"Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning..."Marek Weber's musicians apparently knew the song by heart, because they didn't miss a beat when the lights went out. At the tables, nobody even stopped talking as the Adlon's waiters quickly lighted candles, transforming the crowded glittering room.
It was the middle of October and the lights were going out all the time. Everybody was accustomed to it. Sometimes the water pressure was turned off. Sometimes the streetcars or the Stadtbahn stopped running. Sometimes the mail was not delivered. All it meant was that a group of public employees had not been granted a raise that week, so they had gone out on strike.
At our table - I guess technically it was my table - Christoph Keith was telling a story he had just heard. He wore a white carnation in his lapel and Helena had put a flower from her bouquet into her hair. Those were the only signs that they had been married that afternoon, a civil service at the Standesamt Berlin. Lili and I and Alfred and Sigrid had been the only witnesses and now, at my invitation, the wedding party was conducting the only celebration of the event.
I had assumed a big wedding and a big reception out at Havelblick, or at the Pariser Platz after the family moved back to town, but neither of them wanted that. "For the second one you don't make such a production," Helena had said. "And certainly not in a situation where everybody says, 'It's about time!' "
As a matter of fact, Christoph had been more or less living at Helena's apartment on the Lützowufer for months, leaving me awkwardly with his mother in Grunewald. The number of Frau Keith's constant visitors had been reduced to one: a well-preserved, tight-lipped colonel with red General Staff stripes on his breeches, a widower, perhaps a little younger, who now kept two riding horses in the stable and his orderly in the kitchen. Although he was meticulously polite to me, he obviously did not share his chief's opinion that I was really a painter. Doors were kept shut; nothing more controversial than the weather was discussed; and even when Herr Oberst was not on the premises, Meier and his wife seemed more reserved now. My five dollars were still accepted, but with just a trace of condescension.
It was time to get my own place. I knew it, both Helena and Miss Boatwright were looking, I suppose I could have been looking myself ... but I wasn't. In the mornings I was supposed to be painting Miss Boatwright. I had set up my stuff in her apartment for that purpose, but it was impossible to keep her still for more than twenty minutes at a time. Visitors came, usually visitors who wanted something, or she would rush off to help somebody, somewhere....
Christoph was telling his story: "When Stresemann announced that the government was calling off passive resistance in the Ruhr, they expected an uproar from the Nationalists, all shades of the Right, so President Ebert called an emergency meeting of the cabinet at five o'clock in the morning. Half of the ministers showed up unshaved or without their neckties- except Seeckt, who appeared in immaculate uniform, all his medals, polished boots with spurs.... There was a lot of talk about a Putsch from the Right, Ebert turned to Seeckt and asked: 'General von Seeckt, will the Reichswehr stick with us?' and Seeckt replied: 'Mr. President, the Reichswehr will stick with me.' He let that sink in for a moment. Then he said: 'I'm the only man in Germany who can make a Putsch, Mr. President, and I'm not going to make one.'"
We looked into the candlelight.
"What kind of person is General von Seeckt?" I asked.
"Ask Helena," said Lili, laughing, and Alfred's hand crashed down on the table so hard that the cutlery clanged. People turned to look at us.
"If you cannot behave yourself like a grownup you don't belong in grownup company!" Alfred said to Lili, very quietly, his eyes blazing. "If Peter were not our host I would suggest that he take you home now."
"It's all right, don't make such a fuss," said Helena, but she had paled, compressing her lips.
A terrible moment. Nobody knew where to look or what to do. "I'm sorry, Helena," whispered Lili. "I didn't mean anything."
"Yes, you did, dear, but I have a reasonably clear conscience, in this case." She smiled. "Will somebody give me a cigarette?"
Christoph supplied the cigarette and lighted it for her.
"All right," she said, blowing smoke toward the candles. "Hans von Seeckt destroyed the Russian army as a factor in the east. Battle of Gorlice. Hindenburg got the credit, but in our staff everybody knows who planned Gorlice and who carried it out. After we lost the War, he was put in charge of the Republic's Reichswehr, our hundred thousand men. He's built an elite corps, only the best officers, most of the soldiers are former non-commissioned officers. No political people. No Freikorps people. No socialists or Communists either, of course. The sons of peasants, not the sons of factory workers. A small, efficient, completely nonpolitical fighting machine -"
"That obeys only its officers," interrupted Alfred.
"Who else should it obey?" asked Sigrid.
"Peter asked what kind of a person he is," said Helena, putting out her cigarette. "As you have seen, he looks like a film version of a Prussian general, and he is, as I've said, the most efficient Prussian general we have. But he's other things too. He loves to read books. He loves to play the piano. He loves beauty in all forms - pictures, horses, music-"
"- and women," said Sigrid.
