We were driving along a street bounded by a high dark wall. Over the top of the wall I suddenly caught sight of an ornamental cross. “Good God,” I said. “Are you taking me to the cemetery?”
The Baron merely smiled. We had stopped; having arrived, it seemed, at the blackest corner of the night. I stumbled over something, and the Baron obligingly took my arm. He
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seemed to have been here before. We passed through an archway and into a courtyard. There was light here from several windows, and snatches of gramophone music and laughter. A silhouetted head and shoulders leant out of one of the windows, shouted: “Prosit Neujahr!” and spat vigorously. The spittle landed with a soft splash on the paving-stone just beside my foot. Other heads emerged from other windows. “Is that you, Paul, you sow?” someone shouted. “Red Front!” yelled a voice, and a louder splash followed. This time, I think, a beer-mug had been emptied.
Here one of the anassthetic periods of my evening supervened. How the Baron got me upstairs, I don’t know. It was quite painless. We were in a room full of people dancing, shouting, singing, drinking, shaking our hands and thumping us on the back. There was an immense ornamental gasolier, converted to hold electric bulbs and enmeshed in paper festoons. My glance reeled about the room, picking out large or minute objects, a bowl of claret-cup in which floated an empty match-box, a broken bead from a necklace, a bust of Bismarck on the top of a Gothic dresserholding them for an instant, then losing them again in general coloured chaos. In this manner, I caught a sudden startling glimpse of Arthur’s head, its mouth open, the wig jammed down over its left eye. I stumbled about looking for the body and collapsed comfortably on to a sofa, holding the upper half of a girl. My face was buried in dusty-smelling lace cushions. The noise of the party burst over me in thundering waves, like the sea. It was strangely soothing. “Don’t go to sleep, darling,” said the girl I was holding. “No, of course I won’t,” I replied, and sat up, tidying my hair. I felt suddenly, quite sober.
Opposite me, in a big armchair, sat Arthur, with a thin, dark, sulky-looking girl on his lap. He had taken off his coat and waistcoat and looked most domestic. He wore gaudily striped braces. His shirtsleeves were looped up with elastic bands. Except for a little hair round the base of the skull, he was perfectly bald.
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“What on earth have you done with it?” I exclaimed. “You’ll catch cold.”
“The idea was not mine, William. Rather a graceful tribute, don’t you think, to the Iron Chancellor?”
He seemed in much better spirits, now, than earlier in the evening, and, strangely enough, not at all drunk. He had a remarkably strong head. Looking up, I saw the wig perched rakishly on Bismarck’s helmet. It was much too big for him.
Turning, I found the Baron sitting beside me on the sofa.
“Hullo, Kuno,” I said. “How did you get here?”
He didn’t answer, but smiled his bright rigid smile and desperately cocked an eyebrow. He seemed on the very point of collapse. In another moment, his monocle would fall out.
The gramophone burst into loud braying music. Most of the people in the room began to dance. They were nearly all young. The boys were in shirtsleeves; the girls had unhooked their dresses. The atmosphere of the room was heavy with dust and perspiration and cheap scent. An enormous woman elbowed her way through the crowd, carrying a glass of wine in each hand. She wore a pink silk blouse and a very short pleated white skirt; her feet were jammed into absurdly small high-heeled shoes, out of which bulged pads of silk-stockinged flesh. Her cheeks were waxy pink and her hair dyed tinsel-golden, so that it matched the glitter of the half-dozen bracelets on her powdered arms. She was as curious and sinister as a life-size doll. Like a doll, she had staring china-blue eyes which did not laugh, although her lips were parted in a smile revealing several gold teeth.
“This is Olga, our hostess,” Arthur explained.
“Hullo, Baby!” Olga handed me a glass. She pinched Arthur’s cheek: “Well, my little turtle-dove?”
The gesture was so perfunctory that it reminded me of a vet. with a horse. Arthur giggled: “Hardly what one would call a strikingly well-chosen epithet, is it? A turtle-dove. What do you say to that, Anni?” He addressed the dark girl on his knee. “You’re very silent, you know. You don’t sparkle
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this evening. Or does the presence of the extremely handsome young man opposite distract your thoughts? William, I believe you’ve made a conquest. I do indeed.”
Anni smiled at this, a slight self-possessed whore’s smile. Then she scratched her thigh, and yawned. She wore a smartly cut little black jacket and a black skirt. On her legs were a pair of long black boots, laced up to the knee. They had a curious design in gold running round the tops. They gave to her whole costume the effect of a kind of uniform.
“Ah, you’re admiring Anni’s boots,” said Arthur, with satisfaction. “But you ought to see her other pair. Scarlet leather with black heels. I had them made for her myself. Anni won’t wear them in the street; she says they make her look too conspicuous. But sometimes, if she’s feeling particularly energetic, she puts them on when she comes to see me.”
Meanwhile, several of the girls and boys had stopped dancing. They stood round us, their arms interlaced, their eyes fixed on Arthur’s mouth with the naive interest of savages, as though they expected to see the words jump visibly out of his throat. One of the boys began to laugh. “Oh yes,” he mimicked. “I spik you Englisch, no?”
Arthur’s hand was straying abstractedly over Anni’s thigh. She raised herself and smacked it sharply, with the impersonal viciousness of a cat.
“Oh dear, I’m afraid you’re in a very cruel mood, this evening! I see I shall be corrected for this. Anni is an exceedingly severe young lady.” Arthur sniggered loudly; continued conversationally in English: “Don’t you think it’s an exquisitely beautiful face? Quite perfect, in its way. Like a Raphael Madonna. The other day I made an epigram. I said, Anni’s beauty is only sin-deep. I hope that’s original? Is it? Please laugh.”
“I think it’s very good indeed.”
“Only sin-deep. I’m glad you like it. My first thought was, I must tell that to William. You positively inspire me, you know. You make me sparkle. I always say that I only wish
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to have three sorts of people as my friends, those who are very rich, those who are very witty, and those who are very beautiful. You. my dear William, belong to the second category.”
I could guess to which category Baron von Pregnitz belonged, and looked round to see whether he had been listening. But the Baron was otherwise engaged. He reclined upon the farther end of the sofa in the embrace of a powerful youth in a boxer’s sweater, who was gradually forcing a mugful of beer down his throat. The Baron protested feebly; the beer was spilling all over him.
I became aware that I had my arm round a girl. Perhaps she had been there all the time. She snuggled against me, while from the other side a boy was amateurishly trying to pick my pocket. I opened my mouth to protest, but thought better of it. Why make a scene at the end of such an enjoyable evening? He was welcome to my money. I only had three marks left at the most. The Baron would pay for everything, anyhow. At that moment, I saw his face with almost microscopic distinctness. He had, as I noticed now for the first time, been taking artificial sunlight treatment. The skin round his nose was just beginning to peel. How nice he was! I raised my glass to him. His fish-eye gleamed faintly over the boxer’s arm and he made a slight movement of his head. He was beyond speech. When I turned round, Arthur and Anni had disappeared.