Csardas (56 page)

“But,” he persisted, “how do you find girls like that? Girls who love you, girls you can talk to as well as...”

Jozsef shrugged, the careless shrug of the man who isn’t pressed by urgent bodily needs in contrast to the man who is.

“Oh, they just come along. Some you’ll meet at the university or at parties. I met Gerta at a bar in Friedrichstrasse. She didn’t have enough money to pay her bill, and I helped her. She came back here and that was that.” He regarded his brother’s glum face with idle affection and then said good-naturedly, “Look, old fellow, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Do you have any money?”

“I’ve my first term’s allowance from Papa.”

“Right. Then we’ll go out on the town this evening, your first evening in Berlin. I’ll show you the bars and the bright lights, and who knows what might happen?”

They went to about four bars and drank a lot of beer. Jozsef kept seeing people he knew, and they all talked and shouted and bought more beer until Leo felt that if anyone squeezed him the liquid would burst from both ends the way it does when you squeeze a rubber tube. After the fourth bar there was much whispered conversation with an unshaven young man called Theodor, and then they went through a door at the back of the bar into a small overheated room with a rostrum at one end. A jaundiced pianist was thumping out jazz on a piano.

“You can dance here,” said Jozsef affably. “Over there, you can pick anyone you like.” Through the smoke and gloom he could see a wooden partition with, over the top, a row of female heads. “Come on,” said Jozsef, pulling him across the room.

On the other side of the partition were five plumpish young women, naked except for silver fringes strung just below their navels and several matching silver chains round their necks. Leo began to giggle.

“Shut up,” hissed Jozsef.

One of the girls stood up and walked toward Jozsef. Her fringe came to the top of her fat thighs and rustled when she walked. “Want to dance?” she asked professionally. Leo couldn’t stop giggling. Every time he looked at the fringe he began to giggle again.

“What’s the matter with him?” asked the girl sharply. “Doesn’t he like girls? He shouldn’t come here if he doesn’t like girls.”

“He’s shy.”

She glared at him, then at Leo. “You want to dance?” she asked again, belligerently.

Jozsef pushed him towards her, and he found himself competently gripped by a pair of heavy Teutonic arms. There was a smell of stale powder about her, and close up he could see that the pores of her skin were clogged with make-up. They jiggled up and down to the music, Leo doing his best to keep a distance from her so that her powder-covered breasts wouldn’t smudge his suit. He caught sight of Jozsef dancing with another tasseled beauty, and the sight of the fringes bobbing up and down over her buttocks made him giggle again.

“What’s so funny?”

“My brother. He—look at him.”

She looked. “What’s so funny?” she asked again tonelessly, and then suddenly she pushed him away, with a remark that he only half understood but which he knew was insulting. Her voice grew louder and Jozsef left his dancing companion and hurried over.

“We’d better get out,” he said, annoyed. “She thinks you’re some kind of freak or police spy or something. Come on. If she shouts for much longer we’ll get thrown out.”

In the street Jozsef walked along, sulking a little. “Complete waste of money,” he grumbled. “What’s the matter with you? First of all you say you want to see some women, then when I take you all you do is laugh.”

“I’m sorry, Jozsef.”

“What was wrong with them?”

“They—I don’t know, they just made me laugh. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they were completely naked. It was the tassels. They reminded me of Aunt Gizi’s curtains up at the villa!”

Jozsef, always good-natured, grinned a little, then flung his arm round Leo’s shoulders. “Okay. We’ll try something else. Maybe you were wise. I expect it would have cost most of your allowance.”

They stumbled on into several more bars until after a while Leo found he could no longer even see them properly, all neon lights and red lamps and, everywhere you looked, fringes: on the lamps, on the curtains, on the foreheads of girls in the bars. And photographs; every third bar seemed to be full of photographs of naked girls. First he was shocked, then titillated, and finally he couldn’t see them at all.

Jozsef pushed open the door of yet another establishment, which proved to be a hall with a curtained stage at one end. The floor was filled with tables and chairs, and sweating waiters pushed their way between customers.

