EVENING in the café was announced by the four o’clock change of waiters. It signified to the poor who had been there since mid-day that entrance to the evening’s warm idleness was conditional upon ordering fresh coffee. The young man writing leisurely beckoned another cup. Voluntarily he avoided the shouldertap of necessity. Few were brave enough to outsit otherwise their customary familiar waiter. He turned his sheet to re-read.

“Caravanserai of Chatter. By William Burton. The grey mass of the Gedächtnis Kirche segregates the Romanisches Café from its brighter brethren of the Kurfürstendamm. The ostracised café therefore not ungratefully harmonises its architecture with that of the jailor church. There is, however, more than a church between this one and the rest of Berlin Westend cafés. Barrier serving is the spontaneous bohemianism of the Jewish nations. When the old Café des Westens went the way of all the cafés of Bohemia and became smart, the ejected ‘temperamentvoll [high-spirited] German Jews’ who had drunk around Rupert Brooke were houseless. The managers of the respectable konditoreis [pastry shops] of the Kurfürstendamm showed plainly disinclination to admit shabby bohemia. Then the painter Viktor adventured further behind the grey church than any bohemian had ever been, and discovered a moribund and therefore welcoming coffee house. Three hundred newspapers were on the file and Berlin Bohemia avidly settled there. That is the origin of the present café.”

Mr. William Burton destroyed this third product of a young life of dreams and rested against the green plush cushions.

* * *

He caught the approaching waiter’s eye.

—Strange myself in a noose of coffee cups curtailing the liberty of my heart beats. Coffees black and white, warp and weft of the caffein shroud, enveloping the last of my young Englishman’s life. I am to be seen in here opening my mouth to the hardened clay of a double coffee cup and slipping within myself heated liquids.—

Herrober laid down a filament of hangman coffee. “Your little friend has not come in to-day. You look lonely for her.”—The way those two sit in a corner kissing hours away behind American papers. He is her latest....

—Let plump little Lotte from the reformatory home go hang herself before I sit looking lonely for her. Let her slip from the plush-cushioned banks into deep pools of café hours. No wind from the hills moves their waters sideways. So dead are they with the washed down salts of ambition she will float desperately trying to drown herself. All the stagnant eternity of day and night seeps in through the swing doors swung by the porter, and bears lotus blossoms of coffee cups past floating speakers. Let her drown.—

Swing door of the café turned its four compartments irritably on themselves. Through those sudden right angles spectacled habitués were precipitated flocculent in unsymmetric tables.

Round the fat Fritz the regular octahedron of women crystallised themselves on axes of contemptuous chatter.

—I am the speck of dust waiting to solidify the supersaturated intellectual. It is time Ali showed up.—

“Nine o’clock,” said the waiter.

—All the hours slouch in like tramps through the café. Hour ten not able to move round the place, so chockablock it is with drinkers of coffee. Only at midnight the tired sweaty evening hours make a mob of it, rush the door and hustle themselves out of it. Seven and eight o’clock not out of the chess room yet. But my afternoon fumes of brandy are crawling down. Call for the cheesecake.—

The white aproned waiter laid a single cheesecake on the table.

—I am at the bottom of a hot green and gold cavern. If you ask me where, it is centred in the cold Prussian plains. Here in the centre of the cold Prussian plains I am slaughtering subsidiary tribes of cheesecakes. Somewhere outside this empire of Käsekuchen [cheesecake] are other rooms with far different wallpapers.

I am the man who in the dark scaled the walls of Regent’s Park.

Out on the early unruffled river morning near Henley in racing skiffs with the backward pupil from Columbia. The sculls drew soapy railway lines on the thick singing water and the muscled legs open to the breeze pushed hard against the thwarts. No one was abreast of the water for miles and we raced ahead singing the limericks that by now are anthologised in the monasteries of Columbia.

Watching the foggy sun like peculiar cheese behind St. Paul’s. In the laboratory coughing nitrous fumes and spilt acids were the conceivable basis to research work momentous to the learned. The delicate weighing out of unimportant things for important purposes. In college rooms electrical appliances and examination papers.

