took off her garters, placed her little bodice on a chair. She was
inconsolable.



II


On a transparent summer evening the Cafe Kloesschen was bathed in
light. The city sky of dark blue silk, upon which the white moon and
many small stars lay, enveloped it. At the rear of the cafe, alone,
a long time before he suddenly died, smoking at a tiny table, on
which something stood, sat the hunch-backed poet Kuno Kohn. People
crouched around other tables. Among them moved people with yellow
and red skulls: women; writers; actors. Everywhere shadowy waiters
darted.

Kuno Kohn was not thinking of anything special. He hummed to himself:
"A fog has so gently destroyed the world." The poet Gottschalk
Schulz, a lawyer, who had painfully flunked all the tests he had
taken, greeted him. A beautiful girl was with him. They both sat
down at Kohn's table. Schulz and Kohn collaborated with the
enthusiastic little Lutz Laus, to produce a monthly journal, "The
Dachshund," designed to refine the level of immorality. Schulz told
Kohn that the Dachshund-Laus would soon invent a godless religion on
neo-legal principles, for which purpose he intended to call an
organizational meeting in a nearby movie-house. Shaking his head,
Kohn listened. The lovely girl ate cake. Kohn said sadly: "Laus can
touch people and get things done. But there is no longer a Jesus to
make us believe. We die every day more deeply into empty, eternal