Read The Storyteller for Free Online

Günter Morland sat in front of a café. The cold grenadine made his teeth hurt. Violin sounds came from inside, as though bright spiritual voices were storming irritably towards their goal.
    â€˜Why did you sleep with a woman? It was a girl, it was a prostitute. Oh Günter, you were pure.’
    An old woman made a fuss as she sought a space among the empty chairs. Günter examined her tiny body with interest. One could have twisted off her neck, that’s how thin she was. The waiter cheated him when he paid the bill. He pushed himself into the stream of people on the boulevard. Every evening the sky was a milky brown, the small trees were black, and the doorways to the amusement halls were dazzling. He was spellbound by the jewellers’ shops. With the golden knob of his walking stick buttressed against his hip, he would pause in front of the window displays. For minutes at a time he observed the hats at a milliner’s shop and imagined them on the heads of women in full make-up.
    He was met by a gust of perfume that came from four women. They edged their way through the crowd and Günter followed them unashamedly. Well-dressed men turned their heads after these women; newsboys squawked after them. With a hiss, an arc lamp flared up and illuminated the hair of a slender blonde. The women huddled together. As they turned around, Günter approached them with wavering steps. The girls laughed. Stiffly, he went past them and one of the women pushed her arm against him, making him hot. Suddenly he appeared in the brightness of a mirror which reflected the lights. His green tie was glowing; it sat well. But he saw himself looking dishevelled amid the lights. His arms hung limply at his sides. His face appeared flat and red, and his trousers hung in deep folds. Shame had befallen his body in all its limbs simultaneously. A stranger surfaced from the depths of the mirror. Günter fled with his head bowed.
    The streets were empty and the voices rang sharply, all the more so now that it was dark. Günter Morland was astonished that during these last twenty-four hours he had not yetsuccumbed to some debilitating disease. He steered well clear of other people and yet kept his eye on them.
    At around eleven at night, he found himself in a square and noticed a crowd of people with upturned heads looking at the sky. In a circle of light above the city there drifted an aeroplane, black and jagged in the pinkish mist. It seemed as if one could hear its quiet rumbling, but the aviator remained invisible. He steered an even course, almost without accelerating. The black wing hovered sedately in the sky.
    When he turned, Günter had to sharpen his gaze to make out the prostitute he had slept with. She did not notice the look in his childlike eyes as he took her by the arm assuredly.
    â€”
    Translated by Sebastian Truskolaski .
    Fragment written c. 1911–12; unpublished in Benjamin’s lifetime. Gesammelte Schriften VII , 643–4; also translated in Early Writings , 126–7.

CHAPTER 21
The Death of the Father
Novella

    Two Men, Each Suspecting the Other to be of Higher Rank, Meet (Invention 6) (Zwei Männer, einander in höherer Stellung vermutend, begegnen sich [Invention 6]) , 1903.
    D uring the journey, he avoided thinking about the real meaning of that telegram: ‘Come immediately. Turn for the worse.’ In the evening, in bad weather, he had left the town on the Riviera. Memories surrounded him like morning light bursting in upon a late carouser, sweet and shaming. Indignantly he heard the sounds of the city, whose midday he had entered. Feeling upset appeared to him to be the only response to the annoyances of his hometown. But he harboured a chirruping lust for those hours he had whiled away with a married woman.
    His brother was standing there. And, like an electrical shock running down his spine, he despised this black-clad figure.The brother greeted him hastily with a despondent