The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars

by Maurice DeKobra

  I was about to walk through the train when a woman appeared in the doorway. She hesitated before the ominous combination of tibias which barricaded the passage. The obsequious Saxon withdrew his, while the Englishman, hidden behind his guidebook, never so much as raised his head. The lady surmounted the living obstacles and sat down opposite me.

  I looked at her carefully while she rummaged in her little blue traveling bag. An agreeable visage with vivid blue eyes which smiled from under a head of curly blond hair. A mutinous nose above a sensual mouth and a mole on her left cheekbone. Very Lustige Blaetter. She was certainly from Berlin. She smelled of one of Coty’s oldest perfumes. Not badly shod, but with coarse silk stockings and a string of imitation pearls. She thumbed the pages of her Simplicissimus without paying much attention to the designs of the successors of Reznicek and crossed her legs, pulling down her skirts as she did so—a mistake on her part because her ankles were small and her legs very well shaped.

  I asked her in English if I might smoke since we were in a compartment marked: Raucher. She murmured a friendly and bilingual acquiescence: “Bitte schon. Certainly, sir.”

  The lady removed her hat, which floundered about, like a straw fish, in the baggage net. She took a cigarette from a small inlaid case and searched in her handbag. Here was my chance—a match produced like lightning from nowhere.

  “Will you allow me, madam?”

  The conversation was lighted. The Englishman plunged head and shoulders into his monumental valise. The Saxon, in the corridor, was apparently determined not to lose a single whiff of his malodorous cigar. We exchanged a few banalities in subdued voices:

  “Are you going to Vienna, madam?”

  “Yes.”

  “The pearl of Central Europe, isn’t it?”

  “I prefer Prague, with its imposing Radschin and the old Charles Bridge bristling with statues.”

  “Do you speak Czech?”

  “No. I am from Berlin. Can’t you tell that by my accent?”

  Her pretty head, with its puffs of golden hair about the ears, intrigued me. At noon she accepted my invitation to lunch.

  At half past twelve I was aware of the fact that she was the widow of a lieutenant of the 2nd Regiment of the Guard, killed on the Yser in 1915, that she had an aged aunt in Vienna, that she adored the defunct poet, Liliencron, and that she had an excellent recipe for making veal cutlets with a burned flour sauce. At one o’clock I knew that she had been brought up in a girls’ boarding school at Hanover and that, along with the youngest daughter of Prince von Schaumburg-Detmold, she had been expelled because of a childish prank.

  Our two glasses of Chartreuse danced merrily with the motion of the train. My sweet Berlin flower was pink and satisfied. The adventure lent a certain charm to the monotony of my voyage, and the whirring of the electric fan invited confidences.

  “Will you do me the honor of dining with me, madam?” I asked. “We arrive in Vienna at nine o’clock. I know a nice, secluded little restaurant on the famous old Giselastrasse.”

  “I really shouldn’t—”

  “Madam! But the unexpected—that’s the real spice of life—the cuckoo in the clock!”

  “I’d so love to—I am almost tempted to.”

  “Why not? There is a slumbering Saint Antoinette in every woman.”

  When we arrived in Vienna the little blue bag went off on the porter’s truck beside my yellow suitcase. The coat, with its trimming of skunk fur, rubbed on the sleeves of my overcoat. A quarter of an hour later, the yellow suitcase entered Room 26 at the Bristol while the little blue bag disappeared into Room 27.

  The Orient Express bound for Constantinople did not leave for thirty-six hours. So much vacation for me!

  The restaurant Chez Zulma. A dozen little tables with colored napkins. A rose in a cheap glass vase and a wooden shaker filled with paprika. Between the tables, silken walls to isolate lovers who wished to dine incognito.

  “How nice this is! Let’s sit here, shall we?”

  My Berlin beauty sat down, enchanted. Two real tziganes, with the faces of ex-convicts, were playing softly. A pink paper clothed the naked light bulb.

  I leaned toward my guest. “What is your first name?”

  “Klara.”

  “Do you regret our meeting?”

  “No—I expected to dine with Aunt Louisa. She will keep until tomorrow. This is life!”

  “Would you like the violinist to play anything in particular?”

  “Oh, yes! Ask him to play the Fledermaus waltz to please me. That melody from the Strauss operetta will make me feel young again.”

