He took it quite calmly. His smile was disingenuous and bland.
“My dear boy, what, in my time, have I not exported? I think I may claim to have exported everything which iser exportable.”
He pulled out one of the drawers of the filing cabinet with the gesture of a house agent. “The latest model, you see.”
The drawer was quite empty. “Tell me one of the things you export,” I insisted, smiling.
Mr. Norris appeared to consider.
“Clocks,” he said at length.
“And where do you export them to?”
He rubbed his chin with a nervous, furtive movement. This time, my teasing had succeeded in its object. He was flustered and mildly vexed.
“Really, my dear boy, if you want to go into a lot of technical explanations, you must ask my secretary. I haven’t the time to attend to them. I leave all the moreersordid details entirely in his hands. Yes …”
CHAPTER THREE
A few days after Christmas I rang up Arthur ( we called each other by our Christian names now) and suggested that we should spend Silvesterabend together.
“My dear William, I shall be delighted, of course. Most delighted … I can imagine no more charming or auspicious company in which to celebrate the birth of this peculiarly ill-omened New Year. I’d ask you to have dinner with me, but
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unfortunately I have a previous engagement. Now where do you suggest we shall meet?”
“What about the Troika?”
“Very well, my dear boy. I put myself in your hands entirely. I fear I shall feel rather out of place amidst so many young faces. A greybeard with one foot in the tomb… . Somebody say ‘No, no!’ Nobody does. How cruel Youth is. Never mind. Such is life… .”
When once Arthur had started telephoning it was difficult to stop him. I used often to lay the receiver on the table for a few minutes knowing that when I picked it up again he would still be talking away as fast as ever. To-day, however, I had a pupil waiting for an English lesson and had to cut him short.
“Very well. In the Troika. At eleven.”
“That will suit me admirably. In the meantime, I shall be careful what I eat, go to bed early and generally prepare myself to enjoy an evening of Wein, Weib, und Gesang. More particularly Wein. Yes. God bless you, dear boy. Goodbye.”
On New Year’s Eve I had supper at home with my landlady and the other lodgers. I must have been already drunk when I arrived at the Troika, because I remember getting a shock when I looked into the cloakroom mirror and found that I was wearing a false nose. The place was crammed. It was difficult to say who was dancing and who was merely standing up. After hunting about for some time, I came upon Arthur in a corner. He was sitting at a table with another, rather younger gentleman who wore an eyeglass and had sleek dark hair.
“Ah, here you are, William. We were beginning to fear that you’d deserted us. May I introduce two of my most valued friends to each other? Mr. BradshawBaron von Pregnitz.”
The Baron, who was fishy and suave, inclined his head. Leaning towards me, like a cod swimming up through water, he asked:
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“Excuse me. Do you know Naples?”
“No. I’ve never been there.”
“Forgive me. I’m sorry. I had the feeling that we’d met each other before.”
“Perhaps so,” I said politely, wondering how he could smile without dropping his eyeglass. It was rimless and ribbonless and looked as though it had been screwed into his pink well-shaved face by means of some horrible surgical operation.
“Perhaps you were at Juan-les-Pins last year?”
“No, I’m afraid I wasn’t.”
“Yes, I see.” He smiled in polite regret. “In that case I must beg your pardon.”
“Don’t mention it,” I said. We both laughed very heartily. Arthur, evidently pleased that I was making a good impression on the Baron, laughed too. I drank a glass of champagne off at a gulp. A three-man band was playing: Gruss’ mir mein Hawai, ich bleib’ Dir treu, ich hob’ Dich gerne. The dancers, locked frigidly together, swayed in partial-paralytic rhythms under a huge sunshade suspended from the ceiling and oscillating gently through cigarette smoke and hot rising air.
“Don’t you find it a trifle stuffy in here?” Arthur asked anxiously.
In the windows were bottles filled with coloured liquids brilliantly illuminated from beneath, magenta, emerald, vermilion. They seemed to be lighting up the whole room. The cigarette smoke made my eyes smart until the tears ran down my face. The music kept dying away, then surging up fearfully loud. I passed my hand down the shiny black oil-cloth curtains in the alcove behind my chair. Oddly enough, they were quite cold. The lamps were like alpine cowbells. And there was a fluffy white monkey perched above the bar. In another moment, when I had drunk exactly the right amount of champagne, I should have a vision. I took a sip. And now, with extreme clarity, without passion or malice, I saw what Life really is. It had something, I remember, to do with the revolving sunshade. Yes, I murmured to myself, let them dance. They are dancing. I am glad.
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“You know, I like this place. Extraordinarily/’ I told the Baron with enthusiasm. He did not seem surprised.
Arthur was solemnly stifling a belch.
“Dear Arthur, don’t look so sad. Are you tired?”
“No, not tired, William. Only a little contemplative, perhaps. Such an occasion as this is not without its solemn aspect. You young people are quite right to enjoy yourselves. I don’t blame you for a moment. One has one’s memories.”
“Memories are the most precious things we have,” said the Baron with approval. As intoxication proceeded, his face seemed slowly to disintegrate. A rigid area of paralysis formed round the monocle. The monocle was holding his face together. He gripped it desperately with his facial muscles, cocking his disengaged eyebrow, his mouth sagging slightly at the corners, minute beads of perspiration appearing along the parting of his thin, satin-smooth dark hair. Catching my eye, he swam up towards me, to the surface of the element which seemed to separate us.
“Excuse me, please. May I ask you something?”
“By all means.”
“Have you read Winnie the Pooh, by A. A. Milne?”
‘Tes, I have.”
“And tell me, please, how did you like it?”
“Very much indeed.”
“Then I am very glad. Yes, so did I. Very much.”
And now we were all standing up. What had happened? It was midnight. Our glasses touched.
“Cheerio,” said the Baron, with the air of one who makes a particularly felicitous quotation.
“Allow me,” said Arthur, “to wish you both every success and happiness in nineteen thirty-one. Every success …” His voice trailed off uneasily into silence. Nervously he fingered his heavy fringe of hair. A tremendous crash exploded from the band. Like a car which has slowly, laboriously reached the summit of the mountain railway, we plunged headlong downwards into the New Year.
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The events of the next two hours were somewhat confused. We were in a small bar, where I remember only the ruffled plumes of a paper streamer, crimson, very beautiful, stirring like seaweed in the draught from an electric fan. We wandered through streets crowded with girls who popped teasers in our faces. We ate ham and eggs in the first-class restaurant of the Friedrichstrasse Station. Arthur had disappeared. The Baron was rather mysterious and sly about this; though I couldn’t understand why. He had asked me to call him Kuno, and explained how much he admired the character of the English upper class. We were driving in a taxi, alone. The Baron told me about a friend of his, a young Etonian. The Etonian had been in India for two years. On the morning after his return, he had met his oldest school-friend in Bond Street. Although they hadn’t seen each other for so long, the school-friend had merely said: “Hullo. I’m afraid I can’t talk to you now. I have to go shopping with my mother.” “And I find this so very nice,” the Baron concluded. “It is your English self-control, you see.” The taxi crossed several bridges and passed a gas-works. The Baron pressed my hand and made me a long speech about how wonderful it is to be young. He had become rather indistinct and his English was rapidly deteriorating. “You see, excuse me, I’ve been watching your reactions the whole evening. I hope you are not offended?” I found my false nose in my pocket and put it on. It had got a bit crumpled. The Baron seemed impressed. “This is all so very interesting for me, you see.” Soon after this, I had to stop the taxi under a lamp-post in order to be sick. ‘