On dusty roads of Berkshire the Khaki puttees of school section of cadets with egg and tomato sandwiches. I was the last to get a drink of water on that contemptible field day, but indomitably held up the whole homeward march till I got it—extra-special, with the headmaster near his little pukka sahib [proper colonial gentleman].

Under the white lily dome of the national library in Unter den Linden from nine in the morning till the bell at night trod down the turf of green lamps with severity.

Diving into sea water near Rye.—

Through the swing doors the straight eyes of Lotte.

Lotte bounced in through the swing door faster than she had intended. The scoundrelly porter played that joke with every girl entering alone. Some day she would vamp a prizefighter and let him settle that matter.

The man with the blue beard from Munich raised a hand: “Lotte, when are you coming to pose for me?”

“I will come some time; I am busy at present. I must go.”—They will not catch me standing for hours in cold studios when I have found a nice young publisher with money.

The casual photographer motioned: “We have to get some more scenes done quickly. Rich Americans have ordered them. Something really novel. Pay you and Hedi twenty marks a position.”

“Not now, I am busy.”

Looking to the usual table she saw the young Englishman lonely. Some of Viktor’s friends in a side alley detained her. “Let me pass, please.”

“There is a way round there, gnädiges Fräulein [gracious young lady]. Your Englishman is sitting over there. Have a coffee with me. Make him jealous.”

“Oh, he won’t be jealous” bitterly, Lotte.

—He wouldn’t be jealous. How calmly he said to me, ‘Well, go along with my friend, there he is, he is a nice man, they say he’s a bit of a prince in his country. I can recommend him.’

Lotte sipped her jealous coffee.—I’m glad he is alone. He knows I can sit at any table here. I am never alone. No one would have thought he could have turned out like that. The whole night unsympathetic, unhelping: ‘I can’t take you home, Lotte. Impossible. My landlord is a lawyer, all terribly respectable. No lock on my door and they bring in the breakfast very early. The maid is up hours before I am. Isn’t there anywhere you can get a room? How about your dark-haired friend?’—‘She hasn’t a room either, and I can’t go back to Viktor. He would turn me out.’—‘I will walk about all night with you, or we can sleep on one of the stations.’—‘It is too cold to walk about. It is bitter.’—‘Well, how about my friend here?’ Then he started on about his friend and they kept speaking in English together. Ali said he didn’t mind, I always knew he liked me. And Willy kept saying: ‘You know you really like him, you can see for yourself how handsome he is. He is a beautiful man’—

Lotte finished her coffee.—On the cold windy corner beneath the church the three of us argued. Ali agreeable to everyone, only Willy sulky. Pushing me into the arms of his friends: ‘Oh, go with him, go along with him.’ When I stamped my foot he laughed and then the tears came into my eyes and when I saw him again he was already going away. He shook hands with Ali, that was all. I thought he was wonderful at first, but he treats me just like they do, making out I am only fit to be a servant girl. Pretending I have no brains, stupid. Brains enough to get a better man. He shan’t keep me away from our table.—

She stood up and looked towards the corner. He was looking at her. He might.

Willy indifferently lengthened his legs.—Coming here in all those new clothes. Bit of impudence to annoy me, because it’s Viktor’s table. Hope he turns her away. Now she’s got some good clothes she’ll be well rid of me. Fly at higher game. The Anhalter Bahnhof two o’clock in the morning, she was hanging on my arm listening to a persuasive sailor lad.

We recognised each other although it was over six months since we met. We were both pleased, I must have looked pleased. Rather flattering to have German friends popping up like that all over the place. I told her: ‘This is a friend of mine come from Hamburg. He was a sailor and tramped all the way to Berlin. I met him in the waiting room at the Zoologische Garten station.’ He smilingly remembered: ‘Yes he and I were sleeping there, I was out of work.’—‘He helped me out of a hole. I was sleeping there at night. I had missed a train, and a German tried to get money from me. He kept coming back with his friends, pretending they were secret service men, and I was a fake Englishman. Wanted to get my passport. There was a row, they wouldn’t leave me. I didn’t know much German in those days and my friend here chipped in for me. At last he got a policeman. We have never met since then, have we?’ ‘What is he doing now?’ she asked. She was interested.—‘All kinds of things, carry bags, fetch cabs, find rooms at night. I can find you a room if you haven’t got one.’

