A German Requiem

'Who is it?' I said, reaching for the bedside light, and then my watch. The name made no impression on me as I swung my legs out of bed and went into the sitting-room.

I was still swearing as I opened the door a little wider than was safe. Lotte Hartmann stood in the corridor, in the glistening black evening dress and astrakhan jacket I remembered her wearing from our last evening together. She had a questioning, impertinent sort of look in her eye.

'Yes?' I said. 'What is it? What do you want?'

She sniffed with cool contempt and pushed the door lightly with her gloved hand, so I stepped back into the room. She came in, closed the door behind her and, leaning on it, looked around while my nostrils got a little exercise thanks to the smell of smoke, alcohol and perfume she carried on her venal body. 'I'm sorry if I woke you up,' she said. She didn't look at me so much as the room.

'No you're not,' I said.

Now she took a little trip around the floor, peering into the bedroom and then the bathroom. She moved with an easy grace and as confidently as any woman who is used to the constant sensation of having a man's eyes fixed on her behind.

'You're right,' she grinned, 'I'm not sorry at all. You know, this place isn't as bad as I thought it would be.'

'Do you know what time it is?'

'Very late.' She giggled. 'Your landlady wasn't impressed with me at all. So I had to tell her I was your sister and that I had come all the way from Berlin to give you some bad news.' She giggled again.

'And you're it?'

She pouted for a moment. But it was just an act. She was still too amused with herself to take much umbrage. 'When she asked me if I had any luggage I said that the Russians had stolen it on the train. She was extremely sympathetic, and really rather sweet. I hope you're not going to be different.'

'Oh? I thought that's why you were here. Or are the vice squad giving you problems again?'

She ignored the insult, always supposing she had even bothered to notice it.

'Well, I was just on my way home from the Flottenbar that's on Mariahilferstrasse, do you know it?'

I didn't say anything. I lit a cigarette and fixed it in a corner of my mouth to stop me snarling something at her.

'Anyway, it's not far from here. And I thought that I'd just drop by. You know ' her tone grew softer and more seductive ' I haven't had a chance to thank you properly,' she let that one hang in the air for a second, and I suddenly wished that I was wearing a dressing-gown, 'for getting me out of that little spot of bother with the Ivans.' She untied the ribbon of her jacket and let it slip to the floor. 'Aren't you even going to offer me a drink?'

'I'd say you've had enough.' But I went ahead and found a couple of glasses anyway.

'Don't you think you'd like to find that out for yourself?' She laughed easily and sat down without any hint of unsteadiness. She looked like the type who could take the stuff through the vein and still walk a chalk line without so much as a hiccup.

'Do you want anything in it?' I held a glass of vodka up as I asked the question.

'Perhaps,' she said ruminatively, 'after I've had my drink.'

I handed her the drink and put one quickly down into the pit of my stomach to hold the fort. I took another drag on my cigarette and hoped that it might fill me up enough to kick her out.

'What's the matter?' she said, almost triumphantly. 'Do I make you nervous or something?'

I guessed it was probably the something. 'Not me,' I said, 'just my pyjamas.

They're not used to mixed company.'

'From the look of them I'd say they were more used to mixing concrete.' She helped herself to one of my cigarettes and blew a cord of smoke straight at my groin.

'I could get rid of them if they bothered you,' I said, stupidly. My lips were dry when they sucked at my cigarette again. Did I want her to leave or not? I wasn't making a very good job of throwing her out on her perfect little ear.

'Let's talk a little first. Why don't you sit down?'

I sat down, relieved that I could still fold in the middle.

'All right,' I said, 'how about you tell me where your boyfriend is tonight?'

She grimaced. 'Not a good subject, Perseus. Pick another.'

'You two have a rattle?'

She groaned. 'Do we have to?'

I shrugged. 'It doesn't make me itch a lot.'

'The man's a bastard,' she said, 'but I still don't want to talk about it.

Especially today.'

'What's so special about today?'

'I got a part in a movie.'

'Congratulations. What's the role?'

'It's an English film. Not a very big part, you understand. But there are going to be some big stars in it. I play the role of a girl at a nightclub.'

'Well, that sounds simple enough.'

'Isn't it exciting?' she squealed. 'Me acting with Orson Welles.'

'The War of the Worlds fellow?'

She shrugged blankly. 'I never saw that film.'

'Forget it.'

'Of course they're not actually sure about Welles. But they think there's a good chance they can persuade him to come to Vienna.'

'That all sounds very familiar to me.'

'What's that?'

'I didn't even know you were an actress.'

'You mean I didn't tell you? Listen, that job at the Oriental is just temporary.'

'You seem pretty good at it.'

'Oh, I've always been good with numbers and money. I used to work in the local tax department.' She leaned forward and her expression became just a little too quizzical, as if she meant to question me about my year-end business expenses.

'I've been meaning to ask you,' she said, 'that night when you dropped all that mouse. What were you trying to prove?'

'Prove? I'm not sure I follow you.'

'No?' She turned her smile up a couple of stops to shoot me a knowing, conspiratorial sort of look. 'I see a lot of quirks, mister. I get to recognize the types. One day I'm even going to write a book about it. Like Franz Josef Gall. Ever hear of him?'

'I can't say that I have.'

'He was an Austrian doctor who founded the science of phrenology. Now you've heard of that, haven't you?'

'Sure,' I said. 'And what can you tell from the bumps I'm wearing on my head?'

'I can tell you're not the kind to drop that sort of money without a good reason.' She stretched an eyebrow of draughts-man's quality up her smooth forehead. 'I've got an idea about that too.'

'Let's hear it,' I urged, and poured myself another drink. 'Maybe you'll make a better go of reading my mind than you did of reading my cranium.'

'Don't act so hard to get,' she told me. 'We both know you're the kind of man that likes to make an impression.'

'And did I? Make an impression?'

'I'm here, aren't I? What do you want Tristan and Isolde?'

So that was it. She thought that I had lost the money for her benefit. To look like a big-shot.

She drained her glass, stood up and handed it back to me. 'Pour me some more of that love potion of yours while I powder my nose.'

While she was in the bathroom I refilled the glasses with hands that were none too steady. I didn't particularly like the woman, but I had nothing against her body: it was just fine. I had an idea that my head was going to object to this little skylark when my libido had released the controls, but at that particular moment I could do nothing more than sit back and enjoy the flight. Even so, I was unprepared for what happened next.

I heard her open the bathroom door and say something ordinary about the perfume she was wearing, but when I turned round with the drinks I saw that the perfume was all that she was wearing. Actually she had kept her shoes on, but it took my eyes a little while to work their way down past her breasts and her pubic equilateral. Except for those high-heels, Lotte Hartmann was as naked as an assassin's blade, and probably just as treacherous.

She stood in the doorway of my bedroom, her hands hanging by her bare thighs, glowing with delight as my tongue licked my lips rather too obviously for me to have contemplated using it on anything but her. Maybe I could have given her a pompous little lecture at that. I'd seen enough naked women in my time, some of them in fair shape too. I ought to have tossed her back like a fish, but the sweat starting out on my palms, the flare of my nostrils, the lump in my throat and the dull, insistent ache in my groin told me that the machina had other ideas as to the next course of action than the deus which called it home.