The Berlin Stories (5 page)

“That will suit me admirably. In the meantime, I shall be careful what I eat, go to bed early and generally prepare myself to enjoy an evening of Wein, Weib, und Gesang. More particularly Wein. Yes. God bless you, dear boy. Goodbye.”

On New Year’s Eve I had supper at home with my landlady and the other lodgers. I must have been already drunk when I arrived at the Troika, because I remember getting a shock when I looked into the cloakroom mirror and found that I was wearing a false nose. The place was crammed. It was difficult to say who was dancing and who was merely standing up. After hunting about for some time, I came upon Arthur in a corner. He was sitting at a table with another, rather younger gentleman who wore an eyeglass and had sleek dark hair.

“Ah, here you are, William. We were beginning to fear that you’d deserted us. May I introduce two of my most valued friends to each other? Mr. Bradshaw—Baron von Pregnitz.”

The Baron, who was fishy and suave, inclined his head. Leaning towards me, like a cod swimming up through water, he asked: “Excuse me. Do you know Naples?”

“No. I’ve never been there.”

“Forgive me. I’m sorry. I had the feeling that we’d met each other before.”

“Perhaps so,” I said politely, wondering how he could smile without dropping his eyeglass. It was rimless and ribbonless and looked as though it had been screwed into his pink well-shaved face by means of some horrible surgical operation.

“Perhaps you were at Juan-les-Pins last year?”

“No, I’m afraid I wasn’t.”

“Yes, I see.” He smiled in polite regret. “In that case I must beg your pardon.”

“Don’t mention it,” I said. We both laughed very heartily. Arthur, evidently pleased that I was making a good impression on the Baron, laughed too. I drank a glass of champagne off at a gulp. A three-man band was playing: Gruss’ mir mein Hawai, ich bleib’ Dir treu, ich hob’ Dich gerne. The dancers, locked frigidly together, swayed in partial-paralytic rhythms under a huge sunshade suspended from the ceiling and oscillating gently through cigarette smoke and hot rising air.

“Don’t you find it a trifle stuffy in here?” Arthur asked anxiously.

In the windows were bottles filled with coloured liquids brilliantly illuminated from beneath, magenta, emerald, vermilion. They seemed to be lighting up the whole room. The cigarette smoke made my eyes smart until the tears ran down my face. The music kept dying away, then surging up fearfully loud. I passed my hand down the shiny black oil-cloth curtains in the alcove behind my chair. Oddly enough, they were quite cold. The lamps were like alpine cowbells. And there was a fluffy white monkey perched above the bar. In another moment, when I had drunk exactly the right amount of champagne, I should have a vision. I took a sip. And now, with extreme clarity, without passion or malice, I saw what Life really is. It had something, I remember, to do with the revolving sunshade. Yes, I murmured to myself, let them dance. They are dancing. I am glad.

“You know, I like this place. Extraordinarily/’ I told the Baron with enthusiasm. He did not seem surprised.

Arthur was solemnly stifling a belch.

“Dear Arthur, don’t look so sad. Are you tired?”

“No, not tired, William. Only a little contemplative, perhaps. Such an occasion as this is not without its solemn aspect. You young people are quite right to enjoy yourselves. I don’t blame you for a moment. One has one’s memories.”

“Memories are the most precious things we have,” said the Baron with approval. As intoxication proceeded, his face seemed slowly to disintegrate. A rigid area of paralysis formed round the monocle. The monocle was holding his face together. He gripped it desperately with his facial muscles, cocking his disengaged eyebrow, his mouth sagging slightly at the corners, minute beads of perspiration appearing along the parting of his thin, satin-smooth dark hair. Catching my eye, he swam up towards me, to the surface of the element which seemed to separate us.

“Excuse me, please. May I ask you something?”

“By all means.”

“Have you read Winnie the Pooh, by A. A. Milne?”

‘Tes, I have.”

“And tell me, please, how did you like it?”

“Very much indeed.”

“Then I am very glad. Yes, so did I. Very much.”

And now we were all standing up. What had happened? It was midnight. Our glasses touched.

“Cheerio,” said the Baron, with the air of one who makes a particularly felicitous quotation.

“Allow me,” said Arthur, “to wish you both every success and happiness in nineteen thirty-one. Every success…” His voice trailed off uneasily into silence. Nervously he fingered his heavy fringe of hair. A tremendous crash exploded from the band. Like a car which has slowly, laboriously reached the summit of the mountain railway, we plunged headlong downwards into the New Year.

