The Hustler: The Story of a Nameless Love From Friedrichstrasse by John Henry Mackay

would have given his life’s salvation to enclose that form just once in his arms!
    No doubt, he must be from a good family. How different he was in everything from these other guys, with their uncouth, fresh, and loud conduct, their crudeness and insolence!
    No, Gunther was neither crude nor loud and fresh. But friendly, no, he had also not been friendly. Rather, just the opposite: almost unfriendly, unapproachable, rejecting—taciturn and almost sulky.
    How was that to be explained?
    With each answer he gave himself, he sought to excuse Gunther (as we who love do, and have always done, so as not to lose—even in our own eyes—what we love).
    He had followed him. No, he had waited for him. Of course, because he had recognized him, from seeing him that first time. But why, then, had he not admitted it? Because he was ashamed of having run away so foolishly that time. He had been unfriendly, grouchy even? Yet how could one be friendly and cheerful, if one had slept outside and had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours? But even after he had eaten his fill, he had still remained so quiet and withdrawn? It was shyness with a new and unaccustomed acquaintance, his uneasiness under his many and certainly often intrusive (even if so well meant) questions. Would he have preferred that right away in the first hour he had babbled and bared his little heart? To him, to the stranger, to him, Graff, who was himself so scrupulously withdrawn in regard to other people?
    No: it was he himself who had behaved so falsely and quite unreasonably! He now saw this. To be sure, there was also an excuse for him. He had never really had contact with boys of this age (despite—or rather, precisely because it was the age that he loved), had never spoken much with such boys. With some because they did not interest him. With the others, however, the few to whom he was irresistibly drawn, the secret fear of being misunderstood and the shyness of not finding the right word had always closed his mouth.
    He realized that he should have begun quite differently. He should not have talked about the first meeting at all. He should have realized that he had before him a poor, half-starved, young chap, a lonely little chap obviously abandoned by all the world.
    He himself had been too awkward.
    If he had presented himself as cheerful and unaffected, the boy too would have come out of himself and everything would have been different in that first hour, which is so often the decisive one.
    He tormented himself further in his thoughts:
    His questions had bored him. Was he really full from the one, even if ample portion? He should have ordered more. And above all: Had he given him enough money? Indeed it seemed enough to him. He, under such circumstances, would have managed with five marks until the day after tomorrow. He could have given him still more—ten, or even twenty marks. But then Gunther, whom he did want to help further, would have received an entirely false idea of his circumstances (which would certainly have come back to haunt him later).
    Everything had been wrong. That offering to use the familiar pronoun “Du.” With a finer feeling than he had, the boy had continued to say “Sie” to him nevertheless. Wrong, completely wrong also had been that all too hasty parting. Now he did not even know where to find him again, if he were prevented from coming tomorrow. Gunther, of course. For no power on earth would prevent him, Graff, from being on the bridge at a quarter past five—that was beyond question.
    No, he should not have allowed him to go away like that! He should have accompanied him to the hotel, paid for him there, entrusted the manager and clerk with taking good care of him, and then tomorrow picked him up there himself. That would have been the only right thing! But now it was too late.
    Poor little chap! Life has certainly treated him harshly. He probably had never known real love. No friend by his side to help him. No one to care for