The Berlin Stories (6 page)

“Nein, nein. Mercy! oh dear! Hilfe! Hilfe!”

There was no mistaking the voice. They had got Arthur in there, and were robbing him and knocking him about. I might have known it. We were fools ever to have poked our noses into a place like this. We had only ourselves to thank. Drink made me brave. Struggling forward to the door, I pushed it open.

The first person I saw was Anni. She was standing in the middle of the room. Arthur cringed on the floor at her feet. He had removed several more of his garments, and was now dressed, lightly but with perfect decency, in a suit of mauve silk underwear, a rubber abdominal belt and a pair of socks. In one hand he held a brush and in the other a yellow shoe-rag. Olga towered behind him, brandishing a heavy leather whip.

“You call that clean, you swine!” she cried, in a terrible voice. “Do them again this minute! And if I find a speck of dirt on them I’ll thrash you till you can’t sit down for a week.”

As she spoke she gave Arthur a smart cut across the buttocks. He uttered a squeal of pain and pleasure, and began to brush and polish Anni’s boots with feverish haste.

“Mercy! Mercy!” Arthur’s voice was shrill and gleeful, like a child’s when it is shamming. “Stop! You’re killing me.”

“Killing’s too good for you,” retorted Olga, administering another cut. “Ill skin you alive!”

“Oh! Oh! Stop! Mercy! Oh!”

They were making such a noise that they hadn’t heard me bang open the door. Now they saw me, however. My presence did not seem to disconcert any of them in the least. Indeed, it appeared to add spice to Arthur’s enjoyment.

“Oh dear! William, save me! You won’t? You’re as cruel as the rest of them. Anni, my love! Olga! Just look how she treats me. Goodness knows what they won’t be making me do in a minute!”

“Come in, Baby,” cried Olga, with tigerish jocularity. “Just you wait! It’s your turn next. Ill make you cry for Mummy!”

She made a playful slash at me with the whip which sent me in headlong retreat down the passage, pursued by Arthur’s delighted and anguished cries.

Several hours later I woke to find myself lying curled up on the floor, with my face pressed against the leg of the sofa. I had a head like a furnace, and pains in every bone. The party was over. Half a dozen people lay insensible about the dismantled room, sprawling in various attitudes of extreme discomfort. Daylight gleamed through the slats of the ve-netian blinds.

After making sure that neither Arthur nor the Baron were among the fallen, I picked my way over their bodies, out of the flat, downstairs, across the courtyard and into the street. The whole building seemed to be full of dead drunks. I met nobody.

I found myself in one of the back streets near the canal, not far from the Möckernbrücke Station, about half an hour from my lodgings. I had no money for the electric train. And, anyhow, a walk would do me good. I limped home, along dreary streets where paper streamers hung from the sills of damp blank houses, or were entangled in the clammy twigs of the trees. When I arrived, my landlady greeted me with the news that Arthur had rung up already three times to know how I was.

“Such a nice-spoken gentleman, I always think. And so considerate.”

I agreed with her, and went to bed.

CHAPTER FOUR

Frl. Schroeder, my landlady, was very fond of Arthur. Over the telephone, she always addressed him as Herr Doktor, her highest mark of esteem.

“Ah, is that you, Herr Doktor? But of course I recognise your voice; I should know it in a million. You sound very tired this morning. Another of your late nights? Na, na, you can’t expect an old woman like me to believe that; I know what gentlemen are when they go out on the spree… What’s that you say? Stuff and nonsense! You flatterer! Well, well, you men are all alike; from seventeen to seventy.., Pfui! I’m surprised at you… No, I most certainly shall not! Ha, ha! You want to speak to Herr Bradshaw? Why, of course, I’d forgotten. I’ll call him at once.”

When Arthur came to tea with me, Frl. Schroeder would put on her black velvet dress, which was cut low at the neck, and her string of Woolworth pearls. With her cheeks rouged and her eyelids darkened, she would open the door to him, looking like a caricature of Mary Queen of Scots. I remarked on this to Arthur, who was delighted.

“Really, William, you’re most unkind. You say such sharp things. I’m beginning to be afraid of your tongue, I am indeed.”

After this he usually referred to Frl. Schroeder as Her Majesty. La Divine Schroeder was another favourite epithet.

