She shook her head and smiled. I loved her very much at that moment. She meant to show me that all that had been, was forgotten. But something bored in me, something I felt to be ridiculous, myself, and yet something I could not shake off. I put my glass down on the table. "You can tell me. It doesn't signify."
She looked at me again. "Do you suppose we would be here otherwise?" she asked.
"No," said I ashamed.
The band started to play again. Breuer came up. "A Blues," said he to me. "Wonderful. Wouldn't you like to dance it?"
"No," I replied.
"Pity."
"You ought to try once, Robby," said Pat.
"I'd sooner not."
"But why not?" asked Breuer.
"I don't care for it," I replied unamiably. "I never learnt. Never had time. But you dance, I can amuse myself here all right."
Pat hesitated.
"But Pat—" said I. "You enjoy it so."
"That's true—but are you enjoying yourself too?"
"What do you think?" I showed her the glass. "This is a kind of dancing too."
They went. I beckoned a waiter and emptied my glass. Then I lolled on the table and counted the salted almonds. Beside me sat the shade of Frau Zalewski.
Breuer brought some people with him to the table. Two good-looking women and a younger fellow with a completely bald head. Afterward a fourth joined us. All of them light as cork, glib and sure. Pat knew them all four.
I felt as heavy as a clod. Until now I had always been alone with Pat. Now I was seeing for the first time people she had known before. I could not start anything with them. They moved easily and freely, they came from a life where everything went smoothly, where one saw nothing one did not want to see; they came from another world. Had I been alone there, with t,enz or Köster, I should not have troubled about it. But Pat was there, Pat knew them, and that made everything seem wrong, it crippled me and forced me to make comparisons.
Breuer suggested going to another place.
"Robby," said Pat as we went out, "wouldn't you rather go home?"
"No," said I. "Why?"
"It's so boring for you."
"Not in the least. Why should it be boring? On the contrary. And you are enjoying it."
She looked at me but said nothing.
I started to drink. Not as before, but really. The chap with the bald head began to take notice. He asked what it was I was drinking. "Rum," said I. "Grog?" he asked. "No, rum," said I. He sampled it and choked. "Good heavens," said he respectfully, "one needs to be used to that." Now the two women also took notice. Pat and Breuer were dancing. Pat looked across often. I did not look any more. I knew it was unfair, but it came over me suddenly. And I was annoyed too that the others should remark my drinking. I had no wish to impress them like an undergraduate. I got up and went to the bar. Pat seemed quite strange to me. She could go to the devil with her people. She belonged to them. No, she didn't belong to them. Yes she did.
The bald head followed me. We had a vodka with the mixer. Mixers are always a comfort. You can get on with them anywhere, and without having to talk. This one was good too. Only the bald head was feeble. He wanted to unburden himself. A certain Fifi lay heavy on his soul. But that petered out soon. He told me Breuer had been in love with Pat for years. "Really?" said I. He sniggered. I silenced him with a Prairie Oyster. But it stuck in my head, what he had said. It annoyed me that I should come in on it. It annoyed me that I cared. And it annoyed me that I did not bring my fist down on the table. But somewhere I felt a cold lust for destruction that turned not against others, only against myself.
The bald head was soon speechless and disappeared. I remained sitting. Suddenly I felt a hard, firm breast against my arm. It was one of the women Breuer had introduced. She was sitting close beside me. Her oblique, grey-green eyes caressed me slowly. It was a look that left nothing more to be said—only something to be done.
"Wonderful to be able to drink like that," said she after a while. I said nothing. She stretched out a hand to my glass. The hand was like a lizard, glittering with jewels, dry and sinewy. It moved very slowly, as if it crawled. I knew what was coming. I'll soon settle you, thought I. You underestimate me, because you see I'm annoyed. But you're mistaken. I'm through with women already—it is love I'm not through with. It is the unrealisable that is making me miserable.
The woman began to talk. She had a glassy, brittle voice. I saw Pat looking across. I took no notice. But I took no notice either of the woman beside me. I had the feeling of slipping down a smooth bottomless pit. It had nothing to do with Breuer and the people. It had nothing to do with Pat even. It was the melancholy secret that reality can arouse desires but never satisfy them; that love begins with a human being but does not end in him; and that everything can be there: a human being, love, happiness, life—and that yet in some terrible way it is always too little, and grows ever less the more it seems.
I looked stealthily across at Pat. There she moved in her silver dress, young and lovely, a bright flame of life; I loved her, and if I should say to her "Come," she would come; nothing stood between us; we could be as near as only human beings can—and yet occasionally everything would in some puzzling way be overcast and full of torment, I could not free her from the circle of things, not tear her out from the contact of the existence that was above us and in us and compelled us to its laws, the breathing and the passing, the questionable glamour of the present immediately falling back into nothingness, the shimmering illusion of passion which in the possession is already lost again. It was never to be checked, never. Never would be loosed the rattling chain of time; never out of restlessness come rest—out of seeking, stillness; to falling come a halt. Not even from chance could I free her, from what had been before I knew her, from the thousand thoughts, memories, from all that had fashioned her before I was there, not even from these people here could I free her. . .
