The Brothel in Rosenstrasse vb-2

by Michael Jonh Moorcock

  'Eventually,' I continue, 'it is very likely that you will wear me down sufficiently so that out of weariness or exasperation I will make you an offer and thus save you the responsibility of making your own decision. Or I will become remorseful and give you that which your conscience cannot demand. Well, I will have none of it. When you have made up your mind to speak to me directly I shall be pleased to continue this conversation.' I sound ridiculously pompous in my own ears. She wants me to take her to the party. I am almost ready to do so, even though I know it would be unwise. But I want her to ask. Somehow I am carrying too much of the burden. I am at the door when she wails: 'I want to go to the party!'

  'You know it would be too dangerous for us,' I say.

  'I don't know. I only know what you tell me. Are you frightened of their opinion?'

  I am frightened, of course. I am frightened of the dream ending, of reality intruding. I leave the room. She has wounded me and I am full of self-pity. I am furious with her. I had thought things had reached a decent balance. But she is not content with promises of Paris and I can scarcely blame her, since there is no means of knowing when the siege will be over. But she has changed. I can sense that she has changed. What alterations have occurred in her strange, fantastic brain. I am as much at a loss for a satisfactory explanation as if I had attempted to analyse the perceptions and motives of a household pet. Like a pet she is able to take on the colour of any master; to respond to whatever desires that master displays. Yet she is not doing that now. Does that mean she is ready to find a new master? I feel I am somehow making a mistake; as if I have failed to understand the rules of the game. Perhaps I should not have been so direct with her. Perhaps I should have disguised my desires and remained more of a mystery to her. Or will I lose her anyway? To someone else who will represent liberty and escape to her? It seems increasingly important that we should leave Mirenburg. I will go to Police headquarters in the morning and try again to get passports for us. I have miscalculated. I blame the drugs, the atmosphere of the whorehouse. Sensuality has given way to a sort of erotomania. It could destroy everything. I must make an effort to impress her with my own common-sense. I must not weaken. Alice! I want what you were. My little girl! Have you no notion of all the emotions you have aroused in me? The tenderness, the willingness to sacrifice everything for you? You cannot know what I have given up already, what I am still prepared to give up. You are myself. And we are Mirenburg. I find that I am outside Clara's room. I knock. She tells me to enter. She has Natalia, her dark friend, with her. They are drinking tea. 'I am so sorry to disturb you.' I make to go, but both wave me in. 'Is the child sleeping?' asks Clara. 'No,' I say,'she decided to have a tantrum, so I've left her to cool down.' Clara and Natalia both seem to approve of this decision. I fall into Clara'scouch, immediately relieved. 'What am I to do with her?'

  '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 fiance, 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 younge
r. 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.

  'Is there no chance of getting up a group of those who wish to leave?' asks Caroline, all sweet perfume and vulnerable, whispering russet flounces. 'If only we could reach the mountains, say. Under a white flag. There must be some sort of communication between the two sides. Some understanding that the civilized world would be scandalised when it found out how decent people were being treated.'

  'But my dear lady, there is absolutely no danger to you here,' says the General. 'Holzhammer has used up all his ammunition. And the bombardment, you must have noticed, was concentrated entirely on the centre of the city. You are far safer in Mirenburg. There are bandits abroad in the country areas. Deserters. Disaffected peasants. You can imagine.'

  'Are we to understand that no permits will be issued at all?' I say.

  'No chance whatsoever, at present.' The General speaks as if he imparts the best news in the world. 'Holzhammer can scarcely hold out another week with all the desertions. Then - a quick counter-attack, with or without Berlin's support - then it will be over. We are biding our time. It is a question of choosing the moment.'

  'So our losses have not been as great as they say?' says Caroline almost waspishly.

