by Vicki Baum
Although he had seen Baron Gaigern pick up his key a quarter of an hour before and go up to his room, there was no reply from within. He hesitated and then decided to open the outer door and knock on the inner one. The Baron’s dinner jacket was hanging neatly on the hooks between the two doors for the valet to take away for cleaning. The pageboy knocked. Not a sound. He waited and knocked again. No reply. He pressed down the handle of the inner door. The door was unlocked, but the room was empty. The pageboy, Karl, who knew something of life, grinned, whistled once very high and softly and put the cigarette case, warmed by his hand, in the middle of the table. The room was orderly and neat. The light was on. The air in the room was scented with menthol, lavender water, cigarettes, and lilac, and it was a pleasure merely to breathe it. One or two sprays of forced white lilac stood in a vase. On the desk there was a photograph of a sheep dog. In the middle of the room Gaigern’s patent-leather shoes were sleeping with a dutiful and self-contented expression. Karl was impressed. He sniffed this atmosphere of bachelor elegance, and grinned. Suddenly with a sharp flutter of his heart he took possession of the cigarette case again, stowed it away inside his jacket and shirt, and withdrew silently.
A chambermaid was sitting in her little office writing a letter as he passed by the open door. It was very quiet on the second floor. Down below, the miniature propeller of an electric fan was humming. In the Yellow Pavilion a tango was being played.
A faint echo of the music could be detected even in the expensive two-bed room that General Manager Preysing had engaged for his secretary. Preysing emerged from the violent fragrance of his first kiss and said, “Listen!”
“Yes. I’ve been hearing it for quite a while. Music,” said Flämmchen, “it’s nice to hear it coming from far away.”
“Music? No. Didn’t you hear something else?” Preysing asked. He made a somewhat distraught impression as he sat upright on the edge of the bed, straining to hear. His eyebrows were drawn up, and his forehead was a network of wrinkles—the result of many years of intricate business cares. “I can hear something all the same,” he said anxiously.
“What? Where?” Flämmchen murmured. She was getting sleepy and she put her hands impatiently on Preysing’s head.
“I heard a knocking of some sort.” Preysing pointed and stared fixedly at the door into his bathroom, which he had left open.
“I hear something too,” said Flämmchen, as she put her hands on Preysing’s waistcoat. “I hear your heart beating. I can hear it distinctly. Tac-tac-tac . . .”
Preysing’s heart was indeed making an undue noise in his capacious chest. It beat with a dull and heavy thud inside his gray suit. He was still looking toward the open door on whose painted surface the shaded night-table lamp cast a pink reflection in the dim room.
“Let me go. I have to go and check—” he said. He pushed Flämmchen’s hands away from his chest and got up. The bed wheezed as he rose from it. Flämmchen let him go with a shrug. Preysing disappeared with three creaking steps through the bathroom door.
This small white door ought, properly speaking, to have been shut. It separated the general manager’s suite from his secretary’s bedroom. The hotel management had done nothing whatsoever to do away with this barrier. On the contrary. The little door had no latch, and when it was shut there was no handle to open it by. Preysing, however, had used the master key he always kept in his pocket at the factory, and which he had brought along. With this he had opened the door and forsaking his own tidy room with its boot bags, collar boxes, sponge bags and all the other paraphernalia of a good husband, he had stepped through the little door into the boundless and unimaginable realm of adventure . . .
