"Ah, Sardo" sighed José (né Hermann Winkhaus, a concealed Nazi), as he masticated the Patagonian bovine coagulant, the Argentinian answer to Parmesan. Years of hiding in South America had given him a new identity, and addiction to Agentinian cheeses, and a modest bank account. Proprietor of the Pas de Destivelle, he cast his alkaline eye around his gym, avariciously calculating his profit, while his lupine countenance could barely conceal his abyssal disdain for all the "pretentious Parisian twits" (a doubly redundant term, he thought).

       He looked inside his mind and found a question. "Within how many seconds of 2:00pm will that little vixen Marie arrive for her afternoon pump? She is so predictable, so punctual, so . . . orderly. 'En retard' is not in her vocabularly." (Ed. note: True enough, but it is in her spell-check software) José found his spandex becoming just perceptably snugger. He derived intense erotic pleasure from punctuality, even when it was housed in the body of a demi-France (Marie, an automotive engineer for Volkswagen France, was all Parisian, except for the part of her that wasn't, and that part was Helvetian; Marie's father, Elf Zwanzig, had been José's Zürich banker during the Second War).

       His musings on Marie and her tartish partner Françoise were interupted by the increasingly coincidental arrival of Solomon Abramovitz. José began to count "one, two, three, four . . . (he was good at this) . . . ten, eleven" and at that confluence of space-time, Marie and Françoise burst through the doors, followed not 15 seconds later by Solomon. José longed for the days when the Sons of Israel could be banned from proper establishments. "But what the hell? The clientel is Parisian--a far cry from Teutonic purity, hardly a step above the Semites." He kept his ethnic contempt well hidden, because he was a slave to a loftier and purer pursuit--money. José, a singularly vile little Nazi, was keeping book on Marie, suspecting that she might lead him to his other goal in life besides money--and that was more money! "Her father, her father, . . ." he mused. What had he confided to Marie before that fateful day when he was touring the Toblerone Fabrik with some Korean customers, when his life mysteriously came to an end in a vat of dark chocolate with almonds?

       In narrow Nazi enclaves it was widely rumored that Elf managed one of the Third Reich's safety deposit boxes, and that Herr Zwanzig sequestered its customized key up inside his left nostril. After his untimely confectionary demise, Marie's mother, Isabelle, became a nun and joined the Convent of Mounting Mary Magdalena. Even at 53, she had been the most sought after climbing nun in the Alps. But alas, like so many others, she had perished--only 400 meters from the summit on the Schreckkind North Face Direct Route (a made-for-BBC movie was still pending). Other rumors whispered that Isabelle wore a nose, threaded with a prussik cord, around her neck, underneath her habit. The nose, the nun, the conundrum--all disappeared without a trace when Isabelle caught major air time and Joe Simpson'd into a crevasse. Once, in a moment of dark humor, Sr. Mary Natividad, CMMM (behind her back they called her sister Merry Christmas) suggested the Direct Route should be renamed the "Nose Route," but Mother Superior sternly snuffed out that joke.

       Marie and Françoise changed--but not in any substantial way, only into their lycra. They planned to do a light circuit of the Nautilus machines before they did the real workout on "the wall." "Where in the Rive Gauche did you ever find those divine earrings?" queried Marie as she gazed upon the silver cats that pendulously dangled from Françoise's lobes. The cats' odd positioning of legs obviously depicted a climbing pose, but they also--vaguely--resembled a swastika in reverse. "Oh these?" Françoise demurely flicked the silver felines. "This is the famous 'Bergsteigende Katze' of Oberundsoweiter, symbol of the town. Got them on my last junket there..." "Speaking of which," Marie interupted, "have you heard all the hub-hub about the Schreckkind Kontest, and the award and all? VW has offered 1 million DM for the first team to succeed on the Direct Route." "Well, a bit" Françoise prevaricated. She wondered what Marie knew about it all and if she had guessed Françoise's ambitions, and whether Marie had any aspirations to compete for the prize herself. This fear was immediately allayed when Marie said "I could never even think of climbing that wall of death--my mother, you know. But I would like to ground crew for someone else."

       This put an idea in Françoise's mind. The idea was not alone in there. "Let this plan incubate for now" she thought in her ornithic fashion. Changing the subject, Françoise asked Marie "Have you noticed that handsome Jewish man--over there, working his pecs--who lately seems to arrive when we do? He almost seems to be shadowing us. He's never far away from us on the machines or when we're on the wall." "Oh him, yes, what a tasty little brioche he is. How do you know he's Jewish?" Marie asked. Evilly, Françoise said "Well, his lycra is rather tight, and . . . uh, the forelocks are a dead giveaway." The women, now in their let's-talk-about-men mode continued on to their fourth, fifth, and then sixth circuit stations. At the seventh, Françoise was just about to return to the subject of Das Schreckkind when she felt a tap on her shoulder. Turning around, ready to say in her best don't-interrupt-me-I'm-in- training tone "What do you want!?", she was frozen mid-utterance by intense deep hazel eyes that seemed to see all the way through her retinas to her occipital lobes. "I believe you dropped this over at the pec deck." He dangled a Bergsteigende Katze earring between his thumb and forefinger. Françoise's gaze moved reluctantly from the mesmerizing eyes to his curious forelocks, and then took in the silver cat. She admired his muscular fingers. They were the digital equivalent of Carl Lewis's calves. She hypertensively wondered about their dexterity.

       With motor signals to her lips and larynx misfiring, Françoise sputtered "Uh. . . uh . . .why, uh . . . yes, I believe that's mine," as she rubbed her left lobe, absently. Abramovitz nodded congenially, then with presumption, which would have been rude had it not been so patently correct, intruded "You must be familiar with Oberundsoweiter. I recognize the famous cat. Will you be visiting there for the Winter Festival and the Kontest?" Françoise inhaled sharply--a good thing too, because she had in the last 20 seconds forgotten how to breathe. Her spine began to moan, the vertebrae commenced to resonate yet again--like Aeolian bells--with the hollow tones of Alpenschmerz. This was the second time in 15 minutes that Das Schreckkind had come up. "You must pardon me" the green-brown eyed hypnotist interrupted Françoise's neural miasma, "where are my manners? I am Solomon Abramovitz, at your service." The world just went off at a 90 degree angle to its current course and Marie, Françoise, and Solomon went with it. Life, the Universe, and Everything had changed (see Adams, 1987).

       José tried not to stare at the three who looked like they were deep in conspiratorial conspiracy. He suspected that something was afoot, and instantly realized that that something wasn't just a foot--it was probably a whole leg, to boot.

(To be continued)

Schicklgrüber in Repose