The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars

by Maurice DeKobra

  She raised her left arm so that I could discover a tiny snap in the folds of the silk. She let her dress slip to the floor, and stretching out her delicate hands, so heavily laden with emeralds, she looked at me with true tenderness and said in an unnatural voice:

  “Gerard—this doesn’t make you unhappy, does it? You are not jealous of the marriage?”

  “Yes, Diana. Because the day that Russian finds a wife, I shall have lost a friend.”

  Lady Diana closed her eyes. Her hands dropped to her sides. Under the slip which outlined in mauve the perfect rounding of her figure, she trembled slightly. Then she half-opened her eyes and scrutinized me silently, through the soft screen of her long lashes as though caught in a labyrinth of indecision. Then she arose brusquely, picked up her dress and started for the door. I was going to call after her when she turned and remarked:

  “By the way, my dear—I count on you to be a witness at my wedding.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AN ANGEL NEEDS A VALET

  I HAD JUST FINISHED MY EIGHTH BREAKFAST IN my room at the Adlon. Varichkine had told us the night before that the deed of concession would be signed within forty-eight hours. We were all impatient. Lady Diana was bored with Berlin. Time was dragging heavily on my hands and Varichkine made no attempt to conceal his ardent desire to accelerate the passage of events.

  At ten o’clock, the valet brought me an urgent message. The fine, close writing made my heart beat rapidly:

  Sir, I shall expect you at three o’clock this afternoon at No. 44 Belle Alliance Platz, second floor on the left. I wish to have a private conversation with you. In your own interest, mention this to no one. Salutations and Fraternity. IRINA MOURAVIEFF

  All the rest of the morning was consecrated to the game of drawing deductions. Should I make an excuse for not appearing? Would it be better to postpone the meeting? Should I pretend to ignore Madam Mouravieff? Ought I to warn Varichkine in spite of the request for secrecy? I concluded that the best thing to do was to keep the engagement and not to intimate in any way that I was frightened.

  At 44 Belle Alliance Platz, I found an ordinary painted brick house like thousands of others in Berlin. On the first floor I read on the left: Dr. Otto Kupfer, Zahnart, and on the right: Fraulein Erna Dickerhoff, Gesangunterricht.

  Certainly Madam Mouravieff’s neighbors seemed to be peaceful enough people and Miss Dickerhoff’s music lessons would not scare away any anxious visitors.

  I rang the bell on the left on the second floor. An unshaven, shabbily dressed man greeted me in a pronounced Slavic accent and stared at me from under bushy, black brows. I made the mental reservation that I would not care to trust him with a signed check.

  “I have an engagement with Madam Mouravieff,” I began politely.

  He corrected me. “You have an engagement with Comrade Mouravieff.”

  “Yes, Comrade.”

  He looked me up and down from the tips of my patent leather shoes to the pearl in my cravat and grumbled, “I am not your comrade.”

  I asked his forgiveness for the impertinent assumption. But he had already disappeared through a doorway. I had an opportunity to examine the place. This huge anteroom was furnished with a few battered chairs and a table strewn with Russian reviews and German gazettes. I could hear a baby mitrailleuse somewhere beyond—undoubtedly a stenographer at work.

  “This way,” commanded the man who was so meticulous about the matter of comradeship.

  I followed him. I found myself in the presence of Madam Mouravieff. Her private office was anything but luxurious. A large oak table strewn with papers, a worn armchair for visitors, a white bookcase full of imposing volumes—and that was all.

  Madam Mouravieff was standing in front of the fireplace. She wore the same gray tailored suit. No hat. Her thick, short hair made a black line across the pallor of her forehead and her blue eyes examined me without any expression either of hostility or friendliness. I felt like a rare insect being studied by an entomologist.

  I bowed. She nodded. I thought it wise to begin the conversation with some frivolous remark and, as the Russian spoke perfect English, I opened fire this way:

  “You sent for me, madam. I came post haste. Russia has no time to lose.”

