“Beautiful, is it not?” he asked, when he let the book drop and stared ahead for a long time.
No, it was not at all beautiful, it was very boring. Gunther also had understood not a word.
He twisted this way and that. He lit a cigarette, careful that no spark fell on the fur, threw the butt into the ashtray next to him, and was bored with it all. Or he lay on his back, his knees drawn up and crossed, and played with the pink toes of his feet in the air, until the Count stood up with a nod or he had fallen asleep from sheer boredom.
Then Franz came, took him in his arms, and carried him off.
Again and again he thought, especially in the first weeks: Is it just to go on like this? What does he actually want from me? Always just to look at me? It seemed to be so.
The Count wanted to have him about: spotlessly washed, well dressed, and talking as little as possible—in the afternoons on excursions, just as in the evenings at dinner and in the theatre.
And look at him: stretched out there, illuminated by the soft light of the wax candles in the high chandeliers, whose reflections played over his naked body.
Nothing else.
Like a dog, thought Gunther sometimes. Just like a dog. Only a dog is called and sometimes petted. He was never called. Never even touched.
One evening, during dinner in the Adlon, the Count, as if by chance, reached into his pocket and laid a case down before him. A nod indicated that he was to open it. It contained the gold wrist-watch that Gunther had wanted so long. He had to put it around his wrist himself. It was difficult at first. But the Count did not help him. It was as if he shunned even the least contact with him.
“Pretty, is it not?”—the boy, who had turned quite red from joy, heard the him say.
He did not dare to thank him out loud.
He felt himself wounded in his vanity, in his pride. It occurred to him that the Count had not so much as given him his hand in these almost three weeks.
Why was he disdained? (Like once already—where had that been?—oh yes, that time in Potsdam, by the monkey, the one he had run away from.) Why was he disdained? The man must know whom he had before him—who he had been—when he had picked him up “from there” himself!
On this evening when, as usual, they were again together in the garden room and Gunther was lying on his fur (happy over his watch, which now formed his only clothing, yet secretly angry), he saw how the Count made a movement, as if he were searching for something. Then he knew that it was a glass of liqueur that he wanted, and he sprang up, before Franz could be rung for, in order to bring it.
He brought it himself. He remained standing near the lounge chair. He was excited.
He saw how the Count brought the glass to his mouth, tipped and emptied it, and set it down again. And how he then, as if astonished, looked up at him.
He remained standing where he was.
But an expression which he had never before seen on the always indifferent face caused him to crawl onto his fur again. It had been an expression, not of repugnance—that would be saying too much—but of unconcealed aversion to seeing him standing so close to him. He threw himself sulkily onto the fur, ostentatiously turning his back to the Count. He bit his lip. He could have cried, as on the first evening, but not from fear.
He did not see how the Count complacently looked at his tender, slim back, and longer than usual (in just the same way he looked at his paintings).
Nor did he hear him murmur to himself, “The devil knows where the rascal got those hands and feet! If only he were not so hopelessly stupid!”
Else he would have been able to say to the him that he had them from his father, who had perhaps also been a count. As for his stupid-ity—what did the he know about it, since he never spoke with him?
But he never again repeated this, his first and only attempt.
*
Otherwise everything was fine and good, if it had not been so horribly boring.
Again and again he put Franz to the test.
Could he not help with something or other?
“Just let it be. I’ll do it myself. Besides that’s not what you’re here for.”
And when he still hesitated:
“Go on out. Have fun. You’re got money. Only,” Franz raised a warning finger, “only—not there—”
“But if the Count is waiting for me?”
“The Count never waits,” said Franz indignantly.
So he dressed—for the first time—in his splendid sailor suit, took a taxi, and rode to the largest and finest motion picture house in Berlin West. And no one would have dared to ask the member of the imperial yacht club in the box if he was eighteen years old.
But one could not always go to a cinema.
He felt bored, prowled through the rooms, to Franz in the kitchen, and looked at him so long, he was thrown out again.
“Go on out! Why are you always sitting around here? You can do whatever you want. Go and have fun.”
One day he had not seen the Count for twenty-four hours. He questioned Franz.
“The Count is on a trip. But don’t worry, you can stay on here. The Count will come back.”
“When?”
“The Count never says how long he will stay away.”
5
If the many free hours before had been boring enough, they now became unbearable.
He could no longer endure being so alone.
If he had believed that Franz would now have more free time for him, he was thoroughly mistaken. For his “fiancee” immediately appeared on the scene and strutted around the house.
Gunther could not stand the red-haired female. She looked at him askance, always disdainfully, and made offensive remarks to which he could not reply.
No, he could stand it no longer, this whole crazy life! Was it even living?
No one to whom he could tell anything! Ever and always alone! Never before, since he was in Berlin, not even in the first days of the futile search for Max, did he feel so abandoned as now—now, when things were going well for him beyond all measure, when all the other boys would have burned with envy, had they known.
