Razzle-Dazzled

CZARDAS--Jeno Heltai--Houghton Mifflin ($2.50).

Like bacteria in water, myriads of thoughts and memories swarm unnoticed in the drop of intelligence under every man's skull. Unlike bacteria, however, they are brought to a man's attention less by microscopic examination than by some serious shock to the tenor of his ways. Then the myriads of thoughts & memories rush helter-skelter every which way: they have strange encounters, make strange marriages. If they absorb too much of the man's attention he may go mad.

When Peter Karmel crashed his airplane and lost his arm in Galicia he woke up in the dismal fairyland of his cracked brain. His head hummed like a drunken beehive, but above that noise he heard the menacing approach of a blind man's tapping stick, saw visions of a beautiful porcelain woman who comforted him. To flee the blind man he hides away in an obscure hotel in Budapest, drinks brandy by the bottle, neat. Finally his longing for the porcelain woman overcomes his terror of the blind man. He leaves the hotel to try to find her in the world outside. Led by befuddled memories he looks to find her in one of his old mistresses, without success. He sees the blind man, but this time it is a real one. Mr. Callus, whom he had chanced to injure before the War. He confesses to Callus and is forgiven. The porcelain woman he discovers to be Theresa Gendarme, a delicate young girl in his memory, a lady of pleasure now. After he discovers that she cannot love him, can only pity him, he hears again the blind man's tapping stick. This time it is not the memory of injured Mr. Gallus. not Mr. Callus himself that he hears: this time he fancies true, he hears the tapping stick of Blind Man Death.

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