  My gayety overshot its mark. I was still unaware that one does not joke with the Valkyries of Moscow. Madam Mouravieff, her hands thrust deep in her pockets, took two steps forward, and scrutinized me more closely. I thought she was going to tickle my ears with a pen-holder to learn my reaction to the treatment. Finally, a trifle annoyed at being silently inspected by this tiny lady, I remarked:

  “Yes, madam—I breathe through my nostrils and I shave every morning like other civilized men. Do you want any more details?”

  She took a cigarette case from her pocket, offered it to me, gave me a light and waved me into the tottering armchair.

  As she remained standing, I arose and said, “No, madam, I will sit down when you set the example.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you remained standing that would signify that you were in a hurry to be rid of me, which would not be polite, while if I remained standing while you were sitting down that would insinuate that I was being tried by you for some crime or other—”

  Madam Mouravieff shrugged her shoulders and finally sat down. I imitated her.

  She flicked her cigarette ashes into a copper bowl, and said, “I’m wondering whether or not you’re an honest man.”

  “That depends on your definition of honesty. Have you the eighteenth-century point of view? Or do you think along twentieth-century lines? Up to now I have never stolen anything and I have invariably kept my word.”

  “I have considered your case very carefully, Prince Séliman.”

  “I take that a great compliment, knowing, as I do, the importance of your judgment.”

  “And I have decided that you pursue a most unusual profession for an honest man?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Acting as secretary to a beautiful woman.”

  “Is that incompatible with the rules of honesty?”

  “Ordinarily, yes. Because it lacks the quality of frankness. Let us come to the point: are you paid to take care of Lady Diana’s correspondence or to sleep in her bed?”

  “Neither for the one nor for the other. I am not paid at all. Furthermore, I am not her lover.”

  Madam Mouravieff betrayed evident surprise. She put out her cigarette. “Are you playing the role of secretary for glory?”

  “Better say that I’m a friend by inclination. But may I ask you a simple question, madam? Did you invite me here merely to expound your theories on the comparative moral values of professions?”

  “No. I commanded your presence here because I like to know the adversaries I am called upon to fight.”

  I protested, “I? An adversary?”

  “No comedy, I beg you. You know perfectly well that we are separated by a veritable barricade.”

  “Political, perhaps?”

  “No. Sentimental. If it were only a matter of granting a concession to an Anglo-American business organization, we would already be agreed. But there is a pair of silk stockings in that particular administration. And those silk stockings are solely responsible for Varichkine’s extraordinary zeal in the affair. With ten other similar applications sleeping in the files of the Delegation, Lady Wynham’s is already signed.”

  “Already signed.”

  “It will appear in the legal announcements of the Izvestia today.”

  “I thank you, madam, in the name of Lady Wynham.”

  Madam Mouravieff interrupted me with an impatient gesture. “You can consider yourself off duty as far as your secretarial work is concerned. It will suffice to tell me how Lady Wynham intends to thank Varichkine for his good offices.”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  “Then I will reverse the situation and tell you something. Prince, listen to me carefully. If, by chance, you are
not already aware of it, you may as well know that Varichkine has been my lover for eight years. He owes his prominence in Russia almost entirely to me. Had it not been for me, he would be dead or in prison. I did it all because of my love for him. When we first met, at the beginning of the war, he had just been evacuated from the Galician front. Finding him wounded and without a solitary kopek, I gave him lodging in my modest students’ quarters in Petrograd. We lived poorly, heart to heart, while the first undercurrents of the approaching revolution echoed from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Feverish with impatience, we listened to the creaking of the edifice which was about to fall. The sinister rumors which spread about the capital gave us hope of better times to come. The high treason of ministers, the audacity of speculators, the lassitude of deserters, the cowardice of an empty-headed Czar, the ignominious behavior of a Czarina hypnotized by a devilish monk—all these things were a secret source of joy to us because, on this rottenness, on the ruins of the ancient régime, the beautiful scarlet flower of revolution was sure to bloom more quickly.

