Grand Hotel

by Vicki Baum

  •

  The streets behind the Tempelhof airport went to this new Kringelein’s heart as they drove back. They were so much like the dreary streets of Fredersdorf. Chimneys rose up behind railway embankments, and his distended nostrils were on the alert for the smell of glue that in Fredersdorf always issued from the finishing shops. As he passed these poor streets, he was more than ever conscious that he was wearing a new coat and sitting in a car. He tried to find a word for this curious mixture of feelings, but he failed. He did not recover his spirits till they reached the Hallescher Gate. There they were held up for half a minute. The flight still ran in his veins like a calm but powerful intoxication, and full of eagerness he asked with a politeness that came from his heart: “And what has the Baron in store for me now?”

  “Now I personally have to go back to the hotel. I have an engagement at five. But why not come too? I am only going to dance a little,” he added, when he saw the forlorn and dejected look in Kringelein’s eloquent eyes.

  “Thank you very much, I’ll come with pleasure. I can’t dance though, unfortunately.”

  “Oh, come on. Everyone can dance,” said Gaigern.

  Kringelein reflected upon this remark until they were well into the Friedrichstrasse.

  “And after that? What could we do after that?” he asked with importunate insatiability. Gaigern made no reply. He just drove on till he had to pull up in front of the red traffic signal on the Leipzigerstrasse.

  “Tell me, Herr Direktor,” he asked while they were stopped, “are you married?”

  Kringelein made so long a pause for reflection that the traffic signals turned to yellow and green and allowed them to proceed again before he replied.

  “Have been. I have been married, Herr Baron. I have separated from my wife. Yes, I have taken my freedom, if I may put it like that. There are marriages, Herr Baron, which are so irksome and sickening to both parties that one of the two can’t see the other without flying into a rage. The husband can’t see his wife’s comb in the morning with the combed-out hair in it without having the whole day spoiled for him. It’s quite wrong, certainly, for how can a woman help it if her hair comes out? Or again when you want to read at night, and your wife keeps on talking, talking, talking, and if she’s not talking, then she’s singing in the kitchen. If a man is musical, that sort of singing makes him ill. And every evening when you are tired and want to sit down with a book, it is always, ‘Come, chop up some firewood for tomorrow morning.’ It costs eight pennies more to have a bundle of firewood chopped up, and that adds up to a two pennies a day, but no, that won’t do. ‘You’re a spendthrift,’ your wife tells you, ‘for all you care we shall end in the workhouse.’ And yet, there’s my father-in-law’s shop that she’ll inherit eventually. She’ll be all right. So I took my freedom. My wife never suited me, to tell you the truth, for I was always for the higher things in life, and she could never forgive me for that. When my friend Kampmann gave me the old issues of Kosmos for five years back, my wife went and sold them as waste paper; she got fourteen pennies for them. There you have the whole woman, Herr Baron. Now—we are separated. In any case she’ll have to get on without me very soon, and a week or two sooner or later makes no difference. She’ll go back to the shop and sell unmarried civil servants pickled herrings and sausage for their suppers. That’s how I got to know her myself, so perhaps she’ll get hold of another dumb fool. And what a fool I was, I can tell you, when I married, not a notion of life nor of women either. Since I’ve been in Berlin and seen all the pretty girls so perfect and polite, it’s beginning to dawn on me. But then, it’s too late for all that now.”

  This speech, which Kringelein brought up from deep within him, lasted from Leipzigerstrasse to Unter den Linden.

  “Oh, things aren’t so bad as all that,” Gaigern replied absentmindedly, for he had to negotiate the difficult crossing near the Brandenburg Gate, and there was an incompetent gentleman driver in front of him. The fumes of a stingy little kitchen rose from Kringelein’s words. Those fumes depressed him and robbed him of the impulse he’d had to ask for a loan of three thousand marks.

  And Kringelein too, in his silk shirt, driving in a car, would have liked to be able to take back some of his unpremeditated confession.

  “So we are going dancing,” he said all the more glibly. “I am most extremely obliged to the Herr Baron for taking me under his protection. And what could we do tonight?”

