Telegrams of the Soul

Conversation with a Chambermaid

“Listen up, my dear Anna, I’m in heaven. An admirer, but not the kind you might imagine, just on account of my books, is going to pay my rent here in town this summer for as long a time as I spend in the country for my really very necessary rest and relaxation.”

She turned pale upon hearing this. She thought: “Jesus, there goes my monthly housekeeping tip of six Crowns! If he isn’t here then he definitely doesn’t need to pay for tidying up the cabinet he even keeps locked up with a Yale lock! He’d be downright batty if he did!”

Whereupon I replied: “Naturally you’ll still be paid your six Crowns a month. Why should you have to suffer a loss just because I want a little relaxation in the country?!”

To which she said: “How nicely and comfortably a person could live if there were a lot of people around like you! Why in forty years a person could perhaps even think of retiring! But honestly, Mr. von Altenberg, what’s the use if there’s just one poet among the many thousands and all the others are such cheapskates?!?”

When my dear and most devoted beloved read this “Sketch from Daily Life,” she said: “You see, here you compensate for your absence in the country, but who, pray tell, makes it up to me?!”