I spent less time at the Villa Keith now. There always seemed to be a few elderly distinguished-looking gentlemen around, some in uniform, some not. They came for coffee, they came for lunch, they came for dinner. They brought flowers. They were polite to me, but they were not unhappy when I excused myself.
The five dollars I was still slipping Meier every week was worth 1,750,000 marks by now. I knew that it was too much. I knew it was supporting the household and Frau Keith's salon and the rest was being salted away, but giving Meier less did not occur to me. Christoph spent almost every evening at Helena's apartment. It was time to find my own place, and yet I couldn't seem to get around to it.
A hot wind blew dust along the streets of Neukölln. Long lines in front of the stores. I knew the reason now: the farmers would not deliver their crops against paper money. Berlin was facing famine.
"It's just like 1919," said Miss Boatwright. I wanted to talk to her about Kaspar Keith, but she was too busy to listen, or maybe she was tired of being my sounding board. She insisted that I take her to the municipal soup kitchen in the Warschauer Strasse, which she had helped to organize.
An enormous hall, big as an airplane hangar and echoing with noise. Three endless queues waiting to get in, men and women and children carrying containers of every kind: water pitchers, buckets, washbasins, cooking pots, anything that would hold the quart of boiled rice they were allowed to buy when they finally reached the head of the line. Some of these people sat right down at the long tables in the center of the hall and ate the only meal they would get that day, but most of them rushed home to bring the rice, still steaming, to their families. At the other end of the hall about thirty women were peeling potatoes and chopping carrots for tomorrow's soup.
"We have to charge them something," said Miss Boatwright. "Otherwise the place would be simply overrun. Last week the vegetables did not arrive in time and the people went mad. They turned into a mob, they smashed the tables and one of the cooking vats.... The only way we can keep some control is to adjust the price every day, so we just charge the same as the trolley fare; that is announced in the newspapers. They've become accustomed to it; they know when they get here the soup will cost the same as a trolley ticket."
I left Miss Boatwright in a deep discussion with a lady from the Berliner Ernährungsamt: What could be done about families that sent each child to stand in line for a quart? Should they require resident passes? It would take forever to check all the addresses....
I saved the trolley fare and walked from the Warschauer Strasse across the bridges over the Spree and the Landwehr Canal into the tenement canyons of Neukölln.
The wind blew dust along the streets, the air was moist, the sky was turning black, and rolling thunder promised the kind of storm we have on summer evenings at home. Fat raindrops were beginning to hit as I swung into the first gloomy courtyard of Kaiser-Friedrichstrasse 101 and started the long climb.
I had a key but I always knocked first because you never knew what might be going on in there.
The door opened. "Mensch!" Baby threw her arms around my neck and wrapped her legs around my legs so that I almost fell over while she was kissing me. "Where the hell have you been?"
"Oh, I've been working on a special commission.... What are you doing? Where is everybody?"
"What am I doing? I'm washing the god-damned dishes! Mutti's out standing in a food line and the kid is with her. . . ."
She followed me through the body-smelling little room full of unmade beds into the studio. Rain was pelting the windows now. Water dripped into the bucket.
"Where's the picture?"
"Fritz took it. He took it to sell."
"But it wasn't finished! He took my picture to sell before I finished it?"
"He said it was done enough to sell. He said he wasn't sure you were coming back, and we need money."
"Bärbel putting on her stocking, my best full-length of Bärbel... where did he take it? I'm going right out and get it back!-"
"Come on now, you haven't been here for weeks, you don't even know what's going on here," said Baby angrily.
"What do you mean? What is going on here?"
"In the first place, Fritz beat the shit out of Bärbel. He made her strip and he tied her wrists to the bedstead and he beat her ass with the steel ruler until it was all red and purple. And her legs too. Boy, you should have heard her!" Baby seemed to relish the memory.
"But why?"
"Because of you."
"Of me?"
'Partly you. You paid her to stay home. She couldn't do it. Bored her. Began working the Adam und Eva again, and then Fritz got the idea she'd given you the clap and that's why you weren't coming around."
"Why would he think she'd given me the clap?"
"Because she gave it to him! And now they both have to go to the Charité and get shot with some arsenic drug that makes them puke." Baby put her arms around me. "Bärbel's got the clap, the clap, the clap," she chanted softly in my ear. "So sorry, but she's finally got it, you're lucky, Peter, because I've been a very good girl, and you haven't got the clap, have you? You couldn't have it!"
"You knew I couldn't have it!"
Baby nodded solemnly. "Oh Christ, Peter, you're not really going to leave us, are you? I couldn't stand that!"
"I came to finish the picture," I said, but the picture was gone and Baby was pulling her dress over her head.
Is this what you call 'necking'?"
"Mmm ... Like it?"
"Oh yes .... but why 'necking'? You are not even touching my neck."
"I don't know.... Where did you hear that word?"
"I read it in a story Alfred gave me. A new story by a young American."
"What was it called?"
"I don't know.... Do that again, I like it when you do that.... His name was Fritz something."
"An American called Fritz? "
"No, it was his last name. Fritz with something behind it."
"You don't mean Fitzgerald? Scott Fitzgerald?
"Yes, I think so."
"Have they translated him into German?"
"No, what do you think? I read it in English. What does 'Fitz' mean?"
"That's Irish, means 'son of'."
"Like Mendelssohn means 'son of Mendel'?"
"Yes. just like that."
"Is this all they do, in America?"
"Is what all they do?"
"This necking. What you are doing to me. Don't they take their clothes off?"
"Lili! "
"How can they do anything with all their clothes on? I mean, doesn't it make them nervous?"
