“Thank you very much.”
So that was it, I thought, on my way down the shabby staircase. None of them trusted Arthur. Bayer didn’t trust him but he was prepared to make use of him, with all due precautions. And to make use of me, too, as a convenient spy on Arthur’s movements. It wasn’t necessary to let me into the secret. I could so easily be pumped. I felt angry, and at the same time rather amused.
After all, one couldn’t blame them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Otto turned up at Arthur’s about a week later, unshaved and badly in need of a meal. They had let him out of prison the day before. When I went round to the flat that evening, I found him with Arthur in the dining-room, having just finished a substantial supper.
“And what did they use to give you on Sundays?” he was asking as I came in. “We got pea-soup with a sausage in it. Not so bad,”
“Let me see now,” Arthur reflected. “I’m afraid I really can’t remember. In any case, I never had much appetite… . Ah, my dear William, here you are! Please take a chair.
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That is, if you don’t disdain the company of two old gaolbirds. Otto and I were just comparing notes.”
The day before Arthur and I visited the Alexanderplatz, Otto and Anni had had a quarrel. Otto had wanted to give fifteen pfennigs to a man who came round collecting for a strike fund of the I.A.H. Anni had refused to agree to this, “on principle.” “Why should the dirty communists have my money?” she had said. “I have to work hard enough to earn it.” The possessive pronoun challenged Otto’s accepted status and rights; he generously disregarded it. But the adjective had really shocked him. He had slapped her face, “not hard,” he assured us, but violently enough to make her turn a somersault over the bed and land with her head against the wall; the bump had dislodged a framed photograph of Stalin, which had fallen to the ground and smashed its glass. Anni had begun to curse him and cry. “That’ll teach you not to talk about things you don’t understand,” Otto had told her, not unkindly. Communism had always been a delicate subject between them. “I’m sick of you,” cried Anni, “and all your bloody Reds. Get out of here!” She had thrown the photograph-frame at him and missed.
Thinking all this over carefully, in the neighbouring Lokal, Otto had come to the conclusion that he was the injured party. Pained and angry, he began drinking Korn. He drank a good deal. He was still drinking at nine o’clock in the evening, when a boy named Erich, whom he knew, came in, selling biscuits. Erich, with his basket, went the rounds of tKe cafés and restaurants in the whole district, carrying messages and picking up gossip. He told Otto that he had just seen Anni in a Nazi Lokal on the Kreuzberg, with Werner Baldow.
Werner was an old enemy of Otto’s, both political and private. A year ago, he had left the communist cell to which Otto belonged and joined the local Nazi storm-troop. He had always been sweet on Anni. Otto, who was pretty drunk by this time, did what even he would never have dared when sober; he jumped up and set off for the Nazi Lokal alone. Two policemen who happened to pass the place a minute or two after he entered it probably saved him from getting
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broken bones. He had just been flung out for the second time and wanted to go in again. The policemen removed him with difficulty; he bit and kicked on the way to the station. The Nazis, of course, were virtuously indignant. The incident featured in their newspapers next day as “an unprovoked and cowardly attack on a National-Socialist Lokal by ten armed communists, nine of whom made a successful escape.” Otto had the cutting in his pocket-book and showed it to us with pride. He had been unable to get at Werner himself. Werner had retreated with Anni into a room at the back of the Lokal as soon as he had come in.
“And he can keep her, the dirty bitch,” added Otto violently. “I wouldn’t have her again if she came to me on her knees.”
“Well, well,” Arthur began to murmur automatically, “we live in stirring times …
He pulled himself up abruptly. Something was wrong. His eyes wandered uneasily over the array of plates and dishes, like an actor deprived of his cue. There was no tea-pot on the table.
Not many days after this, Arthur telephoned to tell me that Otto and Anni had made it up.
“I felt sure you’d be glad to hear. I may say that I myself was to some extent instrumental in the good work. Yes… . Blessed are the peacemakers. … As a matter of fact, I was particularly interested in effecting a reconciliation just now, in view of a little anniversary which falls due next Wednesday… . You didn’t know? Yes, I shall be fifty-three. Thank you, dear boy. Thank you. I must confess I find it difficult to become accustomed to the thought that the yellow leaf is upon me… . And now, may I invite you to a trifling banquet? The fair sex will be represented. Besides the reunited pair, there will be Madame Olga and two other of my more doubtful and charming acquaintances. I shall have the sitting-room carpet taken up, so that the younger members of the party can dance. Is that nice?”
“Very nice indeed.”
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On Wednesday evening I had to give an unexpected lesson and arrived at Arthur’s flat later than I intended. I found Hermann waiting downstairs at the house door to let me in.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I hope you haven’t been standing here long?”
“It’s all right,” Hermann answered briefly. He unlocked the door and led the way upstairs. What a dreary creature he is, I thought. He can’t even brighten up for a birthday party.
I discovered Arthur in the sitting-room. He was reclining on the sofa in his shirtsleeves, his hands folded in his lap.
“Here you are, William.”
“Arthur, I’m most terribly sorry. I hurried as much as I could. I thought I should never get away. That old girl I told you about arrived unexpectedly and insisted on having a two-hour lesson. She merely wanted to tell me about the way her daughter had been behaving. I thought she’d never stop… . Why, what’s the matter? You don’t look well.”
Arthur sadly scratched his chin.
“I’m very depressed, dear boy.”
“But why? What about? … I say, where are your other guests? Haven’t they come yet?”
“They came. I was obliged to send them away.”
“Then you are ill?”
“No, William. Not ill. I fear I’m getting old. I have always hated scenes and now I find them altogether too much for me.”
“Who’s been making a scene?” ,
Arthur raised himself slowly from his chair. I had a sudden glimpse of him as he would be in twenty years’ time; shaky and rather pathetic.
“It’s a long story, William. Shall we have something to eat first? I’m afraid I can only offer you scrambled eggs and beer; if indeed there is any beer.”
“It doesn’t matter if there isn’t. I’ve brought you a little present.”
I produced a bottle of cognac which I had been holding behind my back.
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“My dear boy, you overwhelm me. You shouldn’t, you know. You really shouldn’t. Are you sure you can afford it?”
“Oh yes, easily. I’m saving quite a lot of money nowadays.”
“I always,” Arthur shook his head sadly, “look upon the capacity to save money as little short of miraculous.”
Our footsteps echoed loudly through the flat as we crossed the bare boards where the carpet had been.
“All was prepared for the festivities, when the spectre appeared to forbid the feast,” Arthur chuckled nervously and rubbed his hands together.
“Ah, but the Apparition, the dumb sign, The beckoning finger bidding me forgo The fellowship, the converse and the wine, The songs, the festal glow!
“Rather apt here, I think. I hope you know your William Watson? I have always regarded him as the greatest of the moderns.”
The dining-room was draped with paper festoons in preparation for the party; Chinese lanterns were suspended above the table. On seeing them, Arthur shook his head.