Telegrams of the Soul

The Koberer (Procurer)

“Own up,” said the Count to Mitzi G., “who’d you get to draft this letter to me for you?!”

“Drafted?! Drafted?! What do you mean by that?!”

“Drafted! You couldn’t possibly have dreamed it up yourself!”

“Why not?! You think I’m all that stupid?!”

“No, yes. But once and for all, you didn’t write this letter!”

“Who else do you think wrote it?!”

“That I don’t know. You’re the only one that knows it. Listen, Mitzi, I’ll give you one hundred Crowns if you tell his name!”

“One hundred Crowns? Make it one fifty!”

“It was Peter!”

“What Peter?!”

“Peter, you know, Peter Altenberg!”

The letter: “Saw you again last night at the ‘Tabarin!’ Couldn’t talk to you, didn’t dare to. So there I was seated face to face with the guy that had me for a whole year butt-naked under the covers. . It was just no use!”

“How did he ever come to draft this letter for you?!”

I said to him, I said: “For God’s sake, write me something I’d have written if I knew how to write!”

“So the letter’s from you after all?!”

“That’s what I said from the start!”

So then she patched things up again with the Count.