Katherine Anne Porter (70 page)

No more daylight. No more ice. No more chairs with
tapestry on them and legs that broke if you leaned back in them. No more of those table rugs with their nasty sweet colors. If the corner whatnot should be knocked over, just once, there would be no more of that silly bric-a-brac and a good thing too, thought Charles, hardening his heart.

“Coffee at last,” said Rosa, coming in without knocking this time, carrying a very dressed up tray. No more coffee at five o’clock, unless you were a foreigner, and—it followed naturally—rich. Charles felt he was living under false pretenses of the kind his early training had taught him to despise. “I am poorer than she is,” he thought, watching Rosa arrange the fine porcelain cup with butterfly handle, and spread out thin napery. “But of course not. A boat is coming from America for me, but there is no boat for her. For nobody in this house but me is a boat coming from America, with money. I can get along here, I can leave when I like, I can always go home—”

He felt young, ignorant, awkward, he had so much to learn he hardly knew where to begin. He could always go home, but that was not the point. It was a long way home from where he stood, he could see that. No more Leaning Tower of Pisa, he remembered with guilt, when Rosa, with a last little fussy pat as if she could not quite give up her coffee table, stood back and said, “Now, if you will sit, I will pour your coffee. Pity it is we are not in Vienna,” she told him, with a gay little air, “then I could give you real coffee. But this is not the worst in the world, either.” Then she ran away, and the flurry of her wake did not settle until some seconds after she was gone.

The coffee was indeed as good as Charles had ever tasted, more than good enough, and he had just taken the first swallow when he heard Herr Bussen’s voice in the hall. “Ha,” he pronounced in his loud Low-German, “how that coffee stinks.”

“Don’t tell me you wouldn’t like it just the same,” said Rosa cruelly. “Just because you drink milk like a big baby and leave the dirty bottles under the bed. Shame on you, Herr Bussen.”

They were silenced in the sound of a piano, struck firmly and softly at first, and then without pause there followed a long rippling continuous music. Charles loved music without knowing how or why, and he listened carefully. That would be the Polish student, and it seemed to Charles he was doing pretty well. He sat back in a pleasant daze, hypnotized by the
steady rhythm and delighted with the running melody that he could follow easily. Rosa tapped and came in on tiptoe, finger on lip, eyebrows raised, eyes shining. She approached the table and with careful lightness gathered up the napery and silver. “Herr Mey,” she whispered, and then, reverently, “Chopin—” and before Charles could think of any response, she had the tray up and had tiptoed out again.

Charles, lightly asleep, dreamed the house was burning down, silently alive and pulsing with flame in every part. With no fear or hesitation at all, he walked safely through the fiery walls and out into the wide bright street, carrying a suitcase which knocked against his knees and weighed him down, but he could not leave it because it contained all the drawings he meant to do in his whole life. He walked a safe distance and watched the dark skeleton of the house tall as a tower standing in a fountain of fire. Seeing that he was alone, he said in wonder, “They all escaped, too,” when a loud and ghostly groan was uttered in his ear. He spun about and saw no one. The groan sounded again over his shoulder and woke him sharply. He found he was wallowing in the airless deeps of the feather quilt, hot and half smothered. He fought his way out and sat up to listen, turning this way and that to locate the sound.

“Ah,—ahoooooooo,” sighed a voice hopelessly from the room to the right, falling and dying away in a heavily expelled breath of weariness. Without deciding to do anything, Charles found himself at the right hand door tapping with the extreme tips of his fingers.

“Well, what is it?” came a drowsed but soberly indignant voice.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” asked Charles.

“No, no,” said the voice in despair. “No, thank you, no no. . .”

“I’m sorry,” said Charles, thinking he had been saying this to somebody or other, or thinking it, or feeling it, all day and every day since he had been in that city. The soles of his feet were tingling on the bare floor.

“But come in, please,” said the voice, changing to a shade of affability.

The young man sitting on the side of the tumbled bed was
of the extreme pale blondness such as Charles had often noticed among the young people in the streets. His hair, eyebrows and eyelashes were pale taffy color, the skin taffy blond, the eyes a flat grayish blue almost expressionless except for a certain modeling of the outer lids that gave him the look of a young, intelligent fox. He had a long, narrow head, with smooth, sharply cut features of the kind Charles vaguely regarded as aristocratic. So far, a good-looking fellow, perhaps twenty-one years old; he stood up slowly and was eye level with Charles’ six feet of height. There was only one thing wrong with him: the left side of his face was swollen badly, the eye was almost closed from beneath, and glued along his cheek from ear to mouth was an inch-wide strip of court plaster, the flesh at its edges stained in dirty blues and greens and purples. He was the Heidelberg student, all right. He stood cupping his hand lightly over his cheek without touching.

