The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars (14 page)

“Shall you remain in Berlin?”

“No, I am returning to London on Tuesday. Varichkine telephoned just now that he would arrange for a special mission to call him to England. He will join me there shortly.”

“What about the marriage?”

“I shall await news from you before I do anything definite. Varichkine is evidently in a great hurry to bring it off, but I prefer to know, first, the result of Blankett’s interviews with the Soviet powers. You can never tell what those people will do next. When you have reassured me on that score, I shall offer my ring finger to the Slav of my choice. Take care of yourself, my little Gerard. Don’t catch cold and don’t forget your
mission in the arms of some Circassian beauty with dreamy eyes! By the way, have you your passport?”

“Of course—Varichkine signed it and countersigned it with the open-sesame which will permit me to enter the Georgian paradise by the door which is guarded by the archangels of Moscow. I am thoroughly prepared. Nothing can go wrong unless I get indigestion from bad food. But I’ll make up for that at your wedding reception. For you won’t tie the knot with your darling Varichkine without me, will you?”

“I promise I won’t, Gerard.”

The locomotive whistled. I embraced Lady Diana and entered my compartment.

The train drew out of its immense brick niche, and began to grind out, on the rails, the syncopation of its accelerated dance. On my right, a traveler with apple cheeks, deeply scarred, evincing his prowess in dueling at the University, was already reading. Likewise, in the seat near the door, an Englishman, in a spinach and gray homespun golf suit, opened a Karlsbad guidebook and ignored the rest of the world. In the rack above his head, a bag of clubs rattled around beside a pigskin valise big enough to hold three men cut in small pieces. Opposite me, there was a vacant place which was, however, reserved by a beige coat trimmed with skunk fur, a small traveling bag of enameled blue leather, a copy of
Simplicissimus
and one of
Punch
. Was it an English or a German woman? I decided that the Munich illustrated betrayed the Germanic nationality of the traveler, and I was consequently astonished that she had not yet installed herself.

A half-hour went by. The scarred Saxon pulled a cigar out of a leather case adorned with a stag’s head, thumbed it over, sucked it and finally clipped off the end with a patent clipper. He exchanged his felt hat for a black pongee cap, stretched out
his legs in the direction of the Englishman, muttered, ‘
Verzeihen Sie
—’ as he took a copy of the
Dresdener Nachrichten
out of his overcoat pocket, and began to read. The Englishman, whose feet had been disturbed by the Saxon, deliberately spread his ham-like extremities wide apart, striking, as he did so, the legs of the other. He made no vestige of apology.

I was about to walk through the train when a woman appeared in the doorway. She hesitated before the ominous combination of tibias which barricaded the passage. The obsequious Saxon withdrew his, while the Englishman, hidden behind his guidebook, never so much as raised his head. The lady surmounted the living obstacles and sat down opposite me.

I looked at her carefully while she rummaged in her little blue traveling bag. An agreeable visage with vivid blue eyes which smiled from under a head of curly blond hair. A mutinous nose above a sensual mouth and a mole on her left cheekbone. Very
Lustige Blaetter
. She was certainly from Berlin. She smelled of one of Coty’s oldest perfumes. Not badly shod, but with coarse silk stockings and a string of imitation pearls. She thumbed the pages of her
Simplicissimus
without paying much attention to the designs of the successors of Reznicek and crossed her legs, pulling down her skirts as she did so—a mistake on her part because her ankles were small and her legs very well shaped.

I asked her in English if I might smoke since we were in a compartment marked:
Raucher
. She murmured a friendly and bilingual acquiescence: “
Bitte schon
. Certainly, sir.”

The lady removed her hat, which floundered about, like a straw fish, in the baggage net. She took a cigarette from a small inlaid case and searched in her handbag. Here was my chance—a match produced like lightning from nowhere.

“Will you allow me, madam?”

The conversation was lighted. The Englishman plunged head and shoulders into his monumental valise. The Saxon, in the corridor, was apparently determined not to lose a single whiff of his malodorous cigar. We exchanged a few banalities in subdued voices:

“Are you going to Vienna, madam?”

“Yes.”

“The pearl of Central Europe, isn’t it?”

“I prefer Prague, with its imposing Radschin and the old Charles Bridge bristling with statues.”

