Fast Fiction: Fraulein Friss
The narrator in Richard Mallinson's story is amazed to discover that he knows Fraulein Friss the fortune teller. But what of Fraulein Friss's husband, the chap with the half-crushed face of a failed criminal?
‘Carm inside, carm inside, ave your fortune told by the greatest of em all, Fraulein Friss, the Maiden from Munich.’
The speaker outside the tent in the corner of the fairground was a squat fellow with a cap and an off-white muffler.
There was something about his half-crushed face that made me think of a failed minor criminal.
He began again, in raucous cockney tones. ‘Carm inside - ‘
‘Yes, please,’ I said and gave him the necessary coin.
I pushed my way through the flap. The only light inside came from the green-glowing glass ball on the table.
I sat down. There was silence. Then a female voice said, ‘Good heavens, it’s you.’
I leaned forward. ‘Amazing,’ I said, ‘it’s you too.’
She removed a veil from the lower half of her face.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and of all the tents in all the fairgrounds in all the…let’s meet for a drink tonight…I haven’t seen you for ages.’
‘The last time we met in the fullest sense of the word,’ I said, ‘was five years ago in St Ives.’
She ignored this. ‘I hope you won’t mind if I bring my husband along tonight,’ she said.
‘Your husband?’
‘Yes, you’ve just met him outside, doing the spiel, taking the money…he’s extremely versatile.’
‘I bet he is,’ I said. And as I ran through the crowds I could still hear his voice yelling above the noise, ‘Carm inside, carm inside, ave your fortune told by the greatest…’