No matter how much of a hurry he was in, he always found time for a few minutes’ flirtation with her, brought her flowers, sweets, cigarettes, and sympathised with every fluctuation in the delicate health of Hanns, her canary. When Hanns finally died and Frl. Schroeder shed tears, I thought Arthur was going to cry too. He was genuinely upset. “Dear, dear,” he kept repeating. “Nature is really very cruel.”

My other friends were less enthusiastic about Arthur. I introduced him to Helen Pratt, but the meeting was not a success. At that time Helen was Berlin correspondent to one of the London political weeklies, and supplemented her income by making translations and giving English lessons. We sometimes passed on pupils to each other. She was a pretty, fair-haired, fragile-looking girl, hard as nails, who had been educated at the University of London and took Sex seriously. She was accustomed to spending her days and nights in male society and had little use for the company of other girls. She could drink most of the English journalists under the table, and sometimes did so, but more as a matter of principle than because she enjoyed it. The first time she met you, she called you by your Christian name and informed you that her parents kept a tobacco and sweet shop in Shepherd’s Bush. This was her method of “testing” character; your reaction to the news damned or saved you finally in her estimation. Above all else, Helen loathed being reminded that she was a woman; except in bed.

Arthur, as I saw too late, had no technique whatsoever for dealing with her sort. From the first moment he was frankly scared of her. She brushed aside all the little polished politenesses which shielded his timid soul. “Hullo, you two,” she said, casually reaching out a hand over the newspaper she was reading. ( We had met by appointment in a small restaurant behind the Memorial Church.)

• Arthur gingerly took the hand she offered. He lingered uneasily beside the table, fidgeted, awaiting the ritual to which he was accustomed. Nothing happened. He cleared his throat, coughed: “Will you allow me to take a seat?”

Helen, who was about to read something aloud from the newspaper, glanced up at him as though she’d forgotten his existence and was surprised to find him still there.

“What’s the matter?” she said. “Aren’t there enough chairs?”

We got talking, somehow, about Berlin night life. Arthur giggled and became arch. Helen, who dealt in statistics and psycho-analytical terms, regarded him in puzzled disapproval. At length Arthur made a sly reference to “the speciality of the Kaufhaus des Westens.”

“Oh, you mean those whores on the corner there,” said Helen, in the bright matter-of-fact tone of a schoolmistress giving a biology lesson, “who dress up to excite the boot-fetishists?”

“Well, upon my soul, ha ha, I must say,” Arthur sniggered, coughed and rapidly fingered his wig, “seldom have I met such an extremely, if you’ll allow me to say so, er—advanced, or shall I say, er—modern young lady…”

“My God!” Helen threw back her head and laughed unpleasantly. “I haven’t been called a young lady since the days when I used to help mother with the shop on Saturday afternoons.”

“Have you—er—been in this city long?” asked Arthur hastily. Vaguely aware that he had made a mistake, he imagined that he ought to change the subject. I saw the look Helen gave him and knew that all was over.

“If you take my advice, Bill,” she said to me, the next time we met, “you won’t trust that man an inch.”

“I don’t,” I said.

“Oh, I know you. You’re soft, like most men. You make up romances about people instead of seeing them as they are. Have you ever noticed his mouth?”

“Frequently.”

“Ugh, it’s disgusting. I could hardly bear to look at it. Beastly and flabby like a toad’s.”

“Well,” I said, laughing, “I suppose I’ve got a weakness for toads.”

Not daunted by this failure, I tried Arthur on Fritz Wendel. Fritz was a German-American, a young man about town, who spent his leisure time dancing and playing bridge. He had a curious passion for the society of painters and writers, and had acquired a status with them by working at a fashionable art dealer’s. The art dealer didn’t pay him anything, but Fritz could afford this hobby, being rich. He had an aptitude for gossip which amounted to talent, and might have made a first-class private detective.

We had tea together in Fritz’s flat. He and Arthur talked New York, impressionist painting, and the unpublished works of the Wilde group. Arthur was witty and astonishingly informative. Fritz’s b)ack eyes sparkled as he registered the epigrams for future use, and I smiled, feeling pleased and proud. I felt myself personally responsible for the success of the interview. I was childishly anxious that Arthur should be approved of; perhaps because I, too, wanted to be finally, completely convinced.