“Hi, Jozsef. Come over here!” It was the girl who had kissed Jozsef earlier in the day and they fought their way to her table, where Jozsef ordered more beer. She was there with another girl, crop-haired and fringed like all the others. She wore a green dress, and that too had a fringe across the neck.

“This is Hanna Weiss.”

Jozsef stood up and kissed Hanna’s hand (he told Leo later that he always tried to live up to the reputation of being a romantic Hungarian; the girls loved it and it gave him a head start over his home-brewed German rivals). “Enchanting,” he murmured. Leo wanted to say and do something equally effective, but he could only blink owlishly. He was afraid to stand up in case he fell over.

“Hanna works in the bookshop just off Friedrichstrasse.’’

“You’re here alone?”

“Gunther brought us, but he’s passed out. He’s in the washroom, I believe.” Lisette shrugged thin naked shoulders. “Got a cigarette?” she demanded of Leo.

He flushed drunkenly and shook his head.

“Get me some cigarettes, darling.”

“Sorry, Lisette, my allowance has just about run out. We’re celebrating on my little brother’s money this evening.”

Lisette fixed Leo with a speculative eye; then she began—fully and explicitly—to swear. Leo stared. He had never heard a woman swear before. He looked at the girl in the green dress, who stared back coolly and flicked ash from her cigarette straight onto the table.

The noise of piano, clarinet, and drums crashed from the stage at the end of the hall. The curtain rose and four tall blondes in split evening dress did a few high kicks and sang a little song about wanting to please the boys. The audience was appreciative, calling out and passing comments on the shapes of the women. Then three of them left the stage and the remaining one sang in a husky and curiously attractive voice, something about her lovers: what she did to the old ones and what the young ones did to her. Halfway through the song she coyly removed her skirt. She had long beautiful legs. Leo tried to focus his eyes a little better.

“You like her?” asked Jozsef. Leo nodded, and for some reason Jozsef and Lisette burst out laughing. Lisette whispered into Jozsef’s ear, and they laughed again. The fringed girl wasn’t laughing, but she was interested. She was staring at the blond singer in an absorbed and inquiring manner, as though wondering how the performer put her act together.

The blonde on the stage turned round and thrust her hips back at the audience, which roared and clapped. Then she took the top of her dress off. She had a narrow waist and small, high breasts covered in a silver brassiere. Leo’s fuddled eyes ran the length of her beautiful body. How did you get a girl like that to come and live in your apartment, do the cooking and the cleaning, and be available whenever you wanted?

“She’s beautiful,” he muttered, and his brother and Lisette roared again, leaning against each other and heaving together.

The song continued, built towards a climax, and suddenly the girl stripped off the brassiere, revealing to Leo’s surprise a completely flat chest. He was puzzled. “She’s got no breasts!” he complained drunkenly. “That’s cheating, not to have breasts!”

Lisette and his brother were hysterical. Jozsef had his head on the table. He was laughing so hard he couldn’t even lift it. Hanna stared at him, curiously.

“You’re very drunk, aren’t you?” she asked coolly.

“No.” He tried to straighten his back and took another gulp of beer just to show that he wasn’t drunk. The girl on the stage, with a final flourish, ripped off the tiny strip of cloth over her loins. Underneath was a support—made of silver lamé—as worn by male athletes.

“It’s a man,” said Leo blankly. Jozsef and Lisette fell on each other’s necks, wiped each other’s tears away, tried to speak and couldn’t. Leo’s disappointment changed immediately to another sensation. The floor rocked up at him and nausea gripped his stomach.

“Get him out! Quick!”

Lisette and Jozsef, one each side, bundled him out through the door and he was sick on the pavement, conscious of shame even while he was vomiting. Suppose his papa or either of his brothers-in-law were to walk past now. How disgusted they would be. How disgusted he was himself.

“All right now, old chap?”

He nodded, was sick again, and suddenly felt better, subdued but better. “I think perhaps I’d better go home.”

“Do you think you can make it on your own while I take the girls back?”

“Oh, yes.”

They began to walk along the streeet, Jozsef and Lisette in front. They were still giggling and Jozsef had his arm round Lisette’s shoulders.

“I’m very sorry,” he said to the silent Hanna by his side, “for spoiling your evening, having to leave so soon.”