"What makes me nervous is that somebody might walk in here, and then what would happen?"
"You are afraid? We can hear anybody moving in this tiny house."
"Lili, I don't want to get thrown out of here."
"Such a passionate cavalier! All right, you want to paint me some more? I don't think this necking is healthy sport."
She suddenly stopped kissing me, moved her head and bit me just as hard as she could bite, at the place above the collarbone where the neck and shoulder come together.
"Think of me!" A flash of lightning illuminated the room, and I saw my blood smeared across her mouth. "Open your eyes and see it's me, not Bärbel!"
"I wasn't thinking of Bärbel," I said.
"Don't stop," she said.
I didn't.
Later she boiled some water and cleaned the throbbing wound.
"How am I supposed to explain that?" I asked.
"Just keep your shirt on," said Baby placidly.
As usual, her timing was perfect. We had finished dressing and were in the kitchen, looking in vain for something to eat. A key turned in the lock and Mutti Bauer came in, followed by the boy. She was soaking wet and panting from the climb. Her face was scarlet - and streaked with tears."The Schweinehund! " she gasped. "The filthy, dirty, stinking Schweinehund!"
The boy was pale and silent. They both saw me, but they didn't really see me.
"Who, Mutti?" asked Baby. "What's the matter? Who's a Schweinehund?"
"Schultz the butcher. You know how long I stood in his line? Four hours! In the lightning, in the rain, I have water running down inside my legs. And when I got to the front he still had a few sausages behind the glass and you know what he said to me?" She began to cry again, holding out the shopping net packed full of sodden bundled banknotes.
"He said to me, 'Oh no, Frau. Bauer. We don't take marks from you, Frau Bauer. You've got dollars up there. Those girls of yours, they bring you dollars, and you could buy everything I have left today with a few American coins, so don't bring me a bag full of German marks, Frau Bauer,' and I said, 'This is all I have, Herr Schultz, I haven't got any American money,' and he said, 'Na ja, Frau Bauer, you'll just have to send out those sluts of yours to get you some,' and I said, 'I'll call the police on you. you profiteer, you gangster!' and then he told me to get out of his store, he did, in front of all the other ladies. . . ." and with that she sank into a kitchen chair and began to sob into her hands.
"Mutti broke the glass," said the boy in a quiet voice.
"Oh God, oh God, I was so ashamed, so ashamed in front of the people, and so angry that I lust couldn't stand it and I took my umbrella and I swung it over my head and I smashed the glass case where he had the sausages and then we ran out of the store and Schultz was yelling, 'Police! Somebody call the police!' and now they're going to come up here and drag me to the Alexanderplatz.. . ."
It took us quite a while to calm her down.
My first instinct was to send the boy back with some American change, to placate the butcher and get something for them to eat.
But if I did that, I would just be proving the butcher's point, wouldn't 1?
"It's all because of the Jews," said the boy suddenly.
"What?" I turned to him. "What about the Jews?"
"That's what the man in the line was saying. The Jewish middle class have bought all the meat and they're holding it for higher prices, they borrow the money from their Jewish banks and they're making all this profit-"
I thought of all the people standing in lines all over Germany, and I felt a chill. "Why don't we all go out and get something to eat?" I suggested. Look, the rain has stopped and the sun is coming out. Isn't there a nice Gasthaus around here somewhere?"
"Treptow Park!" Baby shouted.
"But the police.. ." Mutti Bauer was still sobbing and wiping her eyes.
"Well, they can't arrest you if you're not here," I said. I also had a feeling that butchers were not permitted to demand payment in American money. Maybe the police were not coming.
"Hurry up and put on your other dress," said Baby. "And your good hat. Peter's going to take us over to Treptow. We'll sit along the river and have supper and listen to the band, and maybe he'll dance with us." Her eyes were shining.
My shoulder ached. So did my heart.
PROLOGUE - THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 1922
I. HOW I GOT THERE
1. PARIS 1922
2. VERDUN 1916
3. IT'S STEALING MONEY, ISN'T IT
4. WHERE WERE YOU IN 1919?
5. RELIABLE TROOPS
6. AN ISLAND
7. BISMARCK FOUND THEM USEFUL
8. INTRODUCTIONS
9. THE LITTLE HOUSE
10. INDIAN CROSSES
11. ANOTHER PART OF TOWN
12. A VIEW OF THE GENDARMENMARKT
13. TWO FOR TEA
14. ON THE TOWN
15. A VIEW OF THE HAVEL
16. REIGEN
II. WHAT HAPPENED
17. THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 1922
18. MONDAY, JUNE 19, 1922
19. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 1922
20. FRIDAY, JUNE 23, 1922
21. SATURDAY, JUNE 24, 1922
22. WHAT HAPPENED?
III. THE WITCHES' SABBATH
23. SILENCE WITH VOICES
24. THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS
25. SAME SONGS, DIFFERENT SINGERS
26. THEY'RE ONLY GOING TO HIRE HIS VOICE
27. INFLATION WORKS IN DIFFERENT WAYS
28. SMALL CHANGE
29. WHY NOT PAINT LILI?
30. COLD WIND IN MAY
>31. ROLLING THUNDER
32. WALDSTEIN'S VOICE
33. THE MATTER OF A DOWRY
34. A RUSSIAN WORD AND A GERMAN WORD
35. THE MARCH ON BERLIN
36. A PIG LOSES MONEY ALL THE TIME
37. THE ARTISTS' BALL
IV. STRIKE TWELVE ZEROs
38. AMYTAL DREAMS
39. LETTERS
40. PROFESSOR JAFFA'S PROGNOSIS
41. THE OTHER SUBJECT
42. ROLLING HOME