“Well,” he said, keeping his mouth stiff and looking from under his downy light brows at Charles. “You can see for yourself. Nothing to speak of, but it gives me the devil. Like a toothache, you know. I heard myself roaring in my sleep,” he said, and his eyes quietly dared Charles to doubt his word. “I woke myself up at it. When you knocked, to tell you the truth, I thought it was Rosa with an ice cap. I don’t want any more ice caps. Sit down, please.”

Charles said, “I’ve got some brandy, maybe that would do something.”

The boy said, “God, yes,” and sighed again in spite of himself. He moved around the room aimlessly, holding his spread hand just beside his face as if he expected his head to drop and hoped to catch it as it fell. His pale gray cotton pajamas gave him the look of being about to fade away in the yellowish light of the bed lamp.

Charles, in his old blanket robe and felt slippers, brought two glasses and the brandy bottle. As he poured, the young man watched the liquid filling the glass as if he would spring upon it, but he held his hands until the glass was offered, smelled the brim, they touched glasses and drank.

“Ah,” said the young man, swallowing carefully, head back and tipped to the right. He curled up the right side of his
mouth at Charles and his right eye glimmered at him gratefully. “What a relief.” He added suddenly, “Hans von Gehring, at your service.”

Charles spoke his own name, the other nodded, there was a pause while the glasses were filled again.

“And how do you like it, here in Berlin?” Hans asked politely, warming the brandy between his palms.

“So far, very well,” said Charles; “of course, I’m not settled yet.” He observed Hans’ face in the hope that language was not going to get in the way of their talk. Hans seemed to understand perfectly. He nodded, and drank.

“I’ve walked nearly all over, and have been to a lot of museums, cafés, all the first things, of course. It is a great city. The Berliners are not proud of it, though, or pretend not to be.”

“They know it’s no good compared with any other city at all,” said Hans, forthrightly. “I was wondering why you came here. Why this city, of all places? You may go where you please, isn’t that so?”

“I suppose so,” said Charles. “Yes, that’s true.”

Hans said, “My father sent me here to see a doctor who is an old friend of his, but in ten days I shall be back in Heidelberg. The Polish fellow is a pianist so he came here because pianists seem to think old Schwartzkopf is the only Master. Herr Bussen, down the hall, he is Platt Deutsch to begin with and he lives in Dalmatia, so anything would perhaps be a change for the better to him. He thinks he is getting an education here and maybe he is. But look at you. A free man and you come to Berlin.” He smiled on one side of his face, then shuddered bitterly. “Are you staying on, then?”

“Three months,” said Charles, rather gloomily. “I don’t know why I came, except that I had a good friend who was German. He used to come here with his family—that was years ago—and he would say, Go to Berlin. I always thought it was the place to be, and if you haven’t seen anything else much, this looks pretty good. Of course, there is New York. I stayed there only about a week, but I liked it, I think I could live there.”

“Of course, New York,” said Hans, indifferently. “But here, there are Vienna, and Prague, and Munich and Budapest, and Nice and Rome and Florence, and, ah, Paris, Paris, Paris,” said
Hans, suddenly almost gay. Imitating a German actor imitating a Frenchman, he kissed his fingers and wiggled them lightly towards the west.

“I am going to Paris later,” said Charles. “Were you ever there?”

“No, but I am going,” said Hans. “My plans are all made.” He got up as if his words excited him, wrapped his robe around his knees, felt his cheek tenderly and sat down again.

“I hope to stay there a year, I’m going to some atelier and get some painting done. Maybe you will be there before I leave.”

“Oh, I have another year in Heidelberg,” said Hans, “and my grandfather, who is old, is giving me the money, so I must stop with him for at least a few months first. But then I may go, I shall be free then for a while, perhaps for two years.”

“It is strange to have everything mapped out so,” said Charles. “I haven’t a notion where I’ll be two years from now. Something might even happen to keep me from Paris.”

“Oh, it is necessary to plan everything,” said Hans, soberly, “or how should we know where we were? Besides, the family has it arranged. I even know the girl I am to marry,” he said, “and I know how much money she has. She is an extremely fine girl,” he said, without enthusiasm. “Paris will be my own, though, my holiday. I shall do as I please.”