“Do you speak Czech?”

“No. I am from Berlin. Can’t you tell that by my accent?”

Her pretty head, with its puffs of golden hair about the ears, intrigued me. At noon she accepted my invitation to lunch.

At half past twelve I was aware of the fact that she was the widow of a lieutenant of the 2
^nd
Regiment of the Guard, killed on the Yser in 1915, that she had an aged aunt in Vienna, that she adored the defunct poet, Liliencron, and that she had an excellent recipe for making veal cutlets with a burned flour sauce. At one o’clock I knew that she had been brought up in a girls’ boarding school at Hanover and that, along with the youngest daughter of Prince von Schaumburg-Detmold, she had been expelled because of a childish prank.

Our two glasses of Chartreuse danced merrily with the motion of the train. My sweet Berlin flower was pink and satisfied. The adventure lent a certain charm to the monotony of my voyage, and the whirring of the electric fan invited confidences.

“Will you do me the honor of dining with me, madam?” I asked. “We arrive in Vienna at nine o’clock. I know a nice, secluded little restaurant on the famous old Giselastrasse.”

“I really shouldn’t—”

“Madam! But the unexpected—that’s the real spice of life—the cuckoo in the clock!”

“I’d so love to—I am almost tempted to.”

“Why not? There is a slumbering Saint Antoinette in every woman.”

When we arrived in Vienna the little blue bag went off on the porter’s truck beside my yellow suitcase. The coat, with its trimming of skunk fur, rubbed on the sleeves of my overcoat. A quarter of an hour later, the yellow suitcase entered Room 26 at the Bristol while the little blue bag disappeared into Room 27.

The Orient Express bound for Constantinople did not leave for thirty-six hours. So much vacation for me!

The restaurant
Chez Zulma
. A dozen little tables with colored napkins. A rose in a cheap glass vase and a wooden shaker filled with paprika. Between the tables, silken walls to isolate lovers who wished to dine incognito.

“How nice this is! Let’s sit here, shall we?”

My Berlin beauty sat down, enchanted. Two real tziganes, with the faces of ex-convicts, were playing softly. A pink paper clothed the naked light bulb.

I leaned toward my guest. “What is your first name?”

“Klara.”

“Do you regret our meeting?”

“No—I expected to dine with Aunt Louisa. She will keep until tomorrow. This is life!”

“Would you like the violinist to play anything in particular?”

“Oh, yes! Ask him to play the
Fledermaus
waltz to please me. That melody from the Strauss operetta will make me feel young again.”

The tziganes played while we were served with bleached red cabbage in vinegar, anchovies rolled like watch-springs, and chopped celery. Klara, hardly eating anything at all, listened to the romantic and time-worn air of the old Viennese waltz. I detected in the sudden melancholy of her blue eyes the memory of her past when, little more than a child, seated at her piano, she had cradled the nostalgia of her first desires with those same notes.

I took her hand. I murmured, “It is an afternoon in the springtime. The chestnut trees of Charlottenburg are pointing to heaven with their blossoms, so very like pink fingertips. In a neat little parlor with brand new furniture, I see you, Klara dear, dressed in white, with two blond braids of hair bound about your temples. You are sitting at the piano, playing this same waltz, so sentimental and so tenderly innocent. Your little soul, filled with unavowed thought, evokes a lieutenant of the Guard, dancing at a ball. Kisses stolen fearfully in the shaded paths of the Tiergarten. Marvelous dreams in the shadow of the Church of the Memory of Wilhelm the First. The waltz continues, voluptuous and intoxicating. It cradles the white ball of your fleeting desires. It is your first voyage to the Venusberg of imaginative adolescence. Dear Klara. Let us walk together sometimes in the garden of the past, in the shade of cherished memories. It is a miraculous park where the leaves never fade on the trees.”

The tziganes stopped. My companion’s hand trembled in mine. Her eyes, flowing over with tears, sad and passionate, gazed into mine. Suddenly she leaned far across the table, offered me her lips and murmured in a delicious voice:

“Thank you. You have made me happy. I shall reward you as best I can.”

It was only at a much later date that I understood the
meaning of her words. At the moment I merely thought that the restful melody had assured the success of the adventure. I silently thanked the defunct Mr. Strauss whose sentimental music could melt ironclad resolutions and precipitate the collapse of German ladies into the arms of lonely tourists.