—Lotte and I had been walking all over Berlin. Without a room as usual. I can understand him kicking her out. I, like a fool, walking all night with her. Spent our last money on sausages hot at a street corner. Cold and tired when we met him. He wanted to know whether I had a watch. ‘Only a very cheap one.’ ‘Looks very good,’ he said. I told him frankly, it’s cheap. He couldn’t tell, but anyone else could. ‘Fine scarf you have,’ he noticed. ‘You could get a room for those two and take them out again next day for five marks, price of a room.’

Lotte said: ‘I will get the five marks to-morrow. Let us go. I am cold and sleepy.’ We must have talked hours about it. I didn’t want to take a room with Lotte. Sudden destiny flinging up a gratefully remembered helper so inopportune—opportunely. He and she allies that she and I go together. I, young and lustful, hungry and dirty, six weeks old shirt on my back, overcoatless, student—on philosophic benches of lecture rooms dreaming, cursing: O for a girl, for a girl. On my arm, then, plump, tender Lotte. I, in good English retreat, thank you no, hardily, boldly hesitating. I thinking, are you blind, Lotte? Here is a young sailor. Are you soft, sailor? Here is a softer young girl. Why don’t you take English leave of the Englishman? Leave me now insular, completely surrounded by desertion. Then that jackal of the night: ‘Who are these, Fritz?’—‘They want a room, watch and scarf in exchange.’—‘Come with me.’

In the neighbouring houses a staircase growing into rooms. Bell. Goodbye, Fritz. Man, to woman: watch, scarf, redeem to-morrow. Lotte and I smothered into a room obsolete with bed and couch and wardrobe. ‘I will sleep on the couch, you in the bed, Lotte.’ It wasn’t my fault, Viktor, she seduced me.

Undressed sideways, crabbily hiding unsuccessfully, unnecessarily, dirty underlinen. Lotte kicking in bed. Strange she hadn’t a room, had such white shining candlelight under clothing. I have a room and look at my socks. ‘Come into bed.’—‘No I can’t.’—‘Come into bed. Why don’t you want to love me?’ She thought I was callow. Then I told her: Ali my friend, the Persian, he said to me, ‘How can you be such a fool? don’t you go with that girl, she’s got something the matter with her, she’s got no eyelashes, haven’t you noticed?’—Herrgott [Good Lord], however did I, could I fetch myself to break that to her. Bit of a coward giving away Ali, served him right, there was nothing the matter with her. The way she turned her face, began to cry, cried, seemed like a child. Then I as cowardly shook Ali and fear to the devil, consolation as I gathered her into my pitiful arms that I was for it, but no matter, dear little Lotte. It was quite all right anyway.—

Willy looking up saw Heinke come in through the swing door. He was conscious that Lotte was indifferently seated on his left, alone. That was one consolation.

* * *

Heinke’s green shirt and tie splashed their colour through the swing door.

—Viktor not there yet, only the Englishman and Lotte. Thought they had quarrelled. Simple naive fellow, nothing perverse, this Englishman. Wouldn’t think he was English though, not one of those lanky fellows with the seesaw voices and cold eyes. Seems never to have had a woman. Why Lotte wouldn’t show him my drawings. The little cow blushed and hasn’t spoken to me since. Why shouldn’t he see? Got no time for people with minds as pure as that. Besides, she’ll be showing him something, I know.

Think she’s got something wonderful, thinks she’ll marry into one of those leather-trunk families of rich English. Just because he does not know enough to not treat her like a lady. It’s only ignorance. Viktor sees through that. It all comes out of Viktor if he’s winning at chess, cursing confidentially. When I let him win the other day, he chuckled: ‘Young Lotte’s got her audience at last, she’s got our little Englishman, he listens open-eyed to her penny-dreadful tales of reformatory life. I suppose he believes she is a tragic adventuress. You should see the airs she gives herself, never been taken so seriously before. I’ve kicked the little bitch out. She tires me. Haven’t got the strength to deal with little animals like her, born to roll on their backs when a stranger enters the café. Only thing the little devil can understand. She’s not such a fool, though. Always leaves something behind when I turn her out. She’ll be round in a couple of days, saying: I’ve come to fetch my other vest. I have to pose to-day. Let me change here, then I’ll take everything away.—So she starts undressing very slowly and I always say: You can stay and make tea. So she stops fooling about with her clothes and stays till I kick her out again.’ No wonder she thinks young Willy is an English lord. Never had anyone but village toughs and café Jews. I’d prefer any Jew to a cold-blooded Englishman, damned sight more generous. But Willy can’t be English. His mother must have been something else. Irish.