We said goodbye with mutual promises of an early future meeting. A day or two later, I happened to see Fritz in the street. From the pleasure with which he greeted me, I knew at once that he had something extra spiteful to tell me. For a quarter of an hour he chatted gaily about bridge, night clubs, and his latest flame, a well-known sculptress; his malicious smile broadening all the while at the thought of the tit-bit which he had in reserve. At length he produced it.

“Been seeing any more of your friend Norris?”

“Yes,” I said. “Why?”

“Nothing,” drawled Fritz, his naughty eyes on my face. “Eventually I’d watch your step, that’s all.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“I’ve been hearing some queer things about him.”

“Oh, indeed?”

“Maybe they aren’t true. You know how people talk.”

“And I know how you listen, Fritz.”

He grinned; not in the least offended: “There’s a story going round that eventually Norris is some kind of cheap crook.”

“I must say, I should have thought that ‘cheap’ was hardly a word one could apply to him.”

Fritz smiled a superior, indulgent smile.

“I dare say it would surprise you to know that he’s been in prison?”

“What you mean is, it’d surprise me to know that your friends say he’s been in prison. Well, it doesn’t in the least. Your friends would say anything.”

Fritz didn’t reply. He merely continued to smile.

“What’s he supposed to have been in prison for?” I asked.

“I didn’t hear,” Fritz drawled. “But maybe I can guess.”

“Well, I can’t.”

“Look, Bill, exuse me a moment.” He had changed his tone now. He was serious. He laid his hand on my shoulder. “What I mean to say, the thing is this. Eventually, we two, we don’t give a damn, hell, for goodness’ sake. But we’ve got other people to consider besides ourselves, haven’t we? Suppose Norris gets hold of some kid and plucks him of his last cent?”

“How dreadful that would be.”

Fritz gave me up. His final shot was: “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you, that’s all.”

“No, Fritz. I most certainly won’t.”

We parted pleasantly.

Perhaps Helen Pratt had been right about me. Stage by stage I was building up a romantic background for Arthur, and was jealous lest it should be upset. Certainly, I rather enjoyed playing with the idea that he was, in fact, a dangerous criminal; but I am sure that I never seriously believed in it for a moment. Nearly every member of my generation is a crime-snob. I was fond of Arthur with an affection strengthened by obstinacy. If my friends didn’t like him because of his mouth or his past, the loss was theirs; I was, I flattered myself, more profound, more humane, an altogether subtler connoisseur of human nature than they. And if, in my letters to England, I sometimes referred to him as “a most amazing old crook,” I only meant by this that I wanted to imagine him as a glorified being; audacious and self-reliant, reckless and calm. All of which, in reality, he only too painfully and obviously wasn’t.

Poor Arthur! I have seldom known anybody with such weak nerves. At times, I began to believe he must be suffering from a mild form of persecution mania. I can see him now as he used to sit waiting for me in the most secluded corner of our favourite restaurant, bored, abstracted, uneasy; his hands folded with studied nonchalance in his lap, his head held at an awkward, listening angle, as though he expected, at any moment, to be startled by a very loud bang. I can hear him at the telephone, speaking cautiously, as close as possible to the mouthpiece and barely raising his voice above a whisper.

“Hullo. Yes, it’s me. So you’ve seen that party? Good. Now when can we meet? Let’s say at the usual time, at the house of the person who is interested. And please ask that other one to be there, too. No, no. Herr D. It’s particularly important. Goodbye.”

I laughed. “One would think, to hear you, that you were an arch-conspirator.”

“A very arch conspirator,” Arthur giggled. “No, I assure. you, my dear William, that I was discussing nothing more desperate than the sale of some old furniture in which I happen to be—er—financially interested.”

“Then why on earth all this secrecy?”

“One never knows who may be listening.”

“But, surely, in any case, it wouldn’t interest them very much?”

“You can’t be too careful nowadays,” said Arthur vaguely.

By this time, I had borrowed and read nearly all his “amusing” books. Most of them were extremely disappointing. Their authors adopted a curiously prudish, snobby, lower-middle-class tone, and, despite their sincere efforts to be pornographic, became irritatingly vague in the most important passages. Arthur had a signed set of volumes of My Life and Loves. I asked him if he had known Frank Harris.

“Slightly, yes. It’s some years ago now. The news of his death came as a great shock to me. He was a genius in his own way. So witty. I remember his saying to me, once, in the Louvre: ‘Ah, my dear Norris, you and I are the last of the gentleman adventurers.’ He could be very caustic, you know. People never forgot the things he said about them.