Grand Hotel

by Vicki Baum

  •

  “No. 218 wants to be called at nine,” said the hall porter to little Georgi.

  “Is he leaving then?” asked little Georgi.

  “Why should he be leaving? No, he’s staying on.”

  “I only meant because he’s never asked to be called in the morning before.”

  “Well, see to it, anyway,” said the hall porter. And thus the telephone buzzed punctually at nine in Doctor Otternschlag’s small and inexpensive room.

  Otternschlag roused himself from his dreams as hurriedly as any very busy man, and then he lay where he was and wondered at himself. “What’s up?” he asked himself and the telephone. “What’s up now?” Then for a minute or two he lay still and thought hard, with the disfigured side of his face pressed into the rough linen of the hotel pillow. Wait a bit, he thought—it’s that Kringelein, poor fellow. We have to show him a bit of life. He’s waiting for us. He’s sitting waiting for us in the breakfast room.

  “Shall we get up and get dressed?” he asked himself. “Yes, so we will,” he replied after an effort, for he had a good sleeping draught of morphine in his veins. Nevertheless, there was a certain alacrity about him as he hurried here and there getting dressed. Somebody was waiting for him. Somebody was grateful to him. With one sock in his hand, he sat on the edge of his bed and fell to considering plans. He made a program for the day. He was as preoccupied as if he had a party of tourists to conduct. He was important and sought after. The chambermaid, as she took a broom and pail out of a closet next door to Room No. 218, was astonished to hear Doctor Otternschlag humming a song after a fashion while he brushed his teeth . . .

  Meanwhile, Kringelein was already seated in the breakfast room, still exhausted, excited and exultant after his exacting victory over General Manager Preysing in the barber shop. Also, ten minutes before, he had made the acquaintance of the engaging and delightful Baron von Gaigern. Gaigern had been in a hurry. After emerging minus the pearls from his night with Grusinskaya, he had shot straight into a harsh confrontation with the chauffeur that, although conducted in whispers, was nonetheless vehement. Immediately after that—once he had taken his bath, done his exercises, and rubbed himself over with lavender water—he had pounced on the provincial gentleman from Room No. 70, from whom in one way or another he hoped to raise the few thousand marks of which he now stood in immediate need. Inwardly he was filled with a radiantly blissful and devouring eagerness and impatience. Though it was only an hour since his parting from Grusinskaya, he already felt an uncontrollable, yet tender, longing for her. Through his whole being he felt the desire to be with her again with all possible speed. Gaigern drank in this hitherto unknown feeling with all the joie de vivre and all the alertness with which every fresh experience inspired him. He started upon his enterprise with Kringelein with enormous gusto. He went off like a rocket, and in a quarter of an hour he had gone an immense way towards winning his confidence. Kringelein was captivated at once. He exposed his timid bookkeeper’s soul with all its eagerness for life and all its acceptance of death, and what he did not say or could not express Gaigern guessed. By the time Kringelein had wiped the last traces of egg from his ambitious mustache with the hotel napkin at fourteen minutes past nine, they had become friends.

  “You must understand, Baron,” said Kringelein, “that I have come into a little money after living always in very restricted circumstances, oh yes, in very restricted circumstances. A man like you can have no idea what that means. To be afraid of the coal bill, you know, to be unable to go to the dentist, until, after putting it off year after year, you find yourself minus most of your teeth—you have no idea. But I won’t talk about it. The day before yesterday I ate caviar for the first time. You may well laugh, you eat caviar and such every day, of course. When our general manager entertains people, he has caviar sent by the pound from Dresden. Well, caviar, champagne and all the rest of it are not life, you may say. But what is life, Herr Baron? You see, Baron, I am no longer young, and besides I am not in good health, and then you suddenly feel afraid—so afraid—of missing life altogether. I don’t want to miss life, if you understand?”

  “You can’t very well miss that. It’s always there. You live—and that’s all there is to it,” said Gaigern.

  Kringelein looked at him. He saw his good looks and his good spirits, and maybe, as he did so, his eyelids reddened a little behind his glasses.

