Circles of Time (39 page)

“I shall play host for Father,” Werner said, taking Martin by the arm. “Just as I play at being chairman of the board—only the former is more pleasant than the latter. I find business to be boring, especially now when there is no business. There is only
speculation
now. It is a great game for the rich. I warn you, all you will hear tonight from most of the guests is how much they have prospered by the inflation. Hardly a man or woman here who hasn't paid off old debts with bloated, worthless marks—or bought this building or that good piece of property for virtually nothing by having had the foresight to speculate on inflation. How they paid so many thousands of solid marks down a year ago, the balance to be paid now. Clever, you see. Very clever. They exchange many hundreds of thousands of inflated marks for a trust deed in the property—and the poor seller can take all that money he has received and buy a sandwich with it and maybe, if he's lucky, a cup of coffee as well. And it's all so legal—to the letter of the contract. We Germans abide by the law.”

“But surely, Werner, even the rich—”

“Suffer from inflation? They can weather the present while acquiring goods and property for the future. They have only to sell something—a painting, some Dresden statuary or other artifacts for Swiss francs, pounds, or dollars. I can show you an office building in Leipzigerstrasse—directly across from Wertheim's department store—which you could purchase tonight for one thousand English pounds. That's worth selling a painting or two to some war-rich manufacturer from Birmingham, isn't it?”

“And what of the people who have nothing to sell?”

Werner's smile was faint and bitter. “They starve.”

There were platters of roast goose and half a dozen different meat dishes. Servants in blue jackets with large brass buttons hurried in and out with steaming plates and tureens and an endless variety of fine wines. Martin ate slowly, barely listening to what a large blond woman seated next to him was saying. She was talking of inflation, as Werner had predicted, of how she had sold one of her Benz cars to a Dutch businessman for gulden and had exchanged that good money for a fine piece of property in Wilmersdorf “for a fraction of its real worth.”

But what is
real worth
, Martin was thinking, in a nation gone insane?

“Things will stabilize soon,” a man across the table was saying in a loud voice. “You'll see. The treasury will soon run out of paper to print and the inflation will be over!”

A tall, austere man with a gray vandyke beard took exception to the jest. “My dear Helmut, it's not less paper we need printed just now, it is
more.
”

“That's all very well for you to say, my dear Lieventhal. It keeps your clerks at the ministry busy stamping extra zeroes on thousand-mark notes!”

Martin looked down the table at the minister. Erich Lieventhal, one of the industrial giants of prewar Germany, now doing his best as a public servant in the Republic to deal with the harsh reparations policy of the victors. He had interviewed Lieventhal more than a year ago in London and he had hinted then to Martin that only some dramatic, near catastrophic occurrence within Germany would ever drive home to the Allies the futility of draining the conquered nation of its gold, coal, goods, and timber. The French and Belgian invasion of the Ruhr to assure delivery of telegraph poles and lumber had coincided with the fall of the mark. The French couldn't force the German people to cut down their forests. Let them then be content with money. They could have as much as they wished, carloads of the stuff, the war debt paid just as quickly as the printing presses could spew out new million-mark notes. It was crazy, but in the madness of it all there was a method.

Martin continued to stare down the table, only to realize with a dull shock that he wasn't looking at Lieventhal at all, but at a young woman seated between the minister and Uncle Paul. Odd that he hadn't noticed her before—Werner had introduced him to everyone. And then he knew why. He had not noticed her because subconsciously he had not wanted to notice her. But he had no choice in the matter now. She was looking directly at him and smiling. And it was Ivy's smile he saw. The resemblance was a shock. The same slender neck and elfin face. The same black hair, creamy skin, and pale violet eyes.

He tore his gaze away and scrutinized the slices of roast goose on his plate. Seeing the woman brought back to him that terrible year after Ivy's death, the year in Paris when he had seen Ivy everywhere, had followed her a score of times through the Bois or along the Champs-Elysées, or gazed at her across the crowded tables in Montparnasse bars. Fate had conspired at that time to flood Paris with slender, beautiful, dark-haired girls. And now here was another! He sliced into a piece of goose and chewed on it as though it were a hunk of rubber.

