To: Russell C. Horowitz who wrote (7676 ) 6/19/1999 8:26:00 PM From: Josef Svejk 1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) | Respond to
Svejk began: 'Nothing remains hidden in the world. Everything comes to light in the end, as you've heard, and it even turns out that an idiotic jay like that is not a nutcracker. It's really very interesting that anyone could be taken in by a trick like that. It's true that inventing animals is a difficult thing to do, but presenting animals which have been invented is really much harder. Once some years ago in Prague there was a chap called Mested who discovered a mermaid and exhibited her behind a screen in Havlicek Street in Vinohrady. In the screen there was an opening, and everybody could see in the half-light a common or garden sofa with a woman from Zizkov sprawling on it. Her legs were wrapped up in green gauze, which was supposed to represent a tail. Her hair was painted green and she had gloves on her hands with cardboard fins fitted on them, which were also green. And on her spine she had a kind of rudder fixed with a cord. Young people under sixteen sere not allowed in, but all those who were over sixteen and had paid for their tickets were absolutely delighted to find that that mermaid had enormous buttocks on which was the inscription: "Au revoir!" As for her breasts they were nothing to shout about. They flopped down to her stomach like a worn out trollop's. As seven o'clock in the evening Mested shut the panorama and said: "Mermaid, you can go home." She changed and already at ten o'clock at night you could see her walking up and down Taborska Street and saying quite unobtrusively to every gentleman she met: "Darling, what about coming and playing Philopena with me?" Because she didn't have a registration book Drasner locked her up with other tarts like her he had caught in a raid, and Mested lost his business.' amazon.com
