Three Comrades Read online

  I was a bit embarrassed and at a loss how to start a conversation. I hardly knew the girl, and the longer I looked at her the stranger she was. It was a long time since I had been together with anyone like this; I was out of practice. I was more accustomed to knock about with men. In the café just now it had been too noisy—and now here it was suddenly too quiet. The stillness of the room gave to every word such weight that it was hard to talk easily. I began to wish myself back in the café. . . .

  Fred brought the glasses, and we drank. The rum was strong and fresh, and tasted of the sun. That was something to the good. I emptied my glass and at once ordered another.

  "Do you like it here?" I asked.

  The girl nodded.

  "Better than the pastry shop?"

  "I hate pastry shops," said she.

  "Then why ever did we meet there of all places?" I asked in surprise.

  "I don't know." She took off her cap. "Nothing else occurred to me."

  "So much the better that you like it here. We are often here. Of evenings this place is almost a sort of home for us."

  She smiled. "Isn't that rather a pity?"

  "No," said I, "it suits the times."

  Fred brought me the second glass. He placed a green Havannah beside it on the table. "From Herr Hauser."

  Valentin signalled from his corner and raised his glass. "Thirty-first of July, 'seventeen," said he in a thick voice.

  I nodded to him and raised my glass.

  He must always be drinking to somebody. I met him one night in a country inn drinking to the moon; he was celebrating some day or other in the trenches when things had been particularly sticky, and he was thankful to be alive still and able to sit there.

  "He is an old friend of mine," I explained to the girl, "a pal from the war. He is the only man I know who has known how to extract a small happiness out of a great misfortune. He does not know any more what to do with his life—so he rejoices simply that he is still alive."

  She looked at me thoughtfully. A band of light fell across her forehead and her lips. "I can understand that right enough," said she.

  I looked up. "Well, you ought not to be able to. You are much too young."

  She smiled. A slight, hovering smile in the eyes only. Her face hardly changed expression; merely became clearer, as from" within brighter.

  "Too young," said she. "What a thing to say! It seems to me one is never too young. Only always too old."

  I remained silent a moment.

  "There's a lot might be said on the other side," I replied at last, and made a sign to Fred to bring me something more to drink. The girl was,so assured and independent; I felt like a block of wood in comparison. I would like to have started some light, gay conversation, a really good conversation, the sort that usually occurs to one afterwards when one is alone again. Lenz could do it; but with me it always became awkward and laboured. It was not without justice that Gottfried maintained that as an entertainer I was about on the level of a postmistress.

  Fred fortunately was an understanding fellow. Instead of the usual thimble he brought me a decent wineglass full. It saved him trotting backwards and forwards all the time and it wouldn't be so obvious how much I drank. I had to drink else I should never get shot of this stockish prosiness.

  "Wouldn't you have another Martini?" I asked the girl.

  "What is that you are drinking, then?"

  "This? This is rum."

  She looked at my glass. "That is the same as you had just now."

  "Yes," said I, "I mostly drink rum."

  She shook her head. "I just can't believe that it can taste good."

  "I really don't know what it tastes like any more," said I.

  She looked at me. "Then what do you drink it for?"

  "Rum," said I—happy to have found something I could talk about—"rum has very little to do with taste. It isn't just a simple drink—it is a-friend, more. A friend who makes everything easier. It changes the world. And so one drinks it, of course—" I pushed the glass aside. "But shouldn't I order you another Martini?"

  "Make it a rum, rather," said she. "I should like to try it, once."

  "Good," said I, "but not this time. It is too heavy to start with. Bring a Bacardi cocktail," I called across to Fred.

  Fred brought the glasses. He brought also a dish with salted almonds and black baked coffee beans. "Leave me my bottle here, will you?" said I.

  Little by little things began to assume a new aspect. The sense of insecurity vanished, words came of themselves, I was no longer so painfully conscious of everything I said, drank on and felt the great soft wave approach and embrace me; the dark hour began to fill with pictures and stealthily the noiseless procession of dreams appeared again superimposed on the dreary, grey landscape of existence. The walls of the bar receded and suddenly it was no longer the bar— it was a little corner of the world, a haven of refuge, a dugout around which the eternal battle of chaos was raging and in which we two sat sheltering, mysteriously drifted to one another through the twilight of time.

  The girl was sitting curled up in her chair, a stranger, mysterious, as if cast up here from the other side of life. I heard myself speaking, but it was as if it were no longer myself, as if now some other person were talking, someone. I should like to have been. The words were not true any more, they took on other meanings, pressed on into other, more brightly coloured regions than were to be found in the little happenings of my life. I knew they were not true too, that they had turned to fancy and lies; but I did not care—the truth was cheerless and drab, and only the sense and the glamour of the dream was life.

  In the copper vat on the counter the light was glowing. Off and on Valentin raised his glass and murmured a date into the empty air. Outside the muffled roar of the street poured on, punctuated with the vulture cries of motorcars. They screamed in whenever anyone opened the door. They screamed like a nagging, jealous old woman.

