The Days of the King by Filip Florian

beer teemed with the same green glints as thelight of the day. He drained two mugs, tossing back the first, sipping the second, letting the fizzy liquid slip soothingly down his throat. And then he penetrated to the heart of the fair, wandering for hours on end. His walk was an undulating line, and the undulating line was the track of a lazy snake, a snaking that was inevitable, an inevitability called fate. Herr Strauss could not be distinguished among the motley mob, but he was there as it was proper for him to be, so as not to upset the logic of things and so as to fulfill events, all the events of that late spring of the year, 1868. Beneath a bunch of sunbeams as fine as pondweed, he glimpsed a profile with rosy cheeks, flushing or confused, with curly locks poking from under a hat, touching the left earlobe, with a small chin that resembled a ripe apricot. He quivered, hoping and believing that it was Mathilde Vogel, and in that tremulous state he wondered, as he had in the yard of the Catholic Church some time ago, whether it was worth approaching her, whether the fine sunbeams gladdened her or saddened her, whether her strappy shoes pinched, whether her thighs were smooth and moist. He wondered without moving, until the quivering died away, and then he remembered that the optician's sister had become engaged before Lent and that he himself had attended the lively engagement party. Mathilde was to be wedded to Schütze the notary, a Calvinist, and the distant profile proved to be that of another woman, who was waving a cherry-red fan and who turned toward him, revealing how deceptive is the countenance of the weaker sex. He smiled. Then he had a smoke. And he smiled once more at the antics and the capers of some clowns, he grew dizzy on a carousel turned by four donkeys, he quickly grew bored of juggled balls, torches, and skittles, he laughed heartily at a puppet show, in which Vasilache and Märioara tussled on a tinystage (a crate with the bottom knocked out and set on its side, with a crêpe skirt for a curtain), he watched the dancing bears with rings through their snouts, and was filled with pity, he nibbled walnuts roasted in salt, he fired a bow and arrow, ineptly, at the pear on a scarecrow's head (and did not win the prize of a demijohn of plum brandy), he applauded the brass bands and vaudeville acts, he gave spinning tops and lollipops to Peter Bykow's freckled boys (hand in hand with their father), he bet with the baker on the wrestling bouts, but kept losing, they toasted each other with a mug of sweet red wine and parted, and Joseph threw his head back to catch a view of three acrobats perched each on the other's shoulders, he met an old man on stilts and a one-legged man riding a boar (a stuffed boar, maneuvered with strings and levers from behind a curtain), he shuddered for the dwarf who was prancing and leaping on a tightrope stretched between two posts. After he finished his balancing act and acrobatics, the dwarf collected a few coins in a copper cup, but as he drew closer to Joseph he somehow also seemed to grow longer. Through the greenish-blond strands of sunlight, the dentist saw the dwarf's arms and legs extending, his body becoming fuller, his head, as his proportions shifted, no longer looked like a pumpkin, his strides became long and smooth, and his striped trousers, red waistcoat, and high-soled shoes grew with him. The dwarf who was no longer a dwarf offered Joseph a scarf and asked him to blindfold himself, and he consented, allowing himself to be led through the din of the fair. Finally, they reached a shady, quiet place, like a cool cellar, although they had not descended any steps, and Herr Strauss undid the knot of the scarf. The dwarf who was no longer a dwarf scrutinized Joseph and meanwhile continued to elongate, inch by inch. And he told him that the gates of the heavens would soon open, notto unleash whirlwinds, floods, and devastation, but to reveal a pale, bluish flame,