Metropole. I had changed, and now I was in the salon, fixing two drinks, which I carried into the bedroom. A scream from Irinal She was standing in front of the mirror, half-naked, holding the robe I had bought in front of her. "I'm sorry, my darling," I said, closing the door all but a crack through which I handed her her glass. "Thank you," she said. I stuck my other hand with my glass in it through the door, and she clinked her glass against mine. "Chin-chin!" I said.
"Chin-chin. You're nice."
"I'm the nicest man in the world, my darling," I said. "I want to order our dinner. Are you hungry?"
"Yes." I could hear her drinking.
"That's good," I said. "So what would you like to eat?"
"Oh...I don't know. Ask Monsieur Jules. He should recommend something."
I turned around. "Monsieur Jules?"
He was smiling. He said in a loud voice, "We have very fine chicken today. Here in Hamburg we call them Hamburger Kiicken. Very litde chickens. I can recommend highly."
"Did you hear him, darling?" From the bar, over the radio, came the melody of "The Wayward Wind." "Strange," she said.
"What's strange?"
"How you can get used to whiskey. Yesterday I hated it, today it tastes wonderful."
"Yes," I said. "That happens fast. So... two Hamburger Kiicken, Monsieur Jules."
"Very good. And before that? Lobster cocktail?"
"Fine. Let's not spare the expense account."
"And for dessert?"
"We'll see."
"And to drink?"
"Champagne, of course. What did you think?"
Jules was smiling. "Then I would recommend Pommery Demi-Sec. Not too dry. We have some '51 bottles left. A very good year."
"How does that strike you, darling?" I asked.
"Wonderful!"
"Very well, then," I said, and closed the bedroom door.
Before Jules had come, I had sat at the beautiful antique desk and written on pieces of hotel paper, folded them, and stuck them in envelopes. Now I began to hide them—under my typewriter, under the couch, behind the drapes. Jules watched
me, amused. "What are you doing, monsieur?"
"It's a surprise."
"Oh." He smiled as only a Frenchman can smile in such a situation. "I understand—you have to console the litde lady."
"Yes."
"Tr&s charmante ... the mademoiselle. It is touchinghow she always pretends to be your wife. But he careful, monsieur. Mademoiselle is not from the West. She comes from the East, and the ladies from the East are not so easily—"
"ItTl work out all right," I said, and hid another envelope.
He smiled, but then he was serious again. "Just the same," he said, "Mademoiselle impresses me as being very innocent—"
"Innocent?" I said, and nodded grimly. "For two years she was the mistress of this man Bilka. He's thirty-two, she's eighteen. Innocent?"
Jules said, "Last night you slept here in the salon. The maid told me."
"Well, yes," I said, irritated suddenly. "I wanted to be a little discreet about it."
"I understand," said Jules.
"You do?" He was looking at me intendy. "What's the matter?"
"If you have fallen in love with Mademoiselle, that is good."
"Now, listen," I began.
But he went on, "Because Monsieur Seerose said you must watch over Mademoiselle tonight very carefully. This is very important. Look after Mademoiselle, nothing else. She must not be allowed to disturb what is going on. Besides—"
"Besides what?"
"If you want to find out everything about Mademoiselle—her life, her fate—that you must really faire Tamour ... not sleep on the couch."
"I think I know what I have to do."
Just then the bedroom door opened and Irina walked in. I stuck the rest of the envelopes in my pocket, and stared at her and had to swallow hard. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that Jules was staring at her, too, just as astonished.
Irina was a beautiful girl. I knew that. What I didn't know was how this girl could be transformed. It was fantastic! I had known a lot of girls who could transform themselves, but I had never seen anything like this.
She stood there in the sleeveless cocktail dress, in the
high-heeled gold shoes, one hand on her hip. She had on silk stockings, she was wearing makeup. Her mouth was bright red and big, her skin was smooth and pink. She wore mascara and velvety blue shadow on her big black eyes. Her thick black hair, which she wore in a pageboy cut, was brushed smooth. The dress made her look provocative; you could see the cleft of her breasts. I emptied my glass and could feel my heart beating fast. She was so beautiful ... so beautiful— "Oh, mademoiselle!" said Jules.
