by Vicki Baum
He did this with indifference at first, and almost with distaste, for he thoroughly disliked this frivolous manner of passing the time. He preferred sound and substantial reading matter. But after a while he smiled all the same at this joke or that, emitting, as he did so, short puffs through his nose. Once, too, he turned the pages back to look more closely at a woman in a low-cut dress, and it was then that he turned to a page that remained open during the entire time he sat in the barber’s chair. Yes, he became so deeply absorbed in the contemplation of this photograph in a magazine, that it quite upset him when the senior assistant returned from his meal and got ready to shave him.
But the photograph that had so captivated him was nothing unusual. Photographs of this sort were to be found by the hundreds in the magazines Preysing didn’t normally go in for. The picture was of a naked girl standing on her toes, trying to look over a screen that was much taller than she was. Her arms were raised and, in this attitude, her extremely pretty breasts were shown in a particularly enticing way. The muscles of her long and slender back were also visible. Her waist was incredibly slender and her hips starting at this narrow waist, widened and swept in two long soft curves to her thighs. Here the body was turned slightly to the front, so that you could just barely get an inkling of the shadowy indented triangle between her legs, and her thighs and knees as she stood straining upwards seemed to express an eager curiosity. This exceptionally well-favored and charming girl also had a face, and—what was so enormously provocative about this picture was that the general manager knew this face. It was Flämmchen’s short-nosed, gay and innocent kitten face, and the smile, too, was the trusting smile of Flamm the Second. It was her lock of hair on which the clever photographer had put an extra little highlight and, above all, it was her complete spontaneity and her matter-of-fact unconcern, as she displayed her body, stark naked before all the world, the body that—as Preysing now remembered—she had accurately and modestly described as “good.” Preysing went red as he held this picture before his eyes; a sudden hot flush sprang to his forehead and clouded his mind, as sometimes happened when he had those fits of rage that made the whole factory tremble. Then every single vein in his body began to throb. He felt it; he felt his blood surge; he had not felt this for many years.
Preysing was fifty-four. Not an old man, but a man who had gone numb, the undemanding husband of a Mulle who had gone to seed, the benign Pops of grown-up daughters. He had walked unmoved behind Flamm the Second along the hotel corridor and the soft tingling in his blood that he may have felt had subsided again of itself. Now as he sat and gazed at this nude photograph, it rose up again and took his breath away. “If you please—” said the barber, and, with a graceful flourish, he set the razor to Preysing’s cheek. Preysing kept hold of the magazine, lay back, and closed his eyes. At first there was only red; then he saw Flämmchen. Not Flämmchen in her clothes at the typewriter and not the unclothed Flämmchen of the in black-and-white photograph, but a violently exciting combination of both. A Flämmchen of golden brown flesh and red pulsing blood, naked, however, and on tiptoe, looking inquisitively over a screen.
General Manager Preysing was not used to his imagination actively working. Now, however, it was at work. It had been in gear ever since he laid the telegram on the table that morning and gone on to lie, without shame and without discrimination. And it was now running away with him at full tilt, and in a way that was at once alarming and intoxicating. While the razor glided over his face with the lightness of a practiced hand, Preysing experienced unheard-of things with the naked Flämmchen and with himself too, things he would never have thought himself capable of.
“Shall I trim the mustache?” asked the barber.
“No,” said Preysing in a flurry. “Whatever for?”
“The ends are a little gray. That makes you look older. If I may advise—the gentleman would look ten years younger without a mustache,” the barber whispered to the mirror with that flattering smile common to all barbers.
But I can’t go back to Mulle without a mustache, looking like a fool, thought Preysing as he looked at himself in the glass. True, his mustache was gray, and there was always perspiration beneath it on his upper lip. Oh, never mind Mulle! he thought. That settled it. His marriage vow was already broken.
“Yes, take it off. A mustache like that can always be grown again.”
“Certainly, with no trouble at all,” the barber agreed, and he made fresh lather for the great undertaking. Preysing held up the photograph again—but now it satisfied him no longer. He was done with looking. He wanted to grasp and feel. He wanted to feel Flämmchen burning . . .
In the hotel, the absence of the mustache was spotted at once, but it was ignored. They were well accustomed enough, heaven knows, to the strangest transformations in people from the provinces after a brief stay in the big hotel. Preysing, breathing hard, made a hasty inquiry for letters. One from Mulle was thrust into his hand. He put it, unread and without any affection, into his pocket and went straight across to the telephone booths. I must ring up Mulle, he thought. But I can always do that later. He went into the local-calls booth, and, ringing up the office of Counselor Zinnowitz, had a brief conversation with Flamm the First.
He asked whether her sister happened to be at the office.
No, she had left.
Where could she be found?
Flamm the First, after a moment’s pause, said that perhaps she had got delayed. But she would certainly be at the hotel any moment now.
Preysing gaped like a fool at the telephone. At the hotel? Here? In the Grand Hotel? How was that?
