by Vicki Baum
Just as he was steering a roundabout course for the porter’s desk to get the key to his room, the revolving door discharged an extraordinary individual into the entrance hall.
“Heaven help us, here he comes again!” the hall porter said to little Georgi and turned his best N.C.O.’s gaze upon the new arrival. He was certainly not the sort of person you would expect to see in the lobby of the Grand Hotel. He wore a cheap new bowler hat that was too large for him and only prevented by his projecting ears from coming even farther down over his face. His face was yellowish, and he had a thin and timid nose, compensated for by an aggressive mustache. He was clothed in a tight, much-worn and sadly unfashionable overcoat of a gray-green shade, blacked boots that looked too large for his small stature and showed too much of their tops below his too-short black trousers. He wore gray cotton gloves and grasped a suitcase. It was much too heavy for him and he held it against his stomach with both hands. Besides this he had a bulky brown-paper parcel clasped under one arm. His whole appearance was comic and pitiful, and he was clearly in the last stages of exhaustion. Pageboy No. 24 made an attempt to relieve him of his imitation leather suitcase, but the man would not give it up, and his embarrassment seemed to be increased by this officious attention. He did not put his suitcase down till he had reached Herr Senf’s cubicle, and then after pausing to get his breath he made a sort of bow and said in a high-pitched, rather pleasant voice: “My name is Kringelein. I’ve been here twice already. I want to inquire again.”
“Will you please inquire over there; but I don’t think there is a room free,” said the porter and pointed towards Rohna. “The gentleman has been waiting two days for a room here,” he said in explanation over the glass partition. Rohna, who had taken in the whole situation without a glance, made a polite and fleeting pretense of looking through the pages of his register, and then said: “Unfortunately we are full for the moment. Extremely sorry—”
“Still full? I see. Well, where am I to find a room, then?”
“You might look round near the Friedrichstrasse Station. There are a number of hotels there . . .”
“No, no, thanks.” He took a handkerchief and wiped the moisture from his brow. “I went to one of those on arriving. That’s not what I want. I want a really first-class hotel.” He took a damp umbrella from under his left arm and at this the bulky parcel slipped from his right disclosing a few dry and crumbling pieces of bread and butter. Count Rohna suppressed a smile. Georgi turned away and gazed at the keys hanging from the board. Pageboy No. 17 gathered up the dry crumbs with irreproachable composure, and with trembling fingers the man stuffed them into his pocket. He took off his hat and put it down in front of Rohna on the desktop. His forehead was high and wrinkled and his temples pinched and blue. For a moment he squinted with very clear blue eyes from behind pince-nez that looked as though they would slip off his thin nose. “I want a room here. There must be rooms free here sometimes. Will you please reserve me the first one that’s vacant? This is the third time I have come, and you will agree that that is not very pleasant. You can’t always be full up.”
Rohna shrugged with an air of regret. For a moment there was silence. You could hear music coming from the Red Dining Room, as well as the jazz band, now playing in the Yellow Pavilion. A few of the guests had reassembled in the Lobby and some of them looked across at this strange personage with a mixture of amusement and surprise.
“Do you know Herr Generaldirektor Preysing? He always stays here when he comes to Berlin. Well, I want to stay here too. I have something important—an important conference with . . . with Preysing. I was to meet him here as a matter of fact. He particularly recommended me to take a room here. I was to mention his name to you. So now please, when will there be a room vacant?”
“Preysing? Generaldirektor Preysing?” asked Rohna, looking across to Senf.
“From Fredersdorf. Of the Saxonia Cotton Company. I’m from Fredersdorf too,” the man put in.
“Why, yes,” said the porter, consulting his memory, “there is a Mr. Preysing who’s been here once or twice.”
“I believe he has a room booked for tomorrow or the day after,” Georgi whispered officiously.
“Perhaps you would be good enough to look in again tomorrow, when Mr. Preysing is here. He arrives tonight,” said Rohna after he had turned the pages of his register and come upon the reservation of the room.
Surprisingly this news seemed to fill the man with some consternation.
