Rakanaspya appeals to us, but we are laughing too heartily at Voorman. The Russian puts his back against a pillar and pretends to listen to the orchestra as it plays a sort of gypsy dance. The General joins us, with Frau Schmetterling on his arm. His face is red; not wishing to show he is in any way exhausted he controls his breathing. Frau Schmetterling is pleased; she seems to have extracted some sort of promise from him. 'I will put young Captain Mencken in charge of the matter.’ He hands her a glass of champagne. He bows to Caroline Vacarescu, who continues to court him. Caroline is talking first to Clara and then, as the two women approach closer, to Alice and myself. She is quite drunk. ‘It was the chemistry between us,’ she says, ‘I could not help myself. I cannot explain. And yet it was failing. I know he felt this loss. The intensity was gone and without it one becomes very easily bored.’ She seems to be referring to Mueller. Clara listens patiently. ‘We tried to recapture passion which overpowers all constraint, all conscience, but it became hollow. Yet we were linked to each other, by virtue of what we had done to one another and to friends and strangers.’ Caroline looks at me suddenly, as if to test my response. ‘We were partners in crime. All I could do was watch as he seduced the others who would eventually all become linked to us. That was how we worked, how we affirmed the validity of our habits; and justified them. Was that so wrong? Is one reality any better than another?’
Rakanaspya is the only person with an answer. ‘One is sad’, he says, ‘the other reality you describe is not. Such power as Romanticism eventually destroys its proponents. It is always the case. And the process of destruction is neither normal nor bearable. It is merely sordid. Save yourself, while you have the chance. Never link your star to a m» as Mueller again.’
She becomes uncharacteristically sentimental. ‘You can never understand what someone like Mueller has. He radiated authority. He snapped his fingers at convention. He made fools of them all.’
‘And now he is dead,’ says Clara softly, trying to distract Caroline.
Voorman watches cynically as they move back through the salon. ‘I heard Fraulein Vacarescu is only at liberty now because Mueller was caught through information she supplied. Perhaps she found her own way of freeing herself from that chemistry.’
‘Somewhat radically.’ I do not believe him. Caroline seemed genuinely distressed by Mueller’s fate. I catch sight of a man I have often seen here in the evenings and whom I continue to confuse with the current Mayor. He is in fact the ex-Mayor of Mirenburg. He reels about the dance-floor in a kind of vulgar parody of the polka. Herr Kralek’s tie is lost. He has spilled food down his shirt-front. Dolly, alone, will dance with him. Almost every night he comes to visit the girls, to drink plum brandy and eat cream-cakes until dawn, when he returns to his wife, to make love to her, we have heard, until he is inevitably sick. His huge red neck ripples. His face is a featureless mass of purple. He usually displays resentment and elf-pity in all his tiniest gestures: demands respectful attention and receives instead the amiable kindness of the girls, which he mistakes for fear. He describes himself as an honest burgher, or rather he describes his opinions as those of an honest burgher: ‘Your honest burgher believes the Jews should all be expelled from the city proper,’ he will say. ‘Your honest brother isn’t happy with the idea of increased taxation.’ I remember one naive visitor asking him why, since he was so dently the voice of the respectable citizens of Mirenburg, they had signed a petition to have him removed from office. He said seriously that most of the signatures had been forgeries, Petition had been a plot of Zionist elements afraid of his power. ‘Where I could no longer exercise my ever watchful eye.’ He stumbles now and falls to the floor. Dolly attempts to help him up. Dolly’s fiancé is not here. Voorman tells Alice about another guest, a small, middle-aged journalist on the far side of the room. ‘He awoke in the hospital, still convinced he was at Frau Schmetterling’s, and immediately ordered one of the sisters to remove her underwear. She had obeyed with alacrity. It was four days before it dawned on him he had somehow been transferred from the brothel. The sister had no wish for him to leave. Being responsible to her superior to report his condition, she continued to insist on his poor rate of recovery. She kept him for another week until one of her colleagues demanded a share of the patient and was refused. The sister was reported and dismissed on the spot. She accompanied him back to the brothel where she stayed for a while as medical advisor to the girls.’ Alice is disbelieving. Voorman insists he is telling the absolute truth. The General confides to Frau Schmetterling, also on a medical matter: ‘My physician had the nerve to suggest mercury treatment, which means he thinks I have syphilis. But until the fool comes out with it directly and tells me I have the disease I shall carry on as I have always carried on. The responsibility is his, not mine.’
‘You have put the question to him?’ asks Frau Schmetterling.
‘In as many words.’
‘But not directly?’
‘Has he been direct with me, madam?’
The air is growing warm. It is difficult to breath. We move closer to the door. Wilke, perhaps the most dignified person here, with a look of self-possessed humility, is talking to Clara about Amsterdam, which they both know. He seems untroubled by the noise and laughter which surrounds him. His large hands move in a circle as he describes a certain district of the city and asks her, with his usual gravity, how long it is since she was there. ‘Doesn’t he look a marvellous brute,’ murmurs Alice as we go by. ‘Such a man, compared to the rest of these!’ I pretend to be insulted. ‘Perhaps I should introduce you?’ She gives me a look of mock-irritation: ‘Oh, don’t be silly. Someone like that has no real interest in women. He is either friends with them, or takes them quickly and leaves, or is faithful to his wife, if he has one. That’s obvious to me, even at my age!’ How many of these observations has she received from her mother?
I am again unsure why Alice should find me attractive. Is it a certain weakness which makes me more easily controlled, or less inclined to go my own way when it suits me? I have no idea. I look around at the crowded salon. How could I have thought that this was normality? We are all crazed. We are all in Hell. I stare at every face. There are only two women here I have not fucked. One of them is Frau Schmetterling herself. The other is Lady Cromach. She and Princess Poliakoff also stand near the door. Lady Cromach chews on an olive. ‘Frau Schmetterling tells me that you write, Herr von Bek. Do you work for the Berlin journals?’ I shake my head. ‘I am a dilettante, Lady Cromach. I do not know enough about life to be able to write with any authority, and I am, moreover, horribly lazy.’
‘Is that why you prefer to stay in a place like this when you travel?’
Princess Poliakoff snorts, saying something coarse to Alice who begins to giggle. I continue to speak to the English woman. ‘There are few houses as elegant as this and few which have such excellent ladies. I’m sure you know that most whores have a dislike of men and a crude sort of self-involvement which makes them very dull. How can one possibly be aroused very often or very satisfactorily by a dull woman?’
‘I find men much duller than most women,’ she says.
‘I am inclined to agree with you. And the dullest of all men are German, eh?’
‘They have their points. What they lack in imagination they make up for in cleanliness. I nearly married one, when I was a girl. And at least they are not as boring as Frenchmen, who seem to believe their attractiveness is in direct proportion to their vanity. I blame their mothers. And Germany is so modern! Though, as you suggest, a little on the tame side. When were you last in Berlin?’