'No.' She stands firm. I act as if I am dealing with a child. 'Very well.' I lift my hat and return down the steps, feeling that I have somehow hurt her and myself at the same time. Her confusion is infectious. I stop and look back. She is staring at me from those blank eyes. She is staring. 'Come along, Alexandra.' I stretch out my hand. 'I can no longer afford to indulge myself in this fantasy of youthful infatuation. Either you come with me or I shall abandon you.'
'I want you to go.'
I return, one by one, up the steps. The shells are like a chorus of harpies all around us. 'But what of me?' I say. I am still hoping to appeal to her. 'What shall I be left with?'
She looks at me almost with contempt. 'Love and affection,' she says.
I cannot recover myself. Mirenburg is being destroyed. All my romance is being taken from me at once and there is no one I can blame. This desolation is too complete. She shrugs and joins me. Through all the yelling and all the death we walk slowly home to Rosenstrasse. 'You were lying to me,' she says. 'There is no means of getting to Paris.'
'I will find a way,' I promise. If only I can keep her with me, can get her free of all this terror, we can become calm again. She will love me again. She will know me for what I am, a decent, ordinary, kind-hearted man. In Rosenstrasse everyone is relieved to see us. Alice is put to bed. 'It is exhaustion,' says Lady Diana. 'She is only a child. She's in shock.' For twenty-four hours she hardly moves, although she is awake. We take turns sitting with her. 'Don't leave me, Ricky,' she says suddenly, in the depths of the night. I grasp her hand. I have begun to seek out a plan of Rosenstrasse's sewers; it has occurred to me that this could be our best means of escape. Some of the sewers must run outside the walls, or connect with the underground river. She is so weak. She is fading. Her temperature is alarmingly high. Clara assures me there is nothing seriously wrong with her. I am suspicious of Clara. One is always suspicious of those one deceives. I too am dying, I suppose. That must be why Papadakis humours me so readily, no longer refusing me wine or anything else I demand. He can afford to be charitable. There is never any snow here, only relentless blues and yellows and whites occasionally softened by mist or rain. I can see no green trees from my window. How can they give beauty to me so easily and then take it away just as thoughtlessly? Why should she wish to do that? She stands in the snow with shredded flags limp on her remaining turrets, like a captured heroine. Mirenburg is defeated, but Holzhammer, perhaps so there should be no physical monument to his bestiality, is relentless. Hour after hour the shells fall on the city and at night she is livelier than by day, for her fires are now inextinguishable; her broken silhouettes possess a nobility they lack under the light of the sun. Mirenburg is all but dead. She makes sad, fluttering sounds and little whimpers: the steady booming we hear is the triumphant beating of enemy hearts. If they rape her now, they shall have only the satisfaction of violating a creature which has already made its peace with death. She will give them no pleasure; she will put no curse upon them. They have damned themselves.
We are not allowed outside. Captain Mencken sits beside the telephone, waiting for the instrument to give him orders. In the street there is a horse and cart. We can see it through a hole in the boarded window. All the glass is broken. The horse is dead, from shrapnel. 'Mister' was bringing it back, with our provisions. 'Mister' was killed, too. His body was dragged inside. The cart has remained there for hours. At night its silhouette is thrown onto the blinds by any nearby explosion. 'That cart is the Devil's own carriage,' says Rakanaspya. 'It is waiting for one of us.' He laughs and pulls heavily on his brandy bottle. He is wearing an opera hat and cape. He has an ebony stick in his left hand, together with a pair of gloves. Captain Mencken wishes to know why the window is unprotected when all the others are boarded up. 'We needed some air,' says Rakanaspya. Frau Schmetterling has given shelter to a group of musicians. They are playing now. Their music is exotic, but its inspiration escapes me: there is an Oriental quality to it, though it follows the familiar form of a sonata. The musicians themselves have a slightly Asian cast to their features. Count Belozerski assures me they are not Russian. I have enquired the name of the composer, but I did not recognise it. They are still playing in the morning when I look through the blinds. I can smell the dead horse. In the half-light I see a young, naked child, squatting upon the carcass, picking with its claws at the tough, steaming meat, its own pink body seeming to merge into that of the dead beast, its black eyes hard and wary, like the eyes of a guilty crow. I once used to say that I had an ear for music, an eye for women and a strong distaste for death. While that little orchestra played and while I tortured myself over the question of Alexandra I came to doubt both former statements and to feel thoroughly reinforced in the latter. The whores do not bother to dress in their tasteful finery now. They make love in corners of the salon if they feel like it. Frau Schmetterling is hardly ever present. She has disappeared with Wilke. Only once did I hear her put her foot down in her old, firm way. It was when Inez, the Spanish girl, refused point blank to accompany Van Geest to the rocking-horse room. 'I will not do any of those things,' she had insisted. 'It is quite true,' Frau Schmetterling had said softly,'that Inez is not required, Herr Van Geest, to visit the rocking-horse room. Perhaps Greta would oblige?' But Van Geest, lost in the depths of his own brain and very drunk, had insisted that he wanted Inez. 'You said nothing of the rocking-horse room when you asked for Inez or I should have told you, Herr Van Geest, that she was not available. There has always been an agreement, after all.' Van Geest offered to pay double. Inez had considered this and then again shaken her head. Van Geest had said angrily: 'In other establishments girls like you are severely punished. There are Houses in Amsterdam which specialise in taming stupid, disobedient young women.' Frau Schmetterling had pursed her lips. 'Then I suggest you wait until you can return to Amsterdam, Herr Van Geest.'
