City of Endless Night

by Hastings , Milo M. ;

  All this was interesting, but I inferred that I would again have opportunity to visit the library and now I was impatient to keep my appointment with Bertha. Making an excuse for haste, I asked Zimmern to get the geography for me. The stiff back of the book had been removed, and Zimmern helped me adjust the limp volume beneath my waistcoat.

  ‘I am sorry you cannot remain and meet Marguerite tonight,’ he said as I stepped toward the door. ‘But tomorrow evening I will arrange for you to meet Colonel Hellar of the Information Staff, and Marguerite can be with us then. You may go directly to my booth in the cafe where you last dined with me.’

  IV

  After a brief walk I came to Bertha’s apartment, and nervously pressed the bell. She opened the door stealthily and peered out, then recognizing me, she flung it wide.

  ‘I have brought you a book,’ I said as I entered; and, not knowing what else to do, I went through the ridiculous operation of removing the geography from beneath my waistcoat.

  ‘What a big book,’ exclaimed Bertha in amazement. However, she did not open the geography but laid it on the table, and stood staring at me with her childlike blue eyes.

  ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘that you are the first visitor I ever had in my apartment? May I show you about?’

  As I followed her through the cosy rooms, I chafed to see the dainty luxury in which she was permitted to live while being left to starve. The place was as well adapted to lovemaking as any other product of German science is adapted to its end. The walls were adorned with sensual prints; but happily I recalled that Bertha, having no education in the matter, was immune to the insult.

  Anticipating my coming she had ordered dinner, and this was presently delivered by a deaf-and-dumb mechanical servant, and we set it forth on the dainty dining table. Since the world was young, I mused, woman and man had eaten a first meal together with all the world shut out, and so we dined amid shy love and laughter in a tiny apartment in the heart of a city where millions of men never saw the face of woman – and where millions of babies were born out of love by the cold degree of science. And this same science, bartering with licentious iniquity, had provided this refuge and permitted us to bar the door, and so we accepted our refuge and sanctified it with the purity that was within our own hearts – such at least was my feeling at the time.

  And so we dined and cleared away, and talked joyfully of nothing. As the evening wore on Bertha, beside me upon the divan, snuggled contentedly against my shoulder. The nearness and warmth of her and the innocence of her eyes thrilled yet maddened me.

  With fast-beating heart, I realized that I as well as Bertha was in the grip of circumstances against which rebellion was as futile as were thoughts of escape. There was no one to aid and no one to forbid or criticize. Whatever I might do to save her from the fate ordained for her would of necessity be worked out between us, unaided and unhampered by the ethics of civilization as I had known it in a freer, saner world.

  In offering Bertha money and coming to her apartment I had thrust myself between her and the crass venality of the men of her race, but I had now to wrestle with the problem that such action had involved. If, I reasoned, I could only reveal to her my true identity the situation would be easier, for I could then tell her of the rules of the game of love in the world I had known. Until she knew of that world and its ideals, how could I expect her to understand my motives? How else could I strengthen her in the battle against our own impulses?

  And yet, did I dare to confess to her that I was not a German? Would not deep-seated ideals of patriotism drilled into the mind of a child place me in danger of betrayal at her hands? Such a move might place my own life in jeopardy and also destroy my opportunity of being of service to the world, could I contrive the means of escape from Berlin with the knowledge I had gained. Small though the possibilities of such escape might be, it was too great a hope for me to risk for sentimental reasons. And could she be expected to believe so strange a tale?

  And so the temptation to confess that I was not Karl Armstadt passed, and with its passing, I recalled the geography that I had gone to so much trouble to secure, and which still lay unopened upon the table. Here at least was something to get us away from the tumultuous consciousness of ourselves and I reached for the volume and spread it open upon my knees.

  ‘What a funny book!’ exclaimed Bertha, as she gazed at the round maps of the two hemispheres. ‘Of what is that a picture?’

  ‘The world,’ I answered.