  The tziganes played while we were served with bleached red cabbage in vinegar, anchovies rolled like watch-springs, and chopped celery. Klara, hardly eating anything at all, listened to the romantic and time-worn air of the old Viennese waltz. I detected in the sudden melancholy of her blue eyes the memory of her past when, little more than a child, seated at her piano, she had cradled the nostalgia of her first desires with those same notes.

  I took her hand. I murmured, “It is an afternoon in the springtime. The chestnut trees of Charlottenburg are pointing to heaven with their blossoms, so very like pink fingertips. In a neat little parlor with brand new furniture, I see you, Klara dear, dressed in white, with two blond braids of hair bound about your temples. You are sitting at the piano, playing this same waltz, so sentimental and so tenderly innocent. Your little soul, filled with unavowed thought, evokes a lieutenant of the Guard, dancing at a ball. Kisses stolen fearfully in the shaded paths of the Tiergarten. Marvelous dreams in the shadow of the Church of the Memory of Wilhelm the First. The waltz continues, voluptuous and intoxicating. It cradles the white ball of your fleeting desires. It is your first voyage to the Venusberg of imaginative adolescence. Dear Klara. Let us walk together sometimes in the garden of the past, in the shade of cherished memories. It is a miraculous park where the leaves never fade on the trees.”

  The tziganes stopped. My companion’s hand trembled in mine. Her eyes, flowing over with tears, sad and passionate, gazed into mine. Suddenly she leaned far across the table, offered me her lips and murmured in a delicious voice:

  “Thank you. You have made me happy. I shall reward you as best I can.”

  It was only at a much later date that I understood the meaning of her words. At the moment I merely thought that the restful melody had assured the success of the adventure. I silently thanked the defunct Mr. Strauss whose sentimental music could melt ironclad resolutions and precipitate the collapse of German ladies into the arms of lonely tourists.

  At eleven o’clock after a walk in the Hofburg gardens, beneath a full moon which rippled over the verdigris cupolas and the shining roof of the Palace, we went back to the Bristol. The widow of the lieutenant of the Guard was intoxicated with “czardas” and gallant remarks.

  On the threshold of her room, in the deserted corridor, I kissed her hand and started to withdraw. She looked at me with the same pretty reproachful pout which the courtesans of the eighteenth century bestowed upon departing lovers.

  “Come in and smoke a cigarette?”

  I followed her. I ordered a bottle of champagne. Klara bubbling over with gayety, blindfolded me with a napkin which was wrapped around the neck of the bottle and ordered me not to look.

  “You can take it off when I tell you. Not before.”

  When at last I opened my eyes, only the little lamp on the bed-table was burning. Klara, from an ocean of creamy linen, white silk, and Nile green satin, laughed at my surprise.

  The next morning I went to the Turkish Consulate to get my visa. I ordered a garland of tea roses for Klara and bought a documentary study on oil so I might have some inkling, once at Nikolaïa, of what Mr. Edwin Blankett, the naphtha expert, was saying. It is excusable to mistake Piraeus for a man, but no one should take the Acropolis for a relative of Standard Oil.

  I lunched alone. Klara had said that she would meet me at the Kaffee Franz, as soon as she had explained
matters to her family.

  At five o’clock, very punctual, she arrived. She seemed glad to see me again and sat down irreverently on the Wiener Abendblatt. We broke our teeth on some bretzell while we partook of some excellent moka and some ice water. We strolled about the city and ate some haluschka of fried flour and cheese near the Augustin Church.

  At about ten o’clock, Klara’s face took on a sober expression. Her knee pressed mine under the table and her nails dug into my wrist. Her brows raised, her eyes had an expression of afflicted tenderness and she sighed.

  “Are you really leaving for Constantinople tomorrow?”

  “Yes, Klara dear, I must.”

  “Then, this is to be our last night together!”

  “Yes. Unless you want to come to Pera with me. I hardly dare to ask you. But I’d be most happy if—”

  “If I accepted?”

  My dear little widow from Berlin was so seductive that I kissed her outstretched hand.

  “Tomorrow at eleven o’clock we will leave together, dearest. Thus we can postpone our sad but inevitable parting.”