  Secretly Kringelein expected a reply that would give expression to unexpressed wishes of his own. He had a hankering after something that was suggested by many pictures in the museum, but a little more tangible, something that the newspapers he read described as an “orgy.” He supposed that men about town had the key to such things. The evening before Doctor Otternschlag had acceded to his obscurely expressed inclination for the fair sex by taking him to see the ballet and Grusinskaya. Well, that, so Kringelein thought, had been a mistake. Very pretty to look at, but too poetical. Very stirring and magnificent, but it made you sleepy, tired, and in the end it brought on stomach pains. Today however—

  “The best thing you could go to tonight is the great boxing match in the sports arena,” said Gaigern. “We’ll see if the hall porter has a ticket left.”

  “Boxing does not interest me in the least,” said Kringelein with the superior air of a reader of Kosmos.

  “Doesn’t interest you? Have you ever seen a fight? Well, just go to see one and you’ll be interested quick enough,” Gaigern promised him.

  “Will you come too, Herr Baron?” Kringelein asked quickly. He felt in splendid form after the drive and the flight, alert and vigorous and ready for anything, but he knew he would collapse like an inflated rubber doll the moment the Baron deserted him.

  “I’d love to go,” Gaigern answered, “but unfortunately I can’t. I don’t have any money.”

  Meanwhile they had passed the budding trees of the Tiergarten, and the hotel front was already in view farther down the street. Gaigern slowed down to twelve kilometers to give Herr Kringelein time to answer him. Kringelein was utterly taken aback by Gaigern’s laughing remark. They had stopped at Entrance No. V. They had already got out. And still Kringelein had not digested this information.

  “I’ll take the car to the garage,” Gaigern called out when Kringelein was once more on his rather stiff and tingling legs, and he disappeared round the corner. Kringelein walked thoughtfully on and went through the revolving door whose mechanism no longer held any terrors for him. No money, he thought. He has no money. Something must be done about this.

  Rohna, the hall porter, and all the pageboys and even the one-armed elevator attendant observed the transformation in his appearance and then discreetly looked the other way. The Lobby was full of the aroma of coffee, of people, and talk. It was ten minutes to five. In his usual armchair sat Doctor Otternschlag with piles of newspapers lying all round him. He surveyed Kringelein with an indefinable expression of scorn and sadness. Kringelein went up to him confidently and held out his hand.

  “The new Adam,” said Otternschlag without taking the hand, for his own was cold and moist and this embarrassed him. “The butterfly has emerged. And where have you been flitting about, if I may be allowed to ask.”

  “I’ve been shopping. Then a drive along the Avus; lunch at the Wannsee; and then I went up in an airplane.” His tone towards Otternschlag had altered without his knowing it.

  “Splendid,” said Otternschlag. “And what now?”

  “I have an engagement at five. I am going dancing.”

  “Ah—and after that?”

  “After that I intend to go to a big boxing match in the sports arena.”

  “Indeed,” said Otternschlag. That was all. He took up his paper again and holding it in front of his face began to read with a feeling of mortification. In China there were earthquakes, but the paltry matter of forty thousand dead did not suffice to alleviate his boredom . . .

  When Gaigern reached the second floor wi
th the intention of changing his clothes, he found Kringelein waiting at his door.

  “Well?” he asked with impatience. It began by degrees to get on his nerves to have this odd little man tied round his neck.

  “Was the Herr Baron playing a joke on me or is it true that the Herr Baron is short of money?” Kringelein asked hurriedly. It was one of the most difficult things he had ever had to say and he made a mess of it in spite of all his careful preparation.

  “The absolute truth, Herr Direktor. I am down and out. Luck’s against me, I have only twenty-two marks thirty in my pocket, and tomorrow I shall have to hang myself in the Tiergarten,” said Gaigern and a smile broke out on his handsome face. “But the worst is that within three days I have to be in Vienna. I have fallen in love, you hear me? I am so far gone on a woman that no words can describe it, and it is an imperative necessity to follow her. And not a penny to bless myself with. If only somebody would lend me enough to gamble with tonight—”

  “I want to gamble too,” said Kringelein quickly and from the bottom of his heart. The hundred and twenty kilometers an hour feeling and the flying feeling came over him again.

