Your superior officers wish to speak to you!
"Herrgott!" I stood up. "I hoped you wouldn't remember. . . . Don't make a song about it."
"You're not the only one to be considered," said Gottfried, putting down on the table a parcel in which was something that clinked and rattled. Koster came in after him. Lenz stood towering over me.
"What was the first thing you met this morning, Bob?"
I thought awhile.
"An old woman dancing."
"Holy Moses!
There's an omen, if you like!
Fits in with your horoscope exactly!
I had it cast yesterday.
You are born under Sagittarius—weak, unreliable, a reed in the wind—with Saturn sitting in an ugly quarter and Jupiter unfavourable this year.
Koster and I are in loco parentis, you understand, therefore I ask you to accept, for your very necessary protection, first this amulet.
I had it from a direct descendant of the last of the Incas.
She had blue blood and flat feet; she was lousy, and had the gift of clairvoyance.
'Pale-faced stranger,' she said to me, 'kings have worn this; the power of sun, moon and earth are in it, to say nothing of the lesser planets. . . .
Give me a silver dollar for it to buy schnapps and it is yours.'
That the chain of fortune may not be broken, I now give it to you.
May it preserve you and put to flight unfriendly Jupiter." He hung about my neck a little black figure suspended on a thin chain. "There.
That is against major misfortunes. . . .
Against those of every day, there is this—six bottles of rum. From Otto. Every drop twice as old as you are."
He opened the parcel and stood the bottles up one by one in the morning sunshine.
They glowed like amber.
"Looks marvellous," said I. "Where did you get it, Otto?"
Koster smiled.
"That's a long story.
But say, Boy, how do you feel?
Thirty?"
I shook my head.
"Like sixteen and fifty both at the same time.
Pretty punk, in other words. . . ."
"Pretty punk! What do you mean?" objected Lenz. "Why, that's the most wonderful thing in the world.
It means you've conquered time and are living twice over!"
Koster looked at me.
"Let him alone, Gottfried," said he then. "Birthdays weigh heavily on one's self-esteem.
Early in the morning especially.
He'll pick up later."
Lenz knit his brows.
"The less a man thinks of himself the better he is.
Doesn't that comfort you now, Bob?"
"Not at all," said I.
"The better a man is the more he has to live up to.
I find that rather strenuous and a bore anyway."
"Wonderful! He's philosophizing, Otto! He's saved already," said Lenz.
"The worst is over—the crisis is over— he's past the birthday hour when a man looks himself in the eye and finds that after all he is only a poor mutt. . .
Now for the daily round with a quiet mind, and to the old Cadillac to oil his innards."
We worked till dusk, then washed and dressed.
Lenz eyed the row of bottles covetously.
"What do you say to cracking one, Otto?"
"That's for Bob, not for me, to say," said Koster. "You know, Gottfried, it's not polite to make a gift and then throw off hints like a howitzer."
"Still less is it polite to let a benefactor die of thirst," retorted Lenz, drawing a cork.