Hobohemians

25The 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.”

26“Not now, I am busy.”

27Looking 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.”

28“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.”

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

30—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.’

31Lotte 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’—

32Lotte 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.—

33She stood up and looked towards the corner. He was looking at her. He might.

34Willy 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.