  “And then we must say ‘adieu.’ And you will disappear forever?”

  “Is that not the fate of all men in this indifferent world? Destiny is a fantastic monster. Yesterday it chose to favor the flirtation of a blue traveling bag and a yellow valise. In ninety-six hours their intimacy will have breathed its last. Allah is great and Mahomet is not a prophet in the Land of Tenderness.”

  “I think it’s unbearably sad. Don’t you?”

  “There, my charming friend, you have hit on the problem which will always terrify human beings. You can be certain that the relativity of time worries metaphysicians much less than it does lovers. Romeo successfully climbed to the balcony, but eventually he was forced to descend. We are all afraid of the Song of Goodby.”

  “And if it should chance one day that it was not sung? What a glorious miracle!”

  “No, Klara. It is the uncertainty of parting which fires passion and makes one love more deeply. Without it our adventure would have no savor because it would be endless.”

  “I would like it to last forever.”

  “To last! Even the earth which endures perpetually is gradually losing its natural heat. It has become a wrinkled old woman who, in another million centuries, will no longer enjoy the sun’s caresses.”

  “Dearest, you are so pessimistic!”

  “Not at all! We are merely exchanging commonplaces on a subject which interested men before the days of Plato. Do you know what we are? We are little children sitting on the sand listening sagely to the noise of the water in the seashells and believing that those silvery cones contain the entire ocean.… Waiter! Another bottle of Heidsick—Monopole!”

  We returned to the hotel. The roses lay on the Nile green spread. Klara, delighted, breathed in their fragrance and closed her eyes in ecstasy. Then, suddenly, she burst into tears. At first I thought she was laughing. But when I saw the tears flow I was astonished and I pressed her to my heart. She refused to explain this unexpected outburst.

  She murmured in a voice trembling with emotion,

  “Dearest! You are so good—I love you—I love you—and I intend to prove it to you.”

  I did the impossible to calm her with kisses and words of love whispered into her disordered hair. But my gentle caresses seemed, on the contrary, to make her more unhappy. She threw herself on the bed, and her whole body shook with sobs. I thought I heard this exclamation, blurted into the pillow:

  “Ach, Gott! I am not a bad woman! I’m going to prove that to you—you are going to keep on loving me!”

  The gong on the tramway clanged out in the Ring. The proverbial seventh heaven mobilized its forces on the second floor of the Hotel Bristol.

  CHAPTER NINE

  WIND FROM THE WEST

  THE VOYAGE HAD SEEMED TOO SHORT TO ME. Budapest, Brasov, Bucharest, Constanza—so many wayward stops on the schedule of our sleeping car. We were now sharing a suite at the Pera-Palace. And in spite of myself I regretfully counted the hours before I must say goodby to this golden-haired companion whom chance had maliciously placed in a corner of my compartment.

  For three days we tasted Constantinople, with its quilllike minarets pointing toward the zenith. From Disdarié to Stamboul, from Sirkedci to Iédi-Koule, we lost the notion of passing time, inhaling old rose perfumes, the odors of raki and amber fragrance, recalling harems of days gone by. A lost couple, we wandered along the walls of yalis; bordered with trees of Judea; along the shores of the placid Bosphorus, in the golden quiet of twilight. We mused in the doorways of bazaars, filled with motley articles. Seated in an araba badly managed by an apoplectic cabby, we made a pilgrimage to the necropolis of Eyoub, a funebrial game of dominoes with innumerable double blanks lying on the arid soil. Then on two evenings, after the vesperal prayers of the muezzins, we lost ourselves in the cosmopolitan cohorts on the streets of Pera, swarming with sailors from all countries and with nondescript Russians and Greeks.

  Our hours were numbered. Our kisses had the bitter flavor of imminent separation. On the fourth day I spent the afternoon in the offices of tourist agencies with the idea of finding a steamer bound for Batoum. At the Turkish steamship line I was offered a passage on board the Abdul-Aziz which would stop at the Caucasian ports in about two weeks. Klara accompanied me.

  She said, “Darling, perhaps I can help you make your arrangements. I know an Egyptian businessman who used to come to Berlin twice a year and who would like nothing better than to do me a favor. His offices are on Voïvoda Street.”

