At home, the gardener informed him of Tom’s death: the dog, he thought, had been hit by a truck, it was found unconscious and had died, he said, in his arms. Dreyer gave him fifty marks for his sympathy, reflecting sadly that nobody besides that rather coarse old soldier had really loved the poor beast. At the office he learned that Mr. Ritter would meet him not in the lobby of the Adlerhof but at the bar of the Royal. Before going there, he rang up Isolda at her mother’s at Spandau and pleaded abjectly for a brief date later in the evening, but Isolda said she was busy, and suggested he call her again tomorrow or the day after tomorrow and take her to the premiere of the film, King, Queen, Knave, and then one would see.
His American guest, a pleasant, cultured person with steel-gray hair and a triple chin, asked about Martha, whom he had met a couple of years before, and Dreyer was disappointed to discover that all the English learned since the day of that pleasant party was not sufficient to cope with the nasal pronunciation of Mr. Ritter—whereupon the latter courteously switched to an old-fashioned brand of German. Another disappointment awaited Dreyer at the “laboratory.” Instead of the three automannequins promised him, only two were available for the show—the initial elderly gentleman, wearing a replica of Dreyer’s blue blazer, and a stiff-looking, bronze-wigged lady in a green dress with high cheekbones and a masculine chin.
“You might have thrown in a little more bosom,” observed Dreyer reproachfully.
“Scandinavian type,” said the Inventor.
“Scandinavian type,” said Dreyer. “Female impersonator, rather.”
“An amalgam, if you like. We ran into some trouble, a rib failed to function properly. After all, I need more time than God did, Mr. Director. But I’m sure you’ll love the way her hips work.”
“Another thing,” said Dreyer. “I don’t much care for the old chap’s necktie. You must have got it in Croatia or Liechtenstein. Anyway it is not one of those my store provided. In fact, I remember the one he had on last time; it was a beautiful light blue like yours.”
Moritz and Max tittered.
“I confess,” said the Inventor calmly, “to have borrowed it for this important occasion.” He started to worry the front stud of the tall collar under his rustling beard, but before it could spring, Dreyer had already swished off his own pearl-gray tie and remained with an open shirt collar for the rest of his known existence.
Mr. Ritter was dozing in an armchair in the “theater.” Dreyer coughed loudly. His guest woke up rubbing his eyes like a child. The show started.
Gyrating her angular hips, the woman passed across the stage more like a streetwalker than a sleepwalker. She was followed by the drunken viveur. Presently she jerked by again in a mink coat, reeled, recovered, completed her agonizing stretch, and the sound of a massive thud came from the wings. Her would-be client did not appear. There was a long pause.
“That meal you bought me was certainly something,” said Mr. Ritter. “I’ll have my revanche when madame and you visit me in Miami next spring. I have a Spanish chef who worked for years in a French restaurant in London so you do really get quite a cosmopolitan menu.”
This time the woman drifted past on slow roller skates, in a black evening dress, her legs rigid, her profile like that of a skull, her décolleté revealing a tricot smudged by the hasty hands of her maker. His two accomplices failed to catch her behind the scenes where her brief career ended in an ominous clatter. There was another pause. Dreyer wondered what aberration of the mind had ever made him accept, let alone admire, those tipsy dummies. He hoped the end of the show had come but Mr. Ritter and he had not yet seen the best number.
White-gloved, in evening dress, one hand raised to his top hat, the old chap entered, looking refreshed and gay. He stopped in front of the spectators and started to remove his hat in a complicated, much too complicated, salute. Something crunched.
“Halt,” howled the Inventor with great presence of mind and darted toward the mechanical maniac. “Too late!” The hat was doffed with a flourish but the arm came off too.
A photographer’s black curtain was mercifully drawn.
“How have you liked?” asked Dreyer in English.
“Fascinating,” said Mr. Ritter and started to leave. “You’ll hear from me in a couple of days. I have to decide, you see, which of two projects to finance.
“Is the other similar?”