I went up to her and put my arms around her, and could smell her fresh skin and the Est6e Lauder perfume. I drew her close and kissed her on the mouth, then I let her go and said, "You look enchanting."
She reddened under her makeup; Jules noticed it, too. He bowed and left us,
"Walter!" said Irina. Her eyes were shining.
"Yes?"
"That was—that was—you ought to be ashamed of yourself 1 You took advantage of me!"
"I did. Can you forgive me?"
She looked at me, then she nodded, and the trace of a smile played about her lips.
"Wonderful!" I said. "And now, so that you caix say I took advantage of you twice," I drew her close and put my lips to hers again.
She resisted at first, but then her body yielded. Her lips parted, she pressed her body against mine and responded to my kiss. And I thought that perhaps there was that thing about which so much is written in novels, which I had often described and cheapened, which everyone on this earth longs for and dreams of—love.
At last she pushed me away. She was breathing heavily. I mixed us two more drinks and handed her her glass. Her black eyes were blazing. "Another whiskey?" she said. "Yes."
"No."
"Yes," I said. "You must. To our friendship."
"Our friendship?" She laughed, a strange, brittle laugh.
"Yes," I said. "Please."
She raised her glass. "All right, then. To our friendship." She drank and handed me her empty glass. I filled it again. The radio was playing "Let's take a trip into the land of loving." Irina leaned against the bedroom.door and hummed the old song. I walked past her and hid the rest of the envelopes around the bedroom and the bathroom, all the time chatting with her. She had walked into the salon and pushed aside one of the drapes.
"So many lights," I could hear her say. "On the water and on the other side of the water. And such a marvelous hotel!"
"You like it?"
"I love it. Chin-chin, Walter."
"Chin-chin, Irina."
I walked back into the salon and put my arm around her shoulders, and both of us looked out into the night with its many lights and glittering rain.
"This is the first German hotel I've ever been in," said Irina. "No—the second."
"What was the first?" I asked, and drank. She drank, too.
"Oh, I was with the Young Pioneers, a good ten years ago, and we went on a trip to East Berlin. That's when I saw a German hotel. But it was horrible—shabby, cold, dirty—practically a ruin."
"What was it called?"
"The Adlon."
I laughed. "That was once the finest and most famous hotel in Germany."
"You're kidding me!"
"No, I'm not. The Adlon was—" I got no further, because the radio was playing a different song, sad and filled with longing—"Remembering."
"Goddamn it! I told them—" I was about to hurry over to the radio to turn it off, but Irina stopped me.
"Don't!" she whispered.
"Don't what?"
"Don't turn it off." Her eyes were sparkling. "I called the bar and asked them to play the song. I want to hear it. Yes... I want to! Because it doesn't matter anymore—see?" She laughed. "Now it's my song again, my beautiful song that I've always
loved. Things co
uldn't go on the way they were." I looked at her meditatively. "You mean it?" She nodded and put down her glass. Then she took mine out of my hand and put it down beside hers. "Wouldn't you like to dance with me?" she said softly.
I took her in my arms. Our bodies were close, she laid her head on my shoulder, my cheek touched hers, and we began to move to the sweet music. Irina recited the first words of the text: "Remember, love; remember, love—how you and I were dancing... my heart beat against your heart... how can I help remembering..." She stopped and pressed her body closer. I kissed her cheek, she smiled, and we went on dancing slowly, slowly, to the melancholy melody, without saying a word. Suddenly I stopped and let Irina go abruptly. "You!" I said. "How did you get in here?" "Through the door," said Fraulein Louise. "It was open." Damn it 11 had forgotten to lock it after Jules left. And there was Fraulein Louise in an old, black, very wet coat, a ridiculous hat on her white hair, carrying a large bag and quite evidently very excited—Fraulein Louise Gottschalk! The soles of her cracked boots had left their dirty imprint on the light velour carpeting.