The bathroom was in darkness and he quickly passed through it. Water dripped, pong—pong—pong, into the bathtub. Next to the bathroom was the small living room, also dark and reassuringly silent. Preysing stood still for a moment and groped for the switch without success. He then felt his way to the closed door of his bedroom and suddenly came to a stop, petrified and breathless in the middle of the room. He was absolutely certain that he had turned off the light, but now the light was on. It showed like a thread under the door. It quivered over the threshold at Preysing’s feet, and then it was gone. Preysing stood riveted to the spot and stared at the place where a moment before there had been a streak of light and which now was dark—as dark as the lighted hotel front and the street lamps and electric signs allowed. As he stood there he was expecting something extremely unpleasant to happen, although exactly what he did not know. He had a vague idea that the crazy bookkeeper had forced his way in as he had that morning and that he was in there now. He suspected that this vengeful Kruckelein or Kringelein, or whatever his name was, had caught him out in a peccadillo and was now in a position where he could cause him enormous awkwardness by denouncing him, blackmailing him, or making a scandal of one sort or another—
That’s what was rushing through the dark stupor in Preysing’s head as he seized the door handle and abruptly opened the door to his bedroom.
The room was in darkness. There was not a sound. There was nobody there. Nobody breathed. But Preysing wasn’t breathing either.
He put a hand out behind him, felt for the light switch by the door, and turned it on. The next moment the room was dark again. There had been one spasmodic flash of electric light, so brief that he couldn’t see anything clearly. A second of the most extreme and eerie suspense followed. Preysing’s brain worked like mad. There’s another switch by the door to the corridor, it told him of its own accord. A man is standing there and as soon as I switch it on, he switches it off.
“Is anyone there?” he said, in a voice unnecessarily loud and so hoarse that he himself was startled by it. No reply. Preysing made a dash forward, found the desk, and banging his shin against it caused himself the most agonizing jab of pain. He turned on the desk lamp. Then he just stared.
Near the wardrobe close to the door into the corridor stood a man in silk pajamas. It was not the bookkeeper. It was—Preysing recognized his face in the light of the green-shaded lamp—it was the other fellow, the elegant fellow he had seen in the Lobby, and in the Yellow Pavilion dancing with Flämmchen. He was standing there in another man’s bedroom, smiling innocently.
“What are you doing here?” Preysing asked in a forced voice. He was afraid of the pounding of his own heart. His knees tingled. His fingertips too.
“Sorry,” said Baron Gaigern. “I seem to have mistaken the door—”
“What did you say? Mistaken the door? We shall see about that—” said Preysing hoarsely, and pushed his way around the desk. He held his head forward and low like an animal, and even though he saw everything in a haze of red, he miraculously realized quite clearly that his wallet was no longer on the desk where he had placed it with particular care when he went to unlock the door to Flämmchen’s room. “We shall see whether you were mistaken about the room,” he heard himself say, and he lurched away from the desk.
At the same moment the Baron extended his right arm straight out, aiming at the middle of Preysing’s face. “If you move a step I shall shoot,” he said in a quiet voice. For one crazy second Preysing saw the black mouth of a revolver barrel.
“What are you going to do? Shoot me?” he roared, grabbed something, and did something. He felt his arm swinging something heavy through the air with all his weight behind it. The crunching noise with which he struck the man’s head came back like a shock through his own arm.
For a moment the Baron remained standing opposite him with an astonished expression. Then his knees gave way and he fell against the suitcase that was on the luggage rack next the wardrobe and then onto the floor, and after all the racket of his fall was over and it became suddenly still, he lay there face down.
“Going to shoot, were you! Well, there you are,” said Preysing, when he was able to breathe again and came up out of his fit of rage and terror as if coming up out of deep water. “There you are,” he said again to the pros
trate man at his feet. His voice already sounded much softer, half apologetic and half reproachful. The man made no reply. Preysing bent over him but did not touch him. “What’s the matter with you?” he said, half aloud. Now he heard the music from the Yellow Pavilion. He heard his heart beating again and his breathing. He even heard the pong—pong—pong from the bathroom. The man on the ground, however, made no sound. Preysing looked about him. He now found in his hand the object with which he had dealt the blow. It was the inkstand, the bronze inkstand with the out-spread eagle’s wings. He discovered black ink marks on his fingers and on the lapels of his jacket too. He took out his handkerchief and cleaned himself up after quietly replacing the inkstand. Then he turned again to the man on the floor. “He’s unconscious,” he said aloud. He had a blurry and obscure feeling of drowning as he knelt down beside him and heard the boards creak with a weird and warning sound. I’ll have him arrested, he thought, but he was still too distraught to ring. He did not like seeing the man lying there like that on his face, with his neck looking as if it was broken and his arms outspread. He looked around on the carpet for the revolver but couldn’t find it. An oppressive silence now prevailed in the room that only a moment before had been full of noise and the thud of a heavy fall. Preysing had to overcome something in himself before he could take the man by the shoulders and turn him over on his back, to have a better look at him.