“Oh, no. Oh, goodness, no. The other has to do with running water in luxury hotels. Water made to produce recognizable tunes. The music of water in a literal sense. An orchestra of faucets. Wash your hands in a barcarolla, bathe in Lohengrin, rinse your silver in Debussy.”
“Or drown in a Bach,” punned Dreyer.
He spent the rest of the evening at home, trying to read an English play called Candida, and every now and then lapsing into lazy thought. The automannequins had given all they could give. Alas, they had been pushed too far. Bluebeard had squandered his hypnotic force, and now they had lost all significance, all life and charm. He was grateful to them, in a vague sort of way, for the magical task they had performed, the excitement, the expectations. But they only disgusted him now.
He worked through another scene, dutifully leafing through his dictionary at every stumble. He would ring up Isolda tomorrow. He would hire a pretty English girl to teach him the language of Shaw and Galsworthy. He would simply resell the invention to Bluebeard. Ah, brilliant idea! For a token sum of ten dollars.
How quiet the house was. No Tom, no Martha. She was not a good loser, poor girl. All at once he understood what subtle extra was added to the lifeless silence: all the clocks had stopped in the house.
A little after eleven he rose from his comfortable seat and was about to go up to the bedroom when the telephone placed a cold hand on his shoulder.
He was now speeding in a hired limousine driven by a broad-shouldered chauffeur through an infinite nocturnal expanse of woods and field, and northern towns, their names garbled by the impatient darkness—Nauesack, Wusterbeck, Pritzburg, Nebukow. Their weak lights fumbled at him in passing, the car shook and swayed, he had been promised they would make it in five hours, but they did not, and a gray morning was already abustle with bicycles weaving among crawling trucks when he reached Swistok, from which it was twenty miles to Gravitz.
The desk clerk, a dark-haired young man with hollow cheeks and big glasses, informed him that one of their guests happened to be Professor Lister of international fame; he had visited Madame last night, and was with her now.
As Dreyer strode toward his apartment, the doctor, a tall bald old man in a monastic-looking dressing gown with a brown satchel under his arm, came out of Martha’s room. “It is unheard-of,” he growled at Dreyer without bothering to shake hands with him. “A woman has pneumonia with a temperature of 106 and nobody bothers. Her husband leaves her in that state and goes for a trip. Her nephew is a nincompoop. If a maid had not alerted me last night you would be still carousing in Berlin.”
“So the situation is serious,” said Dreyer.
“Serious? The respiratory count is fifty. The heart behaves fantastically. It is not a normal organ for a woman of twenty-nine.”
“Thirty-four,” said Dreyer. “There is a mistake in her passport.”
“Or thirty-four. Anyway, she should be transported at once to the Swistok clinic where I can have her treated adequately.”
“Yes, at once,” said Dreyer.
The old man nodded crossly and swept away. One of the maids Martha disliked, the one who had stolen at least three handkerchiefs in as many days, was now dressed as a nurse (she had worked in winter at the clinic).
Plain brown or the heather tweed? Franz on the terrace of a café was in the middle of a nervous yawn when the doctor billowed past, heading for a quick swim before going to Swistok. Plain brown. Gruff Lister could not help being touched by the young fellow’s dejection and shouted to him from the promenade: “Your uncle is here.”
Franz went up to Dreyer’s room and stood l
istening to the moaning and muttering in the adjacent room. Would fate allow her to divulge their secrets? He knocked very lightly on the door. Dreyer came out of the sickroom, and he likewise was touched by Franz’s distraught appearance. Presently from the balcony they saw the ambulance enter the drive.