  It was already dark when I brought Patricia Hollmann home. Slowly I walked back. I felt myself suddenly alone and empty. A fine rain was spraying down. I halted in front of a shop window. I had had too much to drink, I could feel it now. Not that I reeled—but I knew it definitely.

  I felt hot. I unbuttoned my coat and pushed back my hat. It had caught me napping once again. Blast it all—of all the god-damn things I'd been saying! They would not bear thinking of. And I couldn't remember them; that was the worst. Here, alone in the street roaring with buses, it all looked quite different from the way it had in the semi-darkness of the bar. I cursed myself. A nice impression the girl must have got of me! She was sure to have noticed. She hardly drank anything herself. And she had given me such a queer look when we parted. . . .

  Herrgott! I swung round. As I did so I bumped into a fat little man.—"Eh?" said I peevishly.

  "Keep your eyes open, can't you, you bucking broomstick!" barked the fat man.

  I stared at him.

  "Never seen a human being before, I suppose, eh?" he snapped again.

  He was just my mark.

  "Human beings, yes," said I, "but not beer barrels that walk."

  "Streak of misery!" said he.

  "Fat old fool," I responded.

  Solemnly he raised his hat. "Pass friend," said he, and we parted.

  The exchange of courtesies refreshed me, but my vexation remained. Indeed it got worse the soberer I became. I felt as clever as a wet towel. But gradually I ceased to be annoyed with myself alone: I was annoyed with everything —the girl included. It was her fault that I had got drunk. I turned up my coat collar. She could think what she liked for all of me, I didn't care—who was she anyway? The whole show could go to the devil for all I cared, too— what was done, was done. There was nothing more to be done about it. And just as well, probably. . . .

  I went back to the bar and this time got drunk properly.

  Chapter IV

  The weather turned warm and wet and it rained steadily for several days. Then it cleared and the sun sho
ne down with a sultry brooding warmth. When I arrived at the workshop on Friday morning, I found Matilda Stoss, her broom clamped under her arm, standing in the middle of the yard like a mesmerized hippopotamus.

  "Just look, Herr Lohkamp, isn't that gorgeous? Every time it's a fresh miracle."

  I stood in astonishment—the old plum tree by the petrol pump had blossomed overnight.

  There it had stood, bent and bare, all winter; we used to hook up old tyres in it and stand oil cans to drain in its branches; it had been just a convenient rack on which to hang everything from polishing-rags to engine-bonnets. Only a few days ago our newly washed dungarees were flapping from its branches; even so late as yesterday there had been nothing specially noticeable about it; and now suddenly overnight, it had been transformed, enchanted into a shimmering cloud of pink and white, a cloud of bright blossoms, as if a swarm of butterflies had suddenly settled on our grimy workshop.

  "And the smell!" said she, rolling her eyes with enthusiasm. "Marvellous! Just like rum."

  I smelt nothing, but I understood immediately. "Smells like customers' cognac to me," I suggested.

  She denied it emphatically. "You must have a cold, Herr Lohkamp. Or is it polyps, perhaps? Almost everyone has polyps nowadays. No, old Stoss has a nose like a bloodhound; you take it from me, it's rum, old rum."

  "All right, Matilda. . . ."

  I poured out a glass of rum and then went out to the petrol pump. Jupp was already sitting there. In a rusty jam tin beside him he had several sprays of blossom. "What's this in aid of?" I asked in surprise.

  "For the ladies," explained Jupp. "When they fill up they get a spray gratis. I've sold ninety litres more already. The tree is worth its weight in gold. If we didn't have it we'd have to make an artificial one."

  "You've the making of a smart businessman, boy," said I.

  He grinned. The sun shone through his ears so that they looked like stained-glass windows.

  "I've been photographed twice too," he went on. "With the tree for background."

  "Good for you, you'll be a film star yet," said I, and walked across to the pit where Lenz was crawling out from under the Ford.

  "Bob," said he, "something's just occurred to me. We must be getting busy about that girl of Binding's."

  I stared at him. "What do you mean?"

  "Just what I say. What are you staring for anyway?"

  "I'm not staring—"

  "I say you are staring. What was her name exactly? Pat—but Pat what?"

  He straightened up. "You don't know? but you wrote down her address. I saw you myself."

  "I lost the bit of paper," I explained.

  "Lost!" He seized his yellow hair with both hands. "After my spending a solid hour outside with Binding! Lost! Well, perhaps Otto knows."

  "Otto doesn't know either," said I.

  He looked at me. "You miserable dilettante! You're worse than that. Don't you know, then, that that was a wonderful girl? Hergott!" He stared at the sky. "When for once in our lives a bit of all right runs across our track, a dismal bonehead like you must go and lose the address."

  "She didn't strike me as anything so wonderful," said I.

  "That's because you're an ass," replied Lenz; "a twerp, who can recognize nothing above the level of a whore from the Café International. A pianist, that's what you are. Let me tell you once more, that was a windfall, a real windfall, that girl. You have no idea about such things, of course! Did you look at her eyes? Of course you didn't—you looked at your schnapps glass."