“Arrives today?” he exclaimed as though in alarm, and his voice grew a little shriller. “Good. Then he comes tonight. Good. And there’s a room for him. Then there are rooms to be had. Yes, and why should Herr Generaldirektor have a room and not I? What does that mean? I shall not put up with it! What’s that? Reserved in advance you say? Well, so did I. This is the third time I have been here. The third time, if you please, I have lugged this heavy suitcase along here. It’s raining. Every bus is overcrowded. I am not in good health, I may say. And how many more times am I to make this journey? What’s that? That’s no way to talk. Is this the best hotel in Berlin? Yes? Well then I want to stay in the best hotel in Berlin. Is it forbidden?” he looked from one to the other. “I’m tired,” he added. “I’m tired out.” His fatigue was obvious, and so was his ridiculous effort to express himself in correct style.
Suddenly Doctor Otternschlag intervened in the discussion. He had been standing nearby all this time, with the key of his room in his hand, resting his sharp elbows on the ledge of the porter’s desk.
“The gentleman can have my room if it’s a matter of such importance,” said Otternschlag. “It is utterly indifferent to me where I stay. Send his things up. I can move out. My boxes are packed. They’re always packed. Do as I say, please. You can see the man’s worn out and ill,” he added, to forestall an objection that Count Rohna was about to raise with the eloquently gesticulating hands of a conductor.
“But, Doctor,” said Rohna quickly, “there can be no question of your giving up your room. Let me have another look. Let me see— If the gentleman will be so good as to enter his name. Thank you— No. 216, then,” he said to the hall porter.
The hall porter gave pageboy No. 11 the key to Room 216. The newcomer took the pen handed to him and in a curiously flowing handwriting wrote his name in the visitors’ book.
“Otto Kringelein, Bookkeeper. Fredersdorf, Saxony, born in Fredersdorf, 14-7-1882.”
“There we are then,” he said with a sigh of relief as he turned and peered out into the Lobby.
•
So there he stood in the Lobby of the Grand Hotel—Otto Kringelein, bookkeeper, born in Fredersdorf and residing in Fredersdorf. He stood there in his old overcoat, and through the lenses of his pince-nez eagerly devoured it all. He was as exhausted as the winner of a race when he breasts the tape, but he saw the marble pillars with stucco ornament, the illuminated fountain, the easy chairs. He saw men in dress coats and dinner jackets, smart cosmopolitan men. Women with bare arms, in wonderful clothes, with jewelry and furs, beautiful, well-dressed women. He heard music in the distance. He smelled coffee, cigarettes, perfume, whiffs of asparagus from the dining room and the flowers that were displayed for sale on the flower-stall. He felt the thick red carpet beneath his black leather boots, and this perhaps impressed him most of all. Kringelein slid the sole of his boot gingerly over its pile and blinked. The Lobby was brilliantly illuminated and the light was delightfully golden; also there were bright red-shaded lights against the walls and the jets of the fountain in the Venetian basin shone green. A waiter flitted by carrying a silver tray on which were wide shallow glasses with a little dark-gold cognac in each, and ice was floating in the cognac; but why, in Berlin’s best hotel, were the glasses not filled to the brim?
The porter carrying the wretched suitcase woke Kringelein from his trance. Pageboy No. 11 conducted him to the morose one-armed man who worked the elevator, and he was conveyed upwards.
Rooms No. 216 and No. 218 were
the worst in the hotel. Doctor Otternschlag occupied Room No. 218 partly because he was staying en pension, partly because his means were moderate, chiefly, however, because he was too apathetic to demand better. Room No. 216 was at right angles to it, and the two rooms were wedged in between the service elevator by the back stairs and the bathroom of the third floor. The waterpipes sucked and bubbled in the wall. Kringelein, after being led past groups of potted palms, bronze chandeliers, and pictures of dead game into ever drearier recesses of the hotel, slowly and dejectedly entered the room that an old and ugly chambermaid unlocked. “No. 216,” said the pageboy as he set the suitcase down and waited for a tip. Receiving none, he abandoned the speechless Kringelein. Kringelein sat on the edge of the bed and surveyed the room.