Over the waves, small angular waves, that rose and fell in time to her breathing, Martha floated in a white boat, and at the oars sat Dreyer and Franz. Franz smiled at her over Dreyer’s bent head, and she saw her gay parasol reflected in the happy gleam of his glasses. Franz was wearing one of the long nightshirts that had belonged to his father, and continued to smile at her expectantly as the boat dipped and creaked as if on springs. And Martha said: “It’s time. We can begin.” Dreyer stood up, Franz stood up also, and both reeled, laughing heartily, locked in an involuntary embrace. Franz’s long shirt rippled in the wind, and now he was standing alone, still laughing and swaying, and out of the water a hand protruded. “Take the oar, hit him,” cried Martha, choking with laughter. Franz, standing firmly on the blue glass of the water, raised the oar, and the hand disappeared. They were now alone in the boat, which was no longer a boat but a café with one large marble table, and Franz was sitting opposite her, and his odd attire had ceased to matter. They were drinking beer (how thirsty she was). Franz shared her unsteady glass while Dreyer kept slapping the table with his wallet to summon the waiter. “Now,” she said, and Franz said something in Dreyer’s ear, and Dreyer got up, laughing, and they both went away. While Martha waited her chair rose and fell, it was a floating café. Franz came back alone carrying her late husband’s blue jacket over his arm; he nodded to her significantly and tossed it on the empty chair. Martha wanted to kiss Franz but the table separated them and the marble edge bit into her chest. Coffee was brought—three pots, three cups—and it took her some time to realize there was one portion too many. The coffee was too hot, so she decided that since a drizzle had set in, it was best to wait for the rain to dilute the coffee, but the rain was hot too and Franz kept urging her to go home, pointing at their villa across the road. “Let’s begin,” she said. All three got up, and Dreyer, pale and sweaty, started to pull on his blue jacket. That perturbed her. It was dishonest, it was illegal. She gestured in mute indignation. Franz understood and, talking to him firmly, began leading away Dreyer, who staggered as he fumbled for the armhole of his blazer. Franz returned alone but no sooner had he sat down than Dreyer appeared from another direction, furtively making his way back, and his face was now utterly ghastly and inadmissible. With a sidelong glance at her he shook his head and seated himself without a word at the oars of the bed. Martha was overcome by such impatience that as soon as the bed began to move she screamed. The new boat rode through long corridors. She wanted to stand up but an oar blocked her way. Franz rowed steadily. Something kept telling her that not all had been properly done. She remembered—the jacket! The blue jacket lay at the bottom of the boat, its arms looked empty but the back was not flat enough, in fact it bulged, it humped suspiciously, and now the two sleeves were swelling. She saw the thing trying to rise on all fours, and grabbed it, and Franz and she swung it back and forth and hurled it out of the boat. But it would not sink. It slithered from wave to wave as if alive. She nudged it with an oar; it clutched at the oar, trying to clamber aboard. Franz reminded her that it still contained the watch, and the coat, now a blue mackintosh because of the water, slowly sank, limply moving its exhausted sleeves. They watched it disappear. Now the job was done, and an enormous, turbulent joy engulfed her. Now it was easy to breathe, that drink they had given her was a wonderful poison, Benedictine and bile, and her husband was already dressed, saying: “Hurry up, I’m taking you to a ball,” but Franz had mislaid her jewels.
Before leaving with her for the hospital, Dreyer told Franz to hold the fort, they would be back in a few days. There was probably not much difference basically between Martha’s delirium and her wretched lover’s state of mind. Once, on the eve of a school examination, when he desperately needed a passing mark in order not to repeat a whole class year, a clever sly boy said to him there was a trick that always worked if you knew how to apply it. With the utmost clarity, with all the forces of your mind bunched up in an iron fist, you had to visualize not what you wanted, not the passing mark, not her death, not freedom, but the other possibility, failure, the absence of your name from the list of those who had passed, and a healthy, ravenous, implacable Martha returning to her merry seaside inferno to make him carry out the scheme they had postponed. But according to the boy’s advice, that did not suffice: the really hard part of the trick was ignoring success utterly and naturally as if the very thought of it did not exist in one’s mind. Franz could not recall if he had achieved that feat in the case of the examination (which eventually he did pass) but he knew that he was incapable of managing it now. No matter how distinctly he imagined the three of them sitting again on the terrace of the Marmora tavern, and renewing the wager, and again getting Dreyer into the boat, he would notice out of the corner of his eye that the boat had floated away without them and that Dreyer was telephoning from the hospital to say she was dead.