“I’d about finished anyway.”

If only he had managed to get to the lavatory instead of being sick before this self-possessed young woman. What was the name of her bookshop? He must remember never to go there. He couldn’t bear to see her looking at him and remembering him drunk.

“Why don’t you come and visit me in the shop?” she said suddenly. “It’s all quite different in daylight, isn’t it?” She smiled slightly. Her mouth was narrow but she had nice eyes. They were friendlier than the rest of her face.

“I... perhaps... thank you.”

“You’ll need books at the university. I might be able to let you have damaged ones cheaper.”

“Thank you.”

“I live here.” She stopped before a three-storey apartment house. “Your brother and Lisette have disappeared. I expect they’ve gone back to Lisette’s room. You’ll be all right, won’t you? Savigny Platz is only just round the corner.”

He wished, so much, that he could have kissed her hand with all the style that Jozsef had exhibited. If he could have done that it would have helped to blot out the miserable memory of his being sick on the pavement. He took her hand in his, looked at her face, and thought better of it. “Good night,” he said briskly, pumping her hand up and down in a fierce shake.

“Don’t forget to come and see me in the shop.”

She walked up the three steps. She had long legs like the girl—man—in the cabaret. Would she take her brassiere off to reveal no breasts? He began to giggle at himself as he walked back to the apartment.

When he returned to Berlin for the university year, he went and called at the bookshop. He wore his best suit and had brushed his hair back from his forehead, shaved, and put on a clean collar. He wanted to remove the impression of the drunken student. He didn’t recognize her at first. Her hair was still combed down over her eyes, but she was wearing a neat white blouse and navy-blue skirt. She looked very clean and efficient, not at all like a girl who went to bars and was experienced in sexual matters.

“Hello.”

“I’m back... for the university.”

“What are you studying?”

“Literature. And I’m thinking of learning Russian as well.”

“Is that why you’ve come here? To buy books?”

“No, I didn’t come here to buy books. I wondered.... Could I see you?”

It was strange how attractive her smile was. Her mouth hardly moved but her eyes crinkled. They were pale and she had long dark lashes that stuck out straight. “I expect so.”

“When?”

“This evening. The shop closes at seven. You can meet me here.”

He hurried back to Savigny Platz, deciding to miss his lecture and prepare himself for what lay ahead. He tidied the apartment and bought a bottle of wine, some sausage, jellied eggs, and a small pot of caviar. He made the bed and covered it with a Chinese shawl that he’d found in the bottom of a chest. Of course, he considered while soaping himself thoroughly in the bath, it might not be here; it might be in her apartment. But it would be better here, an intimate dinner, wine, bed.... He tried to remember all the things that Jozsef had instructed him on during the summer: not to be in a hurry, to spend plenty of time talking first, to say nice things about her intellect as well as her appearance. He put on clean underclothes and went to meet her at the bookshop.

They spent the entire evening drinking coffee at a restaurant in Friedrichstrasse. It was a terrible evening because he didn’t know how to arrange things so that eventually they would end up on the Chinese shawl in his apartment. He suggested a drink to begin with, thinking that from then on everything would progress to an increasing warmth that would float them along to Savigny Platz and an evening of passionate fulfilment. Hanna said she would prefer coffee, and instead of inviting intimacies she proceeded to question him about his university course. After the fourth coffee he tried to change the subject.

“Do you often go out with Lisette? To bars and cabarets, like the one we met at?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes. I knew her in Hamburg. We were at school together. She was very bright and her family were quite rich. She came to the university but dropped it after a year. She was reading Literature too.”

He refused to be taken back to that theme and asked, “Do you enjoy that sort of cabaret? That sort of place?”

Her pale eyes narrowed slightly. “It’s very interesting,” she said tonelessly. “Please, could I have another coffee?”

Should he offer to buy dinner? But if he did, what of the carefully prepared seducer’s dinner laid out in Savigny Platz? He could hardly buy dinner here and then take her back to his apartment where the other one was spread, complete with flowers and candles.

He tried again. “You must find Lisette an exciting girl to go around with. She’s so popular, and she knows so many people. My brother liked her a lot.”