I have just learned that our little town possesses a kind of artists’ association. It recently came into existence, as you can easily imagine, out of a crying need, and people say it is “flourishing.” When associations haven’t the faintest idea what they should be doing, that is when they flourish. They must have heard that this is the right approach to take in order to be a proper association.

I don’t have to tell you that Mr. Baum is an honorary member of the association, its founder, its honorary standard bearer, and everything else all rolled into one; and he has trouble keeping all these roles separate. He sent a young man to invite me to participate in the association’s “evenings.” I thanked him, it goes without saying, very politely, but added that the whole of my activity over the last five years has consisted in doing just the opposite. “Just imagine,” I explained to him with the appropriate gravity, “that not a minute has passed during this period of time when I have not been walking out on some club or association. And yet there still remain societies that, so to speak, contain me.”

The young man looked down at my feet, at first with shock and then with an expression of respectful sympathy. He must have seen the “walking out” in them, for he nodded his head with understanding. This result suited me fine, and since just at that moment I had to go out, I proposed that he accompany me part of the way. So we walked through the town and then beyond it toward the train station, for I had errands to take care of in the outlying area. We talked about a variety of things. I learned that the young man was a musician. He had informed me of this with humility; you couldn’t tell it by the look of him. Apart from the abundance of his hair, he was distinguished by a great, as it were, leaping eagerness to be of service. Along our not terribly long way together, he picked up my glove twice, held my umbrella as I was looking for something in my pocket, blushingly called my attention to the fact that I had something caught in my beard, that I had a soot spot on my nose—and at this point his thin fingers lengthened, as though craving to get near my face to help me out in this connection. In his eagerness, the young man even fell behind from time to time to disengage, with visible pleasure, dried leaves that had gotten caught in the branches of the bushes as they fluttered down. I realized that these continual interruptions were going to cause me to miss the train (the station was still fairly far away), so I decided to tell my companion a story to encourage him to keep up with me. I immediately began: