Hjalmar Söderberg translated by Charles Wharton Stork
One day in April many years ago, in the time when I still wondered about the meaning of life, I went into a little cigar booth on a back street to buy a cigar. I selected a dark and angular El Zelo, stuffed it into my case, paid for it, and made ready to go. But at that moment it occurred to me to show the young girl who stood in the booth, and of whom I used often to buy my cigars, a little sketch in India ink, which I happened to have lying in a portfolio. I had got it from a young artist, and to my thinking it was very fine. “Look here,” said I, handing it to her. “What do you think of that?” She took it in her hand with interested curiosity and looked at it very long and closely. She turned it in various directions, and her face took on an expression of strained mental activity. “Well, what does it mean?” she asked finally with an inquisitive glance. I was a little surprised.