"I wish you would madam, I dearly wish you would."
"I hope that is the drink talking Captain," the woman replied with an askance expression, her pencil eyebrows arching above her narrow eyes. Haughty.
"I can see a neck and lip on this bottle Mrs Bremer, but neither mouth nor tongue," Robert exclaimed whilst studying the bottle of wine with mock intent. A few of the men from the group, who did not laugh into their glasses making sparkling wine, cupped their hands over their mouths.
"There is merit in Kant, Captain."
"Is there?"
"What a world it would be if all officers behaved like yourself, if you may permit me the poetic licence to call you an officer?"
"I am as much of an officer as you are a philosopher it seems madam. Tell me, being a student of Kant, what do you think he would have said about the war?"
"Do you question the war effort Captain? Do you hear this? Our brave Captain here questions the war!" Anna Bremer shrilled, looking to her circle for support.
"I question everything Mrs Bremer, especially your knowledge of Kant."
"And what am I to say to that?" Anna replied, again displaying a practiced look of supercilious disdain.
"Whereof one cannot speak, one should not speak."
Why am I here? – Robert Fischer asked himself. To forget myself, was the swift, automatic reply. This amusing role-playing is the arousing mistress to the frigid nag of my wife, boredom. You cannot be dejected all the time, as real and true as life seems when one peers through misery's black veil.
"Come, come, let's change the subject."
Robert neither knew the transparent fop who spoke up here - nor did he wish to get to know the priggish clod. He finished off his glass of wine so as to have a genuine excuse to free himself from the bleating elitist clique - consisting of lawyers, government officials and SS officers. A corner of his mouth was raised in a self-satisfied grin, or leer, when the predatory Captain spotted Maria Schiller at the bar. She was talking to a young pock-marked Corporal, yet her eyes often gazed over his shoulder in search of worthier company.
"It is Nature's way. The wolves must devour the sheep," the Corporal steadfastly asserted, smoothing out his lank hair across his scalp with his palm as he did so, preening himself.
"But I thought Hitler was our shepherd," Robert announced, ghosting in upon the couple.
"Yes, I suppose he is. But our Fuhrer is the wolf's shepherd," the SS Corporal respectfully said to the Wehrmacht officer, forcing a smile.
"Wouldn't that make the Fuhrer a wolfherd though Corporal?" Maria announced – and then let out a burst of peach laughter, pleased that she had concocted up such a novel word, or clever comment. Robert's response to the SS lackey was to plaster upon his countenance some gargoyle half-smile, or sneer.
"Yes, I suppose it would, madam Maria. How clever of you."
"And should the wolf devour every sheep Corporal?" Robert asked, amused rather than disgusted by the young soldier's fanaticism and ineptitude.
"He has no choice sir. It is Nature's way."
"And is it Nature's way that the wolf should die out for having no sheep left to devour? Or will he become a vegetarian, like your shepherd?"
"A good point sir," the Corporal replied through a strained expression. Who had invited him to join their conversation anyway? – he posited beneath his breath. To speak of the Fuhrer so, in such an impertinent tone, was tantamount to blasphemy for the adolescent.
"I'm sure that if Nature was here, he or she, would be able to refute my argument," Robert said whilst patronisingly winking at the proud young soldier.
"Corporal, would you be a darling and give a message to my driver downstairs? Please tell him that I won’t be in need of the car this evening."
"I am there already my lady. Heil Hitler Captain."
Ignoring his young comrade's salute, Robert rudely looked over his shoulder to attract a waiter's attention.
"Heil Hitler Captain," the youth repeated his expression and tone betraying how riled he was by the Captain's condescending attitude towards him.
"Must I crease my brow to show my contempt of you?" Robert laughingly put, but then glowered at the SS toad-eater, disgusted rather than amused now by his make-up.
"Oh Robert, don't tease him. He is not being serious Corporal Simon. I do believe that the Captain does not even know how to be serious. Now would you please be a dear and give the message to my driver? I do not want him to wait for me unnecessarily," Mrs Schiller asked whilst lightly touching the enamoured adolescent upon his pigeon chest with her fan.
"Yes, Madam Maria. But I will return. I could not have hoped for such sympathetic and intelligent company this evening." The Corporal's bow and clicking of his heels were as pronounced as his mediocrity Robert judged. Not having a driver to find, for Maria had long since instructed him to go home, the green, dutiful, hormonal youth spent half the evening downstairs searching for him, desperately conscious of fulfilling his mission for the near aristocratic lady.
"Mrs Schiller," Robert remarked with a seductive light in his eyes, slightly bowing his head as if the couple were meeting for the first time.
Maria Schiller was the wife of the highly admired and highly promiscuous Marcus Schiller, German ambassador to Switzerland. The former actress was as intelligent as her genes and environment allowed, but yet one would forgive any deficiencies in Maria's character from her owning of an hourglass figure and almond eyes that a man could happily get lost in.