A servant entered the room and bent low over the minister's chair to whisper into his ear. Lieventhal nodded, stood up, and left the room. He was back in a few minutes.

“I am most sorry,” he said, “but the president just telephoned and wishes me to come to Weimar at once. Amelia and I regret having to leave your delightful party, Werner, but it cannot be helped. Kindly extend our regrets to your father.” He then shook hands with Paul and escorted the girl from the room. Martin did not watch them go.

The party broke up early. There was a feeling of apprehension among most of the guests about driving along the dark suburban roads too late at night. A stream of chauffeur-driven limousines rolled away from the house, following the winding drive through the woods like a military convoy.

“You're welcome to spend the night here, Martin,” Werner said after the last guest had departed. “Paul will be closeted in the library to all hours with Uncle Theodor and the Grunewalds—thrashing out terms. I doubt if they'll get the better of Paul.”

“Shouldn't you be with them?”

Werner shrugged. “My role in the business is largely ceremonial. Besides, I told them my views—take the money, make the deal. It's only common sense, isn't it? Tying ourselves to Rilke, U.S.A., gives us an immediate foreign market and access to dollars. We might make far less profit than we would have made under happier circumstances, but that's life, isn't it? Paul has our testicles in a firm hold, but he isn't squeezing too hard. We may lose some pride in the library tonight, but not our manhood.”

Martin laughed softly and lit a cigar. “I must say, Werner, I admire your philosophy. You're a pragmatic man.”

“Your William James influenced me greatly. I read all of his lectures when I was at Heidelberg, and in the course of my one delightful year at Oxford. So much more in tune with modern man than, say, Nietzsche.” He closed his eyes for a moment and inhaled deeply. “I miss a good cigar—or a cigarette.”

Martin looked about for an ashtray. “I'll snuff it out.”

“Oh, no—no, dear chap. I enjoy seeing others do what I cannot. Please smoke—and if you have a glass of Cognac, smack your lips.” He glanced at his gold wristwatch. “Barely eleven. If you'd prefer going back to your hotel, we could take in a sampling of Berlin night life. Would you like that?”

“Yes, I would.”

“So would I. These formal dinner parties, with the men dressed like penguins and the women as divas, bore me to the very soul.”

The dark forests of the Grunewald gave way to the bright lights of Wilmersdorf and the gaudy cafés and bars along Kurfürstendamm. The great, pulsing heart of Berlin lay ahead across the Landwehr Canal.

“I know of a place on Charlottenstrasse,” Werner said. “Not far, appropriately enough, from the Comic Opera. Naughty but not vulgar. No young men tottering about in high-heeled shoes and lip rouge like the places along Kurfürstendamm. I think you will be amused.”

Martin said nothing for a minute, and then: “That girl with Lieventhal. Who is she?”

“His daughter. Amelia. Came late in life. Only eighteen and the old boy is at least sixty-five. The birth killed his poor wife, which is a pity. She was a fine woman. Had a sense of humor Erich lacks.”

“Does he need a sense of humor—in these times?”

“Now more than ever, I would think. Chaos breeds comedians. One needs a talent for ridicule in order to survive—at least politically. Erich tries sober reasoning and lucid arguments with critics of the Republic where savage ridicule would serve him better. How else could he answer the taunts of the Freikorps fanatics when they stomp through the streets in jackboots and army uniforms chanting, ‘Shoot the foulest Jew of all, murder Erich Lieventhal'? The joke being that the old boy is not a Jew and everyone knows it.

“Erich Kluge is his real name—son of a Prussian army officer who died in a riding accident when Erich was a year old. Every schoolboy knows the story of how the young widow of the soldier married the young scientist who would solve the problems of bringing the miracle of electric light to Germany. The immortal Sigmund Lieventhal—and even he was only
half
Jewish! Ah, how Erich could savage the ignorant if he only had the tongue for it.”