“Well,” said Charles, seriously, “I am glad to be here. All Americans want to come to Europe one time or another, you know. They think there is something here.” He sat back and crossed his legs, feeling comfortable with Hans.

“There is something in Europe,” said Hans, “but not in Berlin. You are wasting your time here. Go to Paris if you can.” He kicked off his slippers and slid into bed, piling up his pillows and letting his head down very carefully.

“I hope you are feeling better,” said Charles. “Perhaps you could sleep now.”

Hans frowned slightly, retreated. “There is nothing wrong with me,” he declared, “and I was asleep before. This is perfectly normal, it happens quite often.”

“Well, good night,” said Charles, getting up.

“Oh, no, don’t go yet,” said Hans, starting to sit up and thinking better of it. “I tell you—knock on Tadeusz’ door and
get him up, too. He sleeps too much. It’s just there, next door. If you please, dear fellow. He’ll like it.”

A moment of complete silence followed Charles’ knock, and in silence the door opened on darkness. A thin, tallish young man, his small sharp head thrust forward like a bird’s, appeared in the hall. He wore a thin plum-colored silk dressing gown and his long yellowed hands were flattened one above the other over his chest, the fingers lying together. He seemed entirely awake, and his keen little dark eyes were smiling and good tempered. “What’s up now?” he asked in an English accent lying over a Polish accent. “Is the damnation dueler raising hell again?”

“Not exactly,” said Charles, pleased at hearing English and astonished at the speech, “but he isn’t resting easy, either. We were having some brandy. I’m Charles Upton.”

“Tadeusz Mey,” said the Pole, sliding out and closing the door noiselessly. He spoke just above a whisper in an easy voice. “Polish in spite of the misleading name. Indiscreet grandmother married an Austrian. The rest of my family have names like Zamoisky, lucky devils.”

They entered Hans’ room and Tadeusz said instantly in German, “Yes, yes, you are going to have a real beauty,” and leaned over to examine the wound with a knowing eye. “It’s doing very well.”

“It will last,” said Hans. Over his face spread an expression very puzzling to Charles. It was there like a change of light, slow and deep, with no perceptible movement of eyelids or face muscles. It rose from within in the mysterious place where Hans really lived, and it was amazing arrogance, pleasure, inexpressible vanity and self-satisfaction. He lay entirely motionless and this look came, grew, faded and disappeared on the tidal movement of his true character. Charles thought, Why, if I drew him without that look I should never have him at all. Tadeusz was talking along in his low voice, amiably in a mixture of French and German. The easy use of languages was a mystery to Charles. He listened acutely, but Tadeusz, gesturing neatly with his brandy glass, did not seem to be saying anything in particular, though Hans was also listening attentively.

Charles, feeling free not to talk, was trying to see Hans in Paris, with that scar. Trying to see him in America, in a small American town like San Antonio, for example, with that scar. In Paris perhaps they would understand, but how would it look in San Antonio, Texas? The people there would think he had got into a disgraceful cutting scrape, probably with a Mexican, or that he had been in an automobile accident. They would think it a pity that such a nice fellow should be so disfigured, they would be tactful and not mention it and try to keep their eyes off it. Even in Paris, Charles imagined, those who understood would also disapprove. Hans would simply be another of those Germans with a dueling scar carefully made livid and jagged to last him a lifetime. It occurred to him that nowhere but in this one small country could Hans boast of his scar and his way of getting it. In any other place at all, it would seem strange, a misfortune, or discreditable. Listening to Tadeusz chattering along, Charles watched Hans and thought hard in a series of unsatisfactory circles, trying to get out of them. It was just a custom of the country, that was all. That was the way to look at it, of course. But Charles didn’t know, had never known, very likely never would know, a friend in the world who, if he saw Hans, wouldn’t ask privately afterwards, “Where did he get that scar?” Except Kuno, perhaps. But Kuno had never said a word about this. Kuno had said, that if you didn’t get off the sidewalk when army officers came along, you would be pushed off, and when his mother and he were walking together, she would always step into the street and let them by. Kuno had not minded this, he had rather admired the tall officers with their greatcoats and helmets, but his mother had not liked it at all. Charles remembered this for years; it was nothing related to anything he knew in his own life, yet remained in his memory as unquestioned truth, that part of Kuno’s life lived in absence and strangeness which seemed to him more real than any life they had shared.