Van Geest had glared and then given up, stumbling back to his room. Inez had begun to giggle in relief. Frau Schmetterling had been disapproving. 'You should not have caused a scene,' she had said. But there have been other scenes since and she has not been present to make the peace. Sometimes, when I have been keeping vigil beside Alice's bed, I have had to go out into the corridor to beg people to be quiet. I have managed to get hold of the plans to the sewers. I have found a way of escape. When Alice murmurs to me and pleads for reassurance I tell her we are as good as free. All she has to do is to regain her strength. Soon she is a little better. I show her the plans. I describe the route we are going to take through the mountains to the border where we shall be able to get the train. She frowns. 'Is there no other way?' I shake my head. I begin to tell her how we shall drop into the sewers, what we can take with us, and what we shall tell the others. 'It's tiring.' She sinks again into semi-sleep. 'I'll leave it to you.' I am disturbed by this response. I have managed to do what she wants and she scarcely thanks me. I cannot fathom this sickness. Clara is certain it is a sickness of the spirit. We can only blame the shock of War. The horse is eventually freed from the shafts and what is left of it is butchered for meat. The naked child disappears. Four or five of our girls put on a tableau meant to take our minds off the relentless sound of shelling. Clara and I watch together, comfortable in each other's company. The tableau represents something Arcadian and employs a great many artificial flowers which, of course, the girls have in abundance. Since only three of them speak reasonable German and the others have only the most limited vocabularies the 'play' becomes quickly incomprehensible with the result that the actresses are soon laughing more than the audience. Clara and I applaud. I glance furtively at her to see if she knows anything of my plan. She seems innocent of suspicion tonight. At dawn I slip away to look for the entrance to the sewer. It is not far from here, joining with the underground river which runs beneath Rosenstrasse. The intense light of the winter day threatens my eyes. I should be glad of Captain Mencken's glasses. I manage to open the metal hatch beneath the archway of Papensgasse and I hear water run
ning below, but it stinks. There can be no fresh water, other than melted snow, left in the whole of Mirenburg. I know that one can go from here to the main sewer, or get to it directly from the riverbed. I lower the hatch and walk down Papensgasse to inspect the river entrance to the sewer. Looking over the embankment wall from this side I can just see it, a murky hole rimmed with slime. It seems large enough. When the siege is lifted, I wonder, will they redirect the river to its old course or will it continue to follow the new one? There is a familiar whistling overhead. A Krupp shell begins to fall towards me. I run for the relative security of Papensgasse. I hear the shell but I have not heard the gun which fired it, either because it was so far away or because I am so used to the sound of cannon.
The shell falls not far from Rosenstrasse. Out of the dusty debris comes galloping a column of flying artillery. It stops in a flurry of hooves and steel on the embankment. The soldiers rush to position their guns so they point across the river at the Moravia. I slip back to the brothel and return to Clara. She stirs in her sleep. I am not sure she has noticed my absence. Since we all three take turns sitting with Alice Clara has become used to frequent comings and goings. Later that morning we both get dressed and go to see how the child is. To our considerable surprise she is not only up, she is eating cheese and drinking watered wine. Diana is full of joy. 'What a wonderful recovery.' Clara frowns.
I do my best to disguise my pleasure. Alice must be ready to travel. When Clara and Diana go downstairs together I hug my little girl. 'Are you ready for our next adventure?'
'Oh, yes!' she grins at me, a conspiratorial innocent. 'What's the plan?'
I tell her we shall leave separately tonight. I will wait for her at midnight in Papensgasse, round the corner from the archway. 'It might be easier than I thought. They've moved our guns up to the river. That probably means Holzhammer has broken through the defences and is in the Moravia already. We'll come out well behind his main lines. I'll buy horses, then it's a clear ride to the border and a train.' We hear sounds in the corridor. She says gently, with hesitant fingers on my arm:
'You don't think you'd be happier going with Clara?' I am taken aback. My heart sinks. 'Of course not. Why?' She makes a little movement with her lovely shoulders. 'Nothing.' The door opens. 'I'll be there.'