  "Oh, you shut up," I interrupted, for with the mention of schnapps he touched me on the raw.

  "And her hands," he went on, without paying any attention—"slender, long hands like a mulatto's—Gottfried understands these things, Gottfried knows. Holy Moses! A girl at last, as girls ought to be—beautiful, of course, and, what is more important, with atmosphere-r-" He interrupted himself. "Do you know, for instance, what that is—atmosphere?"

  "Air, that you pump into a tyre," said I.

  "Of course," said he pityingly. "Air, of course! Atmosphere, aura, radiance, warmth, mystery—it's what gives beauty a soul and makes it alive. But what's the use—your atmosphere is the smell of rum—"

  "Now stop, or I'll drop something on your head," I growled.

  But Gottfried still talked and I did nothing to him. He had of course no notion of what had happened and that every word found a mark—especially that about the drink. I had just about gotten over it, and was consoling myself pretty well; and now he must dig it all up again. He went on praising and praising the girl until soon I began to feel that I had really lost irretrievably something extraordinary.

  At six o'clock I went disgruntled to the Café International. That was my old refuge; Lenz had been right when he said so.

  When I got there, to my surprise there was an immense activity. On the counter were iced cakes and plum cakes, and flat-footed Alois was running with a tray laden with rattling coffee-cups to the back room.

  I halted. Coffee, by the canful? There must be a whole tribe of drunks under the table, out there.

  But the hostess explained. To-day in the back room they were holding the farewell party to Rosa's friend Lilly. I clapped my hand to my forehead. But of course, I was invited! The only man too, as Rosa had significantly said— for Kiki, the pansy, who was also to be there, did not count. I went out again swiftly and bought a bunch of flowers, a pineapple, a child's rattle, and a slab of chocolate.

  Rosa received me with the smile of a great lady. She was wearing a heavy low-necked dress and sat enthroned at the head of the table. Her gold teeth flashed again. I enquired how her little one was, and for it presented her with the celluloid rattle and the bar of chocolate. Rosa beamed.

  With the pineapple and the flowers I turned to Lilly: "With my best wishes."

  "He always was a cavalier," said Rosa; "and now come, Bob, sit between us two."

  Lilly was Rosa's best friend. She had a brilliant career behind her. She had been what is the unattainable ambition of every little pros'titute, a hotel woman. A hotel woman does not walk the streets—she lives in the hotel and makes her acquaintances there. Very few reach those heights—they have not enough clothes or enough money to be able to wait long for a suitor. True, Lilly had only been in a provincial hotel; but in the course of the years she had saved almost four thousand marks. Now she meant to get married. Her future husband had a small plumbing business. He knew all about her but he did not mind. And he would not have to worry for the future; when one of these girls does marry, she is to be trusted. They know the rough-and-tumble and have had enough of it.

  Lilly was to be married on Monday. To-day Rosa was giving her a farewell coffee-party. They had all turned up to be with Lilly once more. Once married she would not be able to come here again.

  Rosa poured me out a cup of coffee. Alois came trotting up with an enormous cake all peppered over with currants and almonds and angelica. She laid a great slice in front of me.

  I knew what I had to do. Expertly I sampled a bite and registered utmost astonishment.

  "Donnerwetter, but this was certainly never bought in a shop!"

  "Made it myself," said Rosa, delighted. She was a wonderful cook and liked one to recognize it. Especially at goulash and plum cake she was unrivalled. She did not come from Bohemia for nothing.

  I looked around. There they sat about the table, workers in God's vineyard, unparalleled connoisseurs of human nature, soldiers of love: Wally, the beautiful, whose white fox somebody had stolen recently during a night ride in a taxi; Lina with the wooden leg, who yet always found a lover; Fritzi, the gay, who was in love with the flat-footed Alois, though she could have had a house of her own and a friend, whom she refused; Margot of the red cheeks who always wore housemaid's clothes and thereby picked up smart lovers; Marion, the youngest, radiant and carefree; Kiki, who did not count as a man because he wore women's clothes and made up; Mimi, the poor creature, who with her forty-five years and varicos
e veins found the going always hard; a couple of barmaids, and some dining partners whom I did not know; and finally, the second guest of honour, little, grey and shrivelled as a winter apple— "Mother," the confidante of everybody, comfort and support of all night walkers. Mother of the sausage stall at the corner of Nikolaistrasse, at night a travelling kitchen and exchange bureau, where together with her Frankfort sausages she sold on the quiet cigarettes and rubber goods, and could always be counted on for a loan.

  I understand the etiquette. Not a word of shop, no indelicate suggestion to-day; forgotten Rosa's remarkable prowess that had earned her the nickname of the "Iron Horse"; forgotten Fritzi's discussions with Stefan Grigoleit, the cattle dealer, on the subject of love; forgotten Kiki's dances around the brezel basket in the early hours of the morning. The conversation here would have done credit to a mothers' meeting.