  She stared at me blankly. ‘The Royal World?’ she asked.

  ‘No, no,’ I replied. ‘The world outside the walls of Berlin.’

  ‘The world in the sun,’ exclaimed Bertha, ‘on the roof where they fight the aeroplanes? A roof guard officer’ she paused and bit her lip –

  ‘The world of the inferior races,’ I suggested, trying to find some common footing with her pitifully scant knowledge.

  ‘The world underground,’ she said, ‘where the soldiers fight in the mines?’

  Baffled in my efforts to define this world to her, I began turning the pages of the geography, while Bertha looked at the pictures in childlike wonder, and I tried as best I could to find simple explanations.

  Between the lines of my teaching, I scanned, as it were, the true state of German ignorance. Despite the evident intended authoritativeness of the book – for it was marked ‘Permitted to military staff officers’ – I found it amusingly full of erroneous conceptions of the true state of affairs in the outer world.

  This teaching of a childlike mind the rudiments of knowledge was an amusing recreation, and so an hour passed pleasantly. Yet I realized that this was an occupation of which I would soon tire, for it was not the amusement of teaching a child that I craved, but the companionship of a woman of intelligence.

  As we turned the last page I arose to take my departure. ‘If I leave the book with you,’ I said, ‘will you read it all, very carefully? And then when I come again I will explain those things you cannot understand.’

  ‘But it is so big, I couldn’t read it in a day,’ replied Bertha, as she looked at me appealingly.

  I steeled myself against that appeal. I wanted very much to get my mind back on my chemistry, and I wanted also to give her time to read and ponder over the wonders of the great unknown world. Moreover, I no longer felt so grievously concerned, for the calamity which had overshadowed her had been for the while removed. And I had, too, my own struggle to cherish her innocence, and that without the usual help extended by conventional society. So I made brave resolutions and explained the urgency of my work and insisted that I could not see her for five days.

  Hungrily she pleaded for a quicker return; and I stubbornly resisted the temptation. ‘No,’ I insisted, ‘not tomorrow, nor the next day, but I will come back in three days at the same hour that I came tonight.’

  Then taking her in my arms, I kissed her in feverish haste and tore myself from the enthralling lure of her presence.

  V

  When I reached the cafe the following evening to keep my appointment with Zimmern, the waiter directed me to one of the small enclosed booths. As I entered, closing the door after me, I found myself confronting a young woman.

  ‘Are you Col. Armstadt?’ she asked with a clear, vibrant voice. She smiled cordially as she gave me her hand. ‘I am Marguerite. Dr. Zimmern has gone to bring Col. Hellar, and he asked me to entertain you until his return.’

  The friendly candor of this greeting swept away the gray walls of Berlin, and I seemed again face to face with a woman of my own people. She was a young woman of distinctive personality. Her features, though delicately moulded, bespoke intelligence and strength of character that I had not hitherto seen in the women of Berlin. Framing her face was a luxuriant mass of wavy brown hair, which fell loosely about her shoulders. Her slender figure was draped in a cape of deep blue cellulose velvet.

  ‘Dr. Zimmern tells me,’ I said as I seated myself across the table from her, ‘that you are a dear fr
iend of his.’

  A swift light gleamed in her deep brown eyes. ‘A very dear friend,’ she said feelingly, and then a shadow flitted across her face as she added, ‘Without him life for me would be unbearable here.’

  ‘And how long, if I may ask, have you been here?’

  ‘About four years. Four years and six days, to be exact. I can keep count you know,’ and she smiled whimsically, ‘for I came on the day of my birth, the day I was sixteen.’

  ‘That is the same for all, is it not?’

  ‘No one can come here before she is sixteen,’ replied Marguerite, ‘and all must come before they are eighteen.’

  ‘But why did you come at the first opportunity?’ I asked, as I mentally compared her confession with that of Bertha who had so courageously postponed as long as she could the day of surrender to this life of shamefully commercialized love.

