The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars

by Maurice DeKobra

  Lady Diana looked up; she put some more rouge on her lips, gazed at me sideways through her long lashes, tucked her golden hair under her little gilded hat, and said:

  “Gerard, would you believe me if I told you that the one way to make me carry on was to tell me about that woman?”

  “I quite believe you. You love adventure.”

  “You know I’m not afraid of your Irina.”

  “Pardon me. She is not my Irina. The fact of the matter is that Varichkine belongs to her.”

  “So much the better.”

  “So you intend to step on her toes? May the Virgin of Moscow protect you!”

  “Now, Gerard, just one minute. You have overlooked the pure principles of Communism, which should be so dear to Madam Mouravieff. Everything is everybody’s; nothing is anybody’s. Individual ownership no longer exists. If that is the case, why can’t we share Mr. Varichkine?”

  “Alas, my poor darling, women will never nationalize their lovers.”

  Lady Diana, seated on the edge of my bed, was leaning over to look at herself in the mirror on the dressing-table across the room. She took off her leather hat, threw it at the sofa, shook her head defiantly and suddenly interrupted herself to ask:

  “What’s that thing under your bed? Down there—near the left foot?”

  I then discovered for the first time an object which I was thoroughly annoyed to find. It was a tiny black box mounted on a little platform and connected with wires hidden beneath the rug.

  “So, that is it,” I muttered. “Someone seems to be interested in our conversation.”

  I motioned to Lady Diana to speak in a low voice. She drew close to me and looked at the object with real curiosity.

  “That’s a microphone,” I told her.

  I got out of bed, took a handkerchief and shoved it into the little black receiver.

  “Now, my dear, we don’t need to whisper. They can’t hear us any more.”

  I examined the rug and discovered wires, almost as small as human veins, winding in zigzag fashion toward the door which communicated with the room on the left.

  “It is plain enough that we have a neighbor who enjoys our conversation. Interesting, isn’t it?”

  “Why don’t you cut the wires?”

  “No, there is no use in showing that we know.”

  “But who can have installed the instrument in your apartment?”

  “Undoubtedly one of the employees, bribed by the inquisitive party.”

  Lady Diana evidenced no alarm. She put her arm affectionately around my neck and said joyfully:

  “Gerard, this is fun. Like all women, I love mystery and I despise easy victories. Madam Mouravieff’s letter and that little machine are the spices which make this Muscovite zakouska so tasty. Tell Mr. Varichkine that I invite him to dinner tomorrow evening in my private salon, with you. And now I’m going to have Juliette unpack my trunk while I enjoy a much needed hot bath. Then I am going to send for the hairdresser. To wave is to onduliren, isn’t it? And a tip? Trinkgeld? All right. At noon you can get a motor and we’ll go to lunch at Peacock Island near Grünewald, and this evening I count on you to arrange a little debauch for me at Charlottenburg, in the night cafés. I want twenty-four hours’ vacation before considering serious matters.”

  “My dear Varichkine,” I said, as I entered the delegate’s office, “I have come this morning to tell you something which will in no way displease you.”

  Varichkine offered me a cigarette and contracted his eyes with an understanding air.

  “I know. She is here. Apartment 44 at the Adlon. It connects with your apartment. She wore a light brown suit and a gilded leather hat.”

  “Did you see her?”

  “No, but she was seen. We are the best informed people in Europe.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “You don’t seem astonished at the exact details I possess.”

  “No, old chap, but a bit of advice to you. When you have microphones secretly installed in the rooms of your friends, see to it that they are more carefully concealed.”

  Varichkine’s evident astonishment disconcerted me. He leaned across the desk, looked at me incredulously, and repeated, “A microphone?”

  And as I confirmed my discovery, he stroked his beard, thought deeply and murmured, “That’s annoying—”

  “Then your men were not the ones who were listening in?”

  “No, and there’s only one person who can possibly be interested in your conversation—Irina. I’m glad you told me this, old fellow. Madam Mouravieff must have smelled a rat, as they say in England. I’ll have to be careful from now on. Thanks for the warning. But what did your dear Lady Wynham say?”

