Telegrams of the Soul

The Mouse

I checked into the quiet little room on the fifth floor of the good old Stadthotel with two pairs of socks and two large bottles of slivovitz for unseen eventualities.

“If it please, Sir,” said the concierge, “shall I have your luggage brought up?!?”

“I have none,” I said straight out.

Then he said: “Would you like electric lighting?!”

“Yes.”

“It’ll cost you fifty Heller a night. But you can also make do with a candle,” he said, considering my circumstances.

“No, I’d rather have electric, please.”

At midnight, I heard sounds of wallpaper being torn and scratched. Then a mouse appeared, climbed up into the wash basin, made all sorts of curious circular perambulations, and leaped back down to the floor, since porcelain did not suit its purpose. Having no definite, far-reaching plans for the future, it finally found the darkness under the cabinet a rather convenient refuge, under the circumstances.

In the morning, I said to the chambermaid: “Say, last night there was a mouse in my room. That’s some clean house you keep!”

“There are no mice in this establishment — that’s a good one! Where’s a mouse to crawl out of, pray tell?! No one can say such a thing about this hotel!”

After that, I said to the concierge: “Your chambermaid has some nerve. There was a mouse in my room last night.”

“There are no mice in this establishment. Where’s a mouse to crawl out of, pray tell?! No one can say such a thing about this hotel!”

When I stepped into the hotel lobby, the doorman and the porter looked at me, as did the other two chambermaids and the manager, the way one looks at a person who checks in with two pairs of socks and two bottles of slivovitz and proceeds to see mice that aren’t there.

My book, What the Day Brings, lay open on my table, and I once caught the chambermaid reading it.

Under these regrettable circumstances, my credibility in regard to mice was rather dubious. On the other hand, however, I did reap the benefits of a certain aura: No one argued with me any longer, they even allowed for little weaknesses to go unnoticed, shut an eye on eccentricities, behaved in an exceptionally accommodating manner as one would with an invalid or a person over whom one takes special pains for some other reason.

Still, the mouse made its regular nightly appearance, scratched at the wallpaper, and often climbed into my wash basin.

One evening, I bought myself a mousetrap complete with bacon, marched ostentatiously with the contraption past the doorman, the porter, the manager, room service, and the three chambermaids, and set the trap in my room. The next morning, I found the mouse in it.

I considered nonchalantly carrying the mousetrap down. The thing would speak for itself!

On the stairs, however, it occurred to me how embittered people become if proven wrong, especially since a mouse is not supposed to be found in a room in a hotel in which “there simply are no” mice! I considered, moreover, that my aura of a man without luggage, with two pairs of socks, two bottles of slivovitz, a book entitled What the Day Brings, and who already claims to see mice every night, would, thereby, be considerably shaken, and I would immediately have been relegated to the disagreeable category of complaining and altogether ordinary transient guests. Consequently, I disposed of the mouse in a place rather well suited for such purposes, and once again set the empty trap on the floor of my little room.

From then on I was treated with even greater deference, under no circumstances was I to be upset, and they catered to my needs as to a sickly child. When finally I checked out, my departure was met with the friendliest expression of sympathy and devotion, even though my luggage consisted exclusively of two pairs of socks, two empty slivovitz bottles and a mousetrap!