  'Our losses, dear lady, have been minimal. Austria is going to regret her involvement in what is, after all, little more than a domestic squabble.' Caroline darts me a look, as if she hopes for an ally, but I am helpless. With a little nasal sigh, like a lioness who has made too short a charge and has seen her prey escape, she stalks off in search of other game. Clara greets us. She has discarded her usual tailor-mades and is wearing a gold dress, her hair in a Pompadour. She looks at least five years younger and is arm in arm with a rather drunk Rakanaspya who wears a dove-grey suit a little too large for him, evidently borrowed. He speaks so elliptically to the General, in such thick French, that nobody understands him. 'You have nothing to fear,' says von Landoff, and nods, as if to a simpleton. 'Another week or less and you may go home.' Rakanaspya, with one eye on Frau Schmetterling, lapses into the security of Russian, plainly saying all he wishes to say in that language and so releasing his feelings without giving much offence to his hostess. Clara says: 'Good evening to you both. You look stunning. A perfect match,' and she bears against Rakanaspya with her shoulder to steer him off towards the middle of the room where Block enjoys the flattery of the ladies and Stefanik drones moodily on the subject of flight. Princess Poliakoff makes her entrance. She is in black tulle and pearls, true to form, while her lover is a swan in fold upon fold ot Doucet lace, approaching as if she has just landed on water and is coasting towards the shore. Her short curly hair has a torque around it bearing two pale mauve ostrich feathers which match her fan. She seems to wear no make-up but is delicately English in her healthy colouring. Alice wants to know who she is and when I tell her she whispers: 'Let's talk to them. They seem far more interesting.' Occasionally, by a less-than-careful movement she betrays her youth. We make our way to the Lesbian couple. Everyone is introduced. 'We have seen nothing of you,' I say. 'You snub us indiscriminately!'

  'I haven't been well,' says the Princess. 'And Diana has been a saint. Also, of course, she has to look for material.' Lady Cromach takes a testy interest in her fan, then offers me one of her soft, sardonic stares and says in that insinuating voice: 'And how is your health, Herr von Bek?'

  'Excellent, as usual, Lady Cromach. Thank you. Are your articles about the War already entertaining the readers of the Gaulois and the News?'

  'The telegraph is down. And the carrier pigeons are unreliable. I have no idea. For a while I thought I was bribing a little man in the military despatch office, but he was dismissed a few days ago. I fear my work will be retrospective when it appears, and nobody is overly interested in the fate of Mirenburg. Are they?' She seems to want to know. 'I content myself with doing atmosphere-pieces for the monthlies. I keep busy. What a cha
rming brooch, my dear.' She peers towards Alice's breasts. 'You say that you are a guest here, too?' Princess Poliakoff looks distracted and jealous. She puts one of those elongated fingers to her mouth, then withdraws it carefully to her side. 'How's the minstrel, Ricky?'

  'Singing as sweetly as ever,' I say. 'And teaching me to play the banjo.' I'm surprised she still believes me. She pulls her companion away from us. 'You have a lovely cousin,' says Lady Cromach; she winks at me behind the Princess's back. I find her extremely attractive. I believe she is thoroughly intrigued by me. Alice fumes. 'What an awful witch!'

  'Lady Diana?'

  'Of course not.' She is on my arm again. We move towards the buffet. 'It's much more ordinary than I expected. I'd imagined it - well - Oriental. Decadent. It's almost like one of Mother's Evenings.'

  'Except that most of the women are whores and all the men are lechers.' I hand her some cold salmon.

  'Then it's exactly like one of Mother's Evenings.' She laughs. I have not for a long time known her so carelessly cheerful. I love her. It is such a relief to feel that things are normal again. 'You look very handsome tonight,' she says. 'As you always used to look. I'm glad you seem happy, Ricky.'

  'I'm happy that you're happy. It is so easy, my little one, to make you happy.' I am full of tenderness for her.

  'I'm happy because you've taken me seriously and are treating me - I don't know - as an equal. I'm far older than my age. People have often said so.'