The events of the next two hours were somewhat confused. We were in a small bar, where I remember only the ruffled plumes of a paper streamer, crimson, very beautiful, stirring like seaweed in the draught from an electric fan. We wandered through streets crowded with girls who popped teasers in our faces. We ate ham and eggs in the first-class restaurant of the Friedrichstrasse Station. Arthur had disappeared. The Baron was rather mysterious and sly about this; though I couldn’t understand why. He had asked me to call him Kuno, and explained how much he admired the character of the English upper class. We were driving in a taxi, alone. The Baron told me about a friend of his, a young Etonian. The Etonian had been in India for two years. On the morning after his return, he had met his oldest school-friend in Bond Street. Although they hadn’t seen each other for so long, the school-friend had merely said: “Hullo. I’m afraid I can’t talk to you now. I have to go shopping with my mother.”

“And I find this so very nice,” the Baron concluded. “It is your English self-control, you see.” The taxi crossed several bridges and passed a gas-works. The Baron pressed my hand and made me a long speech about how wonderful it is to be young. He had become rather indistinct and his English was rapidly deteriorating. “You see, excuse me, I’ve been watching your reactions the whole evening. I hope you are not offended?” I found my false nose in my pocket and put it on. It had got a bit crumpled. The Baron seemed impressed. “This is all so very interesting for me, you see.” Soon after this, I had to stop the taxi under a lamp-post in order to be sick. ‘

We were driving along a street bounded by a high dark wall. Over the top of the wall I suddenly caught sight of an ornamental cross. “Good God,” I said. “Are you taking me to the cemetery?”

The Baron merely smiled. We had stopped; having arrived, it seemed, at the blackest corner of the night. I stumbled over something, and the Baron obligingly took my arm. He seemed to have been here before. We passed through an archway and into a courtyard. There was light here from several windows, and snatches of gramophone music and laughter. A silhouetted head and shoulders leant out of one of the windows, shouted: “Prosit Neujahr!” and spat vigorously. The spittle landed with a soft splash on the paving-stone just beside my foot. Other heads emerged from other windows. “Is that you, Paul, you sow?” someone shouted. “Red Front!” yelled a voice, and a louder splash followed. This time, I think, a beer-mug had been emptied.

Here one of the anassthetic periods of my evening supervened. How the Baron got me upstairs, I don’t know. It was quite painless. We were in a room full of people dancing, shouting, singing, drinking, shaking our hands and thumping us on the back. There was an immense ornamental gasolier, converted to hold electric bulbs and enmeshed in paper festoons. My glance reeled about the room, picking out large or minute objects, a bowl of claret-cup in which floated an empty match-box, a broken bead from a necklace, a bust of Bismarck on the top of a Gothic dresser—holding them for an instant, then losing them again in general coloured chaos. In this manner, I caught a sudden startling glimpse of Arthur’s head, its mouth open, the wig jammed down over its left eye. I stumbled about looking for the body and collapsed comfortably on to a sofa, holding the upper half of a girl. My face was buried in dusty-smelling lace cushions. The noise of the party burst over me in thundering waves, like the sea. It was strangely soothing. “Don’t go to sleep, darling,” said the girl I was holding. “No, of course I won’t,” I replied, and sat up, tidying my hair. I felt suddenly, quite sober.

Opposite me, in a big armchair, sat Arthur, with a thin, dark, sulky-looking girl on his lap. He had taken off his coat and waistcoat and looked most domestic. He wore gaudily striped braces. His shirtsleeves were looped up with elastic bands. Except for a little hair round the base of the skull, he was perfectly bald.

“What on earth have you done with it?” I exclaimed. “You’ll catch cold.”

“The idea was not mine, William. Rather a graceful tribute, don’t you think, to the Iron Chancellor?”

He seemed in much better spirits, now, than earlier in the evening, and, strangely enough, not at all drunk. He had a remarkably strong head. Looking up, I saw the wig perched rakishly on Bismarck’s helmet. It was much too big for him.

Turning, I found the Baron sitting beside me on the sofa.

“Hullo, Kuno,” I said. “How did you get here?”

He didn’t answer, but smiled his bright rigid smile and desperately cocked an eyebrow. He seemed on the very point of collapse. In another moment, his monocle would fall out.

