The Brothel in Rosenstrasse vb-2

by Michael Jonh Moorcock

  'I would not be in his position,' I tell her. 'But if I were I should probably behave very similarly. One makes choices, until there are no further choices to make. Then one accepts the results. His choices have led him to that queue. As have his circumstances, too, of course. My circumstances will never lead me to make Herr Prezant's choice. Let's count our blessings, Rose, my love.' There are no cabs. We must walk back. Black smoke floats towards the twilight. Fire has broken out in the Koenigsallee and has spread for several blocks. The hospital has been evacuated: the patients are lying on stretchers in the street until they can be removed to the Convent of the Poor Clares. The fire is said to be the work of incendiaries, of women patterning themselves after the communards of '71 and deciding it would be better to burn Mirenburg to the ground than to let it fall into the hands of the besiegers. The blaze is soon under control and several suspected 'petrolleuses' have been arrested. A crowd visits the burning buildings to warm itself and to loot whatever food might have survived. A few shots are fired in the dusk. A far less passive crowd rushes up Falfnersallee towards the Mirov Palace and is met by a fusillade. In the confusion some field-guns are discharged. We reach Rosenstrasse at dark, barely in time for curfew. Captain Mencken peers at us through the pools of his spectacles. 'You are safe, then?' Clara asks him what is happening. He tells us Holzhammer's agents have been creating dissension in the city. Those agents will soon be under arrest. I remark how hot it has become inside the house. Frau Schmetterling flusters through the door which leads down to the basement. 'He intends to burn us all up!' she says despairingly. 'Please help. It is 'Mister' and Chagani!' Captain Mencken and I go down to the furnace-room. The boiler is roaring so high it threatens to burst. Two men stand in the flickering darkness hurling log after log through its blinding mouth. 'He will not listen!' wails Frau Schmetterling. 'He continues to cram in fuel. You would think he was in Hell already!'

  'Mister' stops suddenly. He is panting. He signs for his friend Chagani to continue their work. He looks at us in surprise. He has an enthusiastic, boyish expression on his ruined face. He is sweating. 'Every room in the house is at tropical heat,' says Frau Schmetterling. Captain Mencken steps forward. 'I think this will do. We are supposed to be preserving fuel.' He speaks gently, even hesitantly. 'There is no point now,' says 'Mister'. 'Not now, sir. Why give them our firewood?'

  'You think Holzhammer has won?'

  'Holzhammer has won.' For the first time Chagani speaks. He does not look at us, but he drops the log he has been carrying. I recognise him. He sometimes entertains the girls with his monkey and his mimicry. Muscular and yet without strength, Chagani was an acrobat who destroyed his own judgement through self-demand and a lack of faith in his partners. This evening he has decided to wear his red, spangled costume. He steps back towards the boiler-room's outer door. The firelight shifts to silhouette him, frozen in loneliness, clinging to his pride as he might cling to the very sword which had killed him. 'Holzhammer was won. His troops will be here by morning.' In faded red and tarnished gold he stands stretching his calves, reaching back to a memory of his youth, obstinately continuing to identify the impatience he had then possessed with the subtler forms of optimism he has detected in others and yet been unable to comprehend. 'That's rubbish, Chagani,' I say. 'What on earth's your game? Why have you alarmed 'Mister'?'

  Chagani laughs suddenly and springs into the depleted woodpile in the corner. He attempts a pirouette and lands on his back. The timber tumbles around him. He is still laughing. He is very drunk. 'Mister' goes to help him, his hands stretched. Frau Schmetterling says sharply: 'You are not to listen to him. He's always leading you into trouble. Why do you let him? Why do you get him the schnapps?' She crosses to the boiler and with a long iron rod taps and turns and slides until the thing is burning at a normal level again. She whirls around with the rod in her hand. 'Mister' has aided Chagani to regain his feet. The ex-acrobat flexes his upper arms. He is not hurt. 'I still know how to fall,' he says. He glares at us. 'Which is more than any of you do. Can't you see it's over for you? Your luck has failed.' Frau Schmetterling threatens him with the black rod. He arches his back like a ballerina and, limping, allows 'Mister' to help him to the outer door. I watch him as he mounts the steps up to the garden. There are several cavalry-horses stabled there now. The cockatoos, the macaws, the parrot, all have gone, and there are no more orchids. Captain Mencken follows behind Chagani as the man is challenged by a guard. 'It's all right, Huyst.' And 'Mister' looks after his departing friend before descending the steps and tugging something out of his shirt. It is a half-empty stone bottle. Frau Schmetterling takes it, shaking her head, and drops the rod with a clang to the dusty flagstones. Mencken and I return upstairs. 'They are all going mad,' he says. 'It is hunger and alcohol, I suppose. Who can blame them?'