  You will always be my own sweet little girl, Alice. My lascivious child, my dreaming daughter-wife. I want the soft, sudden flesh, the sweet dunes, the little caves. The music of your shouts and your pleasure. I bite your neck, your throat, your shoulder. I will do whatever you want. I will say and become whatever you want, to keep you as I want you to be. This turn in her conversation begins to depress me. I ask her whom she would like to meet next. 'That's Van Geest, the banker, with Therese. And that, of course, is Count Belozerski. Our Lesbians are talking to Wilke, the jewel-thief. Would you like to meet him. He's usually very grave and of course doesn't talk much about his work.' The salon is growing noisier, a trifle more boisterous. The General moves away from the fireplace beaming like a baby with Natalia on one arm and Aimee on the other, to sample the buffet. He is here, after all, to forget the War. There is champagne everywhere. The corks are a cannonade which mocks recent events. We banish Holzhammer and the doors are rolled back before we can approach the Russian novelist; the little ballroom is revealed where, on a curtained dais amongst potted palms, sits an all-woman orchestra. 'How terrible,' says the Princess as she sweeps past with her friend,'that we should look to Vienna for our gaiety when she is presently causing us so much pain.' And she and her lover boldly begin the dancing, to the applause of the others, who gradually begin to join them on the floor: by Clara and a scowling Stefanik, watching his feet and hers, Frau Schmetterling and the courteous Belozerski, by Alice and myself. 'Ta ta ta, ta ta turn,' shouts General von Landoff, spinning with Natalia. It is as if we are suddenly all much drunker. The real world is whirling silk and painted flesh, wine and perfume and flowers. Soon I am standing back and laughing as Clara dances with Poliakoff and Alice with Lady Diana. Skirts are lifted, ties are loosened, petticoats bounce in the warmth of the chandeliers. The orchestra is made up chiefly of middle-aged women, a little shabbily dressed, and respectable, but there are three young girls, all dark-complexioned and possibly sisters. It is the cellist who attracts my attention. She is as plump as the others but considerably prettier and playing with evident passion, her legs spread to accommodate her instrument, and her whole body swaying as she plies her bow, her eyes as rapt as a woman's in the throes of love-making. Belozerski is talking to Natalia. 'I had decided to visit the estate of a favourite old relative in the Ukraine,' he says. 'I'd spent most of my boyhood summers there but this was the first time I'd gone in winter. Earlier that year I received a pardon from St Petersburg so was no longer an exile, but by then had established a home in Paris and felt no great wish to uproot myself. However, this visit was as much to confirm my pardon as to satisfy curiosity about cousins and aunts and uncles, whom I had not seen in fifteen years. Most of the journey from the railway station was by troika, for it was snowing. I had forgotten how wide the steppe was. The snow was like a white ocean and trees stuck out over the horizon like the masts of wrecks. My wife, who is French, chose to remain behind so I was alone save for the old peasant who drove the troika. We were about half-way to the estate when memory suddenly came back. I have never experienced the like. It was a dream: I seemed to drown in recollections which were as vivid as the original events. I relived those summers, even as the sleigh moved rapidly over the snow, so by the time I arrived I was actually shocked to notice it was winter. The poignancy of that experience, my dear Natalia, is indescribable. It left me rather depressed. I mourned for lost opportunities and deeply regretted the ill-considered romanticism which had led me to take up the cause of nationalism. Yet I know my life has been worthwhile and far more interesting in Paris than if I had remained in the Kiev gubernia where I was born.' He smiles wistfully. She smiles back in some astonishment, then turns to pour him another glass of champagne. Captain Mackenzie nods to me, on his way to speak to Count Stefanik. The Scotsman's eye contains a kind of alert sweetness at odds with his battered and drug-ruined features. Alice and I join him. A scar causes his lip to curl in a sort of grin and his soft German, pronounced with a distinctive Scottish accent, is often impossible to understand. When one of us attempts English, however, it becomes plain that he is even less comprehensible in that language. He speaks enthusiastically with Rudolph Stefanik on the subject of balloons. He has seen them used for scouting, he says, and he has heard they had also been employed in the bombardment of Paris thirty years ago, although the Prussians had of course denied they had ever done anything so inhuman. He laughs. 'Is Holzhammer denying the destruction of Mirenburg, I wonder? They are planning to dam up the river, apparently, and set it in a new course, so that we shall have no fresh water. Have you heard anything about that, von Bek?' I have not. 'I receive virtually no real news, captain. All we get here are fantastic rumours and a little gossip. We are a desert island. But you must be privy to a hundred revelations a night!'