Conversation about Legs

When I was sitting in the coupé, the gentleman opposite me said: 

“Nobody can step on your toes.”

I said:  “How so?”

The gentleman said:  “You have no legs.”

I said:  “Is it noticeable?”

The gentleman said:  “Of course.”

I took my legs out of my backpack.  I had wrapped them in tissue paper.  And taken them with me as a memento.

The gentleman said:  “What is that?”

I said:  “my legs.”

The gentleman said:  “You have a leg up and yet get nowhere.”

I said:  “Unfortunately.”

After a pause the gentleman said:  “What do you think you’re really going to do without legs?”

I said:  “I haven’t racked my brain much about that yet.”

The gentleman said:  “Without legs even committing suicide is difficult.”

I said:  “Yet that’s a bad joke.”

The gentleman said:  “Not at all.  If you want to hang yourself, first you’ve got to get up on the window sill.  And who will open the gas jet for you if you want to poison yourself?  You could only buy a revolver secretly through a servant.  But suppose the shot misses?  To drown yourself you’ve got to take an automobile and have yourself carried down to the river on a stretcher by two attendants who have to haul you to the far bank.”

I said:  “That’s for me to worry about.”

The gentleman said:  “You’re wrong, I’ve been thinking since you’ve been siting here how one might get rid of you.  Do you think that a man without legs makes a sympathetic picture?  Has the right to live?  On the contrary, you create a terrible disturbance for the aesthetic feelings of your fellow human beings.”

I said:  “I am a full professor of ethics and aesthetics at the university.  May I introduce myself?”

The gentleman said:  “How are you going to do that?  Clearly you cannot imagine how impossible you are, in your condition.”

I looked sadly at my stumps.

II

Soon the lady opposite me said: 

“To have no legs must be a very odd feeling.”

I said:  “Yes.”

The lady said:  “I would not like to touch a man who had no legs.”

I said:  “I am very clean.”

The lady said:  “I must overcome a great erotic disgust to speak with you, not to mention looking at you.”

I said:  “Really...”

The lady said:  “I don’t believe that you are a criminal.  You might be a wise and, in your original condition, nice person.  But I could not, with the best will in the world, have relations with you, because you have no legs.”

I said:  “One gets used to everything.”

The lady said:  “That a man has no legs causes a naturally sensitive woman to feel an inexplicable, profound terror.  As though you had committed a disgusting sin.”