She thinks he’s the only one understands her. Viktor says he made English love to her, telling her she ought to write the story of her life. Poor little Lotte! She couldn’t write her name. Still that’s what flatters them, even more than money. Tell a servant girl she’s an artistic whore. All for love and the feeling, as Viktor says. Himmel [Heavens], she’s actually smiling at me! Willy looks fierce.

Willy watched Heinke long-legged shaking hands round tables.—Hope Heinke comes here. Find out where Viktor is. Must be a good sort, Heinke. Goes round once a day to Viktor’s dirty old studio. Never there when I am, but I’m chiefly there at meal times. He sits playing chess all afternoon to please him. If Heinke wins, Viktor bangs him on the head with the chessboard. Remember that time he came in with a bandaged brow. Can’t afford from point of view of health to win more than once in a month. Viktor: ‘I look at the paintings of these dirty dogs and I only get depressed. Heiligesakrament [Holy sacrament]! They paint better than I do, I begin to believe. That’s bad enough. But for these halfwits to beat me at chess as well. That is too much. Smack. I bang their heads.’

Heinke was there the first night I went to Viktor’s. Lotte did that well, saying to Viktor: ‘That is a young Englishman over there, the Hindou told me. You speak to him. He will be able to write about you in English papers and you will sell thousands of pictures.’—He came very politely across the table to me. How pleased he was when I said I would come to see his work next day. Lotte, wearing breeches, opened the door. She always wore those then, had nothing else, had to put an old frock over them when she went out. I wonder whom she got them from. Made her look fatter than she was. Straddled her way over to the potatoes baking on a stove lid, the room tight with leaking smoke. A cliff of charity coal left by insistent organisation for necessitous Hebrews, a sack of beans, a ham wrapped up in coal dust, a paling of black bread fencing off a corner’s cobwebs. I should have kept that essay, could have sold it. A charity so determined and a recipient so unwilling. They made him accept it though.

When I went in, Viktor was washing his collar. He took it off, soaped it, got a nailbrush, brushed it. I moved the butter out of the range of flying soap. He turned the damp collar, nailbrushing it soapily towards the butter. I shook flecks of soap off the ham. Lotte made sweet coffee while Viktor dried his collar over the stove. She lay back on the mattress opening her breeched legs and smiling at me. I suddenly felt I had known her nights and nights. She went to a corner to put on her vest and looked to see if I was looking. Not to be caught out so easily. She discovered I was sitting on her frock on the mattress and came for it. Viktor showed me his etchings.

Lotte shook the frock down over her hips and hunted for the mirror. Viktor said he would join us in the café. Lotte and I left. Where was Heinke then? He must have gone.

Willy: “No, mein lieber [my dear], Viktor hasn’t come. Nor has Ali.”

Heinke: “I think I can see Viktor in the doorway. He looks proud, so perhaps he has money. You be nice to him. He thinks a lot of you, because you are English. There he is.”

Willy saw Viktor pull off his glasses.

* * *

Viktor in the hot café pulled off his glasses.—I must lose thousands of marks a day through these confounded spectacles. Film themselves as soon as I enter a café. Condenses the hot air on the cold glass. Can’t see anyone then, however rich. Never have anything to clean them with. Can’t ask a perfect stranger, clean my glasses on your woman’s petticoat. Gives anyone with money time to get out before I see them, cunning pigs. Look so foolish, too, polishing in the doorway here. Viktor on the lookout for a victim. Wouldn’t need to do it in London. Come to you.