  “Yes, of course, for a man like you life is always there. But for a man like me—” he said more softly.

  “Funny. You talk of life as if it were a train you have to catch up with. How long have you been trying, three days? And not got a glimpse of it yet, in spite of caviar and champagne? What did you do yesterday, for example? Good Lord! The Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Potsdam, and at night the theater? Well, and what did you like best? Which picture? You don’t remember? Of course not. And the theater? Grusinskaya? Yes, Grusinskaya—” Gaigern said, and at the name his heart gave a bound like a silly boy’s. “What did you say? It made you sad; it was so poetic? But all that has nothing to do with life, Herr Direktor” (he said “Herr Direktor” from the sheer goodness of his heart, because he was offended by the plain plebeian name of Kringelein; and Kringelein blushed with pleasure). “Life is—look here, you know when you see those cauldrons of pitch boiling, bubbling, and smoking in the street and making a stink for miles around. Well, now go and put your nose over those tar fumes. It’s beautiful. It’s hot, and it has such a strong and pungent smell that it bowls you over, and the thick black drops glisten, and there’s strength in it, nothing sweet and insipid. Ha, caviar! You want to take hold of life, and if I ask you what color the trams are in Berlin you can’t say because you haven’t bothered to look. Now listen, Herr Direktor, with a tie like yours you’ll never catch up with life, and you’ll never feel happy in a suit like that. I’m telling you this quite frankly, for it serves no purpose my paying you compliments. If you’ll put yourself in my hands, I promise you that we’ll soon get things going. And the first thing to do is to go to a tailor. Have you any money on you? A checkbook? That won’t do. Put some cash in your pocket. Meanwhile I’ll get my car out of the garage. I’ve given my chauffeur a few days off to see his girl at Springe—I’ll drive myself.”

  Kringelein felt as if there were a gusty wind blowing about his ears. The remark about his tie (bought in the Arcade for two marks fifty) and his good suit had hurt. His hand went timidly to his too-large collar. “Quite so,” said Gaigern, “it doesn’t sit right and the stud shows all the time. That way you certainly won’t be able to experience life.”

  “I thought—I didn’t want to spend money on clothes,” Kringelein murmured, and he saw figures capering giddily in his notebook. “I’ll gladly spend money on other things but not on clothes—”

  “Why not for clothes? Clothes are half the battle.”

  “Because it isn’t worthwhile now,” Kringelein said in a low voice, and the damned, ready tears smarted in the corners of his eyes. He couldn’t, confound it all, think of his approaching end without emotion. Gaigern looked vexed. “It really isn’t worthwhile. I mean— I haven’t got many more opportunities left for wearing new clothes. I thought—the old ones would be good enough to last me out,” Kringelein whispered guiltily.

  Good Lord, has everyone got a teacup full of Veronal ready at hand? thought Gaigern, whose sensibilities had been quickened by the tender scenes of the past night. “Don’t reckon things up, Herr Kringelein. One is apt to reckon it all wrong. You should not go on wearing old clothes. You should meet each moment as the moment requires. I am a man of the moment in this sense, and I’m all the better for it. Come along now, and put a few thousand marks in your wallet and then we’ll see whether there isn’t some fun to be had in life. And now, let’s be off.”

  Kringelein got up obediently, and as he did so he felt danger whirling all around him. A few thousand marks, he thought, with his mind in a fog. A good day. One day at a few thousand marks. As he follow
ed Gaigern he was still resisting, and the walls of the breakfast room danced before his eyes. He felt uprooted. His will was gone. His feet in their polished leather boots stumbled with him along the hotel passages. He was afraid. He was uncontrollably afraid of Gaigern, of the looming expenditure, of the smart tailor; he was afraid of the gray-blue automobile as he got into the front seat; he was afraid of life, even though he was afraid of missing it, too. He clenched his damaged teeth together, pulled on his cotton gloves and began his good day.

  As Doctor Otternschlag at ten minutes to ten coasted round the walls of the Lobby searching for Kringelein, he was handed a letter by the hall porter.