  “She instructed me to invite you to dine with her tomorrow evening. Just we three.”

  “I accept with great pleasure. Where are we dining?”

  “At the hotel, in her private salon. She thought that would be the most discreet meeting-place and that it would suit you better.”

  Varichkine reflected. “Yes. I’ll take precautions. By the way, I have telegraphed Moscow and I think the business can be satisfactorily arranged.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  The delegate indulged in a faun-like smile. “The solution of the problem now lies in the hands of Lady Diana.”

  Lady Diana and I dined at the Restaurant Sans-Souci on the Kurfurstendamm, the Champs-Elysées of Berlin W. On our left was a dessert-table dressed with green and rose pastries, festooned with pale cream under mocha pralines. On our right, two Saxons were enjoying some salads made of herrings from the Baltic, followed by some rare roast beef. Behind us, two curly-headed, thick-lipped men were chewing wooden toothpicks which they concealed successfully in cupped hands.

  The maitre d’hotel was offering Lady Diana the Harlequin-like platter, covered with Delikatessen. I was suggesting some appetizing little rolls of paté de foie gras and an anchovy paste when she asked me a psychological question.

  “In your opinion, Gerard, is it more disgusting for a refined man to make love to a vulgar woman than it is shameful for a beautiful lady to submit to the caresses of a brute?”

  “Why do you ask me that?”

  “Because I’m thinking about Varichkine and his terms.”

  “I don’t know that you are going to find him repulsive. This Soviet delegate is neither a brute nor an angel. He resembles most human beings whose souls are leopard skins, spotted with unconfessed vices and excusable weaknesses. If he has contracted a slight propensity for sadism through his intimacy with the Tchekists he has, nevertheless, conserved certain normal and occidental habits of civility.”

  “He is capable of pleasing a woman like me?”

  “Yes. You know the Caracalla of the Vatican Museum, with his short beard and his self-satisfied expression? Accentuate the Asiatic type of the son of Septimus Severus and you will have Mr. Varichkine, proconsul of the Soviet Empire in Germany; an almost perfect gentleman, engaged in driving the Aristocracy out of Russia, but respecting it anywhere outside the land of Michael Strogoff; an iron man when at work and a philanthropist when at play; finally Mr. Varichkine, who was generous enough to think of inviting the Peoples’ Commissars to embalm a Russian bourgeois and to preserve this rara avis in the ethnographic museum of Moscow, before the face should have entirely disappeared.”

  “And all this man asks of me is one night of love?”

  “Yes.”

  Lady Diana imbibed the liquid gold of her Liebfraumilch, and said smilingly, “That’s either too much or too little. Your Slav evidently lacks savoir faire in such matters.”

  After dinner I took her, to kill time, to the Theatre des Westens where the arias of a Viennese operetta recalled to us the sentimental Sundays of the Maedel with their braided golden hair. Coming out of the theater, Lady Diana hummed, into her brocaded cloak, the latest strains of Franz Lehar and said, as we got into the motor:

  “Dear, take me to see something a bit spicy this eveni
ng. After all these sweet things I want to taste the green pimento of a clandestine saturnalia.”

  “All right, then I won’t take you either to the Palais de Danse or the Fox Trot Club. I have a better idea.”

  I gave the address to the chauffeur, who, regardless of the frenzied signals of the Schupo on duty, set off at full speed. We crossed the Kurfurstendamm, that sacred passageway which leads to the Venusberg of forbidden delights, and we came to a stop at the corner of the Fasanenstrasse.

  A villa at the back of a garden. A wooded path. Air heavy with chypre. The human plaint of a saxophone pierced the closed shutters.

  “This is a rather exclusive Tanzlokal where nice people come to enjoy bizarre dances,” I told Lady Diana, who was much intrigued.

