‘The whole city could be destroyed within a month,’ says Rakanaspya in that husky voice of his. The anarchist has been placed under a sort of house-arrest by the police. Frau Schmetterling had agreed to his staying ‘so long as he behaves himself,’ she said. ‘We want no morbid subjects discussed here’. He wipes his lips and beard with his napkin. ‘All those poor people dead while kings and princes play at diplomacy!’ Frau Schmetterling catches his eye and utters a small cough. He sighs. Caroline Vacarescu, beside him, is sympathetic. She, too, is on sufferance, having been released from custody four days ago. She is dressed magnificently as usual. She has no intention, she assures us, of lowering her standards. Her face is heavily made-up. Mueller was tried by military tribunal last week and executed for espionage. The papers have been emphatic: his fate was an example to others. Some of us are a little uneasy in her defiant, knowing presence. Count Belozerski, the eminent Russian novelist and the most recent arrival, leans his handsome face over the table and murmurs in French: ‘I have never seen so many dead soldiers.’ He was turned back from the walls while trying to leave Mirenburg. He alone has witnessed the reality outside and is allowed to say more than anyone on the subject. Frau Schmetterling indulges him because she admires, she says, his mind. But she is also impressed by his connections and his beauty. His pale blond hair, together with his slightly Oriental cast of features, give him a striking and dominating appearance. He is tall and slender and his military stance is tempered by a natural grace which serves to soften the first impression of a distant and somewhat menacing figure. Count Belozerski is proud, he says, of his Tartar forebears. He sometimes refers romantically to his ‘Siberian blood’. He is in all important respects a gentlemanly European. ‘Of the best type,’ says Frau Schmetterling. Caroline Vacarescu also dotes on him, but Belozerski has confided to me that he is determined to have nothing to do with her. ‘Her selfishness,’ he told me last night, ‘is mitigated only by her recklessness. Of course both qualities are alarming to a man like myself. One should be in love with such women in one’s youth. To take up with the likes of Caroline Vacarescu in middle-life is to risk too much. My cousin was, short while, involved with her. She almost ruined him. She is the most extravagant creature I have ever known and I Prefer to admire her from a distance.’ I, of course, feel friendly towards her, but that could be because I have nothing that she would want. It is my belief Count Belozerski is attracted to her. He is a little inclined to overstate his case. He adds: ‘One is dealing, as a novelist, all day with ambiguities, with problems of human character. One does not need any more ambiguities in one’s life.’ Perhaps he is right. I am not a novelist. I tell him I thrive on ambiguity. For me a woman must always have it or she is not attractive to me. He laughs. ‘But then for you life is a novel, eh? Thank God not everyone is the same, or I should have no readers.’
‘The hospitals cannot cope with the wounded.’ Egon Wilke sits immediately to the left of Frau Schmetterling, across from Belozerski. He is a stocky fellow, with the body and bearing of an artisan. His hands are huge and his large head has brown hair, cropped close to the skull. He wears a sort of dark pea-jacket and a white cravat. He is an old friend of Frau Schmetterling’s, apparently from the days when she ran a house of an altogether different character in Odessa, where criminals had gathered. These acquaintances from her past are usually discouraged from visiting Rosenstrasse, but Wilke, who has been introduced to the company as a jewel merchant, is the exception. Frau Schmetterling is evidently very fond of him. He saved her, it is rumoured, from ruin (perhaps prison) in the old days and lent her the money to start the Rosenstrasse house. He always stays with her when visiting Mirenburg and, like me, is treated as a favoured client. He behaves impeccably, never bringing his business to her house, though he is almost certainly still a successful thief. He chews his food thoughtfully, takes a sip of wine and continues: ‘They are requisitioning convents, private houses, even restaurants, I have heard. These Mirenburger soldiers, poor devils, aren’t used to fighting.’
