. . ,” whereupon my aunt could not help but get an eyeful of the bizarre pattern of the damask curtain.

Very soon after these events my aunt became fat and my uncle wrote a book about the national prosperity. I only knew that my aunt could laugh like a fool, for instance, if someone said: “You know how Mr. Z. walks, don’t you?! He walks like this . . .” Then she shook herself out laughing and her arms became very short and fat and vibrated with merriment. My uncle considered everything “from the standpoint of a national economist—.” He felt: “The thinking of a man of genius revolves around a set point, taking all sides into consideration; these, for instance, are the counter-arguments—.”

“How Clotilde can laugh . . . !” the ladies remarked at high tea.

“Indeed,” said one, “her husband considers it a savings for the GNP, you get more out of nutritious matter, digest it all; laughter is healthy. Grief—a waste of vital strengths, joy—a savings! It’s all a chain reaction.”

A young girl said: “I think her laughter is a kind of crying; it’s pretty much the same . . . only in reverse . . .”

“Don’t talk such nonsense,” they said to the young girl. “You’re already ditzy enough.”

One night I met my aunt with her daughter at a ball. She had on a red silk gown, was very fat and looked just like a mortadella sausage. The daughter hobnobbed with millionaires’ sons with noble “vons” tacked onto their names and decked out in snow-white tails with gold buttons.

My aunt said to me: “Say, I want to tell you something, come with me . . . !”

She led me down the halls.

She stopped in one room.

“That’s it . . . ,” she said, “will you take a look at her . . . !”

Seated there was a strawberry blonde American girl who looked like an angel and like the heavens and all the flowers in the field!

My fat aunt and I just stood there .