Night Games: And Other Stories and Novellas Read Online Free Page B

What kind of wonderful things
might happen in this house while he had to earn a thousand gulden in a cafe for the sake of a compromised comrade? Wouldn't it be far wiser
just to abandon the whole affair and to return in half an hour or so to the
beautiful garden and the Three Graces, pretending to have visited his sick
friend? All the wiser, he thought with self-satisfaction, as-if the old saying was to be believed-his chances for winning at cards must just have
sunk precipitously with this unexpected good luck with the ladies.

    III
    A large yellow poster advertising the races stared at him from a kiosk,
and it occurred to him that at this hour Bogner must be at the Freudenau
races, perhaps at this very minute winning the sum that would save him.
Might Bogner not conceal such a lucky win in order to get the thousand
gulden that Willi meanwhile would have won at cards from Consul
Schnabel or the regiment doctor Tugut? Why certainly-since he had already sunk so low as to take money from a cash drawer that didn't belong to him ... and in a couple of months or even a few weeks, mightn't
Bogner be in exactly the same fix he was in today? And then what?
    Willi heard music. It was some Italian overture, in that halfforgotten style in which only resort orchestras played nowadays. But
Willi knew it well. Many years ago he had heard his mother in Temesvar
play it four handed, with some distant relative. He himself had never gotten so far as to be able to serve his mother as partner in four-handed playing, and since she died eight years ago, there had been no more of the
piano lessons that had been a standard feature of his visits home from the
military academy on holidays. Softly and somewhat poignantly the
music reverberated in the tremulous spring air. He crossed the little
bridge over the muddy Schwechat, and after a few more steps he was
standing in front of the spacious terrace of Cafe Schopf, crowded as
usual on Sundays. Lieutenant Greising, the alleged patient, looking pale
and malicious, was sitting at a little table near the street. With him sat
Weiss, the fat theatre manager, in a somewhat rumpled, canary-yellow
flannel suit, a flower in his buttonhole as usual. Willi pushed his way toward them between the tables and chairs with some difficulty. "I see
there's nobody here today!" he called out, affably, extending his hand to ward them. And suddenly he thought with relief that perhaps there would
be no card game today. But Greising explained that the two of them, he
and the theatre manager, were only sitting outdoors in order to strengthen
themselves for the "work" to come indoors. The others were already inside at the card table. Consul Schnabel had arrived too, having, as usual,
come from Vienna in a carriage.

    Willi ordered an iced lemonade. Greising demanded to know where
he had already so overheated himself that he needed a cooling drink, and
then, without further preliminaries, remarked that the girls of Baden were
decidedly good-looking and lively. Then, in not particularly well-chosen
phrases, he told of a small adventure he had begun last evening in the
Kurpark and which he had been able to bring to the desired conclusion
that very night. Willi drank his lemonade slowly and Greising, who
guessed what was going through his head, replied with a brief burst of
laughter as though in answer, "Well, that's the way of the world, like it or
not!"
    Suddenly, First Lieutenant Wimmer, from the Transport Corps
(whom the uninformed often mistook for a cavalryman), appeared behind them. "What are you thinking of, gentlemen'? Are we supposed to
plague ourselves to death with the consul all by ourselves?"
    And he gave his hand to Willi, who had already conscientiously
saluted his higher-ranking comrade, as was his custom even when off
duty.
    "How're things going inside?" asked Greising, brusquely and suspiciously.
    "Very slowly," answered Wimmer. "The consul is already sitting on
his gold