Beside me the woman was talking in her brittle voice. She was seeking a companion for the night, a bit of unfamiliar life to whet the appetite, in order to forget herself and the all too painful, too evident fact that nothing ever remained, no I and no You and least of all a We. Wasn't she at bottom seeking the same thing as I? A companion, in order to forget the loneliness of life, a comrade to withstand the meaninglessness of existence?
"Come," said I, "we want to go back. It is hopeless— what you want—and what I want."
She looked at me a moment. Then she threw back her head and laughed.
We went to a few other places. Breuer was heated, talkative and hopeful. Pat had become quieter. She asked me no questions, she made no reproaches, she did not attempt to explain anything, she was simply there; sometimes she danced and it was as if she were a still, lovely, graceful ship gliding amid a swarm of marionettes and caricatures, and sometimes she smiled at me.
The folly of the night clubs wiped its grey-yellow hands over walls and faces. The music seemed to be playing under a glass catafalque. The bald head was drinking coffee. The woman with the lizard hands was staring in front of her. From an overtired flowergirl Breuer bought roses and divided them between Pat and the two women.
"Shall we dance once together?" said Pat to me.
"No," said I, and thought of the hands that had touched her already to-day; "no"—and felt pretty foolish and mean.
"But yes," said she and her eyes darkened.
"No," I replied; "no, Pat."
Then at last we went. "I'll drive you home," said Breuer to me.
"Very good."
We had a rug in the car and placed it over Pat's knees. She looked suddenly very pale and tired. The woman from the bar thrust a piece of paper into my hand as I was leaving. I made as if nothing had happened and got in. As we went along I gazed out the window. Pat sat in the corner and did not move. I could not even hear her breathing. Breuer drove first to her place. He knew where she lived without asking. She got out. Breuer kissed her hand.
"Good night," said I, without l
ooking at her.
"Where can I put you down?" Breuer asked me.
"At the next corner," said I.
"I'd gladly drive you home," he replied, rather too hastily and too politely.
He wanted to prevent my going back. I considered whether I should not land him one. But he was not worth the trouble.
"All right, then drive me to 'The Bar Freddy,' " said I.
"Can you get in there, then, at this hour?" he asked.
"It's nice of you to ask," said I; "but don't worry—I can get in anywhere still."
I no sooner said it than I was sorry. He had certainly been feeling grand and that he had been coming along finely all the evening. It was a pity to shake it. I parted from him more amiably than from Pat.
"The Bar" was still pretty full. Lenz and Ferdinand Grau were playing poker with Bollwies and a few others. "Sit in, Bob," said Gottfried; "it's poker weather."
"No," I replied.
"Look at that, then," said he, pointing to a pile of money on the table. "No bluffing either. Flushes are in the air."
"All right," said I, "give us here."
With two kings I bluffed four jacks out a window. "So," said I—"seems to be bluff weather too."
"It's that always," replied Ferdinand pushing a cigarette across to me.
I did not mean to stay long. But at last I had solid ground under my feet. I was not feeling too good; but at least this was my old, time-honoured homeland. "Bring us a half-bottle of rum here," I called to Fred.
"Try some port in it," said Lenz.
"No," I replied. "Haven't time for experiments. I want to get drunk."
"Then take sweet liquors. Had a row?"
"Nonsense."
"Don't talk, baby. You can't kid your old father Lenz, who is at home in all the recesses of the heart. Say yes, and get drunk."
"A man can't have a row with a woman. You can be annoyed with them at the most."
"Those are too fine distinctions for three o'clock in the morning. I've had rows with every one. If you don't have rows it's soon over."
"Right," said I. "Who leads?"
"You," said Ferdinand Grau. "My dear Bob, you have Weltschmerz. Don't try and fight against it. Life is gay but imperfect. But I must say, for Weltschmerz you bluff wonderfully. Two kings are pretty steep."
"I once saw a hand where there were seven thousand francs against two kings," said Fred from the bar counter.
"Swiss or French?" asked Lenz.
"Swiss."
"Lucky for you," replied Gottfried. "You wouldn't have dared interrupt the play for French, eh?"
We played on for an hour. I won a good deal. Bollwies lost steadily. I drank, but only got a headache. The brown, waving handkerchiefs refused to come. Everything only became sharper. My insides burned.
"So, now stop and eat something," said Lenz. "Fred, give hirn a sandwich and some sardines. Pocket the money, Bob."
"One more hand."
"All right. Last round. Double?"
"Double," said the others.