  ‘And why should I not come?’ returned Marguerite. ‘I had a chance to come, and I accepted it. Do you think life in the school for girls of forbidden birth is an enjoyable one?’

  I wanted to press home the point of my argument, to proclaim my pride in Bertha’s more heroic struggle with the system, for this girl with whom I now conversed was obviously a woman of superior intelligence, and it angered me to know that she had so easily surrendered to the life for which German society had ordained her. But I restrained my speech, for I realized that in criticizing her way of life I would be criticizing her obvious relation to Zimmern, and like all men I found myself inclined to be indulgent with the personal life of a man who was my friend. Moreover, I perceived the presumptuousness of assuming a superior air towards an established and accepted institution. Yet, strive as I might to be tolerant, I felt a growing antagonism towards this attractive and cultured girl who had surrendered without a struggle to a life that to me was a career of shame – and who seemed quite content with her surrender.

  ‘Do you like it here?’ I asked, knowing that my question was stupid, but anxious to avoid a painful gap in what was becoming, for me, a difficult conversation.

  Marguerite looked at me with a queer penetrating gaze. ‘Do I like it here?’ she repeated. ‘Why should you ask, and how can I answer? Can I like it or not like it, when there was no choice for me? Can I push out the walls of Berlin?’ – and she thrust mockingly into the air with a delicately chiseled hand – ‘It is a prison. All life is a prison.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it is a prison, but life on this level is more joyful than on many others.’

  Her lip curled in delicate scorn. ‘For you men – of course – and I suppose it is for these women too – perhaps that is why I hate it so, because they do enjoy it, they do accept it. They sell their love for food and raiment, and not one in all these millions seems to mind it.’

  ‘In that,’ I remarked, ‘perhaps you are mistaken. I have not come here often as most men do, but I have found one other who, like you, rebels at the system – who in fact, was starving because she would not sell her love.’

  Marguerite flashed on me a look of pitying suspicion as she asked: ‘Have you gone to the Place of Records to look up this rebel against the sale of love?’

  A fire of resentment blazed up in me at this question. I did not know just what she meant by the Place of Records, but I felt that this woman who spoke cynically of rebellion against the sale of love, and yet who had obviously sold her love to an old man, was in no position to discredit a weaker woman’s nobler fight.

  ‘What right,’ I asked coldly, ‘have you to criticize another whom you do not know?’

  ‘I am sorry,’ replied Marguerite, ‘if I seem to quarrel with you when I was left here to entertain you, but I could not help it – it angers me to have you men be so fond of being deceived, such easy prey to this threadbare story of the girl who claims she never came here until forced to do so. But men love to believe it. The girls learn to use the story because it pays.’

  A surge of conflicting emotion swept through me as I recalled the childlike innocence of Bertha and compared it with the critical skepticism of this superior woman. ‘It only goes to show,’ I thought, ‘what such a system can do to destroy a woman’s faith in the very existence of innocence and virtue.’

  Marguerite did not speak; her silence seemed to say: ‘You do not understand, nor can I explain – I am simply here and so are you, and we have our secrets which cannot be committed to words.’

  With idle fingers she drummed lightly on the table. I watched those slender fingers and the rhythmic play of the delicate muscles of the bare white arm that protruded from the rich folds of the blue velvet cape. Then my gaze lifted to her face. Her downcast eyes were shielded by long curving lashes; high arched silken brows showed dark against a skin as fresh and free from chemist’s pigment as the petal of a rose. In exultant rapture my heart within me cried that here was something fine of fiber, a fineness which ran true to the depths of her soul.

  In my discovery of Bertha’s innocence and in my faith in her purity and courage I had hoped to find relief from the spiritual loneliness that had grown upon me during my sojourn in this materialistic city. But that faith was shaken, as the impression Bertha had made upon my over-sensitized emotions, now dimmed by a brighter light, flickered pale on the screen of memory. The mere curiosity and pity I had felt for a chance victim singled out among thousands by the legend of innocence on a pretty face could not stand against the force that now drew me to this woman who seemed to be not of a slavish race – even as Dr. Zimmern seemed a man apart from the soulless product of the science he directed. But as I acknowledged this new magnet tugging at the needle of my floundering heart, I also realized that my friendship for the lovable and courageous Zimmern reared an unassailable barrier to shut me into outer darkness.