The streets were crowded, a frenetic gaiety spilling out from the restaurants, theaters, and cabarets. Men in top hats and women swathed in furs mingled with the gray, threadbare poor.

“Carin detests Berlin,” Werner said, looking gloomily through the side window of the chauffeur-driven Benz. “She refuses to come here anymore.”

“Where are you living now?”

“I bought a villa at Bad Isar—about ten miles from Munich. It's very lovely there—in the woods overlooking the river. I utilize one of the company planes to fly back and forth. I wanted Carin to come on this trip—she's fond of you, Martin—but nothing would induce her to leave Bavaria.”

“I'll have to come down and see her then.”

“That would be wonderful. She'd enjoy that.”

Die Weisse Ratte was a cabaret popular with businessmen and rich speculators. Its dimly lit interior was furnished in opulent baroque style with small marble tables and deep plush chairs. The place reeked of cigar smoke and perfume. On the small stage four beautiful, nearly naked girls danced to the music of an excellent jazz band. Werner ordered champagne for Martin and a glass of seltzer water for himself. He paid with an English pound note, which so startled the waiter he nearly dropped his tray.

Werner held out another pound. “Tell the girls to outdo themselves tonight and they'll each get one of these.”

The waiter stammered something unintelligible and scurried off.

Werner laughed. “Nothing like a little money to encourage true talent.”

One million marks was not a little money, and in real value an English pound was worth much more than the official rate of exchange. The girls came on stage for their next number gazing fixedly, hungrily, in the direction of Werner's table. Then the lights dimmed and a pale blue spotlight bathed the group as they began to dance to the muted wail of a saxophone—to dance and to strip, until they wore nothing but their spike heels, dark stockings and flimsy garter belts. The audience roared its appreciation and men banged on the tables. The dance grew increasingly erotic, the girls touching one another, embracing, rubbing breast against breast. Two of the girls sank slowly to the floor and began to writhe in each other's arms, legs spread, feigning sexual ecstasy and the frenzy of orgasm as a drum rolled and the saxophone moaned a final note.

“Bravo!” Werner called out, clapping his hands. “Bravo!”

Martin's mouth felt dry and he sipped champagne. “Some show!”

“They were only faking, but I can take you to a place in Potsdamerplatz, a private club, where the girls make love on a round bed and pretend nothing.”

The girls came for their money, transparent silk kimonos wrapped loosely around their bodies to artfully reveal naked breasts. Werner, laughing, held up four pound notes, teasing the girls before finally letting them flutter to the floor where the girls scrambled for them. One of the girls bumped heavily against the table, knocking the glass of champagne into Martin's lap. Werner removed a handkerchief from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed it across the table.

“Poor Martin. A cold shower.” One of the girls, slipping her money into the top of her garter belt, bent over and whispered in his ear. “An invitation, Martin. A night with all four of them for whatever we care to give.”

“No, thanks,” Martin said, dabbing at his pants with the handkerchief. “But you do what you want.”

“What I want,” Werner said, getting to his feet, “is a breath of fresh air.”

They walked toward Unter den Linden, the car trailing them. The streets still teemed with people, the rich and the poor. A legless war veteran sat on a little rolling cart in a doorway, selling nothing, staring into space. Young whores moved in constant patrol, some dressed in tight black or green leather and carrying thin, supple canes; others wearing demure schoolgirl smocks. Women for all tastes.

“We have become the nation of Sodom,” Werner said. “And Berlin is our zoo.”

Martin's smile was sardonic. “Don't be a hypocrite, Werner. You seemed to be enjoying yourself back there. Feeding time at the zoo—with pound notes.”

Werner stared rigidly ahead for a moment and then paused in front of the frosted glass door of a restaurant. “I think I'll risk a Cognac and seltzer. Would you care for a nightcap?”