I bought rather rashly three cards to the ten king. They were jack, queen, and ace. I won with it against Bollwies who had an eight-high straight and raised it to the moon. Cursing he paid me over a pile of money. "You see," said Lenz. "Flush weather."
We sat down to the bar. Bollwies asked after Karl. He could not forget how Köster had beaten his sports car. He was always wanting to buy Karl.
"Ask Otto," said Lenz; "but I think he'd rather sell you a hand."
"Well, well," said Bollwies.
"You wouldn't understand that, of course," replied Lenz, "you mercenary son of the twentieth century."
Ferdinand Grau laughed. Fred too. In the end we were all laughing. Not to laugh at the twentieth century is to shoot yourself. But you can't laugh for long. It's too much a matter for tears.
"Can you dance, Gottfried?" I asked.
"Of course. I taught dancing once. Have you forgotten how?"
"Forgotten—let the man forget," said Ferdinand Grau.
"To forget is the secret of eternal youth. One grows old only through memory. There's much too little forgetting."
"No," said Lenz. "It's that the wrong things are forgotten."
"Can you teach me?" I asked.
"To dance? In one evening, baby. Is that all your trouble?"
"Haven't any trouble," said I.
"Headache."
"The sickness of our time, Bob," said Ferdinand. "It would be better to be born without a head."
I went on to the Café International. Alois was in the act of hauling down the shutters.
"Anyone there still?" I asked.
"Rosa."
"Come, let's all three have one more."
"All right."
Rosa was sitting by the bar knitting little woollen socks for her daughter. She showed me the pattern. She had already completed a jacket. "How's business?" I asked.
"Bad. Nobody has any money."
"Would you like me to lend you some? Here—been winning at poker."
"Winnings work wonders," said Rosa spitting on it and putting it away.
Alois brought three glasses. Later, when Fritzi came, one more.
"Knock-off time," said he then. "I'm dead-tired."
He turned out the light. We went. Rosa said good-bye at the door. Fritzi hooked on to Alois' arm. She walked beside him, fresh and light. He shuffled along over the pavement with his fiat feet. I stood and watched them. I saw how Fritzi stooped down to the grimy, crooked waiter and kissed him. He put her away indifferently. And suddenly, I don't know how-it came, but as I turned and looked down the empty street and saw the houses with their dark windows and the cold night sky, such a mad longing for Pat came over me that I thought I should fall. I understood nothing any more, myself, my behavior, the whole evening, nothing.
I leaned against the wall of a house and stared ahead. I could not understand why I had done it. I had run into something there that had rent me asunder, made me unreasonable and unjust, tossed me hither and thither, and destroyed for me all I had laboriously built up. I stood there helpless not knowing what to do. I did not want to go home—there it would be still worse. At last I remembered that Alfons' must still be open. I went there meaning to stay until morning.
Alfons did not say much when I entered. He gave me a short glance and went on reading his paper. I sat down at a table and dozed. There was no one else there. I thought of Pat. Always of Pat. I thought of how I had behaved. Suddenly every detail came back to me. Everything turned against me. I alone was to blame. I had been mad. I stared at the table. The blood raged in my head. I was bitter and furious with myself and at my wits' end. It was I, I alone, that had ruined everything.
There was a sudden crash and tinkle of broken glass. With .the whole weight of my fist I had smashed my glass to smithereens. "One form of amusement," said Alfons, getting up.
He pulled the splinters out of my hand. "Sorry," said I; "forgot where I was for the moment."
He fetched cotton wool and sticking plaster. "Go to a whore shop," said he, "that's better."
"It's all right," I replied. "It's over now. Only an attack of anger." >
"You must amuse anger away, not annoy it away," declared Alfons.
"True," said I, "but you have to be able to."
"All training. You all want to run your heads through the wall. But it passes with the years."
He put the Miserere from Il Trovatore on the gramophone. It was getting rapidly lighter.
I went home. Alfons had given me a large glass of Fernet-Branca to drink. I now felt soft axes chopping over my eyes. The street was no longer flat. My shoulders were heavy as lead. I was finished.
Slowly I climbed the stairs and was searching my pocket for the key. Then in the semidarkness I heard someone breathing—something pale, indistinct, squatting on the upper steps. I took three strides.
"Pat—" said I uncomprehendingly. "Pat—what are you doing here?"
She moved. "I believe I've
been asleep."
"Yes, but how did you get here?"
"Well, I have your house key—"
"I don't mean that. I mean—" The drunkenness receded, I saw the worn treads of the stairs,_the peeling wallpaper and the silver dress, the narrow, shining shoes.-"I mean, that you are here at all—"
"I've been asking myself that a long time."
She stood up and stretched as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be sitting on the stairs in the early hours of the morning. Then she sniffed.. "Lenz would say— cognac, rum, cherry, absinth—"
Three Comrades Page 19