  The four of us, out of choice, are dining most evenings off morphine, opium and cocaine. It is better than the food we have, and thanks to Clara the drugs are still plentiful. When we require warming, we drink old cognac. Wilke, summoned by a maid, stands at the top of the steps as we come back up. 'I thought we were on fire,' he says. 'And that was shooting earlier, wasn't it? I was asleep.' His big, passive head is drowsy and his voice is furred. He wears a red and white dressing gown; his feet are bare. 'What do you want me to do, chicken?' He addressed Frau Schmetterling. 'It is over,' she says. 'I am sorry you were woken up. 'Mister' lost control of the furnace.'

  'Do you want me to have a look at it?' asks Wilke. 'It is all right now,' she says. 'Go back to bed.' She kisses him on the cheek as he turns obediently about. He is quite as loyal to her, I suspect, as 'Mister'. They are a strange pair of children. 'I thought the Bulgarians had arrived,' he says, almost to himself, 'and had set us on fire.'

  'Could Chagani have some word?' I ask Captain Mencken. Behind his smoked glasses he is inscrutable. 'Hardly!' he says. 'A man like that? It would take much more than a day for Holzhammer to break through into the city. It was rubbish. He was drunk as a pig. Drunk as a pig.' I have sweat and grime all over my face. I go up to Clara's room to bathe. A maid fills the tub for me. We are gasping from the heat. 'Don't touch the radiators,' warns Clara. 'I have already burned myself.' She displays a red spot on the back of her hand. On her mirror she has laid out two thick lines of cocaine. 'Have one of those,' she says. 'It will spoil my appetite for dinner,' I tell her. 'Then have both,' she says with a laugh. She is wearing her Broderie Anglaise negligee. Her white body, with its firm breasts and big nipples, is beaded with perspiration. She sprays at herself with a cologne-bottle. 'Ugh! Who could have expected this? That Chagani is mad. I've always said so. He hates the human race. He'll burn us down, yet.'

  'Wilke thought the Bulgarians had arrived.'

  'He's not the only one. We're all on edge, Ricky, dear.'

  After my bath I go to see my other ladies. They usually prefer to be together until mid-afternoon when they like to receive me. This arrangement suits Clara. She has her naps while I am away. Alice and Diana come to embrace me. They could almost be brother and sister. Twins. 'Oh, those guns again,' says Lady Cromach. 'My nerves! Did you hear them?'

  'Nothing to worry about.'

  'Why do men always say that to women and children?' Diana shakes her head and leads me towards the bedroom. 'And you seem so pleased with yourselves when you do it!'

  'Aha. Perhaps we're talking to ourselves.'

  'Perhaps you are, my dear.' Diana kisses me again. 'There is a child in all of us sometimes, who cries and must be comforted.'

  Alice follows behind us. She has her hands together on her stomach. Diana and I stretch ourselves on the bed but Alice continues to stand. 'We've got to leave,' she says. Our Alice is drawing attention to herself. She is looking a little fatter and, as a result, even lovelier than usual. Her skin's lustre reminds me of pink pearls in the deep sea, still enlivened by the movement of the waters. Her hands press against glass. Behind the glass are shutters, nailed with boards on the outside, and only a few bars of yellow light
shed by the houses opposite, enter through the gaps. Within the brothel we live almost entirely by artificial light. There is no more gas. Oil and candles are in short supply. She wears one of Clara's grey silk dressing-gowns and the remains of last night's theatrical make-up - we had turned her into a doll, a Coppelia. 'This is wretched.'

  'There is absolutely nothing we can do, dear.' Diana strokes the linen of my arm. 'Where could we go?' She looks at me.

  'They were shooting at civilians,' I tell Alice. 'It was a riot near the Mirov Palace. Clara and I were almost caught up in it, but it wasn't really dangerous.'

  'What was Clara doing, letting you go out in that?' says Alice. 'Clara is a fool! Clara will get you killed. She looks for danger. She loves to be near death. It's the way she's made. You shouldn't go along with her silly schemes.'

  'We were taking our usual stroll,' I say mildly, looking to Diana for an explanation. Diana gets up and goes into the other room to find her playing cards. Alice has pinched her cheeks together and juts her red lips at me. It is the expression she usually employs when she pretends to know somebody else's secret, or disbelieves a statement, or disapproves of an explanation. 'Don't do that,' I say. 'It makes you look ugly.' I will do almost anything to take that particular expression off her face. If you're frightened, then admit it. But you shouldn't try to turn your fear onto somebody else. Clara doesn't deserve that.' She is for the first time, however, thoroughly unreachable. She will not respond. The realisation gives me a physical shock. 'It isn't fair,' I add. But I am losing her. I can sense it. She needs me to give something which I do not have. I do not even know exactly what it is she wants. I would give it if I could. I hold back. Perhaps it is simply that she has used me up. Anything I say will be contrary to my interests. Alice is cold. 'You have changed,' she says. It is as if a judge has reached a verdict. 'You used to be so gay.' I am condemned and sentenced and still my crime is unknown to me. Diana returns. 'Shall we all go down to dinner tonight? she says. She seems innocent. Has she been speaking about me to Alice? Or against Clara? Nobody could do that unless Alice wanted it.

