‘You wouldn’t welcome my answer,’ says Clara.
‘True. You think I should have told her to go back to her parents.’
‘It isn’t my business to say.’ Clara offers me her own teacup. I accept it. ‘I intend to marry her,’ I say, ‘when we get to Paris. As a wife, she will have more power, more self-respect. She’ll begin to grow up in no time.’
Natalia and Clara exchange a look which is meaningless to me. ‘My father wants me to marry again. Her father will be only too happy to let her marry me once he finds out what has happened. I’m worrying about nothing. She wants to come to the celebration tonight. I’ll bring her.’
‘That should relieve her boredom,’ says Clara. ‘I’ve heard Princess Poliakoff and Lady Cromach have decided to attend. And there are other guests. Some politicians. Some intellectuals. It will be a fine night. You might meet Dolly’s fiancé, too.’ Dolly is the most sweet-natured girl in the house and much in demand with older clients. She is by no means beautiful, with her long nose, large teeth and her frizz of dark hair, but she is good-hearted and genuinely interested in the doings of her gentlemen, spending hours chatting with them. One of these, a pleasant man by all accounts, the owner of a large furrier’s business in Ladungsgasse, is determined to marry her as soon as she wishes to retire. It is a standing joke between them. They often discuss the bridal gown she will have, the church they favour, the places they will visit on their honeymoon. Dolly has taken to wearing her gentleman’s engagement ring: an emerald. She will accept presents from nobody else and on Wednesdays and Sundays when he calls will always make sure she is available only to him. Natalia and Clara continue with their conversation. They are discussing a woman I have not met. The mother had been supporting her drug-addicted daughter, I gather, for some years, paying for her opium and morphine, but her daughter had become homeless and needed work. Against her normal caution, and because the daughter was known to her, Frau Schmetterling had agreed she could work at Rosenstrasse for a few weeks until she saved the fare to go to relatives in Prague. ‘Frau Schmetterling is so innocent in some ways,’ says Natalia. ‘She was surprised at the demand when it became known that a mother and daughter were working in the same house. She could not believe so many of her customers would insist on having the two women in the same bed at the same time! She was very glad when what’s-her-name went on to Prague.’ Clara takes her empty tea-cup from me. ‘She’s a funny little woman. Quite prudish sometimes, eh? What do you think, Ricky? You’ve known her longer than any of us really.’
‘She’s the mother I never had,’ I say lightly. ‘I love her. She worries about me so much!’
‘Oh, I think we all do,’ says Clara. She seems to be making some sort of joke, so I smile.
‘I hear that General von Landoff will be here tonight,’ says Natalia. ‘Madame has decided to treat with the military for once. She’s making a big concession, eh?’
‘A prudent one at this time,’ I suggest. ‘She would rather have one general invading Rosenstrasse than a regiment of privates. War can make politicians of us all.’
‘We are expert politicians here,’ insists Clara with a smile, ‘every one of us. If Frau Schmetterling had been in charge, there would have been no War to begin with!’
Natalia is weighing a piece of her lace collar in her small palm. ‘It’s pretty material,’ she says, ‘isn’t it? That very fine cotton which sometimes I prefer to silk. Silk is too much like skin. There is no contrast. Shall I go on telling you what the Mayor asked me to do?’
‘I’d love to hear,’ I say, settling back in Clara’s cushions. ‘You old eunuch,’ says Clara affectionately. ‘I sometimes think you’d rather gossip than fuck!’ Natalia begins a rather ordinary tale about the Mayor’s make-believe, his penchant for imitating farmyard animals. I learn more, too, about Caroline Vacarescu. Clara says she deliberately pursues and conquers the wives of famous men. ‘It used to be her speciality. Her seductions became an inextricable mixture of business and pleasure. Her mistresses were often grateful for the opportunities for dalliance without much risk of scandal and they were party to secrets which proved useful to Caroline in her other activities. They say she’s probably a millionairess. The truth is she’s probably spent everything. Caroline Vacarescu’s extravagances have taken on the nature of an art; her raw materials are other people’s money (or, at a pinch, credit) and her canvas is the fashionable world. Her clothes are the most expensive, her houses the most richly furnished and her presents to her protectors (who, of course, supplied her with the means to make the purchases in the first place) are generous. But this affair with Mueller was more serious, I think. His death has affected her quite badly. She’s desperate to get back to Buda-Pesht. She’s asking everybody. If anyone can do it, Caroline can.’ I take my leave of the ladies and return to my Alice to announce she can go to the ball tonight. She hugs me and kisses me as if I am a favourite uncle. We fall into bed together and once again the dream comes alive.