  My dear Doctor, (it ran) I regret that I am unexpectedly prevented from keeping my appointment with you today. With respectful greetings, yours truly,

  Otto Kringelein

  It was Kringelein’s style but no longer altogether his handwriting. Hard, jagged strokes had crept into the smooth copperplate hand, and the dots of the i’s had a tendency to fly away, like balloons cut adrift, to burst somewhere in the sky with a lonely and tragic little report that no one would hear . . .

  Doctor Otternschlag held the letter out in front of him. The Lobby was a dreary waste of endless vacant hours. He pottered along past the newspaper stand, past the flower stall, past the elevators and past the pillars to his customary seat. Frightful, he thought. Ghastly. Hideous! His leaden cigarette-stained fingers hung down, and he stared with his blind eye at the charwoman who, contrary to all orders, was beginning in broad daylight to sweep out the Lobby with moist sawdust.

  •

  Kringelein’s embarrassment as he stood in the fitting room of the large tailor’s shop was terrible. Three elegant gentlemen were busily occupied with him. Twelve very shabby Kringeleins were reflected in the mirrors set at acute angles to each other. One elegant gentleman brought in coats and suits, one elegant gentleman knelt on the floor and pulled down the bottoms of his trousers, one elegant gentleman merely stood by and surveyed Kringelein with a half-closed professional eye and murmured unintelligible words. On a sofa, beneath pictures of impossibly beautiful film actresses, sat Baron Gaigern, flapping his stitched gloves on the palm of his hand and looking away from Kringelein as if he were ashamed of him.

  Pitiful matters came to light, dread secrets of bookkeeper Otto Kringelein from Fredersdorf. His suspenders had given way and been mended, and then when they had given way again, they had been clumsily held together with string. Anna had taken in his waistcoat, which had got much too big for him, by stitching two thick tucks in the lining at the back. He wore his father’s shirts, and they were too large for him. He wore rubber bands round the sleeves above his elbows to prevent their superfluous length from overwhelming him. He possessed cufflinks as old as the hills, round and large as soup plates. There was a sphinx on them in red enamel in front of a blue enamel pyramid. The enormous shirt was made of wool, thick and discolored, presenting only a small extent of linen front, like a little shop-window on the street. There was still one more woolen garment beneath the woolen shirt, a washed-out and much-darned undershirt. Below that came a dappled catskin, an approved preventive of stomachache and attacks of ague. The elegant gentlemen didn’t bat an eye. Kringelein would have found it easier if they had made a joke of it, or given him a word of consolation.

  “I have never troubled myself much about being in the fashion. I’m of the old school,” he said, imploring the forgiveness of these icily professional gentlemen. No one made any reply to this. They stripped him of layer after layer as if they were peeling an onion. It is a little gruesome to think what the defenseless Kringelein went through on this occasion. It was almost as bad as the operating room. There was the same glassy brightness over everything, and everything, he felt, came close up to him on all sides. Then the three gentlemen began to clothe him.

  Gaigern cheered up and gave advice. “Take that,” he said, or “Don’t take that.” No opposition apparently could be raised to his decisions. Kringelein squinted at the price tags attached to each article. He thought of nothing but the prices, but he didn’t venture to ask. Finally, though, he asked, and then he received such an immeasurable shock that he wanted to run from the place. The fitting-room became a prison cell with four grim warders and mirrored walls. He perspired dreadfully in spite of having had his woolen coverings removed. They lay in a heap on a chair and looked utterly cast off and repellent. They had suddenly become strange to him. Those darned, fusty and discolored articles of clothing nauseated him. And then something happened to him. He fell in love with the silk shirt he was being forced to put on.

  “Ah,” said Kringelein, standing with his head to one side and his mouth open as if he were listening to a secret, “ah-ah.” The tastefully patterned silk of the shirt caressed his skin. The collar fit, it did not chafe nor scratch, it was neither too tight nor too loose, and the tie fell smoothly and softly over his chest, beneath which his heart beat in secret jubilation. It beat hard and somewhat painfully, but all the same with relief. Now socks and shoes were put before him, most obligingly, for Gaigern had explained in a few words that the gentleman was not very well and so all that a man of fashion required was collected from all four floors of the establishment. Kringelein was subjected to the last extremities of shame by his feet. It was as though all the misery and oppression of his life were to be seen in these feet with their swollen soles. And so he crept away with the new socks and shoes into a corner, and bending down with his back to the company, he set to work clumsily tugging at the shoelaces. After this, he was rigged up in a suit that the Baron had selected.

