I seat myself heavily on the bed and stare into her glowing face. 'She says she is suicidal. That she loves you. She seems very distracted.' The bed reeks of their love-making. I fee' almost faint.
'She won't kill herself.' Lady Cromach settles back in my pillows. 'She'd be more likely to kill one of us. The Princess can't bear to be thwarted.'
'Neither can I.'
She puts a hand on mine. 'But you have not been. Have you?' The sheet falls away from her shoulders. She is lovely, like a young boy. 'Alice tells me you are a stranger to sexual jealousy.'
'I am becoming more familiar with it.'
She accepts the flattery. Alice enters to stand looking at us, like a melodrama child which has affected a reconciliation between its parents. She is almost smug. I laugh and ask her to light me a cigarette. She obeys with cheerful alacrity, placing an ashtray beside me. Lady Cromach's hand has not left mine. 'Are you trying to mollify me, Lady Cromach? Or do you plan to include me in this seduction?'
'You're straightforward,' the says.
'Perhaps it's the atmosphere of this place. Perhaps it is the fact that we may all soon be blown to bits.' I remove my jacket, then my waistcoat. Alice takes them from me. 'I'll bring some champagne,' she says. Lady Cromach's eyes have narrowed and her breathing has become rapid. A nerve twitches in her neck. 'Champagne,' she says. 'What else did the Princess have to tell you?'
'Very little.'
Alice returns with a tray of champagne and glasses. She puts the tray on the little bedside table and curls up beside Lady Cromach. 'She must have yelled herself hoarse!'
'I've promised to try to reason with you and then report back to her.' I accept the cold glass.
'And are you reasoning now?' Lady Cromach wants to know.
'In my own fashion. Or perhaps I'm bargaining.'
'You wish me to give Alexandra up?'
'You know I'm not so rigid. I have told her I will not object to her sleeping with other women, though I draw the line at other men. I'd like it understood, though, that my feelings must take priority with Alexandra.'
'That's surely up to Alexandra.' Lady Cromach raises an eyebrow at my girl.
Alice says in a small voice: 'I'll do what everyone thinks best.' Neither Lady Diana nor myself are even briefly convinced. 'I'm sure you will,' says Lady Cromach, fondling her head. 'Oh, well, I think it can all be arranged satisfactorily, Herr von Bek. This would not be the first time, eh?' We toast one another with our glasses.
Later I remark to Lady Cromach that she has one of the loveliest bodies I have known. It is like fucking a supple youth with a cunt. It is a rare pleasure. 'You are a pretty rare pleasure for me,' she responds sardonically. I get dressed. We have agreed I should pretend to Princess Poliakoff that I am persuading the women the affair is not possible. I will hint at my ability to blackmail one or both of them. But when I get to her rooms Princess Poliakoff has vanished. A maid at work on the stairs says she saw her go out half-an-hour ago. Downstairs, Trudi says the Princess left with a small hand-bag, in a cab. She did not say where she was going. Relieved at this, I return to my women. 'It's almost too good to be true.'
'She has her pride,' says Diana thoughtfully. 'But she also has a taste for revenge.'
I know. She is probably scheming vengeance in one of the empty hotels near the station. She is certainly not dead or planning to die. I clamber into bed. Later tonight I will sleep in Clara's room. In the morning we shall go to breakfast with Alice and Diana. There will be a slightly formal atmosphere until Clara produces her cocaine. Outside large flakes of snow will fall over Frau Schmetterling's garden. Alice will clap her hands. 'It's going to be the most marvellous Christmas!'
The next weeks at Rosenstrasse will be the happiest I shall ever experience. The intimacy between Alice, Rose, Diana and myself will grow. The affection will take on the nature of a family's and I shall fall cheerfully into my charming younger brother, ready for any sport, undemandingly cooperative. Who could fail to love such a man? We will scarcely notice the food growing poorer and sparser, or the brothel beginning to assume a run-down look. Frau Schmetterling, who will have taken charge of our rations and seen to it that doors and windows are properly barricaded, will not be quite so maternally self-possessed as usual. More and more young officers will attend the salon, and fewer civilians. One officer, young Captain Adolf Mencken, is now resident here. The brothel is an official telephone post.