  “Prince, I love Varichkine. And I have proved it to him since the month of October, nineteen hundred and eighteen, changed Russia. We are not married because I despise the absurd little chains which you forge and because I look upon your marriage as a comedy as ugly as it is ridiculous. But I consider myself united to Varichkine, if not in the eyes of heaven, at least in the eyes of my own conscience. It was never necessary for me to swear before God that I would be faithful in order to be faithful. Like our great poet, Maiakovski, I will tell you that in traveling through the clouds, I have learned to do without God.”

  While Madam Mouravieff stopped to extinguish her third cigarette, I considered this little Russian with the liveliest interest; a tiny woman, who, rather more beautiful than ugly, could, young as she was, do without God.

  “I have made these intimate revelations, Prince,” she went on, “because I wanted you to appreciate the extent of your responsibility in the event that Lady Wynham should comply with Varichkine’s demands.

  “Don’t protest. I know my lover’s weak points. He is invariably attracted to well-born women. That is one of his shortcomings. There are officials in Moscow who give way to an immoderate love of money. Varichkine cares much less for gold than he does for a foreign lady, dressed by one of your famous French houses. We have been in Berlin about a year and a half. Since our arrival, he has very nearly deceived me with Princess Anna von Mecklenburg-Stratzberg, a Parisianized German, who has learned the arts of wearing tempting clothes in the course of sojourns at Nice and Cannes. I broke up that little affair. I punished Princess Anna by slashing her across the face with a whip in the hall of Drückheim Castle. Varichkine didn’t say a word. And now I’m not so sure that he hasn’t a little flair for your employer.”

  Just as I was on the point of speaking, she stopped me with an authoritative gesture. “What? You don’t like the choice of words? Nevertheless you are an unpaid employee of that egotistical woman. Am I not correct? In any event, Prince, I want you to know that Lady Wynham won’t get any further with Varichkine than did the Princess von Mecklenburg-Stratzberg. And if any such thing should occur, understand that I would hold all three of you equally guilty and would mete out my vengeance accordingly. She, he, and you.”

  “We would be four, madam. A man who has been warned is worth two ordinary men.”

  She stamped her foot and cried, “No stupid jokes, Prince. You are making a great mistake if you scoff at my warnings.”

  “But, dear Madam Mouravieff, why do you take it for granted that your lover will become fascinated with Lady Wynham? I presume this is not the first time in his life that he has been thrown in contact with a well-born woman?”

  “I know what I know, Prince. Even if he were capable of resisting the temptation, I would still be suspicious of those beautiful English women who travel, those sleeping-car pets who carry a Pekinese in their arms and a lover at their beck and call. I know them, those emancipated females, whose souls are studded with gems from Cartier’s, and whose bodies are accessible to any sort of voluptuous pleasure. They would eat snobbery out of the hand of a leper and sacrifice their standing to astonish the gallery. Their colossal conceit bulges like a goiter in the center of their otherwise emaciated hearts. Their epicureanism intoxicates them. They are above conventions. They laugh at middle-class morals. They prod prejudices with their fingers and they lift their skirts in the face of disconcerted virtue.”

  “Madam, you have made some bitter statements which I must admit are far too close to the truth, but there is no reason to—”

  “To what? To assume that it would amuse Lady Wynham to rob me of my lover? Don’t be ridiculous! We women, we understand one another better than all the psychologists put together. She wouldn’t be the first member of ‘high society’ who has found it pleasing to taste the lure of a Communist, to harbor in her bosom a desire for one of those drinkers of blood who have terrorized the world. For a woman like that, Varichkine would be worth all the drugs and silly little thrills she has ever known. Cocaine, morphine, opium?—pooh! What do all those stupefying poisons amount to in comparison with a comrade of Red Russia whom she could exhibit in her arms in Park Lane or on the Champs Elysées?”