At eleven o’clock after a walk in the Hofburg gardens, beneath a full moon which rippled over the verdigris cupolas and the shining roof of the Palace, we went back to the Bristol. The widow of the lieutenant of the Guard was intoxicated with “czardas” and gallant remarks.

On the threshold of her room, in the deserted corridor, I kissed her hand and started to withdraw. She looked at me with the same pretty reproachful pout which the courtesans of the eighteenth century bestowed upon departing lovers.

“Come in and smoke a cigarette?”

I followed her. I ordered a bottle of champagne. Klara bubbling over with gayety, blindfolded me with a napkin which was wrapped around the neck of the bottle and ordered me not to look.

“You can take it off when I tell you. Not before.”

When at last I opened my eyes, only the little lamp on the bed-table was burning. Klara, from an ocean of creamy linen, white silk, and Nile green satin, laughed at my surprise.

The next morning I went to the Turkish Consulate to get my visa. I ordered a garland of tea roses for Klara and bought a documentary study on oil so I might have some inkling, once at Nikolaïa, of what Mr. Edwin Blankett, the naphtha expert, was saying. It is excusable to mistake Piraeus for a man, but no one should take the Acropolis for a relative of Standard Oil.

I lunched alone. Klara had said that she would meet me at
the
Kaffee Franz
, as soon as she had explained matters to her family.

At five o’clock, very punctual, she arrived. She seemed glad to see me again and sat down irreverently on the
Wiener Abendblatt
. We broke our teeth on some
bretzell
while we partook of some excellent moka and some ice water. We strolled about the city and ate some
haluschka
of fried flour and cheese near the Augustin Church.

At about ten o’clock, Klara’s face took on a sober expression. Her knee pressed mine under the table and her nails dug into my wrist. Her brows raised, her eyes had an expression of afflicted tenderness and she sighed.

“Are you really leaving for Constantinople tomorrow?”

“Yes, Klara dear, I must.”

“Then, this is to be our last night together!”

“Yes. Unless you want to come to Pera with me. I hardly dare to ask you. But I’d be most happy if—”

“If I accepted?”

My dear little widow from Berlin was so seductive that I kissed her outstretched hand.

“Tomorrow at eleven o’clock we will leave together, dearest. Thus we can postpone our sad but inevitable parting.”

“And then we must say ‘adieu.’ And you will disappear forever?”

“Is that not the fate of all men in this indifferent world? Destiny is a fantastic monster. Yesterday it chose to favor the flirtation of a blue traveling bag and a yellow valise. In ninety-six hours their intimacy will have breathed its last. Allah is great and Mahomet is not a prophet in the Land of Tenderness.”

“I think it’s unbearably sad. Don’t you?”

“There, my charming friend, you have hit on the problem
which will always terrify human beings. You can be certain that the relativity of time worries metaphysicians much less than it does lovers. Romeo successfully climbed to the balcony, but eventually he was forced to descend. We are all afraid of the Song of Goodby.”

“And if it should chance one day that it was not sung? What a glorious miracle!”

“No, Klara. It is the uncertainty of parting which fires passion and makes one love more deeply. Without it our adventure would have no savor because it would be endless.”

“I would like it to last forever.”

“To last! Even the earth which endures perpetually is gradually losing its natural heat. It has become a wrinkled old woman who, in another million centuries, will no longer enjoy the sun’s caresses.”

“Dearest, you are so pessimistic!”

“Not at all! We are merely exchanging commonplaces on a subject which interested men before the days of Plato. Do you know what we are? We are little children sitting on the sand listening sagely to the noise of the water in the seashells and believing that those silvery cones contain the entire ocean.… Waiter! Another bottle of Heidsick—Monopole!”

We returned to the hotel. The roses lay on the Nile green spread. Klara, delighted, breathed in their fragrance and closed her eyes in ecstasy. Then, suddenly, she burst into tears. At first I thought she was laughing. But when I saw the tears flow I was astonished and I pressed her to my heart. She refused to explain this unexpected outburst.

She murmured in a voice trembling with emotion,

“Dearest! You are so good—I love you—I love you—and I intend to prove it to you.”