Charlie's Dollhouse

Charlie was small and cloddy. His gaze had something blistering and when he was angry with somebody or just pretending he looked as if he would say: ”I'll kill you.“ His hair was grey with an accurate side parting. He wore a walrus moustache which grew wildly downwards over the corners of his mouth with two grey hanks alongside the bottom lip, like gills.
Charlie always tried to smuggle a knife into the ”Monkey House“. When he came in the evening, more precisely limped in because he had a peg leg, and enlisted the night-watchman always had to remind him: ”Charlie, where's your tickle-cutlery?“ The night-watchman knew that Charlie sometimes dreamed about lying in a Foreign Legion's barrack. Charlie actually had been there, also in prison. Then he considered the others to be nasty and it could happened that he stabbed and only then remembered that he lay in the ”Monkey House“. ”Charlie, where's your tickle-cutlery?“ Charlie grumbled and made his blistering gaze and said: ”Watch out! Listen to me! This is a dangerous thing! I've learned to deal with it. Believe me! I'll won't give it to you, not at all!“ and with a wink to the others behind him on the floor: ”And anyway I want to shave myself now! Yes, yes, yes!“ and his mouth with this bearded hanks snatched just like a fish-mouth that had gorged a huge chunk.
”Here you have a disposable shaver,“ the night-watchman said. ”Huh, watch out! Listen to me! Who are you? Why are you talking big? You don't know Charlie, do you?“ ”Charlie, be kind!“ ”I see!“ he acknowledged and took the butterfly knife out of his leather jacket and let it slide over the writing desk. The night-watchman pulled the drawer and it fell into it. That was the way it happened every evening. Charlie also brought slingshots and broken rakes, and he fidgeted with them as if they were big claws.
Once on his way to the washing room he limped past the office with bare torso and a towel over his shoulder, and in his trouser waistband stuck a revolver. The boys gazed, mouth open. The night-watchman swiftly grabbed it. Charlie turned around, and before he could say ”Watch out! Listen to me!“ the night-watchman had the revolver directed at him: ”Charlie, be kind and go into the washing-room.“ ”Eh, it's loaded!“ Charlie said. ”Yes, that's why! Off you go!“ ”Huh!“ muttered Charlie and went. The night-watchman shut the piece into the drawer. A police patrol came and checked it later that night and identified it as a starter pistol.


Leseprobe, zunächst bis hierhin
Diese Übersetzung von Kalles Puppenstube war für das britische Straßenmagazin The Big Issue vorgesehen.



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