  The thought proved the harbinger of the reality, for Dr. Zimmerman himself now entered. He was accompanied by Col. Hellar of the Information Staff, a man of about Zimmern’s age. Col. Hellar bore himself with a gracious dignity; his face was sad, yet there gleamed from his eye a kindly humor.

  Marguerite, after exchanging a few pleasantries with Col. Hellar and myself, tenderly kissed the old doctor on the forehead, and slipped out.

  ‘You shall see much of her,’ said Zimmern, ‘she is the heart and fire of our little group, the force that holds us together. But tonight I asked her not to remain’ – the old doctor’s eyes twinkled with merriment – ‘for a young man cannot get acquainted with a beautiful woman and with ideas at the same time.’

  VI

  ‘And now,’ said Zimmern, after we had finished our dinner, ‘I want Col. Hellar to tell you more of the workings of the Information Service.’

  ‘It is a very complex system,’ began Hellar. ‘It is old. Its history goes back to the First World War, when the military censorship began by suppressing information thought to be dangerous and circulating fictitious reports for patriotic purposes. Now all is much more elaborately organized; we provide that every child be taught only the things that it is decided he needs to know, and nothing more. Have you seen the bulletins and picture screens in the quarters for the workers?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘but the lines were all in old German type.’

  ‘And that,’ said Hellar, ‘is all that the workers and soldiers can read. The modern type could be taught them in a few days, but we see to it that they have no opportunity to learn it. As it is now, should they find or steal a forbidden book, they cannot read it.’

  ‘But is it not true,’ I asked, ‘that at one time the German workers were most thoroughly educated?’

  ‘It is true,’ said Hellar, ‘and because of that universal education Germany was defeated in the First World War. The English contaminated the soldiers by flooding the trenches with democratic literature dropped from aeroplanes. Then came the Bolshevist regime in Russia with its passion for revolutionary propaganda. The working men and soldiers read this disloyal literature and they forced the abdication of William the Great. It was because of this that his great g
randson, when the House of Hohenzollern was restored to the throne, decided to curtail universal education.

  ‘But while William III curtailed general education he increased the specialized education and established the Information Staff to supervise the dissemination of all knowledge.’

  ‘It is an atrocious system,’ broke in Zimmern, ‘but if we had not abolished the family, curtailed knowledge and bred soldiers and workers from special non-intellectual strains this sunless world of ours could not have endured.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Hellar, ‘whether we approve of it or not certainly there was no other way to accomplish the end sought. By no other plan could German isolation have been maintained.’

  ‘But why was isolation deemed desirable?’ I enquired.

  ‘Because,’ said Zimmern, ‘it was that or extermination. Even now we who wish to put an end to this isolation, we few who want to see the world as our ancestors saw it, know that the price may be annihilation.’

  ‘So,’ repeated Hellar, ‘so annihilation for Germany, but better so – and yet I go on as Director of Information; Dr. Zimmern goes on as Chief Eugenist; and you go on seeking to increase the food supply, and so we all go on as part of the diabolic system, because as individuals we cannot destroy it, but must go on or be destroyed by it. We have riches here and privileges. We keep the laborers subdued below us, royalty enthroned above us, and the World State at bay about us, all by this science and system which only we few intellectuals understand and which we keep going because we cannot stop it without being destroyed by the effort.’

  ‘But we shall stop it,’ declared Zimmern, ‘we must stop it – with Armstadt’s help we can stop it. You and I, Hellar, are mere cogs; if we break others can take our places, but Armstadt has power. What he knows no one else knows. He has power. We have only weakness because others can take our place. And because he has power let us help him find a way.’