managed, by means of energy and all kinds of dirty tricks, after a
year and a few months, to hold a position of trust as an independent
manager of a newspaper kiosk.



II


Because he had a pleasant way of speaking as well as a face that
looked like that of an intelligent doll, the former locksmith soon
had won a very large number of steady customers, for the most part
female. In the morning a dozen saleswomen from a nearby department
store, having purposely arrived too early, gathered around his kiosk
to enjoy the dirty jokes and cheerful comments of Mr. Mechenmal. The
bank officer Leopold Lehmann, who always arrived punctually at eight
o'clock, to buy illustrated joke books and theological tracts,
sometimes became impatient, because the cheerful saleswomen disturbed
him as he tried to make his selection. And the school-teacher Theo
Tontod, who tirelessly, and, as a rule, uselessly asked for the
modern newspaper, "The Other A," often got to school too late.
Around noon, almost every day, the choral-singer Mabel Meier came, on
the arm of an old man. She bought colorful, spicy newspapers, or
sentimental ones, with long lyrical poems. The old man, who always
had a whining expression, sighed as he paid. She was reserved with
Mechenmal. At odd hours, Mieze Maier, a teen-ager, also came, and
asked whether Herr Tontod had been there. Once Mieze Maier remained
longer; from that time on she did it more frequently. Sometimes a
fat, agreeable servant-girl of the salesman Konrad Krause was at the
kiosk. She said to Mechenmal that he was good-looking, that he had