  “Tiens! Then I’ll pick you up at the arena and we’ll go to a nice club I know of. You stake a thousand and I’ll stake twenty-two,” said Gaigern, and with that he shut his door and left Kringelein standing outside. For the moment he had had enough of him. He threw himself on his bed in his clothes and shut his eyes. He felt listless and bored. He tried to recall the girl with the lock of blonde hair on her forehead, but without success. Something else always came between. Either it was Grusinskaya’s bedside lamp, or the balcony railing, or a bit of the Avus, a bit of the aerodrome, or Kringelein’s torn suspenders. Too little sleep last night he thought, chafing and fretting. He fell into a three-minute sleep, an abyss of healing darkness, as he had learnt to do in the war. He was awakened by the chambermaid knocking at the door. She had a note for him, and it was from Kringelein.

  My dear Baron (wrote Kringelein), Would you permit the undersigned to regard you as his guest and, at the same time, accept the small sum enclosed as a loan? You would be doing him a favor by allowing him to be of some service to you, and for me money is no longer of importance. With most respectful greetings,

  Yours very truly,

  Otto Kringelein

  Enclosures: Entrance ticket. Two hundred marks.

  The envelope with the hotel imprint contained an orange-colored ticket for the boxing matches in the sports arena and two crisp hundred-mark notes, numbered in ink on the sides. The dots of the i’s in Kringelein’s signature were missing. He had finally said good-bye to them in the reckless exhilaration of this memorable day . . .

  PREYSING’S joints felt hollow as he stood alone in the Lobby after the conference was concluded, the provisional agreement had been signed, and Doctor Zinnowitz had taken his leave with all sorts of good wishes. The feeling of a great victory, of having successfully bluffed the Chemnitz crowd, and the strain of talking and triumphing under false pretenses were all entirely new to the general manager and left him with a strange but not unpleasant giddiness. He looked at the hotel clock—after three—and went mechanically to the telephone room to get a call put through to the plant. Then he pottered about for a fairly long time in the gentlemen’s lavatory, letting hot water run over his hands while he stared at himself in the mirror with an idiotic smile. Next he wandered into the dining room, which was half empty, and absently ordered the lunch on the menu. He became impatient waiting for the consommé to arrive and began to smoke a cigar. He had no idea it would taste so good. While he scanned the wine list, he hummed a tune he had picked up somewhere in Berlin. He felt a distinct desire for a sweet wine that would be warm to the tongue and he found a Wachenheimer Mandelgarten 1921 that seemed promising. Later he caught himself sipping his soup noisily—it sometimes happened in moments of distraction that his table manners betrayed his humble origin. The situation he was in appeared to him fortunate but extremely shadowy. The swindle—he used this strong word in thinking of it, and the word, very surprisingly, inspired him with a new kind of pride—the swindle he had perpetrated during the negotiations could be maintained at best only for three days. During these three days something would have to happen if he was to escape being abysmally disgraced. The provisional agreement could be cancelled within fourteen days. Preysing had poured the first two glasses of the cold, heady and sun-sweet wine down his parched throat too quickly. His brain became slightly foggy, and through the fog he saw the main chimney of the factory break into three pieces and explode. That meant nothing. It was merely the reminiscence of a dream that came to him at regular intervals. He had just reached the fish course, when a pageboy crowed, “Long-distance call for Herr Preysing” across the subdued murmur of the dining room. He drank one more good swig of wine and marched off to Booth No. 4. He forgot to turn on the light switch. He stood in the dark and, with the receiver to his ear, he put on that icy boss’s face so notorious in Fredersdorf. Through a shrill buzzing caused by a disturbance on the line, he heard Fredersdorf speaking.