Fraulein Louise pressed the button of the door with the name Michelsen on it. She was doing so with a feeling of hopelessness, because she had been trying to get an answer for ten minutes. Nobody seemed to be in the apartment, or else they had no intention of opening. Fraulein Louise was discouraged. The feeling had overwhelmed her in the taxi that had brought her from the Davidswache to Eppendorfer Baum. I haven't gotten a step farther, she thought. I don't know who murdered little Karel. The whole thing grows more mysterious and confusing all the time. What bad thing have I done that everything I try to do seems to fail? Have I sinned, and is that why my friends are misleading me? The young pianist—blind; the Ukrainian servant
in the hotel; the Czech... what are they really planning? Why can't I understand them? All I wanted was to do the right thing, and this is where I am! Why do I make such terrible mistakes all the time? The doctor in the train who I thought was my dead Jehovah's Witness, the SS leader who wasn't my SS friend at all. How can what I'm doing possibly be right if my friends aren't helping me? What did I do wrong? Or have evil spirits entered into the picture and managed it so that my friends cant help me?
For the first time Fraulein Louise was beset by the feeling that she and her friends weren't seeing eye to eye. She was bewildered by the chaos of the big city, her feet hurt, and she was growing more and more hopeless all the time. And now nobody was answering at this man Michelsen's apartment! It was a plot, a plot against her! What point was there in going on?
She gave up and walked across the red carpet, down the elegant staircase with its marble steps and walls, the way she had come. She was afraid of cage elevators—not of any others, only of the cages that moved on wire cables. She walked out of the house into the rain. What next? She didn't know. It was almost dark now, the street and shop lights were on, and a warm, golden light streamed down on the wet pavement from an antique shop beside the house entrance. Fraulein Louise walked slowly up to the window. What wonderful things there were on display there! Fraulein Louise smiled when she saw the ivory elephants, the opium pipes, the Japanese roll prints with their delicate watercolors, the demon masks, the coral jewelry, the carved objects. She read the name of the owner beside the entrance: Andre Garnot. And suddenly she froze. Because beyond the display, in the shop itself, she could see a slender man with short gray hair, twisting and turning in an armchair... and beside him a second man, older, wearing glasses, with a fringe of thin gray hair on his otherwise completely bald head. The older man was holding something over the other man's mouth and supporting him at the same time. The man in the chair was evidently having trouble breathing. His face was purple.
Fraulein Louise's heart was beating wildly. Andre Garnot! A French name... the man in there was having difficulty breathing... the older man was holding something over his mouth—an atomizer, surely! The man who was having difficulty breathing had asthma!
My dead Frenchman had asthma, thought Fraulein Louise. Perhaps—no, surely it is he! And she was already opening the
door of the shop. I am not alone, she thought, I am not alone!
She remained standing in the doorway and gestured to the two men that she would wait until the attack was over, which didn't take long. Then the two men introduced themselves, so did Fraulein Louise. "You must excuse me," said Andr6 Garnot, "but I always have these attacks in this kind of weather."
"I know, I know," she said, and added hastily, "it's the worst kind of weather for asthma."
"I was helping Herr Garnot unpack a crate of Chinese bronzes; that's when it happened. A good thing I was here. It was a nasty attack," said the older man.
"But now I'm all right again," said Garnot. As usual, he was elegantly dressed and moved with grace and dignity.
"And you are Polish," Fraulein Louise said to Kubitzky.
"Yes, Fraulein Gottschalk."
"Would you like me to guess where you're from?" asked Fraulein Louise, her discouragement miraculously gone. Now she was actually happy. "You come from Warsaw, right?"
"How did you know?" asked Kubitzky, thoroughly perplexed.
"Yes... how?" said Fr&ulein Louise, smiling at him. He was smiling, too, a litde helplessly, but this was lost on Fraulein Louise. All she saw was the smile.
"And I'm from Neurode, from the Youth Camp there," she said.
"Ah, yes," said Garnot. "You're a social worker."
Fraulein Louise nodded blissfully. She didn't ask how Garnot knew. She didn't know that he had his information from Irina and me.
"Your name is Louise, isn't it?" said Garnot.
Fraulein Louise suddenly felt young and not at all weary, and her feet didn't hurt anymore. "Louise," she said. "Of course! Oh, how lucky! Thank you. Thank you very much!"
"What for?"