The gramophone burst into loud braying music. Most of the people in the room began to dance. They were nearly all young. The boys were in shirtsleeves; the girls had unhooked their dresses. The atmosphere of the room was heavy with dust and perspiration and cheap scent. An enormous woman elbowed her way through the crowd, carrying a glass of wine in each hand. She wore a pink silk blouse and a very short pleated white skirt; her feet were jammed into absurdly small high-heeled shoes, out of which bulged pads of silk-stockinged flesh. Her cheeks were waxy pink and her hair dyed tinsel-golden, so that it matched the glitter of the half-dozen bracelets on her powdered arms. She was as curious and sinister as a life-size doll. Like a doll, she had staring china-blue eyes which did not laugh, although her lips were parted in a smile revealing several gold teeth.

“This is Olga, our hostess,” Arthur explained.

“Hullo, Baby!” Olga handed me a glass. She pinched Arthur’s cheek: “Well, my little turtle-dove?”

The gesture was so perfunctory that it reminded me of a vet. with a horse. Arthur giggled: “Hardly what one would call a strikingly well-chosen epithet, is it? A turtle-dove. What do you say to that, Anni?” He addressed the dark girl on his knee. “You’re very silent, you know. You don’t sparkle this evening. Or does the presence of the extremely handsome young man opposite distract your thoughts? William, I believe you’ve made a conquest. I do indeed.”

Anni smiled at this, a slight self-possessed whore’s smile. Then she scratched her thigh, and yawned. She wore a smartly cut little black jacket and a black skirt. On her legs were a pair of long black boots, laced up to the knee. They had a curious design in gold running round the tops. They gave to her whole costume the effect of a kind of uniform.

“Ah, you’re admiring Anni’s boots,” said Arthur, with satisfaction. “But you ought to see her other pair. Scarlet leather with black heels. I had them made for her myself. Anni won’t wear them in the street; she says they make her look too conspicuous. But sometimes, if she’s feeling particularly energetic, she puts them on when she comes to see me.”

Meanwhile, several of the girls and boys had stopped dancing. They stood round us, their arms interlaced, their eyes fixed on Arthur’s mouth with the naive interest of savages, as though they expected to see the words jump visibly out of his throat. One of the boys began to laugh. “Oh yes,” he mimicked. “I spik you Englisch, no?”

Arthur’s hand was straying abstractedly over Anni’s thigh. She raised herself and smacked it sharply, with the impersonal viciousness of a cat.

“Oh dear, I’m afraid you’re in a very cruel mood, this evening! I see I shall be corrected for this. Anni is an exceedingly severe young lady.” Arthur sniggered loudly; continued conversationally in English: “Don’t you think it’s an exquisitely beautiful face? Quite perfect, in its way. Like a Raphael Madonna. The other day I made an epigram. I said, Anni’s beauty is only sin-deep. I hope that’s original? Is it? Please laugh.”

“I think it’s very good indeed.”

“Only sin-deep. I’m glad you like it. My first thought was, I must tell that to William. You positively inspire me, you know. You make me sparkle. I always say that I only wish to have three sorts of people as my friends, those who are very rich, those who are very witty, and those who are very beautiful. You. my dear William, belong to the second category.”

I could guess to which category Baron von Pregnitz belonged, and looked round to see whether he had been listening. But the Baron was otherwise engaged. He reclined upon the farther end of the sofa in the embrace of a powerful youth in a boxer’s sweater, who was gradually forcing a mugful of beer down his throat. The Baron protested feebly; the beer was spilling all over him.

I became aware that I had my arm round a girl. Perhaps she had been there all the time. She snuggled against me, while from the other side a boy was amateurishly trying to pick my pocket. I opened my mouth to protest, but thought better of it. Why make a scene at the end of such an enjoyable evening? He was welcome to my money. I only had three marks left at the most. The Baron would pay for everything, anyhow. At that moment, I saw his face with almost microscopic distinctness. He had, as I noticed now for the first time, been taking artificial sunlight treatment. The skin round his nose was just beginning to peel. How nice he was! I raised my glass to him. His fish-eye gleamed faintly over the boxer’s arm and he made a slight movement of his head. He was beyond speech. When I turned round, Arthur and Anni had disappeared.

With the vague intention of going to look for them, I staggered to my feet, only to become involved in the dancing, which had broken out again with renewed vigour. I was seized round the waist, round the neck, kissed, hugged, tickled, half undressed; I danced with girls, with boys, with two or three people at the same time. It may have been five or ten minutes before I reached the door at the farther end of the room. Beyond the door was a pitch-dark passage with a crack of light at the end of it. The passage was crammed so full of furniture that one could only edge one’s way along it sideways. I had wriggled and shuffled about half the distance, when an agonised cry came from the lighted room ahead of me.