  “The Herr Direktor has a wonderful figure,” said one of the gentlemen, “it fits as though it had been made for him.”

  “Not the least alteration required,” said the second.

  “Astonishing. We haven’t many such slim figures among our customers,” said the third.

  They led Kringelein to the mirror and turned him about on his axis like an unresisting wooden doll, and it was just then, at the very moment when Kringelein encountered himself in the glass, that he had the first inkling that he was alive. He recognized himself with a strong convulsion as if by a flash of lightning. What happened at that moment was that a well-dressed and most elegant stranger approached him with an air of embarrassment, a person who was also appallingly familiar to him as the real Kringelein of Fredersdorf, and then the vision passed. A second later the sight was no longer new. The miracle of transformation had taken place.

  Kringelein was now breathing deeply and laboriously, for he sensed the imminence of a stab of pain in his abdomen.

  “I think it suits me very well?” he said like a child to Gaigern.

  The Baron did the handsome thing. With his own large warm hands he smoothed the new coat down over Kringelein’s shoulders.

  “Yes, I think we’ll take this suit,” Kringelein said to the three gentlemen. He secretly felt the cloth between his finger and thumb, for he knew something about cloth. It was in the very air at Fredersdorf, even though you were only employed in the accounts office.

  “Good material. I’m in the business,” he said with respect.

  “Genuine English cloth. We get it direct from London, Parker Bros. & Co.,” replied the one with the pinched-up eyes. Preysing doesn’t wear cloth like this, thought Kringelein. Preysing’s suits were usually of that solid gray worsted which the factory had had in stock for years, and sold off cheap to its employees annually, just before Christmas. Kringelein took possession of his suit by putting both his hands into its clean new pockets.

  His fears were changed abruptly into the joy of buying and possessing, and for the first time he experienced the giddy exhilaration that comes from spending money. He broke down the walls behind which he had lived for a lifetime. He bought and bought. He did not ask the price, but simply bought. He stroked stuffs and silks, felt the brims of hats, sampled vests and belts, matched one color with another, appreciating their harmonies with the relish of a conno
isseur.

  “The gentleman has wonderfully good taste,” said one.

  “Most distinguished,” said another. “Most appropriate and correct.”

  Gaigern stood by, impatient to be off, and added his praises. From sheer boredom he looked at his hands. There was a cut on the right and the left looked naked without his signet ring. Surreptitiously he passed them in front of his face to see whether any scent from the previous night clung to them, a bitter and sweet scent of danger and calm, neuwjada, the little flower that grows in the fields . . .

  Kringelein bought a comfortable brown suit of rough English tweed, a pair of dark gray trousers with a fine white stripe to go with an elegant morning coat; he bought a dinner jacket and trousers, which only needed the position of a button or two altered; he bought underwear, shirts, collars, socks, ties, a coat such as Gaigern wore, a soft and astonishingly light hat, bearing the trade mark in gold of a Florence firm, and then at last, carrying in his hands a pair of kid leather gloves just like Gaigern’s, he repaired to the counter to pay. There things went very smoothly. Kringelein was quickly at home when he encountered the familiar jargon of ledgers and the atmosphere of the accounts office. He paid a thousand marks down, the rest to follow in three installments. “There we are then,” said Gaigern with relief. An array of politely supple backs escorted the transformed and enchanted Kringelein to the mirrored door of the establishment. Outside, it was sunny but cold. The air was like iced wine, Kringelein observed in passing. Hitherto he had always crept about. Now he stepped out. He had three steps to go from the entrance of this fashionable emporium to the gray-blue four-seater and three times he raised his new-shod feet from the pavement with a vigorous and elastic step.

  “Pleased?” asked Gaigern, laughing and with his hand already on the starter. “What does it feel like? More yourself?”