“and whether it was the fault of the metallic tone of the loudspeakers or the rapscallion baritone of the manikin or his understandably profound emotion (for, after long years of struggle, he was back in his homeland for the first time, returning triumphally as her greatest son—recognized at last in his greatness and at last victorious)—

“in any event, this ‘I,’ this ‘Ich,’ came out as a shaky umlauted ‘Üch’—and was instantly reattacked by the driving hee-ha, hee-ha, hee-ha of the beast, a human tumor—

“and it was repeated lamentably: ‘Üch . . .’ And once again, the roaring predator’s breath of the monster, a human metastasis, pounced upon this yearning umlaut and yanked it down and into its panting hee-ha, hee-ha, hee-ha . . .

“and the manikin courageously reiterated his lamentable ‘Üch . . .’

“the tension of the willpower accumulator did not yield, but the record evidently was scratched or cracked: the needle kept hopping in the same groove: ‘Üch . . .’ Hee-ha, hee-ha, hee-ha . . . ‘Üch . . .’ Hee-ha, hee-ha, hee-ha. ‘Üch . . .’ Hee-ha, hee-ha, hee-ha . . . ‘Üch . . .’ Hee-ha, hee-ha, hee-ha . . .

“and finally the manikin managed to blurt out, ‘Oy am sooo happppy. . .’

“But this was just so much blubbering: it sounded squashed and washed out and dull, like a fart in the bathtub: vanderLubbevander-LubbevanderLubbe . . .

“Yet the thing that rose grandly to the heavens, where it was eerily registered for the rest of my life, was that apocalyptic cry, rising heart-burstingly above everything else, that toad’s croak: ‘Üch . . .’—oh no, no majestic manifestation of sovereign self-assurance, but a fluttery call for help, which rose, forsaken, from the fermenting human dough: a cry for help from this very mass of people.

•

“The manikin had vanished from the balcony. And the human dough kept palpitating in its resonant, million-throated hee-ha, hee-ha, heeha. . .

“and flattened it again into a shallowly surging roar, for now the manikin was suddenly in the midst of the human dough and cutting through it.

“This time, he sliced through it like a shark’s fin, slowly and calmly—after all, he was entirely in his element. He stood upright and exposed in his bulletproof but open Mercedes, but neither the car nor the cops encrusting it were visible, they were kneaded into the fermenting dough. Only the manikin loomed above it and sliced closer, ringed by the roaring madness of ecstasy all around him. And he kept slicing closer through the human dough, closer and closer, toward me, until I could look into his eyes.

“He had put his oversize doorman’s cap on again and was snuffling morosely on his minimal mustache. Very slowly, like one of the automatons in the Prater that begin to move when you hit the bull’s eye on their bellies, he lifted and lowered his right arm, displaying his slightly curved palm. His left hand held tight to his belt buckle, as though he were afraid that his pants might fall down. He seemed withdrawn, pensive, and very solitary. And his eyes radiated, sky-blue and foolish.

•