Then he saw Gaigern’s open eyes, and saw, too, that he was no longer breathing.
“What happened?” he whispered. “What happened? What happened here? What happened here?” He whispered it over innumerable times to himself, senselessly, without knowing what he was saying. He stayed there cowering on his knees beside the prostrate man and whispering, “What happened? What happened?” Gaigern listened with a polite smile on his lifeless face. He was already dead. He had already left the big hotel and escaped beyond recall. But his hands were still warm as he lay with open eyes on the floor of Room No. 71. The green light from the desk lamp fell on his beautiful face, which still had a look of great astonishment.
It was like this that Flämmchen found the two of them when she stole through the forbidden door to see where Preysing had gone. She came in on bare feet and stood in the doorway blinking. “What’s the matter? With whom were you talking? Were you feeling unwell?” she asked, peering into the dim light to see what was going on.
Preysing made three attempts before he could reply.
“Something has happened,” he whispered at last, in a voice no one in Fredersdorf would have recognized.
“Happened? Good Heavens, what happened? It’s so dark in here,” Flämmchen said and turned on the ceiling fixture. It cast a hard white light over the room.
“Oh—” was all Flämmchen said when she saw Gaigern’s face. It was a short little doleful cry. Preysing looked up at her.
“He tried to shoot me. I only struck at him—” he whispered. “Someone should call the police.”
Flämmchen bent down over Gaigern.
“His eyes are still open—” she said softly; it sounded comforting. He isn’t dead, is he? He was so nice, she thought simply, from the bottom of her heart. She stretched out her hand.
“Nothing must be touched before the police come,” said Preysing louder than he meant to, and fully awake now. Then Flämmchen understood at last what had happened.
“Oh—” she said again and drew back. Everything began to turn dizzily and the walls seemed to close in on her.
She ran from the room, through doors and doors, pulled herself together from the verge of collapse and ran on, stumbling. She saw doors, nothing but doors. “Help,” she cried faintly. “Help.” All the doors swayed before her eyes and all were locked. Only one opened. Flämmchen saw it, and then she saw no more.
•
Sometimes there is so much noise in the corridors of the Grand Hotel that the guests complain. The elevator rumbles up and down, telephones ring, people passing laugh too loud, somebody whistles, another bangs doors, at the end of the hallway chambermaids quarrel in undertones, you’re embarrassed at running into eight different people on the way to the toilet. Yet often this same corridor will be completely silent and deserted. You might be lurching over its carpeting, stark naked, crying, Help! Help! Help!—and no one would hear . . .
Kringelein, of course, who could not sleep because he was on the alert for renewed pains in his stomach; Kringelein, whose senses had been made more acute by suffering and the approach of death, had heard the low wail the barely conscious Flämmchen emitted as she ran past his door. He did not turn a deaf ear, like the American film agent next door in Room No. 68. He quickly got out of bed and opened his door.
The next moment the miracle entered his life to fulfill and to complete it . . .
For, the next moment Kringelein saw, to his astonishment, Flämmchen’s naked, perfect form, staggering toward him. She fell heavily into his outstretched arms and lay there.