Papadakis seems to be ill. Perhaps he weakens as I grow stronger. ‘As soon as this is finished I shall be getting up,’ I tell him. ‘And we’ll travel. We’ll go to Venice first and then Vienna, or perhaps Paris. What do you think?’ He is a mangy old spaniel. He looks at me and wheezes. ‘You must be careful,’ I say. ‘You aren’t getting any younger. What was the name of that woman who worked for you in London? The one I slept with?’ He frowns. ‘Sonia, wasn’t it?’ I say. ‘She was Jewish, I think. She used to sit in that little basement flat of hers in Bloomsbury and curse you. Then we’d go to the British Museum in the twilight, just before it closed. I can smell the leaves around our ankles. She made you seem far more interesting than you turned out to be. She was obsessed by Egypt, I remember. By the Book of the Dead. What’s happened to your daughter? You haven’t had a letter in a year. Two years. She has forgotten her Papa.’ Papadakis has brought an uncorked bottle of Niersteiner and a glass. He puts it on the table beside the bed. ‘Tell me when you need more,’ he says. ‘What? Is it poisoned? Or do you hope I’ll drink myself into silence? Your daughter. Isn’t she divorced yet, from that foolish Frenchman? Or are you a grandfather, do you think? Are you a grandfather? There is still time to accept the responsibilities of a parent. I am not going to be on your hands much longer.’ He pours some of the wine into the glass. ‘Think what you like,’ he says. ‘Do what you like. Say what you like. It’s good wine. There are a few bottles left. Let me know when you want some more.’ I sip the hock. It is perfect. I am in charge of myself again. ‘Buy flowers when you’re next in town,’ I tell him. ‘As many as possible. Deep reds and blues. Good, heavy scent. Whatever you can find. Spend what you need to spend. I’ll have flowers instead of food. I am celebrating the death of an old friend and my own return to life. Did you ever really visit that doctor I recommended? That follower of Freud’s?’ He shakes his head: ‘I have no time for psychoanalysis or any other fashionable remedies. My faith remains in Science. The rest is just quackery, no matter how it’s dressed up.’ He amuses me. ‘Oh, what we owe to Vienna’ I sing. I descend with Alexandra on my arm. I am dressed in perfect black and white, she in scarlet and gold, with diamonds, pearls, rubies, with black-rimmed eyes and gaudy cheeks, her age unguessable, her identity engulfed. She walks with back straight, her head lifted with arrogant cocaine. We reach the foyer and pause. From the salon comes Strauss and a swell of voices, smoke and the scents of fresh-cooked meat. Alice trembles with pleasure and I am my happiest. We have concocted our masquerade: She is to be the Countess Alice of Elsinore tonight, from Denmark, although her home is now in Florence. She is twenty-three and my cousin. The lie is not meant to convince, merely to confuse the curious. ‘No one will recognise me,’ she says. ‘Friends of my father or my brother know me only as a little girl in sailor-blouses.’ I am feeling so euphoric that I believe I might even welcome a scene in which her father, for instance, was present. We are through the doors now and into the plush and velvet, the crystal and marble, of the salon. The place is alive with potential danger: journalists and several of the great scandal-mongers of Mirenburg, including Herbert Block the song-writer and Voorman the painter. Voorman is the only real problem, but he has no memory of her as the same creature he pretended to court at The Amoral Jew. He kisses her hand as he is introduced and she listens with some merriment as he suggests, again, that she is the goddess he has always imagined he will one day paint. A young Deputy, Baron Karsovin, her distant cousin, suggests as he wrinkles his pink brow beneath an already balding head, that they must have met before, ‘perhaps in Venice’, but he is anxious to return to his discussion of the Prince of Wales, Mrs Keppel and French foreign policy. And an old gentleman, wearing all his orders on his coat, says he believes he knew Alice’s mother. ‘Indeed he did,’ she whispers. ‘He was her lover four or five years ago and used to bribe me with chocolates from Schmidt’s. He bribed Father with secrets of the Bourse and paid for our new house as a result!’ The General is already here, back to the fireplace and looking so brave he might be facing a firing squad. I almost expect someone to blindfold him. He is very tall and thin, with blue veins in his long neck and white whiskers a little yellow about the lips and chin. His hair is quite long. He wears outdated evening-dress, standing with his hands behind him under his frock-coat and talking to Frau Schmetterling (in unusual off-the-shoulder royal blue and silver with a small bustle) and Caroline Vacarescu whose reputation, I suspect, he knows, for he is wary as well as reassuring, though she has succeeded in flattering him. Alice and I are introduced.