  'Why not?' I reply. 'We'll have Horsemeat Surprise. Or perhaps tonight it will be Pouf-Pouf stew.' My joke falls flat. Alice cries: 'Oh, my God!' and begins to cry into her hands. Diana comforts her. Somehow I have compounded my crime.

  'I'm very sorry,' I say.

  'It isn't your fault.' Diana is grim. 'You'd better bring Clara here. This is getting out of proportion. At all costs we four must stick together.' Alice looks up. Snails seem to have crawled across her caked face. 'The pair of them are already against us. Can't you see that, Diana?' Lady Cromach puts on her dark dressing gown. 'I'll get Clara. You stay here with Ricky.' As soon as she has left Alice sniffs and stops crying. She glares at me. She goes to her dressing table and begins to wipe the cosmetics from her face. She has become much more skilled with her clothes and her make-up. 'We've got to get away from here, Ricky,' she says. 'We haven't been trying properly. We'll be like those Romans - those people in Pompei - still making love when the volcano went off. Diana and Clara must take their chances. You surely know of some means… ' I am again shocked, both by her disloyalty and her volte-face. Why has she suddenly forgiven me? I am disturbed, yet flattered she should choose me as her conspirator against the others. 'We've got to get to Paris, Ricky.' The traces of tears are nearly gone. She begins to work on her hair, brushing rapidly. She leans into the mirror. 'It would be pointless to take Clara with us. She has no breeding. Well, you can't expect it from a whore, I suppose.'

  I am angry on Clara's behalf, yet to defend her would be to lose my child. Alice has fired her warning shot.

  'What about Diana?' I ask.

  'She's too unimaginative. You and I are the only ones with imagination, Ricky. It is our bond. Remember?' She turns with a lovely little smile. 'Twin souls?'

  I laugh. I recognise her motives and her techniques but I can't resist them. She is my muse, my alter-ego, my creation. 'Let's at least behave decently.' I attempt to save something of my old standards. 'There's no need to condemn either of them just because we're tired of them. Let's just admit we want to get to Paris together.'

  She is almost happy. She blows me a kiss from her reflection. 'All right. That's fair enough. What will you do?'

  'I'll make enquiries. I know someone. There's a chance.'. This is empty reassurance, of course. She must hope. She must pin that hope on me. She has given me an ultimatum. To lose her would be to lose myself.

  'I just want to be on our own again,' she says. 'In Paris. Or Vienna. Wherever you think. But we can't stay here, Ricky. There are too many dangers. Too many awful memories. I want to start afresh. I want to be your wife, as you promised.'

  I am enormously elated as she embraces me; I have had a last-minute reprieve. But there are conditions. We hear Clara and Diana coming back. She whispers: 'Get us away.' And she continues with her toilet. 'She's much better now,' I say. 'It was the shooting and the heat. We're all relaxing again.' I laugh. I look at the two women I intend to deceive. They seem merely pleased emotions have settled. I see no reason to feel guilt. It will simply be Alice and me again. We shall finish where we began. Nobody will have lost. There have been no bargains made. But I am already lost; I refuse to consider what I will receive in place of love; or what I shall win to replace the pain and the beauty of worshipping a woman rather than a child. I shall become a coward. The future threatens me and I refuse to acknowledge it. The moment is all that matters. I might have ended my days with affectionate memories and all I shall actually have will be a litany of petty revenges and self-pity. I will come to deceive all women as wilfully as I now plan to deceive myself. I will exploit their romance as mine was exploited. I know all this but I am compelled to continue. Alice has begun to sing that old familiar parting song; finding faults, compiling lists of supposed slights so that she might justify her next decision. And what she can turn against these two friends she can as easily turn against me. I am in that state of disbelief which can sometimes last for days or weeks before the fact of disaffection is accepted. I look away. When shall I be struck? In Paris? Before or after we are married? I will suffer that particular indignity. I will listen to lies about what we have done and distortions of the facts of our life together. I will not leave. I will not, as I should, let her sing that song alone. But all this knowledge is swamped by the tiniest hope that she will change: that what I see is not the truth.