Kringelein did not lose his head, nor did his strength fail him under the considerable weight of the unconscious girl. She had fainted and although the helpless collapse of the warm and golden brown body in his arms filled him with a sweet enchanting terror, he did a number of perfectly sensible things. He put one arm under the limp neck, the other under her knees, and lifting her up with an effort, he laid her on his bed. Then he shut and locked both doors to the corridor and took a deep breath, for the rush of blood from his heart was overpowering. And now something fell to the floor from Flämmchen’s slack hand. It was a blue and somewhat worn shoe with a high heel, which till now she had held pressed to her naked breast. She had snatched it up and taken it with her. She had rescued it as though from a fire or a collapsing house as the only article of clothing that the catastrophe had left her. Kringelein took hold of her hand and laid it carefully at her side. He looked round the room and found the bottle of Hundt’s Elixir, and put a few drops to Flämmchen’s lips. A quiver passed over her forehead, but she was too deeply unconscious to drink. Yet she was breathing regularly, and at every breath the tangle of her bright hair rose and sank again on the pillow with an indescribable softness. Kringelein ran into the bathroom and soaked a handkerchief in cold water. He sprinkled it with eau de cologne (for since yesterday Kringelein was in possession of such refinements) and returned to Flämmchen. He carefully wiped her face and her temples. Then he felt for her heartbeat, and found it under her firm and rounded left breast. He placed the cool, wet handkerchief there, and after this he stood beside the bed and waited.
He didn’t know that his face had taken on an expression of shy, unbounded wonderment as he stood there looking down at the girl. He didn’t know that his smile was the smile of first love on the lips of a boy of seventeen. Perhaps he did not even know that at this moment he was truly, actually, and utterly alive. But this much he did know—that the feeling which now coursed through him with an almost painful glow and tug, this buoyancy and transparency and loss of self, was known to him only in dreams. He had never suspected that such a feeling could be experienced in real life. While he was anesthetized, something of the sort had occurred just before the blue roar went black. And in secret, deep within him, Kringelein had imagined this was what it was like to die: an unparalleled solemnity, a perfect something that left behind nothing unresolved. At this moment though, looking at the unconscious girl who had fled to him for protection, Kringelein was far from any thought of death.
It really exists, he thought, it really exists. Beauty like this really exists. Not just painted in pictures and imagined in books and trumped up on the stage. It can really happen that a girl is naked and so wonderfully beautiful, so totally beautiful, so totally—he tried to find another word but couldn’t find one. Totally beautiful was all he could think, totally beautiful.
Flämmchen frowned, pursed her lips like a child waking up, and finally opened her eyes. The light was reflected as a round gleam of white in her pupils. She blinked, smiled politely, took a deep breath, and whispered
, “Thanks.” Immediately afterward she shut her eyes again as though she wished to sleep. Kringelein picked up the quilt from the floor and spread it carefully over her. Then he pulled up a chair to the bedside and sat down and waited. “Thanks,” Flämmchen whispered again after a long while.
She was now conscious, but she found it difficult to put her thoughts in order. A certain confusion was caused by the fact that at first she mixed up the slender Kringelein at the edge of the bed with another man, one of her earlier friends whom she had liked very much and given up with great sorrow. The light-blue striped pajamas and an undefinable tender alertness in Kringelein’s manner led her to make this mistake.
“How did I get here?” asked Flämmchen. “What are you doing here?” She used the familiar du, and this gave him a shock of sweet surprise, but since he was already in the midst of wonders he took it too as a matter of course.
“You fainted and came to me,” he said simply.
Now Flämmchen recognized her mistake. Everything came back to her and she sat bolt upright in bed.
“Forgive me,” she whispered. “But something horrible happened.” She pulled the bedclothes up, crumpled them to her face, to her eyes, and began to cry. Kringelein’s eyes immediately filled with tears too, and his lips, though still smiling, began to tremble.
“It is so horrible,” Flämmchen whispered, “so horrible, horrible.”
Her tears came in an easy flood that soothed and appeased her. She dabbed the sheet against her face and covered the edge of it with small, red, heart-shaped imprints of her painted mouth. Kringelein looked on, and the corners of his eyes smarted with the pain of his suppressed emotion. At last he put his hand on the back of Flämmchen’s neck. “There, there, there,” he said, “there—there— there.”