“Yes,” said Flamm the First, discreetly choosing her words. So, at least, she had understood. Flämmchen was going to the hotel, and, as far as she knew, it was to take down some letters. But possibly, it may have been an engagement of another kind. You could never be sure with Flämmchen. She had her ways and they were by no means the ways of Flamm the First, she implied. But she certainly was punctual; when she undertook anything, she went through with it, and she would certainly be going to the hotel.
Preysing thanked her and rang off in confusion. He dashed back with a harassed air, straight across the Lobby to the porter’s desk. The beat of the music could be heard clearly from the Yellow Pavilion.
“Has my secretary inquired for me?” he asked Herr Senf. The hall porter looked up at him. His care-worn face showed that he was at a loss.
“Who please?”
“My secretary. The young lady to whom I was dictating letters yesterday,” Preysing said irritably.
Little Georgi intervened.
“She did not inquire for you, but she was in the Lobby not ten minutes ago. The slim, blonde lady, you mean? I believe she is in the Tearoom now—in the Yellow Pavilion straight through the Lobby, second turn behind the elevator, please—you will hear the music.”
Can it possibly be any business of a general manager in a gray worsted suit, to be following the peppery strains of a jazz band, along unfamiliar corridors in search of a frivolous young typist who is actually none of his business? But Preysing did it. He was in the midst of a derailment and the ensuing crash. But he didn’t know it. He only knew that his blood was circulating as it had not done for fifteen or twenty years, and that he must at any price keep hold of this sensation and follow it through to the end. His mustache was gone. He was not going to telephone Mulle; and, as he opened the door into the Yellow Pavilion and stepped into its unfamiliar atmosphere, he had almost forgotten Chemnitz and Manchester as well, with all the effort they had cost him and the complications that still had to be cleared up.
At this hour, twenty minutes past five, the Yellow Pavilion is crowded with people, day after day. The yellow silk curtains are drawn. Yellow lights line the walls, and on every one of the small tables there is a lamp with a yellow shade. It is hot. Two electric fans are whirring. The air is a buzz of voices. People sit elbow to elbow, for the small tables have been crowded together in order to leave the m
iddle of the room free for dancing. The vaulted ceiling is painted with indistinct dancing figures in lilac and gray; sometimes when everything is in motion, it looks like a false mirror above the dancing crowd below. All that goes on here has a remarkably angular and jerky appearance. The dancers do not circle round, but zigzag to and fro, and Preysing who had come here on the tide of his tumultuous blood in search of a particular person finds himself at a loss. He saw no one at full length for everyone was always cutting across everyone else, so that only a head or an arm or a leg was visible at one time—as in a certain style of modern painting which Preysing detested for its perversity. But the chief and most remarkable feature of the Yellow Pavilion was the music. It was produced with incredible gusto by seven gentlemen in white shirts and short pants, the famous Eastman Jazz Band. It had a frantic vivacity. It drummed under the soles of the feet and tickled the hip muscles. There were two saxophones that could weep, and two others that derisively mocked their tears. The music sawed, snapped, stood on its head, laid eggs of melody, cackled and proudly jumped on them—and whoever got within range of this music fell into the zigzag rhythm of the room as if bewitched. Preysing, in any case, who—pushed to and fro by waiters with trays of ices—remained standing by the door, observed a certain springiness in his knee joints while at the same time he kept an impatient lookout for Flamm the Second. His shorn and rejuvenated upper lip was again beaded with perspiration. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his face, and then put it back in his outside breast pocket, usually reserved exclusively for his fountain pen. He even, with an embarrassed glance to the side, pulled up a corner of it to make a neat little white triangle in the approved style, as though he thereby established his right to be present in these gay regions of the Grand Hotel. In any case, no one bothered about him. He was at liberty to stand there as long as he liked, while he searched for one slender young girl in particular among the two hundred other slender young girls.
“When you weren’t here at ten minutes past five, I thought, He’s stood me up. You’ll see he’s going to stand you up, I thought to myself,” said Flämmchen, who was dancing with Gaigern an indolent variation of the Charleston, something new, with a syncopating jerk of the knees, in which their two bodies moved like one.
“Out of the question. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you all day,” said Gaigern. He said it as lightly, indolently, and casually as he danced. He was only an inch or so taller than Flämmchen and he looked down into her kittenish eyes with a polite smile. She was wearing a thin blue silk dress, a cheap necklace of cut glass and a neat little close-fitting hat bought at a sale for one mark ninety. She looked enchanting in this finery, a girl with her own way to make in the world.
“Is it true that you were looking forward to this?” she asked.
“Half truth, half fib,” answered Gaigern candidly. “I’ve had a frightfully boring day,” he added with a sigh. “I’ve been taking an old fellow around. Enough to make you weep.”
“Why do you do it, then?”
“I want something from him.”
“Oh, I see,” said Flämmchen, quickly understanding.
“You have to dance with him later on,” said Gaigern, drawing her a little closer.
“I don’t have to do anything.”
“No. But I’m going to beg you to as nicely as I know how. He can’t dance, you know, but he wants to so much. Just walk him about a bit along the wall—to please me.”
“Well—I’ll see,” Flämmchen agreed.
They went on dancing in silence. A moment later he drew her body a little closer to his own. He felt her back yield to his hand. But instead of being pleased, he was vexed.
