Hobohemians

140“Ten francs. I want to get rid of it before I reach Italy. I never meant to bring it but I forgot it was in my pocket. Lucky I wasn’t searched.”

141“Heinke, will you lend me ten francs?”

142“I’ve only got twenty and we have to eat.”

143Willy called on Ludmila: “Please let me have twenty francs. It is very important.” Dull-eyed, despairingly, mysteriously he spoke. When she knew, if it was not too late. . . . Her father gave him the money. “I am meeting a Flemish friend in the Harcourt. If you can come later.”

144Into the café came Pieter. “Do you want the revolver?”

145“Yes,” said Willy and made a bulge in his pocket with it. Last wildnesses of a wild life, he ordered drinks and sandwiches.

146“Heinke said when you left: ‘The little Englishman is fed up with life, he could hardly drag himself away to-day. It may be the last time we see one another.’—He is going to tell Viktor you are killing yourself.” Willy smiled bitterly.

147Ludmila came. As Pieter rose to go, Willy tapping his bulge said: “Thank you Piet for the kindness you have done me. Good-bye. You are very understanding.” Mournful, solemnly.

148Suspicious, Ludmila began to question. With encouraging weariness of spirit Willy discouraged the woman who had ruined his life. Carefully he let slip casually the name of her former friend, the man who had shot himself behind a tree in the Kurfürstendamm.

149“What is it you are thinking? What was it he did for you?” asked Ludmila.

150He moved to show involuntarily the pocket bulge. She felt it. “Give it me.”

151He allowed her to plead, extracting promises that once looked at it should be returned. Handed it possessively, hopelessly to her. Ludmila put it in her bag. “I am going home to lock it up.” Pleading for his stolen salvation. Willy felt a warm awareness of how much she loved him, at last. Wildly rising, throwing his other ten francs on the table, useless to him, and the bill would be nearly that, eloquently rushed silent from the café, swiftly to his room.

* * *

152On his table he found three letters. One was from Ali at Genoa: “I have booked a deck passage on an Italian steamer to Bombay. You don’t understand the Muslim attitude . . . your imperialism. . . .” Another was from an unsuspected brother of Lotte: “She died in Berlin from the effects of an operation. Other people have got into trouble as well. You are a . . .” The third letter enclosed fifty francs as farewell from the last of his pupils: “I have to go to Berlin and . . .”

153Willy sat on the sofa. Gone, the playing and fiddling with unworthy reality and desirable nirvana. Last fling of the good-for-nothing wretch, some last adventure, then to Ludmila.