ARNOSCHMIDT
81
/ "I'll beat your barge into a pram !" I screeched into his Judas' ear, as
he was about to step on the "gass" (or whatever), moving along the
narrow, empty strip of asphalt - quite obviously newly paved: "We
have to keep a look-out, see, for where a lane turns off to the right !".
He muttered his obedience; (or, contrariwise, obediently muttered:
it must be just
too
difficult, with 34 horse power at your feet.) / : "Stop!
There !". (And keep to the right of the balk, my son; 'tis my good
advice.) / Climb out. / : "Be so good as to roll up the windows, huh?
- You'll never learn." (And full of importance "checks it out
himself." And locks the doors.)
4
Up the path: no way you could lay your head back as far as
would have been necessary here ! (Since you were also forced to
regard the gray-blue of the celestial canopy in the process: "Well ?
Wouldn't those sweaters feel good now? !". They emitted, however,
'tis the custom of women perhaps, only a unison-scornful "Pffff -";
and just for that Sir Whirlwind was permitted to link arms with them
"straight away!".)
The cement blocks, to which the cables had been anchored,
were like large sheds sunk into the earth. Each with its acre of sand,
surrounded by a fence 2 m high. "Well, yours isn't all
that
much
lower, either." (Ernst; it had the unequivocal ring of
disapprobation.) / Flat-roofed technical cottages of clinker-colored
clinkers; here
&
there on the clean sand-strewn ground lean twins of
young birch, very attractive and austere, in a tastefully sparse sort of
way - one realized all was not as it seemed only from the fact that
there were things like large tin lunch-boxes hanging on many a wall.
Protective link-fencing here as well, of course; (and I mean of the
thickest, most expensive gauge; I knew all about it; afterall, as Ernst
had hinted just now, I had only recently put up a new fence myself.)
But the main attraction was
&
ever would be him,
HIM: THE
GREAT TOWER! ! ! -
Way at the bottom the skimpy road round cement base :
"Hardly 1 hand above the ground? !". "Listen, that goes down deep
enough," Ernst cautioned out of the fullness of his gazetteer's
erudition: "With the weight it's supporting, there's a good 20 meters
of it ! And cone-shaped, too, I'd guess: growing larger at the base."
("Gives himself some stinking airs at times"; but for once even he had