  A doorman, weighted down with a chestful of medals, took our coats. The mistress of the house, adipose and smiling, welcomed us. A bloated visage, heavily rouged. Saffron bobbed hair. A pear-shaped ruby, resting on an ample bosom. I presented her to Lady Diana:

  “Frau Sonnenfeld, better known as Baronne Hilda—hostess of Berlin’s noctambulists and cutter of thrills into four pieces—”

  “Ach, Milady, wie reizend!” said Baronne Hilda. “Delighted to receive you. We are in high circles here. Extra chic. The ladies of the most exclusive society of Berlin W. frequent my salons. Unrestricted liberty if one behaves politely. I say that because there was a frightful scandal the other evening. Just imagine that a friend of mine brought in a Hungarian, an authentic count. Ja! Ja! I am even told he was aide-de-camp to Admiral Horty. But at all events, a perfect gentleman, you understand. Well, do you know what he did at two o’clock in the morning? Everybody was a little gay, of course, and he discovered a young lady who was sleeping on a sofa with a brandy bottle in her arms—real Franzosischer Kognac—the very best. He pulled a pair of barbers’ scissors from his pocket and clipped the sleeping lady’s hair!”

  She gurgled. “Ja! ja! And when the young lady’s lover discovered the atrocity which the Magyar had committed on the pilatory system of his well-beloved, he jumped on the guilty person, broke a jug of Kümmel over his head and knocked him out of the window with kicks and punches. What a business! But do you care to select your kimonos in the dressing-room?”

  The fete was at its height. Men and women, loosely clothed in many-colored peignoirs, were amusing themselves on sofas as deep as the coral reefs of the Polynesian Archipelago. Suddenly the lights went out. The dancers sank back on cushions strewn here and there.

  Baronne Hilda announced, “Ladies and gentlemen. You are about to see the marvel of the century, Lolita the dancer, ex-mistress of Prince Barouchkine, who was assassinated by the Communists in nineteen-eighteen.”

  A silence ensued. The last yellow bulbs faded away to nothing. Then, in almost complete obscurity, a phosphorescent woman appeared. Lolita had covered her entire body with a phosphorescent paste which enabled her to whirl in the darkness like a luminous shadow. She danced.

  Lady Diana whispered in my ear, “One could read a paper by the light of her body.”

  A little German girl put her arms around my companion and shivered. “How beautiful she is! She makes me think of a statue in the Tiergarten in the shade of which I surrendered myself on Armistice night.”

  Lolita disappeared. A blaze of light! The jazz recommenced. The kimonos rustled. Baronne Hilda rejoined us. Lady Diana contemplated our hostess through her diamond-studded lorgnette. I was about to speak. But the bell rang. There was some whispering behind the heavy curtains. I realized that Baronne Hilda’s time was valuable and that we must not interfere with other of her guests who were already impatient for doubtful pleasures. I gave a hundred Rentenmark to the Baronne and we soon found ourselves outside. Lady Diana shuddered. To drive these disagreeable visions from her mind, I explained, affecting a false optimism:

  “Humanity seems to be an infirmary filled with suffering people. Happily some of them get well.”

  Lady Diana drew her cloak tightly about her bare shoulders and replied simply, “Yes, Gerard. Those who are dead.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE LABYRINTH OF INDECISION

  THE FIRST MEETING BETWEEN LADY DIANA AND Mr. Varichkine reminded me of two duelists taking their places and observing each other. The Russian opened hostilities. He attacked with a well-turned compliment. The English opponent never flinched. She parried and held her ground.

  This preliminary pass of arms took place in Lady Diana’s little salon, along with three cocktails served in Bohemian glasses mounted on green crystal stems. I had suggested to Lady Diana that I make some excuse for leaving her alone with Varichkine, but she had protested; she had preferred that I should be the impartial witness to the prologue.

  At eight o’clock, all of us in high good humor, we sat down to dinner. Varichkine wore a dinner jacket which would have done credit to the most particular of London dandies—a dinner jacket with satin lapels, with a vest of heavy black silk, adorned with a watch chain to which hung a symbolic charm: a scythe and a hammer set with rubies. Save for this one mark, significant of the Soviets, anyone would have taken Varichkine for an ordinary capitalist. Lady Diana, in honor of her guest, was seductively dressed in a robe of mauve brocade with silver spangles; her hair was coiffed with a diamond and emerald tiara.

