The workmen's shelter with its inner glow looked like a cosy little country to itself.
"Do you think the Cadillac will be ready by Tuesday?" I asked.
"Perhaps," said Koster. "Why?"
"I was just wondering. . . ."
We stood up and turned homeward.
"I've been a bit snarled-up to-day, Otto," said I.
"Everybody is now and then," said'Koster. "Sleep well, Bob."
"Good night, Otto."
In my room I continued to sit awhile.
Suddenly I did not like the place any more.
The chandelier—hideous— the light so glaring; and the armchairs, threadbare: the linoleum, utterly dreary; the wash stand—you could never invite any decent person here, I thought.
Not a woman certainly.
A prostitute from the International at the most.
Chapter III
On Tuesday morning we were sitting in the courtyard in front of the workshop having breakfast.
The Cadillac was finished.
Lenz was holding a sheet of paper in his hand and looking at us with an air of triumph.
He was our advertising manager and had just read out to us an ad which he had composed for the sale of the car.
It began with the words
"Luxury. Take your holidays in the sunny South," and was a cross between a love song and a hymn.
Koster and I were silent awhile.
One needed time to recover from such a deluge of flowery fancy.
Lenz supposed we were overcome.
"The thing has poetry and punch, eh?" he said proudly. "In times of realism be romantic, that's the trick.
Opposites attract."
"Not where money is concerned," I replied.
"People don't buy automobiles to save money, my boy," explained Gottfried superiorly. "They buy them to lay out money; and that's where romance starts, at any rate for a businessman.
For the majority of people it even stops there.
What do you say, Otto?"
"Well, you know—" began Koster cautiously.
"Why waste time talking, Otto," I interposed. "That's an ad for a watering place or a beauty cream, not for a motor car."
Lenz opened his mouth.
"Just a moment," I went on. "You think we're prejudiced, I suppose.
Well, let me make you an offer—we'll ask Jupp.
There speaks the voice of the people."
Jupp was our only employee, a lad of fifteen, who had a sort of apprentice job with us.
He served the petrol pump, got our breakfast, and cleared up at night.
He was small, covered with freckles, and had the largest outcrop of ears I have ever known.
Koster declared that if Jupp should ever fall out of an aeroplane he would come to no harm.
His ears would enable him to glide safely to earth.
We called him up.
Lenz read him the advertisement.
"Would you be interested in such a car, Jupp?" asked Koster.
"A car?" demanded Jupp.
I laughed.
"Of course a car," growled Lenz. "What do you think, a hippopotamus?"
"Has it synchronized gears, fluid flywheel, hydraulic brakes?" enquired Jupp, unmoved.
"Muttonhead, it's our Cadillac, of course," snorted Lenz.
"You don't say!" retorted Jupp, grinning from ear to ear.
"There you have it, Gottfried," said Koster. "That's modern romance."