—I will go there with that young Englishman. Only he must leave his Lotte behind. Only too willing, probably. Some English countess girl he must marry when his family bring him back from the grand tour. Still, good experience for him, have his first love affairs with types like Lotte. Thinks I don’t know, I will have to pretend to be angry. You have betrayed your good German friend, the great world artist, Berlin, London, Paris, and stolen his only model, ekelhaftes Vieh [disgusting creature]. He will be disappointed if I am not desolated. I suppose he thinks he did it. Can’t stop her wanting young men, she’s got to live herself out, takes all manner of lads to quieten types like that into marrying. Must give up these pince-nez, see through them now perhaps.—

Settling his glasses Viktor saw Willy, Lotte, Heinke. Lotte was telling Heinke she had found a young publisher who was going to look after her now. She wasn’t going to be kicked out into the streets by madmen like Viktor, who was always over-eating himself and being sick over the chessboards of his friends.

“Enemies, too,” said Heinke.

Willy got ready to smile at Viktor.—No wonder he gets sick after prologue of starvation. Twenty years of a life like his. Creeping up at nights into strange houses to doss on the top floor where interruption unlikely. Twice ten years of borrowed pennies, none of the bulwarks cowardice sets against privation. No stomach, no teeth, no hair, hardening of the arteries, congestion of the brain, abysmal depressions and one ungrateful little bitch of a model. It is like meeting myself at forty. She always complains of living with an old man: ‘People stare at me. I am a young girl, with an old man.’—Why hadn’t she got other people then?—The Russian café in the Nürnbergstrasse a few doors past the red lit homosexual café. A young girl, pale and with dilated lustrous eyes in a crescent of chattering men. A young silently sitting girl beside discursive impotent looking men.—That’s how I first saw Lotte, six months before Viktor spoke to me. Went there with Power, the chemical Englishman. Never seen such a wonderful girl. Knew later she looked like that because of drugs, going home afterwards with the journalist reading mooney poetry to her. I must have gone every evening for a week, gazing at her, whipping myself into heroics of romanticism, going out lonely and agog with cherry brandy into moonlit cooling streets. I knew she was a girl for me, knew she was one of those set down irrevocably as mine. Suddenly stopped going I suppose. Then came my great tears in the morning passion for the Roumanian girl, messing me up for six months. And then at the end of all that, back to the Romanisches Café, a coffee, the Indian, yes I come here sometimes, heart-beat, it’s the girl from the café. All arranged. Indubitably. Funny I should know first glance, girl for me. When I sat here with the limping Indian correspondent, she smiled at me. Said afterwards, almost sincerely, that she hadn’t. Then got Viktor to speak to me.—

“Guten Abend [Good evening], Viktor. Have you seen Ali?”

Viktor turned his back on Lotte and Heinke. “I don’t speak to Heinke now. He’s just a shopboy playing at artist. Shouldn’t sit at a table with people like us. He is only fit to associate with cattle like Lotte.”

Ali turned the corner from the other room. Over a fur-lined coat bargained for six months long, bold eyes swept round to Willy. His full-cheeked Persian face softened. He stopped and waved his bowler hat.

* * *

Ali put on his bowler.—Willy is smiling at Viktor. Looks recovered from his bad temper. He needn’t have been angry, it was all his doing. He encouraged it. Always getting upset like that about a girl. English sentimentality. Crying over that university girl. All these Europeans make fusses like that about women, except Heinke. Gets them young and leaves them early. It’s only like having a beefsteak. Why make a scene about it? I couldn’t help it. I said I wouldn’t if she didn’t want to. Even if I promised, he put her off on me. He didn’t want her. When he left us like that on the pavement he told me to take her home. I tried to keep my word: ‘You sleep in my bed, Lotte. I’ll sleep on my couch.’—It was she kept on saying she was cold, cold. I couldn’t drive her out when she crept in so quickly. She made me. She’s a beast anyway, saying afterwards: ‘You’re not as good as your friend.’—How could I feel like it, after promising Willy? She said: ‘Your English friend is the nicest man I know. Will he be angry with me to-morrow? He wanted me to come with you, didn’t he? Don’t tell him.’—What can he expect? Getting sentimental over German girls when he’d been saying he was mad for Natalie. Just go in the lavatory.—

Willy saw Ali turn into the lavatory.—Pity the stairs to the chess room flattened out near the lavabos. Many a minute’s visitor, long awaited friend, leaves the one to be ensnared hours over coffee-mathematics above. Ali believes he’s a chess champion, just because he’s a Persian. The only good chess players are Jews. Calculation is the Jewish attempt at imagination. Strange that the only really clever men I meet are Jews. Viktor.

