Gentlemen prefer blondes - Anita Loos [30]
So Mr. Spoffard said that we really ought to go to the theater in Munchen because even the theater in Munchen was full of kunst. So we looked at all of the bills of all of the theaters, with the aid of quite an intelectual hotel clerk who seemed to be able to read it and tell us what it said, because it really meant nothing to us. So it seems they were playing Kiki in Munchen, so I said, let us go and see Kiki because we have seen Lenore Ulric in New York and we would really know what it is all about even if they do not seem to talk the English landguage. So then we went to the Kunst theater. So it seems that Munchen is practically full of Germans and the lobby of the Kunst theater was really full of Germans who stand in the lobby and drink beer and eat quite a lot of Bermudian onions and garlick sausage and hard boiled eggs and beer before all of the acts. So I really had to ask Mr. Spoffard if he thought we had come to the right theatre because the lobby seemed to smell such a lot. I mean when the smell of beer gets to be anteek it gets to smell quite a lot. But Mr. Spoffard seemed to think that the lobby of the Kunst theatre did not smell any worse than all of the other places in Munich. So then Dorothy spoke up and Dorothy said “You can say what you want about the Germans being full of ‘kunst,’ but what they are really full of is delicatessen.”
So then we went into the Kunst theater. But the Kunst theater does not seem to smell so good as the lobby of the Kunst theater. And the Kunst theater seems to be decorated with quite a lot of what tripe would look like if it was pasted on the wall and gilded. Only you could not really see the gilding because it was covered with quite a lot of dust. So Dorothy looked around and Dorothy said, if this is “kunst,” the art center of the world is Union Hill New Jersey.
So then they started in to playing Kiki but it seems that it was not the same kind of a Kiki that we have in America, because it seemed to be all about a family of large size German people who seemed to keep getting in each others ways. I mean when a stage is completely full of 2 or 3 German people who are quite large size, they really cannot help it if they seem to get in each others ways. So then Dorothy got to talking with a young gentleman who seemed to be a German gentleman who sat back of her, who she thought was applauding. But what he was really doing was he was cracking a hard boiled egg on the back of her chair. So he talked English with quite an accent that seemed to be quite a German accent. So Dorothy asked him if Kiki had come out on the stage yet. So he said no, but she was really a beautiful german actress who came clear from Berlin and he said we should really wait until she came out, even if we did not seem to understand it. So finally she came out. I mean we knew it was her because Dorothy’s German gentleman friend nudged Dorothy with a sausage. So we looked at her, and we looked at her and Dorothy said, “If Schuman Heinke still has a grandmother, we have dug her up in Munchen.” So we did not bother to see any more of Kiki because Dorothy said she would really have to know more about the foundations of that building before she would risk our lives to see Kiki do that famous scene where she faints in the last act. Because Dorothy said, if the foundations of that building were as anteek as the smell, there was going to be a catasterophy when Kiki hit the floor. So even Mr. Spoffard was quite discouradged, but he was really glad because he said he was 100 per cent of an American and it served the Germans right for starting such a war against all we Americans.