  “I want Herr Brösemann,” said the general manager with the unemphatic tone of command due to his position. Half a minute passed before the head clerk came to the telephone. Preysing resented the delay and drummed on the floor with his heels. “There you are at last,” he said when Brösemann came on the line. Brösemann’s respectful demeanor could be detected through the telephone and was accepted as a fitting tribute. “Anything new, Brösemann, beyond your most unnecessary telegram of yesterday? No—not on the phone, we’ll talk of that later. For the moment, I ask that that business be regarded as not having happened, do you understand? I want to speak to the old gentleman now, Brösemann, do you hear? He’s asleep? I’m afraid he will have to be wakened. No. I am sorry. Yes, yes, at once, Brösemann. No, all further instructions by letter. So then I’ll wait—”

  Preysing waited. He scratched the ledge with his fingernails. He took out his fountain pen and tapped with it on the walls. He cleared his throat, and his heart beat with a distinct triumphant insistence. The receiver at his mouth smelled of disinfectant. A chip was broken off its rim, he noticed as he impatiently played with it in the dark. Then he heard the old man in Fredersdorf.

  “Hello. Good afternoon, Papa. Forgive me, please, for disturbing you. The conference is only just over. I thought it would interest you to hear the result at once. The provisional agreement has been signed. No. Signed, signed.” (He had to shout now for the old man had a pig-headed way of pretending he was deafer than he was.) “Hard work, you say? Well, we brought it off. Thanks, thanks, no ovations, please. But listen, Papa. I have to go to Manchester at once. Yes, it is imperative, absolutely, absolutely imperative. Right. Right. I’ll tell you in detail by letter. What’s that? You are glad? So am I. (Yes, Miss, I’ve finished.) Au revoir.”

  Preysing remained standing in the unlighted booth; it was only now that he thought of switching on the small light. What’s this? he thought in astonishment. Why am I going to Manchester? What put that into my head? But it’s true enough—I have to go to Manchester. I’ve fixed the matter here, and I’ll fix it there too. Quite simple, he thought, and a new self-confidence entered into him and blew him up like a balloon. This one little successful excursion into deceit had changed a solid, conscientious gray-wool businessman into an intoxicated, adventurous entrepreneur and speculator, whose jerrybuilt foundations threatened every moment to collapse.

  “Nine marks twenty for the call,” said the operator.

  “Put it on my bill,” replied Preysing. He was again lost in thought. “I ought to call Mulle,” he said to himself; but he did nothing of the sort. He felt a strange disinclination to talk to Mulle. It was a little too warm there in the dining room at home. Mulle liked overheated rooms; it seemed to Preysing that he could smell the cauliflower from the dining room in Fredersdorf; it seemed to him that he could see the creases of her pillow imprinted in red on Mulle’s round plump ch
eeks, as she woke from her afternoon nap to pick up the telephone. He let it go. He did not call her. He left the telephone booth and went back to the dining room, where a well-trained waiter had, meanwhile, put his wine in fresh ice and now set freshly warmed plates before him.

  Preysing ate, finished his bottle of wine, lit his cigar and then went with hot temples and cold feet up to his room. He felt surprised at himself in a pleasant and nebulous way, but he was, at the same time, quite drained by the morning’s transactions. The thought of a hot bath was tempting, and he turned on the water. Just as he began to undress, it occurred to him that a hot bath was unwise on a full stomach. For a painful moment, he positively felt the heart attack that threatened him in the enameled bathtub; and he let the comforting and steaming water run out again. The fatigue and discomfort he felt became concentrated in an itching of his face and when he scratched it he felt his unshaven cheeks. Taking up his hat and coat as though for a matter of great importance and avoiding the hotel barber, with whom he was still annoyed after the experience of the morning, he went to look for a reliable barbershop in the neighboring streets.

  And now a strange thing happened to General Manager Preysing, a man of principles, but without a razor; a man of sound views, who, nonetheless, had done something questionable; an unlucky fellow whose head was turned by success for the first time—it may seem a coincidence, and yet, for all that, it may have been the irrevocable decree of fate. This, in any case, is what happened.

  The small barbershop that Preysing entered was clean and inviting. There were four chairs and two of them were occupied. One customer was being attended by a young curly-headed and amiable assistant, and the other by the proprietor himself, an elderly gentleman with the look and the demeanor of a valet of the royal household. Preysing was ushered into the third chair and wrapped in sheet and bib. A moment’s patience was politely requested—the senior assistant had just gone out to lunch—and then a bundle of illustrated magazines was put into his hands to appease him. Preysing, too spent to make any objection, leaned his head back on the head-rest and, soothed by the perfume-laden air and the busy chatter of scissors, leafed through the magazines.