One for Alfons.
"Well, pros't!" said he. "May our children have rich parents."
We touched glasses.
The girl did not sip, she tipped it down.
"That's the stuff," said Alfons and sloped back to the counter.
"Did you like the taste of the whisky?" I asked.
She shook herself.
"A bit powerful.
But I couldn't let Alfons down."
The pork chops were the goods.
I ate two large portions and Patricia Hollmann cheered me on.
I thought it grand the way she joined in and found her feet in the place without any trouble.
And without any fuss she drank yet a second whisky with Alfons.
He winked to me secretly that he thought she was all right.
And Alfons was a connoisseur.
Not exactly as regards beauty and culture; more for kernel and content.
"When you are married," said I, "you might teach Alfons to recognize one or two of his human weaknesses."
"Certainly," she replied. "He looks as if he had none."
"But he has." I pointed to a table beside the bar. "There."
"What? the gramophone?"
"Not the gramophone.
Choral singing.
Alfons has a weakness for choral singing. No dances, no classical music—only choirs. Male choirs, mixed choirs—everything on those records there is a choir.
There—you see, here he comes."
"Like it?" asked Alfons.
"Like mother makes," I replied.
"The lady too?"
"The best pork chops in my life," declared the lady boldly.
Alfons nodded satisfaction.
"Now I'll play you my new record.
Make you open your eyes."
He went to the gramophone.
The needle scratched and a male choir lifted up its voice, singing with immense gusto
"Silence in the Forest."
It was a damned noisy silence.
From the first onset the whole place was still.
Alfons could be dangerous if anyone showed irreverence.
He stood at the counter, his hairy arms propping his chin.
His expression changed under the influence of the music.
He looked almost dreamy—dreamy as a gorilla can.
Choral singing had an extraordinary effect on him; it made him as soft and sentimental as a calf.
When he was younger and even more quick-tempered his wife used to keep one of his favourite records always ready on the instrument, so that if he should get dangerous and appear with the hammer she could switch on the needle; then he would lower the hammer, and listen and calm.
It was unnecessary now: his wife was dead and her portrait, by Ferdinand Grau, for which Ferdinand always had free table here, hung over the bar—and besides, Alfons was older and colder.
The record ran out.
Alfons came over.
"Wonderful," said I.
"Especially the first tenor," added Patricia Hollmann..
"Exactly," observed Alfons showing signs of recovery. "You know something about it I see.
The first tenor is in a class by himself."
We were standing out on the pavement.