The Days of the King Read Free

room he occupied with Siegfried the tomcat in a sunny boarding house, Der Große Bär, and the Eleven Titties brothel. It was not until April 14, when the daffodils were in bloom and Siegfried had wounded his muzzle and paw in one of the neighborhood cat fights, that he read, to his astonishment, a short item in a gazette about the holding of a plebiscite: "
Today, the lieutenancy and the ministry have proclaimed, by means of bills posted on the streets, the candidacy of Prince Karl of Hohenzollern for the throne of Romania. The event seems to have filled the whole nation with rejoicing.
" That evening, as the jovial Karl of Prussia bantered with the other Karl (now at last a captain) in the foyer of the Berlin Opera House, addressing him as "Turk," the dentist felt no inclination for mugs of beer, for chatter and whist at the bar, or for the eleven titties, two per five lively wenches and the one huge one on the chest of Rosa. Frequently refilling his glass with schnapps, puffing his pipe, and gazing through the open window at the stars and the eaves of the houses across the way, Herr Strauss regretted not having taken the young officer seriously. He fell asleep dreaming of beautiful women and impatient crowds waiting at his door for him to quell their toothaches. A few days later, a courier of the dragoons regiment handed him a yellowish envelope with a crest and the seal of the house of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. It was raining buckets, but the envelope was dry when it emerged from beneath the military cape.

2. The Captain's Shadows
    I N J UNE, WHEN the solstice draws nigh, dawn is at its earliest. That Wednesday, however, for their eyes no sunrise sprang into view. At dawn, the coach laden with portmanteaus, bags, and trunks set in motion with a judder, one of the horses (a tallish gray mare) whinnied and chomped at the bit, the other (a sorrel with a scar on his throat) puffed out his chest, and from beneath the lid of a wicker basket Siegfried the tomcat mewled heartrendingly. The dentist lost sight of the green shutters of the boarding house, the door, the water barrel in the yard, and the clump of daisies by the gate, but he did see a stripy cat running along the fence tops with fleet and nimble steps, leaping over broken pales, stubbornly keeping pace with the horses. She seemed to him pretty, and large-bellied. At a crossroads, where the coach turned south, the cat must have wearied or floundered in the puddles, because he saw her no more, and soon after, along the streets leading to the Ober-baumbrücke, Siegfried stopped thrashing around and whining piteously and curled up in his basket, with his black ear pricked up and the tip of his tail aloft, while Herr Strauss, whose migraine had not yet relinquished him, gazed through the streaked window at the clouds, the wakening quays, the endless rows of buildings along the banks of the River Spree, the plumes of smoke rising from hundreds of chimneys, and the placid water reflecting a darkling sky, presaging rain. He thought of the hobs sizzling in countless kitchens, he was violently jolted for the length of a bridge, he felt an emptiness in his stomach, perhaps from the rattling of the coach, perhaps from the previous night's beer and champagne, perhaps from the mental image of the sausages, eggs, and bacon being fried in every house, perhaps because of the vista that was now vanishing, as though an unseen hand had wiped away the outlines and colors of a familiar painting.
    The storm began at the morning's end, about an hour after the dentist had managed to throw up and rid himself of his grogginess. The lashing volleys of cold raindrops forced them to seek shelter. They stopped at an inn among the hills, where a man and a woman were whitewashing the walls and a lanky girl was halfheartedly scrubbing the floors. By the window, with a mug of warm milk cupped in his palms, Joseph observed how the coachman, soaked to the skin, took care to tether the horses in a