Going to the other extreme, he allowed himself the dangerous luxury of imagining the freedom, the ecstasy of freedom awaiting him. Then, after that awful volupty of thought, he tried other ways of tricking fate. He counted the boats for hire and added their sum to that of the number of people in the open-air café on the beach, telling himself that odd would mean death. The number was odd but now he wondered if somebody had not left or come while he counted.
The day before he had resolved to take advantage of solitude and make a purchase that Dreyer might have ridiculed with his usual wit, and Martha thought frivolous at such a critical time in their lives. It was his old dream of fashionable plus-fours. He had spent a couple of hours in several shops. He had practically bought a pair but then had said he’d think it over, and decide which he wanted, the brown or the purplish tweed. He now returned to that shop and tried on the plain brown pair and it turned out to be a little too wide in the waist. He said he would take it if they could make the adjustment before closing time. This they promised. He also bought two pairs of brown woollen stockings. Then he went for a swim, and after that had three or four brandies at the bar, vainly waiting for the attractive blonde to get rid of two elderly men flirting with her, ponderously and obscenely. Suddenly it occurred to him that his choosing the more conservative tint meant his having envisaged death rather than life which those confetti-like specks in the tweed might suggest. But when he returned to the tailor’s the plus-fours were ready, and he did not have the courage to change his order.
Next morning Franz, wearing the new plus-fours and a turtleneck sweater, was looking at the rain over his second cup of after-lunch coffee when the desk clerk—who resembled him according to Uncle Clown—brought him two messages. Dreyer had telephoned that madame wanted her emerald earrings—and Franz immediately realized that if madame contemplated going to a dance, no death was expected. The clerk explained that Mr. Director Dreyer wanted his nephew to get those jewels from his aunt’s dresser and drive in a taxi to Swistok without delay. She had evidently recovered from her slight cold so swiftly that the doctor allowed her to go out that very night. Franz reflected bitterly that, of all the contingencies he had attempted to forestall, this was the only one he had not imagined specifically. The other message was a telegram that had been read over the telephone and transcribed thus by the multilingual desk: WISCH TU CLYNCH DEEL MUSS HAVE THAT DRUNK STOP HUNDRED OAKEY RITTER. It made no sense, but who cared. Cursing Lister, the miracle worker, he rode up in the lift with the pseudo-Franz, and a stout locksmith, hoarse-voiced and reeking of beer. The key was in Martha’s handbag which had gone with her to Swistok. The locksmith started working on the lock of the dresser. He wiped his nose and went down on one knee, then on both. The false Franz and the more or less real one stood side by side, staring at his dirty soles.
The drawer was finall
y extricated. Franz opened a black jewel box and showed the emeralds to the gloomy clerk.
Half an hour later he arrived at the hospital—a new white building in a pine grove on the outskirts of the town. The taximan demanded a tip and slammed the door angrily when Franz shook his head. A remarkably cheerful nurse had another message for him. His uncle, she said with a happy smile, was expecting him at the inn—about a mile down the highway. Franz walked the distance with his left hand pressed to his left side where the jewel box bulged. They chafed slightly between the thighs. As he approached the inn, he saw Martha come out of it briskly and consult the sky, one finger on the trigger of her umbrella. She gave Franz a quick look and went the way he had come. She was younger than Martha, and the mouth was different, but the eyes and the walk were Martha’s. That meant a gay reunion in a Swistok inn. Uncle, nephew, and two aunts.
He found Dreyer in the hall of the inn. He was inspecting an ornamental pewter and kept looking at it even when Franz was already thrusting the black box and the telegram into the vicinity of his person. Dreyer thrust both in his pocket without opening either, and replaced the pewter on its hook.
He turned toward Franz, who saw only then that it was not Dreyer but a demented stranger in a rumpled open shirt, with swollen eyes and a tawny-stubbled trembling jaw.
“It’s too late,” he said, “too late to put on for the dance, but still not too late to wear—”
He pulled Franz by the sleeve with such force that Franz almost lost his balance, but Dreyer only wanted to lead him to the desk.
King, Queen, Knave Page 25