51B
PARTISAN REVIEW
screw, extracted the cork from the bottle she held, and filled
two
glasses which Johanna held up without a word.
Their shoulders pressed together, they toasted each other. Ob–
livious of time and the circumstances the host kept on tasting for a
long time, swirling the wine back and forth in his mouth.
The
gargling noise was clearly audible in the stillness. The faint light from
the main vault carved the woman's face out of the deep dark–
drunkenly he leaned over it and whispered: "Look, for your
sake we
celebrate the Marriage of Cana in reverse, and offer them first the
pure and then the mixed wine." "I knew you would listen to me,"
said the woman, with formidable tenderness, bending toward
him.
In the meantime the merriment that had begun upstairs under
the sign of Fortuna continued, and when the host emerged again,
large military maps were spread over all the tables, great sheets
fluttered by drafts from the open door. They were so finely drawn
that in order to improve on the electric light candles had been
set
among them, whose flicker mixed strangely with the artificial glare.
The men were playing a game of war, and had used the host's cork
collection to form two armies, one of which, consisting of pig, dog,
goat and Silenus, represented the
baches,
while little Fortuna stood
in the ranks of the French.
The host was welcomed wildly. When the bottles had
been
opened and, a good while later, iced champagne had begun the
barrage, it came about quite naturally that the German led one
army. Quickly grasping the rules-a clever mixture of chess and dice
in which the moves of a figure were determined by its rank as wen
as by the number of spots on the die--he completely fell in with
his role.
Familiar with all kinds of games from his early youth, he soon
spied his advantage and, using his queen sparingly, advanced with
closed ranks, taking now a bishop, now a pawn- a peasant who de–
fended his post with a brimful tankard. Nor could the host, leaning
over the maps, fail to recognize the names of certain rivers, towns
and contested regions; this so excited him that disregarding
his
over-aIl
plan he bent every effort to conquer a certain fortress or locality. The
name of the place had once been incised on his mind, but so faintly
that only at this second encounter did it cut deeply enough to in–
flame the re-opened wound. Crossing the Moselle, his troops entered