  We called on Mr. Ben Simon, who received us in an office constellated with samples of rabat-loukoum, dried fruit, Daghestan or Karamanian rugs, Bulgarian embroidery, and automobile headlights. This eclectic merchant gave us coffee and wrote a letter of introduction to Mr. Agraganyadès, director of the Phébus Shipping Company. This Greek, who was the son of a Sicilian by a usurer from Patras, suggested that I embark at noon the next day on board one of his ships—thus he described his 900-ton tramps which carried oil from Batoum to Salonica. I thanked him extravagantly and returned to the Palace.

  My last night with Klara was marked by the sadness of my unavoidable departure. The dawn overtook us. My little Lorelei had unfastened her hair, which fell in a blond cascade on her round white shoulder.

  I said, “Nine o’clock. We must get ready, dearest one.”

  She put her arms about me and begged, “We still have plenty of time.”

  An hour passed. It seemed so short. A ray of sunshine, fused obliquely with gold in the obscurity of the room, designed an ellipse in the middle of the floor. When it reached us, we must tear ourselves away from the delights of Pera. Kisses punctuated those brief minutes. The luminous ellipse was about to fall upon us. I freed myself from Klara’s embrace. She arose, brusquely, pathetically, stretched out her arms and cried:

  “Don’t go. Listen to me! I must talk to you.”

  Disconcerted by the sincerity of her tone, I went to her. In a voice quavering with emotion, she continued:

  “Darling—I cannot say goodby without telling you everything. I want you to forgive me for having spied upon you and to try to despise me less because I have unburdened my conscience.”

  I understood immediately. I took her in my arms once more and said, without anger, “You are employed by Moscow.”

  She bent her head. I kissed her neck.

  “I am not annoyed with you, dearest little Klara, because your kisses were sweet to my lips and your smile charmed the fugitive hours of our voyage together.”

  My indulgence upset her terribly. She wept bitterly, her head buried on my chest.

  Then she confessed, “Gerard, I am desolate. But it’s not altogether my fault. I am really Lieutenant Hoeckner’s widow. He was killed on the French front in nineteen-fifteen. Since the war I have lived on my pension and a very small income. But the fall of the mark forced me to find some other source of money so that I could live honestly.
Chance and my connections attached me to the counter-espionage service of the Soviets. They needed a woman, pretty and not stupid, to carry out certain confidential missions. I accepted the position. At first they gave me unimportant tasks which I managed very easily. I was promoted—I was officially attached to the Russian delegation to the Conference at Genoa—I paraded the lobbies of the big hotels—I overheard whispered conversations—I was courted at Miramar by an American observer and a French senator who acquainted me with their secret duties. In short, I won the confidence of my superiors. Last month, during the Anglo-Soviet meeting in London, I was given a special mission among the thousands of leaders of the Labor Party. Posing as a German feminist, I interviewed the Daily Herald and the representatives of the Fabian Society; the Sinn-Feiners talked frankly with me. Every two days I reported at a little office on Throgmorton Street, an unpretentious place where they cook up propaganda and where they control the Russian spy system. I returned to Berlin. A few days ago I was summoned by a woman who plays an occult role with certain party leaders and who received me privately.”

  “Number forty-four Belle Alliance Platz—Madam Mouravieff.”

  Klara gazed at me in astonishment. “You know her?”

  I answered evasively. “I have heard of her. Go on with your story.”

  “She asked me if I would be willing to spy on a Frenchman who was going from Berlin to Nikolaïa.”

  I interrupted Klara rather rudely. Her words made me think rapidly. “Exactly when did the person in question mention my intended trip to Nikolaïa?”

  “Let me think. We left Berlin Tuesday morning. It was the afternoon before.”

  “Late?”

  “At about six o’clock.”

  I remembered that I had interviewed Madam Mouravieff at three o’clock the same afternoon. How could she have guessed that Lady Diana would send me off immediately on receipt of a telegram which would only arrive the next morning? Various theories flashed through my brain. Only one seemed feasible—the message sent by Mr. Edwin Blankett had certainly been communicated to Madam Mouravieff’s informers before it had been expedited. And she, warned in advance, through diplomatic channels, had learned on Monday afternoon that Lady Diana would receive the expert’s wire the following morning. Therefore it was simple logic which made her anticipate my precipitate departure.