596
PARTISAN REVIEW
famous at the time (she later drowned in the Pacific), who was giving a
small, almost shy wave to someone below-<:ertainly not me? No, for as I
looked around, I saw an elegant foreigner-a rarity in this town-but
dusty and ravaged like a second Richard Widmark, waving to her the same
way-it couldn't be the pharmacist from the outskirts, could it?-yes, it
was him, and gone already, as was the beauty from her hotel balcony.
THE MONTHLY MEETING with the other members of his guild was sum–
mery and short: Several pharmacies were closed for the holidays, and
most of the new drugs weren't scheduled for release until fall; for now,
at least in this area, the old stand-bys were sufficient, though because of
the tourists larger supplies had to be laid in; this didn't affect the Tax–
ham pharmacist.
The three of them then lingered on a terrace above the Salzach, where
a faint breeze off the river fanned the heat away-the pharmacist from
Itzling, the pharmacist from Liefering, and him. The pharmacist from
Itzling was a young woman, to whom the Taxham pharmacist had once
remarked, in the middle of another conversation about medications, quite
absent-mindedly and unintentionally, "You're really very beautiful."
He told me later that there was also a story to tell about this woman,
at least as adventurous and mysterious as his own, and certainly more
erotic-she would make a good main character for a book. Why me,
anyway? Why not her?-I responded by asking whether he could pic–
ture a heroine called "the woman pharmacist of Itzling." And alto–
gether, he should just wait and see.
That afternoon, which I view as the beginning of his story, he again
became lost in thought, with the two others there, and abruptly said to
the beautiful pharmacist, "Why are you so brown? Among the ancient
Egyptians only the men were brown; the women had to be white as
alabaster or cheese. And why do almost all pharmacists nowadays go
around with these permanent tans, and especially the women?"
"But you're tanned yourself, actually as dark as a
fellah."
"That's my natural state, and it also comes from being out in the sun
and shade and moving around, not like the rest of you from lying and
applying lotion in the South-West Tanning Salon, where the rays are
carefully calibrated to the white of your lab coats."
"Why are you being so mean today? There was a time when you
wanted to erect a pyramid in my honor!"
All this time the ancient, almost deaf pharmacist from the outlying
village of Liefering was expounding, in a voice that boomed across the