  Alexandra. You must not leave me. You must not change. From the triumph of eyes freshly-adult she will one day mock my misery. She will refuse the role which it will have suited her to play, which will no longer be useful to her. She will change her ambitions, but not her nature. I shall be hardly peripheral to her consideration when not long ago I should have been central. From a citadel of lace and velvet she will look down on a wretch. Now she flashes me a private smile. They are getting changed. They are chatting amongst themselves. They prepare themselves for the dinner. Then Clara and Diana leave me alone with Alice again. 'I must have your guarantee,' I tell her. 'I must know you will not betray me.' She hugs me. She kisses me warmly. 'How could I betray you, darling Ricky? You are my master!' I hold her to me, not daring to look at her face for fear I will see the deception too clearly. 'It's wrong to do this to Clara and Diana,' I say. She pulls away from me. 'That's stupid. What do we owe them?' I sit on the chair, my shoulders stooped. She offers me something in her gloved hand, palm outstretched as if to a pet. It is a little pill of opium. Wonderingly, I take it. She turns away. 'You know, Ricky, that I have no conception of your ideas of morality sometimes. We see things so differently. I don't plan to do any harm to either Diana or Clara. Do you think that?'

  'No'

  'I love them both. They are wonderful. But you and I have something special. What purpose would be served in blurting everything out? It can only cause trouble - and pain to others.'

  'I should have thought that we owed them -'

  She comes to kneel beside me. 'W
e owe them nothing. That is our freedom.'

  I listen to her as a disciple might listen to a holy man; striving to perceive the wisdom, the new attitude, the truth of what she says.

  'They're not like Poliakoff,' she says. 'They won't hurt us.'

  'We ought to tell them.'

  'What's the point?'

  As I rise to my feet my legs are trembling. I cannot fathom the changes which have taken place in her strange, dreaming, greedy brain. I am as much at a loss for an explanation as if I attempted to analyse the perceptions and nature of a household pet. Like a pet she is able to take on the colour of any master; to be obedient and passive for as long as it suits her, to respond to whatever desires or signals one might display. But now I disguise my desires, for fear of losing her. Have I therefore lost her to someone who offers her clearer signals? To someone who represents what she calls 'freedom'? At dinner I look suspiciously around the table, at the Russians, at Count Stefanik, at Caroline Vacarescu, even at honest Egon Wilke, chewing his food with as much relish as if it were the finest beef. And Alice is merry. Alice is the darling of the company. Everyone dotes on her. 'You cheer us all up, my dear,' says Frau Schmetterling. She has become much more tolerant of late. Will Frau Schmetterling somehow betray me? I am scarcely in control of myself, though I appear to be as relaxed and as good-tempered and as witty as always. And yet, has Clara taken on that peculiar, impressive dignity of an injured woman; that dignity which induces in any reasonably sensitive man a mixture of awe, guilt, respect, and sometimes envious anger? We drink too deeply. In bed together that night we tire easily and fall asleep. A terrible depression has overwhelmed me. The dream is lost. I am desperate to rediscover it. I get up from that tangle of women early and go to Clara's room to sleep. I help myself to her cocaine. I look through her books and her musical scores and I cannot rid myself of the thought that I have resisted as heartily as has Clara the thought that she might love me and I her. This scarcely affects my obsession with Alice. I want it to be as it was. 'In Paris,' I murmur to myself. 'It will come back in Paris.' And then I ask myself: 'What am I?' I am corrupted and I am revelling in my corruption. I am the victim of my imagination, trapped in a terrible fantasy of my own devising. I am still awake when, at dawn, the Holzhammer guns begin to fire on Mirenburg. She trembles. She cries out. The shells blow up the Cafe Schmidt and flesh scatters into the morning air; the statues of St Varoslav and St Ormond fall in a haze of white dust, crashing onto the shattered slabs of masonry below. The Liberty apartments, the baroque and romanesque churches, the domes and the steeples, are falling one by one at first and then in their hundreds. Mirenburg, that city of all cities, is being murdered. She is being murdered. And here is Lady Cromach, startled and anxious, asking if I have seen Alice. Clara is behind her. Have I seen Alice? She cannot have left. But she has taken a coat, a hat. I go out to look for her. The shells are relentless. I can see them going past; I hear their wailing and their thunder. I know her family church, near Nussbaumhof. It is still standing, though most of the other buildings are flattened. I am in time to find her coming down the wide steps, dressed inadequately in a silk tea-gown and a summer cloak. The mysterious vulnerability of her face is emphasised by the stooped set of her shoulders, her nervous eyes, as she recognises me and comes towards me for a few paces before pausing and looking back at others also emerging from the white Gothic arch. 'What were you looking for in there?' I ask. She begins to shiver. I go up to her and put my own coat around her. 'Comfort?' she says. 'Certainty? I don't know.' I try to lead her back to Rosenstrasse but she will not move. 'It's unlike you,' I say. 'What?' she asks. 'To risk so much danger.' She frowns. 'There wasn't any. The guns started later.' I smile, almost in relief. 'I must leave you,' she says. 'I must leave you all. I must be free.' I am sympathetic. 'So you shall be. You can do what you like. But first we must escape Mirenburg. Get to Paris. Come.'