But they did not know; he was not allowed to tell anyone. That, however, would really have been the greatest pleasure: to relate this experience. To tell it at Uncle Paul’s at the Hustler Table and in the Adonis Lounge. He would have been the hero of the day!
Or to Atze.
He thought about Atze again and again. How astonished he would be!
Would he again be in Berlin? Surely. It was already a long time since the morning on which he had vanished once again.
He could stand it no longer.
What if he went to Little Mama and asked? That was still surely allowed him. Little Mama was certainly not queer. And then, too, Atze was perhaps not even there and he would come into no temptation.
Just to be able to drink coffee with Little Mama and tell her would be a release from everything that was beginning to oppress him.
He could still do that.
After all, he was not in prison here. He could come and go as he pleased, and now he had time the live-long day.
He continued to struggle with himself and his last scruples.
After three days, however, he climbed into a taxi and rode to Sonderberger Strasse by the Humboldt Wood. He wore his light summer suit, carried a cane and gloves in his hands, and naturally had his watch on his wrist. He looked like a prince and felt entirely like one.
Little Mama opened the door.
“Chick!” was all the fat woman could say.
He asked for Atze.
Yes, Atze was there. “He lies in bed the whole day and sleeps.”
Atze actually was still lying in bed, although it was bright afternoon. But hardly had he seen Gunther than he sprang up onto both feet.
He looked at him. Then, right away master of the situation:
“What did I tell you? What love won’t do!”
At first Gunther did not understand. There
could be no talk of love here.
“You seem to have a fine relationship! He keeps you good, eh?” asked Atze, no longer able to control his curiosity, as he pulled on his pants.
When Gunther continued to look at him stupidly—for what could Atze know of the Count?
“Your john with the five-mark bills.”
Only now did Gunther grasp what Atze meant: the goof in Potsdam.
He waved his hands scornfully.
“Oh, not that one!”—and he began to explain.
He told his story while Atze dressed. He talked while Little Mama brought pastry and made coffee. He talked while the three sat at table, drinking and eating. He talked in a veritable intoxication of joy to finally hear himself speak once again.
For the first time since he had known Atze, the latter was speechless. He became quite silent and reflective. This was new even to him. He was lost, but he would never have admitted it. So, searching in his memory, he said what he found, and was once again the Berliner dumbfounded by nothing:
“He’s a special kind. They’re called voyeurs in France. They get it off merely from looking!”
Then, he turned to Little Mama, in a triumphant tone:
“Little Mama, what did I always tell you? Chick is a winner!”
They remained together for a long time and it was a fine evening. Every detail was talked about again and again.
As they were breaking up, however, and Gunther said they really should not have seen one another, and would probably not see one another again soon, Atze said pompously:
“ It’s not to be understood like that. For one thing he’s away, out of town. And secondly, you’re just not to go with others. You don’t have to any more. You don’t need to. And after all, what does fidelity mean? He doesn’t even love you. The other loved you.”
“What other?”
“Well, the one with the five marks.”
“But he never did anything with me either.”
“Just for that reason,” said Atze decisively. Then Atze, who not so very long ago had asserted that love was nonsense and did not exist, added:
“Just for that reason. Because he loved you. But again you don’t understand, Chick, and you will probably never understand, because you don’t know life like I do!”
So they did decide to meet again.
Naturally not in lounges or on hustler streets. Just among themselves.
Fifty marks a week! I won’t let them get away from me so easily! thought Atze. He had already decided right away—it did not require Little Mama’s understanding look—to participate in his friend’s good fortune to the best of his ability.
His last words, however, were only to repeat again (for even he was still numb):
“Man, Chick, you are a lucky dog!”
*
They met again and again during the next days.
At first in neutral streets and establishments. (Gunther paid for everything as a matter of course, after about half of his savings from the recent weeks had been first taken from him: “Just think, Chick, what all you owe me in tuition!”)
Then, when it became boring for them and they wanted to see old acquaintances again, they also met in queer bars, but only in the afternoon hours.
To be sure, Atze kept him distant from the gentlemen.
“You see how good things are going!” he said, “and why should that goofy servant ever come here.”
On the fifth day they intended to meet in the Kleist Lounge at four o’clock.
Since Gunther wanted to show off his tuxedo, which Atze had not yet admired, he changed at home beforehand.
Then he strolled in this impossible costume of black evening suit with low-cut vest, top hat, and patent leather shoes, in the early afternoon—to the secret amusement of the passersby—from the Tiergarten quarter to Wittenbergplatz, for he still had time until four. (That Franz, who was struck by the change of clothes, was following him, he did not suspect.)
He had hardly entered the still quite empty bar, however, and had just greeted Atze, when the servant appeared on the scene.
He did not make a long speech:
“If you still want to pick up your things, you can come along right now!”