The snow heals the scars on the city, softening the outlines of the fortifications, muting the sounds of distress. Mirenburg is visibly beginning to starve. There is no word from Germany. Holzhammer has strengthened his encirclement. The dribble of water in the river is brackish and filthy and reveals all kinds of horrors. These, too, the snow will cover. Sometimes in my imagination the brothel in Rosenstrasse will seem to be the only building still standing; the only security in a desolate and mutilated world. But then too often I will begin to notice the reality, the theadbare quality of the deception. Frau Schmetter-ling maintains it by her will alone. She once leaned easily on her cushions, controlling a universe of comfort, maintaining by moral strength and skill an illusion of absolute sanctuary, but now the effort is visibly draining her. 'Mister' has become more solicitous; her chow dogs can scarcely summon the energy to bark at the clients. She still dusts every piece of china in her vast dresser. Mirenburg is hungry. The meals at the brothel remain reasonable. We eat once a day. Nobody asks where 'Mister' finds his supplies. Nobody asks where the flowers come from.
We move, all four of us, in a web of reference where our needs and attitudes are the only ones worth considering. Alice, of course, is trapped in this more thoroughly than the rest, who at least know on one level that what they are doing can ultimately be self-destructive: we have conspired and chosen, she has merely accepted. Our games, our fantasies, our rituals become increasingly elaborate and abstract, yet we congratulate ourselves that they are 'humane'. So they are, I suppose, in this private world, and we would be impatient if we were forced to consider them in any different context. I am a woman amongst women; my perfume is their perfume; we share our clothes, our jewellery, our identities. Memory is floating scarlets and pinks shading into yellow and grey, the taste of sex, the sensation of being forever relaxed, forever in a state of heightened sensuality, forever alive. I can smell this paper: it has an old dusty odour, and the ink is bitter in my nostrils. After the War I spent a few months in Algeria, much of this time in a whorehouse having some of the atmosphere of Frau Schmetterling's, although it was a much rougher place. It was frequented by certain elements of the French Army. One of the girls, a pretty redheaded Russian called Marya, whose parents had been killed by the Bolsheviks and who had come here from Yalta, was dying by the hour. She was consumptive. She had a little cubicle off the main floor, where we sat on cushions and smoked hashish. On a certain night she had announced that it was 'free tonight, gentlemen'.
One by one the customers went to her as she called for champagne - a bottle with every man - standing in her door in a pink chemise which had brownish stains on it, challenging them to come, while the blood flowed down her lovely chin, and her delicate shoulders and beautiful little breasts shook as she coughed. 'This is a farewell performance.' But gradually even the coarsest of the soldiers began to hesitate and look to one another in the hope that someone would put a stop to the matter. The proprietor of the brothel, a half-Arab who wore a fez and a European suit, remained expressionless, watching Marya, watching the customers, perhaps curious himself to see how far it could all go. The soldiers took up their bottles of champagne and went into her cubicle, but none went very willingly or stayed very long. I still do not know why they went: I like to think it was out of respect for a dying and desperate girl. Perhaps she thought their bodies would bring her renewed life, or perhaps she hoped they would kill her. She died two days later, quietly, full of hashish.
Mirenburg huddles under the snow as if in a mixture of fear and pride. Her bells continue to chime; her
lovely churches are crowded every day. There are no birds here now. They have all been caught and eaten. The factories are closed and every able-bodied man marches on the walls as part of his militia^ duty. Holzhammer's armour squats not a quarter of a mile from our abandoned trenches on the other side of an expanse of almost unbroken snow. We have heard that German and Austrian diplomats quarrel over the Waldenstein Question but no decision has yet been reached.
