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Showing posts from April, 2017

Herr Miller's Money

In the grand pension at the top of the hill lived Mr. Miller the Englishman, a stout fellow (so he described himself, flattering his physicality with a measure of old-fashioned trust in bulk). He was built as a cuboid, his heavy shoulders both bulky and angular at the same time and rising up to engulf his head between them. He had no neck to speak of, and thick fingers like sausages with which he clutched at his teacup in the morning, frowning disapprovingly at the young woman who ran the coffee shop at the bottom of the building when she forgot, as she inevitably did, to bring him milk instead of lemon juice. She (Frau Alttag, that is, the waitress) had been working there for several years, and was quite used to the Englishman’s idiosyncratic behaviour (so she thought, not having been to Britain or indeed outside of the town in her life), but was incapable of holding his preferences for drink for longer than the time it took her (once reprimanded by MIller himself) to fetch a glass f