He’s out again. Doesn’t expect me to apologise, I suppose. After all, it’s natural to make a bit of a scene. As soon as I saw him sneaking into the library I knew he’s broken his word. The way he put his books on the desk next to me and sat down. Wouldn’t say himself, that’s what I can’t forgive. Had to ask him what happened: ‘Well, what happened? Did you? . . .’ No wonder he looked ashamed, oriental hypocrite, promising under no circumstances to touch her and then feebly bleating: ‘She did it. She asked me.’ Finished it for me, spoilt it. If it had been anyone else but my friend. If he had been scoundrel enough to seduce her, don’t I know that’s his sole talent? I shouldn’t have minded. But to spoil everything for me by letting her. . . . I couldn’t speak. When I came back from rushing about he was still sitting there, miserably trying to be amused. Said nothing till he went, not a word. Cleared out after ten minutes. I watched him coming out from the cloakroom lighting his pipe, philosophic mussulmanic shoulders. The more these people speak of friendship, the feebler they are as friends. Not that she thought he was great guns when I asked her. Haven’t spoken to her since, and never will. Now I hear she hates me. Looks hate too. Nothing like a woman scorned.

Languidly, see how offhand the popular man can be with any one of his friends, shook a Persian hand.

* * *

The golden curtains of the theatre-large café windows were pulled across by the door-whirling porter. Liana of tropical argument crept into the under rooms of idleness. The bald pates of madmen were dripped on by tormenting coffees to frenzy. At Viktor’s table, Ali, selecting a cheesecake, said: “I was in the library to-day. What has happened about Fitzroy?”

Willy, tail of eye on Lotte, foot of brain on library, burst out, “These Americans are fools. I got the whole thing fixed up for him. Went along to see this woman of his. I found I was the first friend to go round there and she hated me instinctively. Felt I was the one to take her sweetie away, I was the enemy. She told me: ‘You go to Italy. It is my country and there the young men in the villages will bring you grapes if you are hungry. Go to Milan.’—Next day Fitzroy said: ‘She will kill you if she knows I’m going away with you. She thinks only you’re going. She’s threatened to kill herself if I leave her. Can I stay the last night with you?’—Well, you know how awkward it is at my place, but I arranged it. Yesterday he came in the coffee-room: ‘I can’t go. I dare not go. She’s taken a slow poison, told me this morning. She must have suspected something. Had to get something to make her sick.’—So he’s not coming. Not sorry, now I think about it.”

Ali: “He would have gone with you as far as the first difficulty and then taken a train: ‘Well, old man, I’m sorry. I kept enough money to get me back. I feel she needs me.’”

Viktor: “What was this?”

Willy: “We were going to tramp from Berlin to Paris, an American student and I, working our way singing songs in the roadside inns. Learn up a few German and French ones.”

Viktor: “No good. Too many tramps on the road, robbers and toughs from the army. Bang you on the head.”

Ali: “I think it a good idea. He must get away from Berlin, he can’t live here. He is starving to death.”

Willy: “I am going away. Viktor and I are going this Saturday.”

Viktor: “We are going as far as Africa. I want to paint pictures of all-black bodies. First we visit my publisher at Konstanz.”

Lotte: “Why are you going to Africa?”

Viktor: “Dummes Vieh [stupid creature].”

Ali: “You must have some money.”

Heinke: “They don’t need any, Englishmen can travel anywhere.”

Willy: “I am selling my typewriter. Viktor will sell a watercolour and then we shall start. We shall go anywhere.”

Ali: “Yes, it is good idea. You must get away. It will be better in Paris.”

Viktor: “I couldn’t travel with anyone but Willy. I trust only the English for travel. Willy will find me rich English lords at Venice with piles of leather portmanteaus on best hotel gondolas. I must have someone to make me known. He respects my art with complete understanding.”