We expect the cannon to begin to fire again soon. Van Geest is still wearing his blanket-jacket. He talks to me one afternoon as we sit side by side on a couch in the gloom of the salon. 'I continue to associate this place with the funeral parlour where we took my mother. Isn't that peculiar? Yet the atmosphere seems exactly the same to me. It always has. Even before the siege began. It could be the dark drapery and the smell of incense. The potted palms. Is that all? The cause of the association is beyond me.' He sighs and lights his cigar. 'But I am comfortable here.' Over on the other side of the room, in the half-light, Frau Schmetterling sits at the piano, playing some mindless German song. As I get up to leave I hear a commotion in the vestibule and Therese comes storming in pointing behind her at the same porter who, a few weeks ago, complained about his wife's teeth. Therese is wearing a feather dressing-gown and mules. Only since the Siege have the girls been allowed to dress like this in public. She has lost all appearance of refinement. Her harsh gutter-Berlin rings out suddenly across the room. 'He's eaten Tiger! The horrible old bastard's eaten the cat!' Frau Schmetterling hurries from the piano. 'Not so loud, dear. What's the matter?' Therese points again. 'The cat. He said it was a rabbit.' She rounds on the man. 'And he offered me some if I'd doodle him. For a rabbit leg! Or a cat's leg, as it turned out. He's disgusting. Old swine! I'd rather eat his damned leg. Tiger was my only real friend.' She begins to weep, every so often pausing to glare at the bewildered porter. All he can say is: 'It wasn't Tiger. Somebody else got Tiger.' Frau Schmetterling tells him he is dismissed.
'One should try to draw the line at cats.' Captain Mencken, all shaded eyes, colourless hair and sandy uniform, comes up to us and borrows a light from Van Geest. 'They are eating worse in the Moravia and Little Bohemia, I hear.' He looks down on us through smoked glasses, a sober lemur.
People seem to have become obsessed with what should and what should not be eaten. Yesterday I was in the kitchen while Frau Schmetterling discussed menus with her cook. Herr Ulric has always impressed me. He was a butcher in Steinbrucke twenty years ago, and he still retains something of the smell of the shambles about his coarse and enormously gentle body. His hands, when at rest, lie upon his thighs as if they grip an axe and his eyes contain that familiar sad tenderness of a betrayer of lambs and ewes. His old calling proves useful again. Herr Ulric was amused by Frau Schmetterling's insistence that the food be described simply as 'meat'. He agreed. 'So long as it isn't described as prime. That nag was hardly the finest horse in the cavalry, even when she was young!' Frau Schmetterling had nodded in that dismissive way she has when she does not wish to hear what is being said to her. Van Geest sighs. 'I feel like one of those dark weeds which grows in the deep sea, which never observes the light of the sky, is never exposed to the air. I wave in fathomless currents. I am moved by profound, slow forces; I am never attacked; I give a hiding place to both predator and prey, yet I am scarcely aware of them and never affected by them. Is this power, do you think?' Captain Mencken hands back the box of matches and looks to me for a reply, but I know Van Geest too well by now to bother to answer. Captain Mencken has little to do and frequently seems embarrassed to be here. He is courteous enough, but always distant. He is unhappy, he has confided to us, with a state of affairs in which our soldiers do battle with starving citizens in their own streets. There have been several terrible incidents. 'We should take the offensive,' he has said. 'That's my opinion. But we wait still for the Kaiser. And the Kaiser will not come. The only relief for Mirenburg depends on the actions of her soldiers. One good cavalry charge could take those positions. Or could have.' Now he moves away from us.
'The horses are growing too weak,' he says. 'Well, you know what's happening to them.'
He goes to the boarded-up window as if he hopes he will get some glimpse of the enemy. 'They're starving us rather successfully, aren't they?' He is one of the few Mirenburger soldiers to have seen active service. Frau Schmetterling returns and settles at her piano. Rakanaspya and Count Belozerski enter, speaking in low Russian voices. The Count has grown a thin pointed beard, and both men have become increasingly serious; they spend all their time together and appear to be discussing metaphysics. Count Belozerski's hair has been allowed to grow, too. It now touches his high fur collar, emphasising his Tartar blood and giving him a Mephistophelean appearance completely at odds with his behaviour, which remains amiably courteous. He has been to see Caroline Vacarescu once or twice, though she is determinedly in pursuit of a rather nervous and flattered Captain Mencken, while granting her favours most frequently to Rudolph Stefanik. She is playing several hands at once. We have heard nothing at all of Princess Poliakoff except a vague rumour she has escaped the city and thrown herself on the mercy of her ex-lover Holzhammer. I enquired at every hotel and boarding-house I was able to find. I still fear she has guessed my perfidy and might by