The room was long and narrow. It had one window. It smelt of stale cigar smoke and damp cupboards. The carpet was thin and worn. The furniture—Kringelein ran his fingers over it—was just polished nut-wood. There was furniture like that in Fredersdorf. A portrait of Bismarck hung over the bed. He had nothing against Bismarck, but he too was on the walls at home. He had expected other pictures over the beds in the Grand Hotel—gay, luxurious, something out of the ordinary, something cheerful. He went to the window and looked out. There was a blaze of light below, for the glass roof of the Winter Garden spanned the courtyard. Opposite, a blank wall shut off the sky. A lukewarm and distressing smell of cooking streamed upward. Kringelein felt a sudden nausea and supported himself with both hands on the washstand. The fact is, I’m not quite well, he thought sadly.
He sat down again on the faded bedspread and his sense of oppression increased with every moment. I shall not stay here, he thought. No, I shall not stay here in any case. This is not what I came for. It would not be worthwhile doing all I’ve done just for this. This is no way to begin. I would be wasting my time in a room like this. They are deceiving me. They have plenty of better rooms than this in their hotel. Preysing does not have a room like this. Preysing would not stand for it. He would make a row and they’d soon sit up. Fancy giving Preysing a room like this. No, I shall not stay here. Kringelein broke off his reflections and collected himself. He waited a few minutes. Then he rang for the chambermaid and made a row.
When it is considered that this was the first time in his life he had ever made a row, it must be admitted that he did not do so badly. The white-aproned chambermaid, in alarm, brought on to the scene a superior with no apron. The floor valet stood by in the distance and a room-service waiter, balancing a tray of cold food on the palm of his hand, listened at the door. Rohna was consulted by telephone and requested Herr Kringelein come to the office. A director, one of the four directors, had to be summoned. Kringelein, obstinate now that he had run amok, insisted that he required a superior and a beautiful and expensive room, at the very least a room like Preysing’s. He seemed to think the name of Preysing was a name to conjure with. He had not yet taken off his overcoat. His trembling hands clutched the old crumbling Fredersdorf sandwiches while he blinked his eyes and demanded an expensive room. He was exhausted and ill and ready to cry. For some weeks past he had begun to cry very easily for physical reasons connected with his health. Suddenly, just as he was about to give in, he won the day. He was given Room No. 70, a first-floor suite with sitting room and bath, fifty marks a day. “Good,” he said, “with a bathroom? Does that mean that I can have a bath whenever I like?” Count Rohna without a tremor said that that was so. Kringelein moved in for the second time.
Room No. 70 was the right thing. It had mahogany furniture, a dressing mirror, silk upholstery, a carved desk, lace curtains, and a picture of pheasants on the wall. Also a silk down quilt on the bed. Kringelein incredulously felt its lightness, its smoothness and its warmth three times in succession. On the desk stood a most superior bronze inkstand in the form of an eagle whose jagged outstretched wings sheltered two empty inkpots.
Outside the window there was a chill March rain, a smell of gasoline, and the sound of automobile traffic. Opposite, an electric sign in red, blue and white letters occupied the whole building façade. As soon as it had run along to the end it began again at the beginning. Kringelein watched it for six minutes. Down below in the street there was a medley of black umbrellas, light-colored stockings, yellow buses and street lamps. There was even a tree that spread its branches not far from the hotel, but its branches were very different from those in Fredersdorf. This Berlin tree occupied a little island of soil in the midst of the asphalt and around the plot of soil there was a railing as though it needed some protection against the city. Kringelein, surrounded by so much that was strange and overwhelming, found something friendly in this tree. Next he stood for a while in perplexity over the unfamiliar mechanism of the nickel bath taps, but suddenly they began to work and warm water shot out over his hands. He got undressed. He found it rather disconcerting to bare his delicate wasted body in the full light of the bright, tiled room. But finally he lay for over a quarter of an hour in the water and felt no more pain. The pains that had pursued him for weeks past had suddenly left him; and he certainly wanted no more of them during the time that lay ahead . . .
