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Paris very cheerful, having, as he guardedly said, “several little irons in the fire.”
Behind all these transactions moved the sinister, pumpkin-headed figure of Schmidt. Arthur was quite frankly afraid of his secretary, and no wonder. Schmidt was altogether too useful; he had made his master’s interests identical with his own. He was one of those people who have not only a capacity, but a positive appetite for doing their employer’s dirty work. From chance remarks made by Arthur in less discreet moments, I was gradually able to form a fair idea of the secretary’s duties and talents. “It is very painful for anyone of our own class to say certain things to certain individuals. It offends our delicate sensibilities. One has to be so very crude.” Schmidt, it seemed, experienced no pain. He was quite prepared to say anything to anybody. He confronted creditors with the courage and technique of a bullfighter. He followed up the results of Arthur’s wildest shots, and returned with money like a retriever bringing home a duck.
Schmidt controlled and doled out Arthur’s pocket-money. Arthur wouldn’t, for a long time, admit this; but it was obvious. There were days when he hadn’t enough to pay his bus fare; others when he would say: “Just a moment, William. I shall have to run up to my flat to fetch something I’d forgotten. You won’t mind waiting down here a minute, will you?” On such occasions, he would rejoin me, after a quarter of an hour or so, in the street; sometimes deeply depressed, sometimes radiant, like a schoolboy who has received an unexpectedly large tip.
Another phrase to which I became accustomed was: “I’m afraid I can’t ask you to come up just now. The flat’s so untidy.” I soon discovered this to mean that Schmidt was at home. Arthur, who dreaded scenes, was always at pains to prevent our meeting; for, since my first visit, our mutual dislike had considerably increased. Schmidt, I think, not only disliked me, but definitely disapproved of me as a hostile and unsettling influence on his employer. He was never exactly offensive. He merely smiled his insulting smile and amused
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himself by coming suddenly into the room on his noiseless shoes. He would stand there a few seconds, unnoticed, and then speak, startling Arthur into a jump and a little scream. When he had done this two or three times in succession, Arthur’s nerves would be in such a state that he could no longer talk coherently about anything and we had to retire to the nearest café to continue our conversation. Schmidt would help his master on with his overcoat and bow us out of the flat with ironic ceremony, slyly content that his object had been achieved.
In June, we went to spend a long week-end with Baron von Pregnitz; he had invited us to his country villa, which stood on the shore of a lake in Mecklenburg. The largest room in the villa was a gymnasium fitted with the most modern apparatus, for the Baron made a hobby of his figure. He tortured himself daily on an electric horse, a rowing-machine and a rotating massage belt. It was very hot and we all bathed, even Arthur. He wore a rubber swimming-cap, carefully adjusted in the privacy of his bedroom. The house was full of handsome young men with superbly developed brown bodies which they smeared in oil and baked for hours in the sun. They ate like wolves and had table manners which pained Arthur deeply; most of them spoke with the broadest Berlin accents. They wrestled and boxed on the beach and did somersault dives from the spring-board into the lake. The Baron joined in everything and often got severely handled. With good-humoured brutality the boys played practical jokes on him which smashed his spare monocles and might easily have broken his neck. He bore it all with his heroic frozen smile.
On the second evening of our visit, he escaped from them and took a walk with me in the woods, alone. That morning they had tossed him in a blanket and he had landed on the asphalt pavement; he was still a bit shaky. His hand rested heavily on my arm. “When you get to my age,” he told me sadly, “I think you will find that the most beautiful things in
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life belong to the Spirit. The Flesh alone cannot give us happiness.” He sighed and gave my arm a faint squeeze.
“Our friend Kuno is a most remarkable man,” observed Arthur, as we sat together in the train on our way back to Berlin. “Some people believe that he has a great career ahead of him. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if he were to be offered an important post under the next Government.”
“You don’t say so?”
“I think,” Arthur gave me a discreet, sideways glance, “that he’s taken a great fancy to you.”
“Do you?”
“I sometimes feel, William, that with your talents, it’s a pity you’re not more ambitious. A young man should make use of his opportunities. Kuno is in a position to help you in all sorts of ways.”
I laughed. “To help both of us, you mean?”
“Well, if you put it in that way, yes. I quite admit that I foresee certain advantages to myself from the arrangement. Whatever my faults, I hope I’m not a hypocrite. For instance, he might make you his secretary.”
“I’m sorry, Arthur,” I said, “but I’m afraid I should find my duties too heavy.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Towards the end of August, Arthur left Berlin. An air of mystery surrounded his departure; he hadn’t even told me that he was thinking of going. I rang up the flat twice, at times when I was pretty sure Schmidt would not be there. Hermann, the cook, knew only that his master was away for an
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indefinite period. On the second occasion, I asked where he had gone, and was told London. I began to be afraid that Arthur had left Germany for good. No doubt he had the best of reasons for doing so.
One day, however, during the second week in September, the telephone rang. Arthur himself was on the line.
“Is that you, dear boy? Here I am, back at last! I’ve got such a lot to tell you. Please don’t say you’re engaged this evening. You aren’t? Then will you come round here about half-past six? I think I may add that I’ve got a little surprise in store for you. No, I shan’t tell you anything more. You must come and see for yourself. Au revoir.”
I arrived at the flat to find Aurther in the best of spirits.
“My dear William, what a pleasure to see you again! How have you been getting on? Getting on and getting off?”
Arthur tittered, scratched his chin and glanced rapidly and uneasily round the room as though he were not yet quite convinced that all the furniture was still in its proper place.
“What was it like in London?” I asked. In spite of what he had said over the telephone, he didn’t seem in a particularly communicative mood.
“In London?” Arthur looked blank. “Ah, yes. London… . To be perfectly frank with you, William, I was not in London. I was in Paris. Just at present, it is desirable that a slight uncertainty as to my whereabouts should exist in the minds of certain persons here.” He paused, added impressively: “I suppose I may tell you, as a very dear and intimate friend, that my visit was not unconnected with the Communist Party.”
“Do you mean to say that you’ve become a communist?”
“In all but name, William, yes. In all but name.”
He paused for a moment, enjoying my astonishment. “What is more, I asked you here this evening to witness what I may call my Conf essio Fidei. In an hour’s time, I am due to speak at a meeting held to protest against the exploitation of the Chinese peasantry. I hope you’ll do me the honour of coming.”
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“Need you ask?”
The meeting was to be held in Neukölln. Arthur insisted on taking a taxi all the way. He was in an extravagant mood.
“I feel,” he remarked, “that I shall look back on this evening as one of the turning-points of my career.”
He was visibly nervous and kept fingering his bunch of papers. Occasionally he cast an unhappy glance out of the taxi window, as though he would have liked to ask the driver to stop.