"Well, that you two are here. You'll be able to help me, I'm sure. I was upstairs at the Michelsen apartment, but nobody answered."
"Nobody's home there, not even the servant. He left two hours ago," said Kubitzky. "What did you want?"
"You know what I wanted," she said, winking at him. "I am looking for Irina Indigo and this reporter, Herr Roland. It's very important."
"Very important?" said Kubitzky.
"Of course, very important," said Garnot, "after all that's happened." And Fraulein Louise looked at him gratefully.
"Yes, after all that's happened," she said. "They were here, weren't they?"
"Yes."
"And they talked to you," she said in a sudden burst of clairvoyance.
"In great detail," said Garnot.
"About what?"
"About Herr Bilka and his fiancee and everything that concerned them."
"What did they say?"
Garnot and Kubitzky took turns telling the story. It seemed perfectly all right to them that they should give the socialworker I had mentioned the information she wanted. Fraulein Louise also found it perfectly natural that her dear friends should be filling her in. So all of them talked at cross-purposes without realizing it, and Fraulein Louise found out everything that had happened.
"And where are they now—Fr&ulein Indigo and Herr Roland?" she asked. "I must find them!"
"Herr Roland gave me an address," said Garnot. "In case anybody asks for him or we have something new to tell. That's where you can reach him."
"And where is that?" asked Fraulein Louise.
"At the Metropole Hotel," said Andre Garnot.
"Yes, meine Dame," said night clerk Eugene Hanslik, leaning forward as he answered Fraulein Louise's question. "Herr Roland is staying here."
"With a young girl?"
"With his wife," said Hanslik, looking at the poorly dressed old woman with a mixture of curiosity and sympathy.
"Of course... with his wife," said Fraulein Louise. "Would
you please tell them I am here. I must speak to them." And now I have them, she thought. Now I have them!
Hanslik, who had my instructions, got o
ut of the dilemma elegantly. He gestured in the direction of the key board. 'The key is here."
"That means they're not here?"
"Yes."
"Have they gone away?"
"No, no. They're just out."
"When are they coming back?"
"They didn't say. Thank you, sir," he said unexpectedly, in English. An English guest, or an American, had just put his room key on the desk. "I have no idea when Herr and Frau Roland will be back. They may be gone quite a while."
"May I—may I wait?" asked Fraulein Louise. She was very impressed and at the same time oppressed by the glitter and luxury of the Metropole Hotel.
"Certainly, meine Dame. Please take a seat in the lobby. As soon as Herr Roland comes back—" He took another tack. "Herr Roland will see you, I'm sure. You know each other, don't you?"
"We certainly do," said Fraulein Louise. "Thank you, sir."
"Front!" cried Hanslik. A boy in uniform came running. "Check the lady's coat." "Yes, sir," said the boy, going up to Fraulein Louise. "May I?"
Absendy she began to unbutton her shabby coat, then she thought, Oh, dear Lord! I'm still wearing my old gray skirt and my old brown cardigan. I can't go in looking like that! They'd throw me out! So she told the boy, "No, thank you. I'll keep on my coat. I'm—I'm a little cold."
"Very well, ma'am," he said with a slight bow.
Fraulein Louise walked into the lobby on a cloud. She'd never seen anything like it. The crystal chandeliers, the carpets—each one must have cost a fortune! The walls—pink marble! The old paintings! The flowers in priceless vases! The elegant furniture and—oh, the elegant gentlemen and the beautiful women with their colorful dresses and dazzling jewelry. How it glittered! And me in my shabby coat, she thought. It's embarrassing. I'd like to run away. But I mustn't. I must wait here until Irina and Hen-Roland come—
She remained standing hesitantly in the entrance to the lobby. A waiter in tails came up to her. "Would madame like to sit down?"
A pretty little table with swung legs, three chairs around it with turned arms, upholstered in brocade. The waiter drew back one of the chairs. Things were beginning to swim in front of Fraulein Louise's eyes. She sat down with a sigh. This is a terrible experience, she thought, all of a sudden depressed again; and she tried to hide her ugly boots under the table. "Would madame like to order anything?" asked the waiter.
The Traitor Blitz Page 41
