The Berlin Stories (18 page)

“Really, William…”

“Wait a minute. And meanwhile, you’ll arrange to be out of Germany before the end of December. That gives you three weeks’ grace. If you pay up meekly now, he won’t bother you again till then. He’ll think he’s got you in his pocket.”

“Yes. I suppose you’re right. I shall have to accustom myself to the idea. AH this is so sudden.” Arthur had a momentary flare-up of resentment. “That odious serpent! If ever I find an opportunity of dealing with him once for all…”

“Don’t you worry. He’ll come to a sticky end sooner or later. The chief problem, at present, is to raise this money for your journey. I suppose there isn’t anybody you could borrow it from?”

But Arthur was already following another train of thought.

“I shall find a way out of this somehow.” His tone was considerably brighter. “Just let me have time to think.”

While Arthur was thinking, a week went by. The weather didn’t improve. These dismal short days affected all our spirits. Frl. Schroeder complained of pains in the back. Arthur had a touch of liver. My pupils were unpunctual and stupid. I was depressed and cross. I began to hate our dingy flat, the shabby, staring house-front opposite my window, the damp street, the stuffy, noisy restaurant where we ate an economical supper, the burnt meat, the eternal sauerkraut, the soup.

“My God!” I exclaimed one evening to Arthur, “what wouldn’t I give to get out of this hole of a town for a day or two!”

Arthur, who had been picking his teeth in melancholy abstraction, looked at me thoughtfully. Rather to my surprise he seemed prepared to take a sympathetic interest in my grumbling.

“I must say, William,. I’d noticed myself that you weren’t in your accustomed sprightly vein. You’re looking distinctly pale, you know.”

“Am I?”

“I fear you’ve been overworking yourself lately. You don’t get out of doors enough. A young man like you needs exercise and fresh air.”

I smiled, amused and slightly mystified.

“You know, Arthur, you’re getting quite the bedside manner.”

“My dear boy”—he pretended to be mildly hurt—”I’m sorry that you mock my genuine concern for your health. After all, I’m old enough to be your father. I think I may be excused for sometimes feeling myself in loco parentis.”

“I beg your pardon, Daddy.”

Arthur smiled, but with a certain exasperation. I wasn’t giving the right answers. He couldn’t find an opening for the topic, whatever it was, which he was thus obscurely trying to broach. After a moment’s hesitation, he tried again.

“Tell me, William, have you ever, in the course of your travels, visited Switzerland?”

“For my sins. I once spent three months trying to learn French at a pension in Geneva.”

“Ah yes, I believe you told me.” Arthur coughed uneasily. “But I was thinking more of the winter sports.”

“No. I’ve been spared those.”

Arthur appeared positively shocked.

“Really, my dear boy, if you don’t mind my saying so, I think you carry your disdain of athleticism too far, I do indeed. Far be it from me to disparage the things of the mind. But, remember, you’re still young. I hate to see you depriving yourself of pleasures which you won’t, in any case, be able to indulge in later. Be quite frank; isn’t it all rather a pose?”

I grinned.

“May I ask, with all due respect, what branch of sport you indulged in yourself at the age of twenty-eight?”

“Well—er—as you know, I have always suffered from delicate health. Our cases are not at all the same. Nevertheless, I may tell you that, during one of my visits to Scotland, I became quite an ardent fisherman. In fact, I frequently succeeded in catching those small fish with pretty red and brown markings. Their name escapes me for the moment.”

I laughed and lit a cigarette.

“And now, Arthur, having given such an admirable performance as the fond parent, suppose you tell me what you’re driving at?”

He sighed, with resignation, with exasperation; partly, perhaps, with relief. He was excused from further shamming. When he spoke again, it was with a complete change of tone.

“After all, William, I don’t know why I should beat about the bush. We’ve known each other long enough now. How long is it, by the way, since we first met?”

“More than two years.”

“Is it? Is it indeed? Let me see. Yes, you’re right. As I was saying, we’ve known each other long enough now for me to be able to appreciate the fact that, although young in years, you’re already a man of the world….”

“You put it charmingly.”

