The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Bernie Rhodenbarr) by Lawrence Block Read Free Book Online Page A

it.”
    “His name was originally Sandor Friedrich Rosenfeld, but he changed it to Alexander Roda Roda. You’re probably wondering why.”
    “I’m sure the man had his reasons, Bern.”
    “Roda is the Croatian word for stork.”
    “See? I knew there was a good explanation.”
    “Storks nested in the chimney of his house in Osijek. I suppose he wanted to remember them.”
    “I guess there must have been two of them, and he wanted to make sure he remembered them both.”
    “He became a writer,” I said, “and published his first work when he was twenty years old. He wrote plays and stories and novels, but he wrote in German, and as far as I can tell nothing of his was ever published in English. In 1938 he emigrated to the States.”
    “He probably figured changing his name wouldn’t fool the Nazis.”
    “He could have tried writing in the language of his new home,” I said. “That’s what Arthur Koestler did after he wound up in London. But there’s no evidence that Roda Roda made the switch, and it’s possible he was done writing by then. He’d been at it for close to fifty years, and he died in 1945 in New York.”
    “A man named Roda Roda,” she said, “belongs in a city named New York, New York. I can see how he’d be tired of writing by the time he got here, but I guess that means there’s nothing of his that I might have read.”
    “Well, there’s Bummler, Schummler und Rossetummler ,” I said. “I like the sound of it, although I realize it would probably lose something in translation. But that’s not how he got into the conversation.”
    “Oh?”
    “When he was 49, Roda Roda published a short story called Antonius de Padua Findling .”
    “Well, that explains everything, Bern.”
    “It does, actually. The story had the same premise as Fitzgerald’s, with a baby born old and growing younger with the passage of time, and Roda Roda published it a full year before The Curious Case of Benjamin Button appeared in Collier’s .”
    “You think Fitzgerald stole the idea?”
    “I’m sure he never heard of it, or of Roda Roda either. I think both men got more or less the same idea at more or less the same time, and each wrote his story and published it.”
    “You know what they say, Bern. Great minds work alike.”
    “And so do lesser ones. But that sort of thing happens a lot. Everybody knows Edgar Allan Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue” was the first true detective story.”
    “I bet you’re gonna tell me it wasn’t.”
    “Back in 1827 a guy beat Poe to the punch by several years. His name was Mauritz Christopher Hansen, and unfortunately he made the mistake of writing his story in Norwegian, so nobody paid any attention. He wrote a short novel, too, The Murder of Engineer Roolfsen, and nobody took much notice of that either.”
    “Outside of Norway.”
    “And look how much of the world is outside of Norway. Almost all of it. But back to Roda—”
    “Roda Roda, Bern. But I guess it’s okay to call him Roda for short.”
    “Mr. Smith got ahold of a copy of his story, and paid somebody to translate it for him.”
    (Mr. Smith indeed. “You have the advantage of me,” I’d said at one point. “You evidently know my name, as you’ve used it four times already. But I don’t know yours.” He’d nodded, as if to acknowledge the truth of my observation, thought for a moment, and said, “Smith. You may call me Smith.”)
    “And was Antonius the spitting image of Benjamin Button?”
    “I’m just guessing,” I said, “but I’d say the title refers to St. Anthony of Padua, the fellow you turn to when you can’t remember where you put your reading glasses.”
    “ ‘St. Anthony, St. Anthony, please come round, for something’s lost that must be found.’ ”
    “Just imagine how catchy that must be in German. And here’s another guess, because I was too lazy to look it up, but I’ll bet you a couple of pfennigs that findling is German for foundling, and the little