Heinke: “I will join you later in Rome.”

Willy: “Yes, I must see Rome. Let me pass. I must go to the lavatory.”—

He passed gracefully like a young English gentleman over between around among six-antlered six-footed clothes rests, responsibility towards which the management disclaimed.

A girl sat beside Viktor a moment: “Where is the young Englishman you were going to introduce me to?”

Viktor: “This is Ali, his rich Turkish friend. He will be back any moment.”

Ali: “What is your name? Lud? how do you spell it? O, Ludmila. That is beautiful, like our names.”

Ludmila: “Do you come from Constantinople?”

Ali: “I was born in the oldest part of Stambul.”

Ludmila: “Ah, excuse me, there is a friend of mine.”

She departed with brutality, aggressive, brushing across coffee—heroin—numb knees with unenglish directness.

Willy returning bowed himself politely round seven obstructing tables.

Viktor: “She is going to Paris in a few days.”

Ali: “Everyone seems to be going there. It’s a nuisance.”

Viktor: “She is very intelligent. Willy, you missed the beautiful Russian girl I found for you.”—He spoke carefully in English: “What is our money?”

They found on counting only two marks against three marks sixty pfennigs of reckoning.

“We have to find help,” said Viktor. He covered his mouth with stumpy fingers. “This is a black night for borrowing, no one dare bring any money into the café. Berliner Börsenkurier says millions of marks have been lost by speculators, consequent depression of industry, businesses closing down, rising unemployment. I don’t see any statement that old Viktor in his studio is deprived of meals by this crash on the Exchange. I must have lost thousands. All your silly communist ideas are very bad for the artist. If there is a communist election in Hamburg, no loans for Viktor in Berlin. Every profiteer starts hiding his money for wife and child. Won’t be able to borrow anything for weeks. Herr Geheimrat [Privy Councillor]! Herr Geheimrat!”

Willy looked another way.—This squat cigar-puffing Berliner will unwilling be made to sit. If Viktor can raise something from him he’s a marvel. I suppose I could do that after twenty years apprenticeship. King of borrowers.

Ali politely, orientally bowed over a shaking paw—Viktor knows presentable people. “Taj Mahal? No, I didn’t build it but I’m an architect from India.”

Lotte tried to peer round Heinke. “Viktor has got that stingy little Charlottenburg housebuilder. Does he think he can get anything from a man who wouldn’t treat a girl to a drink?”

Heinke turned to Lotte: “Did you hear that? Ali is a famous Indian architect. Last week he was secretary to Gandhi, brother of Muhammed Ali, magician from the Himalayas, son of the King of Herat.”

Lotte: “But he told me he studied architecture in London.”

Discreetly Viktor eliminated himself and Willy from a growing technicality. Ali did not disgrace himself. For half an hour he and the architect discussed buildings western and oriental. Ali agreed gracefully to attend the next meeting of the architects assembled of Berlin and perhaps to read appropriate paper. He beamed. This was showing Willy he could penetrate with ease to serious circles. The architect beamed. Architectural Germany was under his initiative penetrating headquarters of the British Raj, Afghanistan, Timbuktu. Ambition caused him to deflect his gaze.

Viktor bending slightly: “Herr Geheimrat, might I ask you to do me the favour, just twenty marks? I have invited my oriental friends to this café. The young Englishman there is from Burma. Forestry officer, thousands of miles. Must act in a noble fashion when they come to my studio. The east is very interested in my work.”

Pocket book, genteel palm to palm, money sandwich. Bows, farewells. “My paper will deal with constructional problems in Delhi, auf wiedersehen [goodbye].”

Ali to Willy: “I knew as soon as Viktor introduced us, he was going to do that.”

Willy to himself: “You wouldn’t know that in a thousand years.”

Lotte: “Viktor, let me have a coffee.”

Viktor: “You go to your publisher. We are going to a likörstube [liqueur bar]. I must leave a good tip for the waiter. I owe him for stamps.”

Herrober helped the Englishman into his coat. Young Englishman probably has to pay for everything. Must be rich, running that little cocotte [courtesan] there. Bought her new clothes too. “Danke sehr, meine Herren [Thank you very much, gentlemen].”