“I assure you, I’m quite serious. Now, what I have to say is simply this (and please don’t regard it as anything but the very vaguest possibility, because, quite apart from the question of your consent, a very vital question, I know, the whole thing would have to be approved by a third party, who doesn’t, at present, know anything about the scheme)…”

Arthur paused, at the end of this parenthesis, to draw breath, and to overcome his constitutional dislike of laying his cards on the table.

“What I now merely ask you is this: would you, or would you not, be prepared to spend a few days in Switzerland this Christmas, at one or other of the winter sport resorts?”

Having got it out at last, he was covered in confusion, avoided my eye and began fiddling nervously with the cruet-stand. The neural effort required to make this offer appeared to have been considerable. I stared at him for a moment; then burst out laughing in my amazement.

“Well, I’m damned! So that was what you were after, all the time!”

Arthur joined, rather shyly, in my mirth. He was watching my face, shrewdly and covertly, in its various phases of astonishment. At what he evidently considered to be the psychological moment, he added: “All expenses would be paid, of course.”

“But what on earth…”I began.

“Never mind, William. Never mind. It’s just an idea of mine, that’s all. It mayn’t, it very likely won’t, come to anything. Please don’t ask me any more now. All I want to know is: would you be prepared to contemplate such a thing at all, or is it out of the question?”

“Nothing’s out of the question, of course. But there are all sorts of things I should want to know. For instance…”

Arthur held up a delicate white hand.

“Not now, William, I beg.”

“Just this: What should I…”

“I can’t discuss anything now,” interrupted Arthur, firmly. “I simply must not.”

And, as if afraid that he would nevertheless be tempted to do so, he called to the waiter for our bills.

The best part of another week passed without Arthur having made any further allusion to the mysterious Swiss project. With considerable self-control, I refrained from reminding him of it; perhaps, like so many of his other brilliant schemes, it was already forgotten. And there were more important things to be thought of. Christmas was upon us, the year would soon be over; yet he hadn’t, so far as I knew, the ghost of a prospect of raising the money for his escape. When I asked him about it, he was vague. When I urged him to take steps, evasive. He seemed to be getting into a dangerous state of inertia. Evidently he underrated Schmidt’s vindictiveness and power to harm. I did not. I couldn’t so easily forget my last unpleasant glimpse of the secretary’s face. Arthur’s indifference drove me sometimes nearly frantic.

“Don’t worry, dear boy,” he would murmur vaguely, with abstracted, butterfly fingerings of his superb wig. “Sufficient unto the day, you know… Yes.”

“A day will come,” I retorted, “when it’ll be sufficient unto two or three years’ hard.”

Next morning, something happened to confirm my fears.

I was sitting in Arthur’s room, assisting, as usual, at the ceremonies of the toilet, when the telephone bell rang.

“Will you be kind enough to see who it is, dear boy?” said Arthur, powder-puff in hand. He never personally answered a call if it could be avoided. I picked up the receiver.

“It’s Schmidt,” I announced, a moment later, not without a certain gloomy satisfaction, covering the mouthpiece with my hand.

“Oh dear!” Arthur could hardly have been more flustered if his persecutor had actually been standing outside the bedroom door. Indeed, his harassed glance literally swept for an instant under the bed, as though measuring the available space for hiding there: “Tell him anything. Say I’m not at home….”

“I think,” I said firmly, “that it’d be much better if you were to speak to him yourself. After all, he can’t bite you. He may give you some idea of what he means to do.”

“Oh, very well, if you insist….” Arthur was quite petulant. “I must say, I should have thought it was very unnecessary.”

Gingerly, holding the powder-puff like a defensive weapon, he advanced to the instrument.

“Yes. Yes.” The dimple in his chin jerked sideways. He snarled like a nervous lion. “No… no, really… But do please listen one moment… I can’t, I assure you… I can’t….”

His voice trailed off into a protesting, imploring whisper. He wobbled the hook of the receiver in futile distress.

“William, he’s rung off.”

Arthur’s dismay was so comic that I had to smile.

“What did he teliyou?”

Arthur crossed the room and sat down heavily on the bed. He seemed quite exhausted. The powder-puff fell to the floor from between his limp fingers.

“I’m reminded of the deaf adder, who heareth not the voice of the charmer… What a monster, William! May your life never be burdened by such a fiend….”

“Do tell me what he said.”

