86
PARTISAN REVIEW
"Huh-uh, Ernst: despite which you can do the mowing. Just
back
&
forth; 'boustrophedonic,' very simple." / Now
I
walked
alongside, now
I
babbled on. / Laughed like a frog for glee, as the
old pettifogger - now why had that word just occurred to me ? -
lopped off half a dahlia bush first thing: "Ernst,
you've
got to take the
whole blame
! :
you'll be taking off again tomorrow; I'm the one
who'll have to grin
&
bear it." Which on the one hand he accepted;
on the other, however, he feared Paula, and not without cause. With
heaving breast after the very first round. (As I noticed that he was
secretly eyeing the bright headscarves in the potato patch across the
way, I quickly went and got him-us the binoculars so as to keep him–
us in a good mood.)
First the revolving rambling reaping rotor; beside it the petty
bumpking : foxyred face with whitish bristles; a hide that would
have bent the stinger on a hornet; and raised his arms in a priestly
gesture to which he hadn't the least right, (the commanding bark of
his pipes that doubtless accompanied this could, happily, not be
heard this far. Diaphragmatic rabble. - "You could tell them:
"Sharpening a new pencil on Wednesday brings misfortune at home"
: they're so stupid that 300 years later a folklorist could come along
and, awestruck, collect that as 'wisdom.'" / And back. And forth .).
: "Break
!".
He screamed now uninhibitedly; directed his
backside to the orient and gave a gaseous formation clearance for
departure (all that elderberry jam, right ?) .
: "Hell, like in a POW-camp
!"
(He meant in fact my pretty new
fence; to keep him in the mood, however, I first handed him the bot–
tle. Then the binox; (and right away he focused lecherously on the 6
potato diggers in their furrows, nudipedaJia with milkmaid arms). /
'''Tis no mask she's wearing - grown ebon rather fro' the sun.' ?" He
nodded agreement, and continued to level in musingly on those
colorful taut rears. / "Listen, do they ever carry on conversations
sometimes
!
Once, hidden behind a bush, I eavesdropped for 5
minutes - : the army's a nunnery in comparison
!".
(Here, as if she
had understood us , there arose a young tan gazelle from out the local
fertile plain; revealed herself a saucy brat of 14 years at most , who
looked our way - and at once, with resolve, tucked her skirt still
higher, tormented by her own sex . Ernst ogled her all the more;
("forest-primevally sansculotte, having been seduced by the Zeit–
geist"); "How would that be, Ernst? : 'To
THE WOODS, TO THE
WOODS'
!".
Naturally something morbid-letterboxy occurred to Him
at once: "The French Republic enacted a law on September 9, 1792,