Frau Schmetterling says firmly: ‘We know how hellish it is a( the defences, and I am sure we sympathise, but this is scarcely appropriate conversation for luncheon.’ Wilke looks almost surprised, then smiles to himself and continues to eat. There is not much else to talk about. We have no real information
Holzhammer has made a grandiose declaration in which he has praised his own sense of humanity and love of beauty in stopping the bombardment ‘to give Prince Badehoff-Krasny time to reconsider his foolish and unpatriotic decision which is causing misery to so many’. He claims that most of Waldenstein is now his. The newspapers on the other hand are continuing to report failing morale and shortage of supplies amongst the rebels. The peasants and landowners have all deserted Holzhammer, they say, and he is entirely reliant on his ‘Bulgarian butchers’, his Austrian cannon. Prince Badehoff-Krasny took his State Carriage into the streets during the bombardment and rode the length of Mirenburg, from the Cesny Gate to the Mirov Gate, waving to cheering crowds. Deputations of citizens have signed oaths of undying loyalty to the Crown and the Mayor has sworn to take a sword, if necessary, and personally drive Holzhammer from the battlements, should he try to enter the city. Holzhammer has probably decided to attempt to starve Mirenburg into submission, saving his troops and his ammunition for a final attack. The blockade is total. The river is guarded on both sides and water-gates have been installed under the bridges on the outskirts so that no citizen can leave by that route or bring supplies in; while a huge barricade has been thrown up around the city, making it impossible for anyone to come or go either by road or rail. Belozerski has reported seeing corpses left to rot in trenches, or half-buried by their comrades as they fell back towards the walls. Field-guns, too, have been abandoned. He observed one trench which was ‘a single, fluttering mass of carrion crows’. Private citizens are no longer allowed on the walls. We are under martial law. Yesterday, at lunch, Belozerski said: ‘God knows what appalling treachery led to ‘his situation. It was a massacre out there.’ And then he became embarrassed, since Caroline Vacarescu could probably have answered his rhetorical question, at least in part. She had continued to eat as if she had not heard him. We are all as tactful as possible, even Rakanaspya who sometimes fumes like one of his own anarchist bombs but never explodes. It is only in private, in the company of one or another of our fellow guests, that we express strong opinions. Last night I sat with Clara in her sitting-room while Alexandra giggled in bed with Aimee, who comes from my native Saxony. Clara is in a better position than many to hear what is actually going on. Her regular clients seem to make up half the Mirenburg Civil Service and she sometimes has a General come to see her. She is discreet, in the main, but she believes that the situation might be worse than most of us imagine. ‘A military train is believed to have arrived from Vienna. If the Austrians give Holzhammer direct aid then Germany must either begin another war, which she does not presently want, or turn a blind eye to what is going on here. I think she will turn a blind eye.’ I found this difficult to believe: ‘With so many of her citizens still here?’ Clara had looked at me knowingly. ‘How many, Ricky? And how many German soldiers would die in a war with Austria-Hungary?’ Then Alexandra had called to me and I had gone in to smile. She had tied one of Clara’s dildoes onto her in some way and was inexpertly fucking Aimee who was helpless with laughter. ‘Help me, Ricky, darling!’ There is an ache in my back today. Papadakis says I am not resting enough. He says I should set these memoirs aside. ‘You will kill yourself.’ I tell him that it does not matter. ‘Can’t you see I am living again? Can’t you see that?’ He wets his red lips. ‘You are mad. The doctor told me to expect something like this. Let me bring him up.’ I set my pen on the pages, across the words. I am patient. ‘I am more purely rational,’ 1 tell him, ‘than I have been for two years. And I should point out that there is hardly any pain. It is quite evident that much of what I was suffering was psychosomatic. Haven’t you noticed how much better my morale is. You would rather I was ill, eh? You have no power over me now that I am recovering!’ He will not respond to this. He sits beside the window, staring down towards the sea. His back i to me. I refuse to let him irritate me. Leopold van Geest and stroll in Frau Schmetterling’s garden. Most of the flowers are gone. It is a mystery where she continues to find fresh ones, fill her house. Beyond the walls are the roofs and turrets ot deserted monastery. ‘In here,’ says van Geest, ‘one is permitted the illusion of power. But we know that Frau Schmetterling is the only one who really wields power and that she derives it from her ladies. From the cunt.’ He shakes his head and pulls the blanket-jacket more closely to him. ‘Yet we have power in the outside world to create a society which needs and permits brothels. Why cannot we exploit that power directly? Why do we feel the need to come here and be masters when we cannot feel that we are masters in our own homes, over our own women—at least, not sexually. Not really. You can sense the difference.’