"This," he says, "is the best part of the whole animal."
He severs the thorax from the lower part, puts his teeth to the body
and drinks deep draughts; he sucks the little legs as if they were
asparagus, eats a bit of dill, and takes a drink of beer and a mouthful
of rye-bread. When he has carefully taken the shell off the claws and
sucked even the tiniest tubes, he eats the flesh; last of all he attacks
the lower part of the body. When he has eaten three crabs, he drinks half
a glass of liqueur and reads the promotions in the _Post_.
He has done this for twelve years and will continue doing it until he
dies.
He was just twenty years old when he first began to patronise the
restaurant, now he is thirty-two, and Gustav has been a waiter for ten
years in the same place. Not one of its frequenters has known the
restaurant longer than the school-master, not even the proprietor who
took it over eight years ago. He has watched generations of diners
come and go; some came for a year, some for two, some for five years;
then they disappeared, went to another restaurant, left the town or
got married. He feels very old, although he is only thirty-two! The
restaurant is his home, for his furnished room is nothing but the
place where he sleeps.
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