And here, gentle reader, be Pfeiffers

[Archeveque]

Выкладываю по просьбе Нуми, цитаты из Мортона, имеющие отношение к означенному герою. Думаю, большинство присутствующих их читали сто раз.
Если некой рыжей женщине, или еще кому-то, понадобится перевод, я только рад буду им заняться.

Много текста

pp. 47-48
The only artist left in the Court Theater neighbourhood that August was certain Johann Pfeiffer, “King of the Birds” as he billed himself. The sidewalks he played for were now largely deserted, but he played on through the August emptiness. He played “previews” from classics the new Court Theater would present after its great opening. His fellow actors were parrots he kept in a huge baroquely domed cage. “Romeo, Romeo wherefore art thou Romeo?” his leading lady’s beak would squawk, and he would respond using the bells of passing horse tramways to punctuate his speeches. He would bow whenewer a coin fell to an upended plumed hat that was his collection box; he would pick up a new mask for a new role, from a box on which in golden letters a sentence was imprinted. The sentenced expressed the spirit of his city, especially during the summer of reprieve: LIFE IS SERIOUS BUT ART IS GAY – VIENNESE SPECIALITIES.

p. 90 После пассажа о невостребованности некого доктора Фрейда.
Johann Pfeiffer, street clown and King of the Birds did better in this particular field. He was still perfoming on the Schottenring, a block and a half from Freud’s doorstep. Profesionally he was more facile and more flexible than the dctor. He and his parrots in their turretlike cage had changed their repertoire. Now they did scenes about the encounter of great kings – the like of which Vienna was to see soon. But there was always a court jester’s line thrown in to amuse strollers on the Ringstrasse, who were waiting for greatness to happen and who laughed and threw coins into the upended lid of the maskbox whose gilt letters said LIFE IS SERIOUS BUT ART IS GAY – VIENNESE SPECIALITIES.

p. 159
The posh side of town too, showed signs of buoyancy. The nice strolling weather populated the Ringstrasse. Unseasonably many passer-by (and coins) came Johann Pfeiffer’s way as he, the King of the Birds performed with his parrots near the new Court Theater. Other landmarks prospered as well.

p. 184 Канун Нового Года (no pun intended...)
Johann Pfeiffer, King of the Birds, performing on th e Schottenring had an act ready for the occasion. For ten kreuzer a parrot would fly to a shelf of envelopes inside the cage, pick one, and ddeliver to King Pfeiffer his clients horoscope for 1889.

p. 264 Похороны Рудольфа.
The overflow reached so far to the northern part of Ringstrasse that Johann Pfeiffer, King of the Birds, had to retreat into the courtyard with his cage.

p. 274 А это действительно интересно
By then the word Mayerling had already began to fosforesce through the world. Abroad it tingled and thrilled. In Vienna it was like some hidden hell machine of which nothing was known except that it was made of gold. Now and then the city tried to shake off the giant riddle that undermined its boulevards. There erupted rumours of some rational solution. At one point word spread that Johann Pfeiffer, King of the Birds,had heard his parrots speak the truth of what had happened in Rudolf’s hunting lodge. A crowd formed on the Schottenring. The police brought the man and his black-craped cage to a precinct house. But the birds just blithered and jabbered in panic and their King lost his renowned humour. The bafflement continued.

pp. 298-299 Ну и собсвтенно...
«Where is the old time?» Bratfisch had sung. “Where is the Gemuetlichkeit”.
One man knew where it was. At least he was among the few who could produce old-fashioned smiles in the teeth of modernity of truth and death. That man was Johann Pfeiffer, King of the Birds. He still performed on the Schottenring, a few steps away from the Freud’s door. Only his act has changed. After Mayerling he stopped staging plays with the parrots – onlookers no longer responded so freely with their coins. Now he had his birds bring each paying customer an envelope fom a shelf of horoscopes, like they had at New Year’s. He knew how to give each prediction a funny twist. And his customers enjoyed that. The Viennese liked to interpose at least a joke between themselves and the future.
His problem was the lack of passers-by. The Ringstrasse did not make a comfortable strolling mall in March of ’89. The mood remained too blighted. The weather too dismal. St the day’s end, the little heap of change the King had garnered was still not quite enough to nourish a family of five humans and seven birds.
Still, the King did not abandon his jolliness, or his daily stand on the Ringstrasse. But now he worked nights too. In late February he began to visit taverns. He gave numerous impersontions of Napoleon at a Viebnnese cofffehouse or of Frederick the Great playing a gypsy violin. He distributed home-made imitations of a fifty-gulden note on which was written, A fifty-gulden fine for all those not watching my performance. When that didn’t bring in enough money, he searched out dog owners among the more good-natured drinkers and taught the pets comical tricks. He performed farcical operas with his shadow-playing fingers, and after one long such evening at the beginning of March, he went home whistling; climbed up three evil-smelling floors in the Castelezgasse; tiptoed past his family whose members both feathered and unfeathered, were sleeping crammed together in the narrow apartment; opened its single window; and jumped out.
When they found him, dead, he still clutched his case of masks on which was written in gold letters: LIFE IS SERIOUS BUT ART IS GAY – VIENNESE SPECIALITIES.
His funeral was marvelous. Truly eine schoene Leich – a beautiful corpse – as the Viennese called succesful occasions of the sort. Most newspapers noted his passing. The city which could not keep him alive showered him with fond obituaries and provided populous company on his last ride. After all, he had been a fixture on the Ringstrasse, its most charming landmark and the first to perish. The policeman on his corner there joined the cortege; so did the mailman and the Dienstmann and the chestnut vendor and the wine lovers whose taverns had been part of Pfeiffer’s nightly rounds.
When he had been laid to rest, they all returned to their pubs and the corpse became very beautiful indeed. It made up for that other, bewildering tragic body still in its temporary coffin at the Capuchin crypt. Rudolf has conjured the glistening antiocipation of greatness, only to dissolve into black bafflement. Johann Pfeiffer, King of the Birds, had offered never more than a moment’s diversion. And in one moment he was, quite logically, gone. He reminded the Viennese of one of their specialties: the art of making life unserious.