At about ten o’clock in the evening Kringelein was strolling around the Lobby, resplendent in a black jacket, tall stiff collar and a ready-made black tie. He was not at all tired now. On the contrary he was possessed by a feverish excitement and impatience. Now it’s beginning, he kept thinking to himself, while his slender shoulders twitched like those of a restless dog. He bought a flower and stuck it in his buttonhole, slid his feet blissfully over the raspberry-red carpet and complained to the porter that there was no ink in his room. A pageboy conducted him to the writing room. Kringelein was no sooner confronted by the rows of vacant desks, discreetly lighted by green-shaded electric lamps, than his confident bearing deserted him. He took his hands from his trouser pockets and looked rather forlorn. From force of habit he pushed his white cuffs up into the sleeves of his jacket before he sat down and began to write in the flowing copperplate handwriting of a bookkeeper.
To the Management of the Saxonia Cotton Company, Fredersdorf.
Sirs,
The undersigned begs leave to say that in conformity with the enclosed medical certificate (enclosure A) he is unfit for duty for the ensuing four weeks. The undersigned requests that his salary for March due on the last of the month shall in conformity with his written authority (enclosure B) be paid to Frau Anna Kringelein, 4 Station Road. Should it be impossible for the undersigned to return to duty at the end of four weeks, a further communication will follow.
Your obedient and respectful servant, Otto Kringelein
To Frau Anna Kringelein, 4 Station Road, Fredersdorf, Saxony, Kringelein wrote next, and he wrote the A with a large and rounded flourish.
Dear Anna,
I have to tell you that Professor Salzmann’s examination did not have a favorable outcome. I am to go direct from here to a sanatorium, costs to be borne by the sick fund, for which there are a few formalities still to be seen to. For the moment, am putting up very reasonably here at the recommendation of General Manager Preysing. Sending further news in the course of a day or two, as I must be X-rayed again before anything definite can be said.
Yours, Otto
Mr. Kampmann, Solicitor, Villa Rosenheim, Mauerstrasse, Fredersdorf, Saxony.
My Dear Friend, (Kringelein wrote in his third letter.) You will be surprised to receive a lengthy letter from Berlin, but I have important developments to communicate and count on you to understand and to maintain a professional silence. It is not easy, unfortunately, for me to express myself in writing. However, I hope that your superior education and knowledge of the world will enable you to put the right construction on my letter. As you know I have not been myself since my operation last summer and have no great confidence in our hospital and doctor. Hence I have availed myself of the inheritance from my father to come here so as to be examined and find out what is wrong. Unfortunately, my dear friend, there is somethi
ng seriously wrong, and, in the specialist’s opinion, I have not long to live—
Kringelein paused after this for perhaps a minute with his pen in the air. He forgot to put a full stop at the end of the sentence. His mustache, that absurdly large mustache, trembled slightly, but he bravely resumed.
Naturally such a piece of news as that makes one think, and I have not slept for several nights, but only kept thinking things over. The result is that I have come to the conclusion not to return to Fredersdorf, but to enjoy life a little during the few weeks I have left to live. It is not very nice to go to one’s grave at forty-six without having lived at all and only to have been harassed and starved and bullied by Mr. P. at the firm and by the wife at home. It seems all wrong that this should be the end of it all when one has never had a single real pleasure. Unfortunately, dear friend, I cannot express myself properly. So I can only add that the will I made in the summer before my operation remains in force though the conditions have now altered. I have, for example, had all my savings transferred here from the bank, also I have borrowed a considerable sum on my life-insurance policy, also I have brought the legacy from my father of 3,500 marks with me in cash. In this way I can live for a few weeks as a rich man and such is my intention. Why should only the Preysings get anything out of life while fools like us do nothing but pinch and save? In all, I have taken 8,540 marks. Anna can have what is left over, and in my opinion I don’t owe her any more. She has given me a wretched life of it with that tongue of hers and no child either. I will keep you apprised of how I go on, but I must request your professional secrecy. Berlin is a fine town and greatly increased in size, when one has not been here for years. I think of a trip to Paris, too, as I know French pretty well from business correspondence. As you see I am keeping the flag flying and feel better than for a long time past.