Robert paused and just gazed at the alluring woman again, admiring both her singular beauty and also sense of fashion. She was wearing a navy blue silk gown, cut low to reveal her pale, sculptured bosom. The sleeves and trim of the rustling dress were detailed with fine lace, the deep blue setting off Maria's white skin and sapphire eyes perfectly. A couple of shiny ringlets of blonde hair fell down over her classically beautiful face. Maria brushed them out of her eyes with her hands, which were gloved in matching navy blue silk, the material clinging to and emphasising her slender arms. Robert smiled appreciatively at her, as if Maria were a work of art. The lady coyly smiled back, revealingly, invitingly. The couple, who had slept together a few of weeks ago, had not seen each other since that night. Both parties implicitly understood that the affair would remain casual. Yet Robert had rightly suspected that Maria wanted more from the relationship – and him. Hence he had refrained from answering her messages and attending a function that he knew Maria would be present at a week ago. As desperate and ripe as the subject was for Robert though, he believed that the seduction (or rather work of art) was only half complete.
"I missed you at the party on Thursday."
"I, I had to work," Robert replied, looking somewhat sheepish for once.
"You are a better philosopher than you are a liar Captain," Maria said and smiled, whilst also conveying the piquet she had felt at him having ignored her messages.
"Do you know why I couldn't see you last week? Why I haven't called?" Robert remarked, lowering his head in shame almost to avoid the intimidating features of the bewitching woman.
"Why?"
"Because I'm frightened that this affair is not just an affair, yet I'm also scared that it might just remain so," the officer dramatically declared whilst simultaneously raising his head to reveal an intense, amorous expression. Smouldering love. Robert deliberately tried to talk in pained, yet impassioned prose. He knitted his brow and then softened his eyes so as to resemble an imploring child almost. For her part Maria's heart skipped a beat, shocked as she was to hear such an ardent confession from her lover, who was usually such a closed book. Maria's heart couldn't help but flutter also though, flattered and pleased as she was to have seduced the Byronic Captain – that he too felt that this was not just another meaningless affair.
"I used to believe that hate was the opposite of love, Maria. Now I know that it is fear. All my life I have been cold, reserved, to keep myself safe. I believed that if I did not invest then I would not go bankrupt
. But now I know that bankruptcy is caused, not prevented, by a lack of investment," he endearingly expressed. The woman's heart and eyes moistened with sympathy for Robert Fischer's devotion, and despair. The officer swallowed and tugged his finger at his collar, like a man remaining stoical in the face of a fever. He sketched sorrow, then frustration, and then desire in his features. The emotional officer then released the tension in his expression, rubbed his brow and shook his head. His vulnerability cemented his sincerity.
"No, I do not know how I feel," Fischer uttered, as if to dismiss or annul the gravity of his recent confession. But Maria was confident of how her lover really felt and her soul trembled like the notes upon the yearning cello in the background, or so she wrote in her diary the day after.
"Then have faith in me that I know what you're feeling, because I've felt it too. I know you Robert, we are the same. I have seen behind the act you put on for people. Let's leave. I suspect that you are as tired of this party as I am." Later on that evening Maria would also go on to comment, in relation to their social set, that they neither understood nor deserved the couple. Society was all so false. She could happily stay in the hotel room with her lover for eternity and never attend another party or see her infernal social circle again.
Robert at first squeezed the hand of Maria tightly, to convey his passion, but then he softly caressed it as she led him out of the bustling party. Maria's champagne-bubbled head swirled with emotion and anticipation, as if she were a character from one of the French romantic novels which she regularly devoured. Yet the glamorous woman was also brought back down to a more prosaic existence when the coarse and corpulent General Lars Haber accosted her officer and took him out of earshot, bluffly apologising to the lady for doing so.
"Robert, how are you, you villain?" he spluttered through his flabby jowls, clasping a fleshy hand around the Wehrmacht Captain's shoulder.
"Fine General. But Lars, more to the point, were you satisfied?" Robert remarked with a wink, all the time suppressing his natural dislike of the odious Nazi – and his feelings of distaste for having played the pimp for the General in setting him up with a former lover.
"The target was acquired," the General replied, winking back and guffawing. "I cannot thank you enough Robert," he asserted, patting his Captain on the back with affection – with red wine and tobacco competing for primacy on his odorous breath.
"The reconnaissance was my pleasure General," Robert said, to the reply of another Bavarian guffaw.
"You are a devil Robert, a veritable devil."
"Yet you must please excuse this devil General. I am on another mission so to speak. Heil Hitler!"
"Heil Hitler!" General Haber solemnly saluted back, extinguishing his laughter. One should never laugh whilst mentioning the Fuhrer.
Robert freed himself from his superior before he had a chance to be amused by a vein throbbing in the General's neck as he passionately, drunkenly held the salute. Yet Robert couldn't fail to hear however, as he clasped Maria by the hand to lead her out, the following words of the highly influential senior officer.
"That Fischer is a fine fellow, a fine fellow – a good man in my book."
Robert Fischer at first sneered and then crimsoned – either in shame or anger at the statement.
Raffles: A Perfect Wicket Page 6