“He confined himself to threats, dear boy. Mostly incoherent. He wanted merely to remind me of his existence, I think. And that he’ll need some more money soon. It was very cruel of you to make me speak to him. Now I shall be upset for the rest of the day. Just feel my hand; it’s shaking like a leaf.”

“But, Arthur.” I picked up the powder-puff and put it on the dressing-table. “It’s no good just being upset. This must be a warning to you. You see, he really does mean business. We must do something about it. Haven’t you any plan? Are there no steps you can take?”

Arthur roused himself with an effort.

“Yes, yes. You’re right, of course. The die is cast. Steps shall be taken. In fact, not a moment shall be lost. I wonder if you’d be so good as to get me the Fernamt on the telephone and say I wish to put through a call to Paris? I don’t think it’s too early? No….”

I asked for the number Arthur gave me and tactfully left him alone. I didn’t see him again until the evening, when, as usual, we met by appointment at the restaurant for our supper. I noticed at once that he was brighter. He even insisted that we should drink wine, and when I demurred offered to pay my share of the bottle.

“It’s so strengthening,” he added persuasively.

I grinned. “Still worried about my health?”

“You’re very unkind,” said Arthur, smiling. But he refused to be drawn. When, a minute or two later, I asked pointblank how things were going, he replied: “Let’s have supper first, dear boy. Be patient with me, please.”

But even when supper was over and we had both ordered coffee (an additional extravagance), Arthur seemed in no hurry to give me his news. Instead, he appeared anxious to know what I had been doing, which pupils I had had, where I had lunched, and so forth.

“You haven’t seen our friend Pregnitz lately, I think?”

“As a matter of fact, I’m going to tea with him tomorrow.”

“Are you, indeed?”

I restrained a smile. I was familiar enough by this time with Arthur’s methods of approach. That new intonation in his voice, though suavely concealed, hadn’t escaped me. So we were coming to the point at last.

“May I give him any message?”

Arthur’s face was a comical study. We regarded each other with the amusement of two people who, night after night, cheat each other at a card game which is not played for money. Simultaneously we began to laugh.

“What, exactly,” I asked, “do you want to get out of him?”

“William, please… you put things so very crudely.”

“It saves time.”

“Yes, yes. You’re right. Time is, alas, important just now. Very well, let’s put it that I’m anxious to do a little business with him. Or shall we say to put him in the way of doing it for himself?”

“How very kind of you!”

Arthur tittered. “I am kind, aren’t I, William? That’s what so few people seem to realise.”

“And what is this business? When is it coming off?”

“That remains to be seen, I hope.”

“I suppose you get a percentage?”

“Naturally.”

“A big percentage?”

“If it succeeds. Yes.”

“Enough for you to be able to leave Germany?”

“Oh, more than enough. Quite a nice little nest-egg, in fact.”

“Then that’s splendid, isn’t it?”

Arthur snarled nervously, regarded his finger-nails with extreme care.

“Unfortunately, there are certain technical difficulties. I need, as so often, your valuable advice.”

“Very well, let’s hear them.”

Arthur considered for some moments. I could see that he was wondering how much he need tell me.

“Chiefly,” he said at length, “that this business cannot be transacted in Germany.”

“Why not?”

“Because it would involve too much publicity. The other party to the deal is a well-known business man. As you probably know, big-business circles are comparatively small. They all watch each other. News gets round in a moment; the least hint is enough. If this man were to come to Berlin, the business people here would know about it before he’d even arrived. And secrecy is absolutely essential.”

“It all sounds very thrilling. But I’d no idea that Kuno was in business at all.”

“Strictly speaking, he isn’t.” Arthur took some trouble to avoid my eye. “This is merely a sideline.”

“I see. And where do you propose that this meeting shall take place?”

Arthur carefully selected a toothpick from the little bowl in front of him.

“That, my dear William, is where I hope to have the benefit of your valuable advice. It must be somewhere, of course, within easy reach of the German frontier. Somewhere where people can go, at this time of the year, without attracting attention, on a holiday.”

With great deliberation, Arthur broke the toothpick into two pieces and laid them side by side on the table-cloth. Without looking up at me, he added: “Subject to your approval, I’d rather thought of Switzerland.”