“Well. What’s the matter?” asked Flämmchen, who was quick to notice.
“Oh, nothing,” answered Gaigern, who was annoyed now with himself.
“What do you want then?” Flämmchen asked, only eager to please. He was so handsome with that mouth of his and with the scar above his chin and his slightly slanted eyes. She was a little in love with him.
“I want to do something a little crazy. That’s all. I want to bite you or scrimmage with you or crush you—well, I am going to see a boxing match tonight. There, at least, there’ll be something happening.”
“I see,” said Flämmchen. “You’re going to a boxing match this evening. I see.”
“With the old fellow,” said Gaigern.
“If you—Oh, that’s the end,” said Flämmchen, for the music had stopped, and she began at once to clap loudly and without stirring from the spot. Gaigern tried to get her away from the middle of the room to the table where he had left Kringelein with a cup of coffee. But the music began again as they were only halfway through the crowd. “Tango,” Flämmchen cried in an ecstasy and simply took possession of him. The way she extended her hands and put them on his both beseeched and implied consent. Without a pause they fell into the slow languid tango steps, and people made room for them on all sides when they saw how beautifully they danced. “You dance very well,” Flämmchen whispered. It was almost a declaration of love. Gaigern had nothing to say in reply.
“You were quite different yesterday,” Flämmchen said a little later.
“Yes—yesterday . . . ,” Gaigern answered. It sounded like: “a hundred years ago.” “Something has happened to me between yesterday and today,” he added. He could talk to Flämmchen easily and spontaneously; they understood each other, and suddenly he obeyed his impulse to tell her all about it.
“I fell in love last night, really and seriously, I mean,” he said in a low voice in the midst of the tango as it sobbed and sawed and sang, filling the whole room. “That makes everything different. It goes through and through you. It is like—”
“But there is nothing extraordinary in that,” said Flämmchen mockingly to conceal a stab of disappointment.
“Yes, yes, it is something extraordinary. You want to get out of your skin and become another person, you see. You find suddenly that there’s only one woman in the world and everything else is nothing. You think you can never sleep again except with this woman. You’re carried off in a whirlwind—as though you had been rammed down into a big cannon and shot off up to the moon or somewhere where nothing is the same.”
“What does she look like?” asked Flämmchen, and every other woman in the world would have asked the same question.
“Ah—what does she look like? That’s just it. She is very old, and so thin and so light that I could lift her up with one finger. She has wrinkles—here and there, and eyes tired with weeping, and she talks in a jargon like a clown till you have to laugh and weep—and this is so utterly delightful that I cannot resist her. It is simply true love.”
“True love? There’s no such a thing,” said Flämmchen. Her face stared at him with that astonished and capricious kittenish expression that you sometimes see in pansies.
“Yes, yes, there is such a thing,” said Gaigern. This impressed Flämmchen so much that for a second she stood still in the middle of the tango, looking at Gaigern and shaking her head. “How he talks—” she muttered.
This, however, was the moment when Preysing’s eyes at last picked her out in the erotically languorous maze of tango dancers. With reproachful and keen impatience he waited till the long dance came to an end, and then he proceeded to fight his way to the table where Flämmchen had taken a seat between two men, both of whom Preysing already knew by sight. These unacknowledged acquaintanceships are always happening in hotel life. You brush against someone in the elevator; you meet again in the dining room, in the cloakroom, and in the bar; or you go in front of him or behind him through the revolving door—the door that never stops shoveling people in and shoveling them out.
“Good evening, Fräulein Flamm,” said the general manager in his dry voice which embarrassment made even less amiable; and then he planted himself beside her chair and bent his back to let the waiters get past. Flamm the Second squinted in an effort to register Preysing’s unexpected app
earance.
“Oh—Herr Direktor,” she said amiably. “Are you dancing too?”
She gazed from one to the other of the three taut faces. She was used to this expression in the men around her. “Do you know each other?” she asked with an elegant wave of the hand that she had picked up from a film star. She could not proceed to introductions for she did not know her cavaliers’ names. Preysing and Gaigern muttered something, and Preysing rested one hand on the table with the air of taking possession, just as a tray of orangeade swept dangerously past his head.
“Good afternoon, Herr Preysing,” said Kringelein, suddenly, without stirring from his seat. Each single one of his vertebrae ached from the fearful exertion it cost him not to tremble and collapse into the pitiful Kringelein of the accounting office. He held his shoulders rigid, his lips and teeth too, and even his nostrils, and these in consequence dilated with a malicious and equine expression. But he sustained himself on the height of this great moment; his willpower tapped undreamt sources of strength in his well-cut black jacket, his linen, his tie and his manicured fingernails. What surely came very close to throwing him off balance was the fact that Preysing too was different. He still wore his well-known Fredersdorf suit, but he no longer had a mustache.
“I am not sure—pardon me—have we met before?” Preysing asked as politely as his intense preoccupation with Flämmchen allowed.
“To be sure. I’m Kringelein,” said Kringelein. “I work in the firm.”
“I see,” said Preysing more coolly. “Kringelein, Kringelein. One of our representatives, are you?” he added with a glance at Kringelein’s smart attire.