The Great Game by Michael Kurland Page A

him."
     
                  Two waiters descended on them, one with their coffee and the second wheeling a heavily laden pastry cart. After due deliberation they made their selections: a Linzer törtchen for Giselle and a mohn strudel for him.
     
                  "This is, perhaps, degenerate, is it not?" Giselle suggested. "Pastry for breakfast?"
     
                  "Decadent at least, if not fully degenerate," Paul agreed. "But then breaking one's fast at"—he twisted around to peer at the clock on the wall inside the café and then twisted back—"almost eleven, would be considered in itself degenerate enough by the respectable burgers of Vienna. Early rising is synonymous with morality and industry."
     
                  Giselle used her knife and fork to cut a tiny sliver from her törtchen and convey it to her mouth. "And what else is degenerate, my sweet?"
     
                  "I know that voice." Paul said. "You're wondering now many degenerate acts we can accomplish before you sneak out of my room tonight."
     
                  "No such thing!" Giselle stated, contriving to look shocked.
     
                  Paul laughed. "All right. Let's see," he said, "there's the church's definition of degenerate: Whenever you hear a priest fulminating against degenerate behavior, you can be pretty sure he's talking about s-e-x. Then there's the Italian Doctor Cesare Lombroso, who thinks that criminals are degenerates, and he can pick them out by the shape of their nose and the angle of their earlobes. The police have a problem with his theories, as they've had little luck identifying criminals by their earlobes, and besides the police's definition of 'degenerate' usually involves blatant homosexuality. If the homosexuality isn't blatant, then the person involved is spoken of in hushed tones as an 'invert.' "
     
                  "This is something I do not understand, homosexuality."
     
                  "You wouldn't," Paul said. "Any man who doesn't look at you with great interest is beyond your understanding."
     
                  "Well, I am interesting to look at, am I not?" Giselle asked, arching her back slightly and smiling her most innocent smile at him.
     
                  "You certainly am ," Paul agreed. He continued his linguistic excursion: "There's the pseudo-Darwinian theory of degeneration, based on a misunderstanding of the theory of natural selection, which holds that some races of humans or animals or plants— although they don't seem very interested in plants—are reversing their evolutionary rise to higher forms and degenerating back into lower forms. Lombroso's notions are an offshoot of this sort of thinking."
     
                  "And this is not so?" Giselle asked.
     
                  "Evolution does not have a direction," Paul explained. "Wherever it gets to is where it was going. "
     
                  " So."
     
                  "And then there's the inventive pan-Germanic idea of the degenerate: anyone or anything that is not German, particularly if it is Czech, Hungarian, or Jewish."
     
                  Giselle thoughtfully cut herself another sliver of törtchen . "Sometimes you surprise me with these things that you know," she said.
     
                  "I believe that mankind can best be studied by its follies," Paul told her.
     
                  "Which is why I study you," she said. "You are a folly all to yourself."
     
                  Paul laughed. "And you are my folly," he told her. "I am mad about you."
     
                  Giselle nodded. "Yes," she said. "And I am sane about you." She put her hand on top of his and squeezed gently. "We will discuss this. And now I had better go. I am posing for Klapmann today. I am a water nymph, and it takes me half an hour to