  “Has Varichkine conducted himself in such a way as to suggest these apprehensions?”

  “That, Prince, is none of your business. I know what I’m talking about. I merely wanted to give you fair warning. Profit by our meeting and lose no time in reversing a motor which has mistaken its way.”

  Madam Mouravieff lapsed into silence. Her blue eyes gleaming from under her thick black lashes were adequate proof of her sincerity and her determination. Judging that the sermon was over, I arose from my chair. But there was still one detail which intrigued me. Had Varichkine’s protecting angel talked this way because she knew about his matrimonial project? Or was she in complete ignorance of everything and simply trying to ward off a hypothetical danger? I attempted to clear up this point.

  “Madam,” I said, bowing, “I thank you for having spoken to me in terms which, if menacing, certainly leave no room for doubt. But before I go, will you permit me to say that I am astonished to find that you have so little actual information about a subject which is of such infinite importance to you and of which any development is bound to be staged on the second floor of the Adlon Hotel.”

  My words whetted her curiosity. She replied quickly, “What do you mean—so little actual information?”

  “Madam Mouravieff, when one installs microphones in someone’s apartment one should certainly be able to digest the main trend of private conversations.”

  The little lady appeared embarrassed, but she immediately regained her composure and said evasively, “I haven’t the remotest idea of what you mean.”

  “Then am I to conclude that the little apparatus which I discovered under my bed germinated spontaneously, like a mushroom? In any event it’s very fortunate that I found it, because I now perceive that even the walls have ears in Berlin.”

  My remark evidently annoyed Madam Mouravieff, for she exclaimed impatiently, “And why not? Anything is fair in time of war.”

  “What! Has war already been declared? I thought we were still in Kriegsgefahrzustand, as they say in Germany.”

  “Be careful, sir, that your irony doesn’t cost you a pretty penny one of these days.”

  The flash of Madam Mouravieff’s eyes underlined her warning. I reached the door. On the threshold, I turned and asked, “May I kiss your hand, madam?”

  “No.”

  In the face of this caustic refusal, I took my leave. In the anteroom, the same unshaven, shabbily dressed man glowered at me the way a suspicious watchdog looks at a passing beggar. I had soon crossed the Belle Alliance Platz, and I meditated beneath the maples of the Koniggrazerstrasse. I was still in ignorance as to just how much Varichkine’s mistress knew about her lover’s plans. But I no longer entertained any illusions as to Madam Mouravieff’s inte
ntions. Had I consulted a fortuneteller and had she not declared, “a dark woman wishes you no good,” I should have refused to pay her the price of her false prophecies.

  The same evening Lady Diana, Varichkine, and I dined in a little restaurant at Schlachtensee. We were almost alone on the terrace, heavily shaded by pines, looking over the orange marmalade of a tranquil lake which reflected, through millions of green needles, the dying rays of a setting sun. Lady Diana’s chauffeur, at Varichkine’s suggestion, had zigzagged through Wilmersdorf to throw any over-inquisitive individuals off the scent. Joy reigned supreme in the hearts of my companions for they had heard the good news from Moscow.

  Plunging my spoon into the vermicelli of a medium blond soup, I remarked indifferently, “My friends, this afternoon I had a conversation with someone you both know. I think it would interest you.”

  “A man or a woman?”

  “A woman.”

  Lady Diana motioned to me to be quiet. She cried out laughingly, “Don’t tell her name, Gerard. Let us try to guess. Varichkine, you ask the first question.”

  “Was she a blonde?”

  “No.”

  “A brunette?”

  “Yes. Lady Diana, don’t rack your brain. You would never guess. It was Madam Mouravieff.”

  I had won an irrefutable victory. They were astonished.

  Varichkine queried anxiously, “Did you meet Irina on the street?”

  “No, I went to her office in the Belle Alliance Platz.”

  “What for?”

  “I went in response to her invitation. I may add that I have no desire to repeat the visit. The best of jokes are stupid when told a second time.”