now have discovered who Alice really is. She would betray me if she could. She would betray us all. In the Town Hall a day or so ago a fire had been especially prepared for an emergency meeting. The business people of Mirenburg were to meet General von Landoff and his staff to discuss the situation. The big mediaeval hall, with its gilded gargoyles and elaborate flags, was full of loud voices and tobacco smoke. A number of old men were in contentious discourse near the fireplace. Everyone still wore their overcoats. No member of the military staff had yet arrived and merchants and bankers continued to represent themselves as experts in the business of War. There were rumours of an emissary from Holzhammer, of new peace-terms which General von Landoff had dismissed out of hand as 'quite impossible'. One iron-master joked that he had it on good authority that all women under twenty were to be given up to the Bulgarians. 'My mistress was in tears when I got there last night. She knew that it was nonsense, of course, but was I suspect enjoying the melodrama. There is so little entertainment, these days. I told her the story was untrue but that I had made a private agreement with General von Landoff to give her up to his uses in return for my own safe-conduct.' No-one there knew anything of the Princess Poliakoff. 'You don't believe you're making sense, do you?' says Papadakis, uncorking a bottle of Chambertin. 'You're being foolish. What are you writing about? The girl? Because I won't listen any more, you're writing it down. Is that it?' Mirenburg is still alive. Her battlements have held off the Goth and the Hun and every empire Europe has known. 'She is indestructible.' Papadakis begins to pour the wine. 'Let it breathe!' I tell him. 'Let me breathe. Let us all breathe! God! You stink of disease. You are putrefying before my eyes. I can smell you night and day!' Clara joins me in the salon. She wears a sable coat, borrowed from Diana, and a matching muff and hat. We are going for one of our walks. Captain Mencken removes his smoked glasses and warns us to be cautious. His eyes have that pale, bloody look of dogs whose hair permanently covers their faces. 'The amount of crime in the city is prodigious…'
We laugh at him as we step into the path which has been cleared through the snow. The dismissed porter is close behind us, grumbling that it has become impossible to please anybody these days. He goes towards Rauchgasse while we turn in the opposite direction, to Papensgasse and the Botanical Gardens. The guards have stamped paths all over the gardens and we follow them. The smell of burning wood comes from near the Tropical Plant House. The white smoke rising over the snow adds to the haze. The sky is the colour of new steel and from the Moravia a score of belfries begin to peal. The people on that side are mostly Catholic. 'They pray four or five times a day now,' says Clara. She wants to investigate the source of the smoke, but I hold her back. 'It would be best not to find out wha
t they are cooking,' I say. 'Have they become cannibals?' She makes to go on. 'There are rumours,' I say. She shivers and her eyes brighten. 'Oh!' She tries to find a remark and fails. 'How terrible,' she says finally, in a small voice. 'I wonder what would happen to me? Would they prefer to eat me or rape me, do you think?' We take the turning for the ornamental lake. 'Probably both,' I say. Most of the trees are down. They have been used for firewood. The unbroken snow covers their stumps, however, so that it is still possible to pretend the Siege does not exist and all is as it was in September. I walk slowly, savouring the sense of peace. I am a little light-headed from hunger. In the distance glass buildings are heavy with snow. Every other outline seems black. There is a strong smell of urine from the lake. Clara holds her nose. 'They must be using it as a cess-pit. I suppose they can't empty the sewage into the river any more, though I don't see what difference it makes.' A soup-kitchen has been set up in the Lugnerhoff. The line of people, many of them well-dressed, stretches the length of Korkziehiergasse and goes out of sight around the corner. I see an old acquaintance, Herr Prezant the tobacconist, and stop to talk to him. 'What's the soup like?' I ask him. 'It gets thinner every day,' he says, smiling. He is a grey ghost in astrakhan. 'Soon it will be only water, but we shall still go on queuing for it. By that time we shall not have noticed. It's as good a way as any of starving to death.' He seems to be quite serious. 'Relief will soon be here,' I say. He is fatalistic: 'There is nobody who would wish to help us in the current political climate. You must know that as well as I, Herr von Bek.'
'I am optimistic by nature, Herr Prezant. There's little point in being otherwise.' He offers me his hand and I shake it. It is all bone; yellow with the stains of his calling. Then he turns back into the line and stands there, his shoulders straight, his fingers toying with the brim of his Homburg hat. 'He is a brave little old fellow,' says Clara. 'But why are people so frequently passive in the face of misery and death? Have they been reconciled to it all their lives? So few of them seem surprised, let alone outraged. Wouldn't you be angry?'
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