Clara enters. She seems distressed. Has she guessed? 'It's Van Geest,' she says. 'He's shot himself. God knows why. Downstairs is full of police and soldiers. They don't seriously think it's murder. But the building's now officially occupied. Soldiers are being billeted here. Temporarily, they say, because of the 'new emergency', whatever that is.' I return to the ground floor with her, so she will not get suspicious. I blow my smiling Alice a kiss as we leave. The vestibule is still hung with its many portraits of the French emperor whom Frau Schmetterling adored and who, some say, was her first lover. The soldiers show distaste for these pictures and seem discomfited by them. The officer in charge, Captain Kolovrat, attempts to order them removed from the walls. This Frau Schmetterling firmly refuses. She is the only one of us with any authority to resist them; my own choice is to pretend respect and to avoid them as much as I can. Unlike Mencken, these men are used to power and know how to gain it. A soldier must be broken in such a way as to make him wholly reliant upon his superiors, otherwise he cannot be controlled in battle. Most officers employ this knowledge in their dealings with women, first destroying their confidence, then supplying it themselves so that those they would command become entirely dependant upon them. I must admit to being nervous. They remind me of well-trained hounds: their natural ferocity, their terror of their own madness, contained and controlled almost entirely by their wills. Such personalities yearn for uniforms, for rituals. They demand them in others, for they must order a world they fear and thus will simplify themselves and those around them as much as they can. Captain Mencken is in conversation with a police inspector wearing a kepi and gold epaulettes on his maroon uniform. Captain Kolovrat, presumably senior to Mencken, struts about the salon inspecting its contents as if he were kicking his heels in a provincial art-gallery. He has a Prussian-style helmet decorated in gold and silver, a black and white uniform, and a variety of medals. His hand sticks his sword out behind him like the extended tail of a scorpion. His little fat face is embellished by a waxed moustache and a monocle. He wheels around and marches towards me to be introduced by a defeated Frau Schmetterling, whose only victory has been the pictures. He salutes me. I bow my head. He clicks his heels and says: 'You must understand, sir, that every resident is now under military discipline. Your privileges, I regret, are at an end.'
'They were over when 'Mister' died,' says Frau Schmetterling softly. And then, to him: 'I hope you don't expect to find supplies here, Captain Kolovrat. We were living hand to mouth as it was.'
'We shall see,' he says. 'I shall want inventories. Anything we use will, of course, receive a receipt and you can claim full payment from the government after the War. Mencken? Inspector Serval?'
'Suicide without doubt,' says Serval. 'He was probably suffering from some form of delirium. Maybe bad meat, maybe drink, maybe a disease. The doctor will let us know. But he shot himself through the temple with his own revolver. A familiar situation at present.'
'Disease,' says Kolovrat, rubbing at his chubby chin. He rolls the word on his tongue and seems about to spit it out. 'Of course. There must be a medical inspection. I shall send to headquarters.'
Frau Schmetterling is offended. 'I assure you that the likelihood;'
'The likelihood is what a soldier must consider, madame.' He is fastidious and condescending. She falls silent, reconciled for the time being to this man's swaggering rudeness. Mencken seems embarrassed and apologetic. Clara, Diana and I go with the others, girls and clients, into the salon. Alice is mentioned and excused because she is unwell. I present her papers. Kolovrat has had a bureau placed in the middle of the floor. He sits at this now, making up a register. One by one we give our names and nationalities, showing him our identification cards. We are allowed to sit or to stand around the walls of the salon. Outside, the shells are constant and from time to time the whole building shakes or more glass crashes to the floor. Kolovrat's inquisition is frequently punctuated by the chiming of the chandelier over his head. One series of shots seems closer: I realise it is our own artillery, firing across the river. Kolovrat knows the sound, too, and looks up. I fail to read his fat little face. Eventually we are dismissed. Young soldiers stand to attention everywhere. Clara, Diana and myself are asked by Frau Schmetterling to accompany her to her kitchen. Whenever a shell lands nearby she jumps and looks at her shivering dresser, at her wonderful, rattling china. So far nothing is damaged. 'I am worried,' she says, 'about my daughter. With 'Mister' gone Elvira has no-one but me… She sits down at her long table. Trudi, smiling in the background, makes us something to drink. Outside, there is a lull in the bombardment and we can hear Herr Ulric the butcher-cook in the courtyard. His loud healthy voice rings and echoes. He is arguing with a young cavalryman: 'The horse is no good to you and no good to itself. It is dying of starvation!' The soldier is passionate. 'We shall die together!' he shouts. The butcher is reasonable: 'Go inside and fuck one of the girls. While you're at it I'll deal with the horse.'
'You are disgusting!'
The butcher drops his voice and so does the cavalryman. We hear no more and soon the shells are landing again. The building is scarcely ever still. It is as if an ea-thquake perpetually shakes it. Frau Schmetterling says to Lady Cromach: 'You have connections, I presume, in England. Could you get Elvira to school there? If anything happens to me.'
'Nothing will happen to you, Frau Schmetterling, and of course I'll do whatever I can. Do you wish me to recommend some schools, somewhere where Elvira could stay? I have an old nanny who still lives in London.'
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