  When the maitre d’hotel had removed the soup, I pretended to look under the table and exclaimed, feigning surprise, “Well, well! Nobody is eavesdropping.”

  “Are you sure there are no wires hidden under the rug?” asked Lady Diana.

  Varichkine made a reassuring gesture. “I have taken every precaution. The man who is serving us is also in the service of my private agents, although the valet, I discovered yesterday, is in the employ of Madam Mouravieff.”

  “Isn’t that amusing! You each have your special army of spies?”

  “It’s absolutely necessary. You will not be surprised, Lady Wynham, to learn that you are not exactly persona gratissima in Madam Mouravieff’s eyes and that, consequently, she employs, in your case, the usual procedure of our good city of Moscow.”

  “Which is the capital of the spy system, if I am not misinformed.”

  “Exactly. The Tcheka without spies would be a newly married woman without her husband—or a Soviet without an executioner!”

  I poured out some Rudesheimer for Varichkine, at the same time asking him to explain his jest.

  “Why, it’s perfectly obvious, old fellow. We don’t pretend for an instant that the Soviet Government is an expression of the will of the majority of the Russian people. When your French and English Communist papers comment on the demands of Russian public opinion, they are speaking of the opinion of an extremely active but very small minority. With us, the freedom of the press, along with the other sorts of freedom, has not existed since nineteen-eighteen, and it’s a good thing because liberty is as injurious for a race of people as it is for women.”

  Lady Diana listened attentively to these words.

  “But,” she asked, “how can you endure an atmosphere of perpetual espionage?”

  Varichkine offered her one of his best cigarettes, lighted it for her with extreme grace, and in his gentlest tone, replied, “My dear Lady Wynham, it’s a matter of habit, I might say, even an acquired taste. Our Tcheka, which is a kind of political Committee of Surveillance, plays the role of a doctor whose duty it is to tap the arteries of our citizens at every hour of the day and night. Consequently, it has in its employ some thousands of benevolent nurses, who apply the stethoscope to the door, listen to the conversation and diagnose the malady.”

  “One is, then, at the mercy of the denunciations of these people, who, I presume, are not round-shouldered from an excess of honesty. But who would accept such degrading work?”

  “Pardoned speculators, acquitted murderers, and policemen of the days of Czarism, who thus buy their personal safety. Thanks to their revelations, we are able to crush all attempts at counter-revolution, which state of affairs, for a régime like o
urs, is the beginning of real development.”

  “And yet the result must be quantities of unjust accusations inspired by vengeance and of false reports.”

  “Most assuredly! And as anyone who is accused of counter-revolution, even if there is no proof, is automatically condemned to death, those innocent people end up in the dungeons of the Loubianka. But all that is of no importance for it is better to shoot ten innocent people than to let one dangerous agitator escape.”

  Lady Diana’s white shoulders trembled slightly. She looked at Varichkine in such a way as to make him regret his cynical avowal. Very gently, just as one comforts a frightened child with kind words, he added:

  “But remember, Lady Wynham, that the Red Peril has undoubtedly already made more victims than it ever will in the future. It is always best to forget the past. Dead people are soon forgotten, you know. Between us, tell me if the last European rulers are still thinking about the massacre of the Czar and his family? Does the tragic fate of that lost potentate prevent the King of Spain from the mad pursuit of pleasure, or the Prince of Wales from disguising himself at Masquerade Balls? All right, then don’t be more of a royalist than the kings, those living fossils of a worthless age, and don’t bother yourself about the sad destiny of a few thousand aristocrats or ordinary people, who would soon have died of paralysis or appendicitis. My dear friend, Danton, Marat, Robespierre, are great names in the history of France. My dear Lady Wynham, you aren’t ashamed, are you, of being the compatriot of Cromwell, who caused the head of your king Charles the First to be cut from his shoulders? Explain to me how the ax or the guillotine are superior to the machine-gun of our executioners. You say we have killed more people. Yes, but there are more than a hundred million Russians. The proportion of the blood shed remains approximately the same. And, after all, we are only imitating the Americans.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, astounded.