The young gentleman in evening clothes, startled and disconcerted, hardly had time left to whisper to his friend: “Go to Little Mama. I’ll come afterward.”
This time Franz went ahead and the boy followed, completely abashed. He wanted to keep his things.
He got them. While he collected and packed them into the leather suitcase, Franz stood beside him, in shirtsleeves and red servant’s vest, watching each piece with sharp eyes (although Gunther did not think about taking anything that had not been a gift to him and therefore rightly belonged to him). What did not go into the suitcase was put into a cardboard box.
This time the boy carried his bag down the stairs himself and Franz followed.
Conscientious as always, he had strictly kept to his master’s order: “If the rascal shows a longing for his earlier life, let him go.”
Happy to be rid of the useless eater and inconvenient loafer in such a good way, he opened the iron door to the street and, without a further word, closed it behind the outcast.
*
The boy was no longer as disconcerted as he had been at the unexpected surprise. For one thing, he had money, still more than seventy marks, and he had a great number of fine things. So he rode first to a hotel at his old familiar Stettiner Bahnhol. But instead of his former hotel, he went to one of the large ones, opposite the train station entrance, where he took a room on the second floor in front. (Six marks a night.)
Then he went directly to Atze and Little Mama.
But here he was badly received.
The two of them, having felt sure they had set a good and firm trap for the weekly fifty marks, covered him with reproaches.
“Why didn’t you pay more attention, you stupid ass!” Atze cried.
But Gunther also had a ready tongue now and used it.
Was it not he, Atze, who had misled him into going to the queer bars again?
Thus they quarreled for a long time and one word led to another until Gunther, becoming tired of it, simply walked away, not to return.
For the second time that day he stood in the street.
No more discouraged than before.
The affair with the Count would have had to end sometime, that he understood. In the long run life there would have become simply unbearable.
Over cake and whipped cream in a cafe he counted his money and found that it was even more than he had thought: over eighty marks (for the fourth week had also been paid in advance). Enough, therefore, for at least two or three weeks!
But even if it were all gone, he would not go with anyone for under fifty marks—now that he was so well dressed.
6
For young Hermann Graff too, these last weeks had gone by neither slower nor faster than others, but no longer in the calm of earlier days.
He wanted to forget.
As if forgetting were easy!
He had his work and did it. He came home, then went out again for a walk—in the open air, in the environs. When the heat let up a bit (but it hardly ever did this summer), he went for long walks. Or he also stayed at home.
But more and more rarely. He had there what he wanted: quiet and solitude. But he no longer felt at ease in his room. It became ever more foreign and uncomfortable.
Not that he had any complaints about his landlady. On the contrary, no one could be served more punctually and silently than he was.
His breakfast stood before the door; his room was made spotlessly clean daily.
Never did he discover a sign of improper curiosity; never were the papers on his desk moved from their place.
He himself, meticulously tidy, could not have done better.
Nor could it be her person, for he never saw her. Days could go by without a sight of her, and when that occurred, their meeting was l
imited to a brief greeting, and now and then the most necessary words.
But her entire appearance was strange and unpleasant to him: the black, staring eyes, the stern mouth, the hard, cold face, even the invariably black dress, and the whole attitude of her gaunt, bony figure.
He still had no idea how she lived. When she was out of the house or there in her back rooms.
He also did not worry about it, but it was uncanny.
Had she known better days and was it only a terrible bitterness that she now showed?
Thus little by little a breath of chill came between these two people, who in living habits so resembled one another, who lived here next door to one another.
A chill breath that, with time, became a no longer concealed aversion and thus, at least on her side—he sensed it vaguely—became plain hatred.
*
Basically he had a clear and cool head. He was slow in his decisions, but once they were made, he stubbornly carried them out.
He knew his sexual disposition. He knew how it stood with him. He still read a great deal, but did not trouble himself for an explanation where there was nothing to explain. What was self-evident, natural, and not in the least sick did not require an excuse through an explanation. Many of the theories now posed he held to be false and dangerous.
It was a love just like any other love. Whoever could not or would not accept it as love was mistaken. The mistake reflected onto those who were mistaken.
They were still in the majority, those who were mistaken. And therefore in possession of force.
But they were mistaken there too. For force never has power over human sentiments. The most human of all feelings—and the strongest except hunger—was love.
Since that terrible struggle with his passion, which the young pupil in his home town had awakened in him (that pupil, whom he had so often seen, but hardly spoken to, with whom he had never become close, because all circumstances forbade it)—since that life and death struggle he had been afraid of himself. Never again in his life did he want to go through that hell again.
Besides, a certain shame had always prevented him from giving in too much to his feelings and conceding a larger space in his life to them. To betray his feelings to others, or even to show his feelings, to speak about them, would have been completely impossible for him. It would have seemed to him inconceivably ugly.
The Hustler: The Story of a Nameless Love From Friedrichstrasse Page 15