With the vague intention of going to look for them, I staggered to my feet, only to become involved in the dancing, which had broken out again with renewed vigour. I was seized round the waist, round the neck, kissed, hugged, tickled, half undressed; I danced with girls, with boys, with two or three people at the same time. It may have been five or ten minutes before I reached the door at the farther end of the room. Beyond the door was a pitch-dark passage with a crack of light at the end of it. The passage was crammed so full of furniture that one could only edge one’s way along
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it sideways. I had wriggled and shuffled about half the distance, when an agonized cry came from the lighted room ahead of me.
“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!”
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“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.
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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 recognize 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 sympathized with every fluctuation in the delicate health of Hanns, her canary. When Hanns finally died and Frl. Schroeder shed tears, I thought Arthur
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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.