"- and women," said Helena.
"In any event," said Alfred, "this lover of beauty is today, for practical purposes, in command of Germany. These emergency decrees the Reichstag adopted give the Minister of Defense unlimited power, supreme power, they abolish all constitutional rights - but of course the Minister of Defense has no power without the Reichswehr and Seeckt is the Reichswehr," said Christoph.
"And what does he want?" I asked.
"Peredyshka," said Helena.
"What does that mean?"
"That's Russian," said Alfred. "A chance to catch your breath?"
"A breathing space," said Helena. "What he is most afraid of is civil war between the Left and the Right, between the Nationalists and the Reds, another Thirty Years' War to destroy Germany again, or bring an Allied occupation. That's his nightmare. He wants peace and quiet, to rebuild."
"Rebuild what?" I asked.
"His army, of course."
"What for?"
They all looked at me.
"What is the army for?" Sigrid replied. "To protect us from our enemies. We are surrounded by enemies."
Who was I to dispute her? Nobody else did.
"Hans von Seeckt says the Reichswehr stands in the service of the government," said Helena.
"That's what he says," said Alfred. "But he can't do anything about the inflation, and if somebody doesn't do something about the inflation, there's going to be no government to serve."
I ordered more champagne. We drank more toasts. Christoph danced with Helena. Of course he couldn't really dance - they held each other, swaying to the music.
"It's a shame they're not going on a wedding trip," said Sigrid. "They could at least go to the mountains -"
"In October?" asked Lili. "I'd rather go to Nice."
"No money for Nice," said Alfred. "And no time. They're terribly busy at the Bank. This thing has become a nightmare."
"No longer a princess," said Sigrid. "Just plain Frau Keith."
"She looks happy," said Alfred. "So does he. As she says, 'It's about time.`"
"I liked your toast," I said. "A long life, and a happy one."
"Unberufen," said Alfred, expressionless, staring at the dancers.
Unberufen? Else Westerich would say it "Unberufen toy-toy-toy" as she knocked on wood.
"Everybody is angry with me," said Lili into my ear as we began to dance.
"Wasn't very tactful."
"I didn't mean she went to bed with him."
"Her wedding day, after all."
"Poor me. They won't say such things on my wedding day, will they? "
"Shall we go someplace else?"
"You all can go," said Helena. "The bride and groom are going home. In a taxi."
"I think we should all take the bride and groom home in a taxi," said Lili.
I called for the check. When it came, it was carefully itemized and added to 790,650,000,000 marks. They had helpfully converted it for me: $31.63.
"May I see that bill?" asked Alfred, putting on his reading glasses, and before I could stop him he held it. Christoph stood up, looked over his shoulder, took out his fountain pen
"Herr Ober!" shouted Alfred.
"Wait a minute," I protested. "This is my party, place is expensive-"
They paid no attention to me. Before they were finished, the maitre d', the assistant manager and a night cashier were all grouped around the table.
"Herr Baron, that's the usual procedure here."
"Since when? This is outrageous!"
"It's not our fault, sir!"
"Where'd you get this Kurs? You know perfectly well it was twenty-six billion at two o'clock -"
"But now it is two o'clock in the morning, Herr Baron! We have to cover ourselves -"
"So you invent a new Kurs? Adlon's midnight Kurs?"
"Works out under twenty-five billion to the dollar," announced Christoph, who had been making calculations on the back of a menu.
"Herr Baron, we have to cover ourselves," said the assistant manager.
"How do we know what the Kurs will be when we deposit the money in the morning?" asked the cashier. He was a pale angry young man with bad skin and heavy glasses. He wore a shiny suit. He looked tired.
"You're getting dollars, man!" Christoph's parade-ground tone. "They'll be worth more tomorrow morning!"
Of course they knew that as well as he did. If I had tried to pay the bill in marks - assuming I could have carried 790 billion marks into the dining room - they wouldn't have accepted them. What did people do if they didn't have dollars - or pounds, or guilders or francs? One thing they didn't do was dine at the Hotel Adlon.
When the negotiations were over, my bill had been reduced by one dollar and twenty-three cents, which was hardly worth the little scene that followed.
Christoph and the assistant manager were trying to smooth
things over and Alfred remarked that they were all in the same boat.
"No, we're not," said the cashier angrily.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Get him out of here!" hissed the assistant manager to the maitre d'.
The cashier, his arms already seized by one of the waiters and the maitre d', shouted: "I don't feel that I'm in the same boat with an American who has a wallet full of dollars - or with the Baron von Waldstein! "
Alfred was on his feet, we were all on our feet, the cashier was hustled away -
"A thousand pardons, Herr Baron, the man will be discharged in the morning-"
Alfred raised his eyebrows. "So he can join the S.A. in the afternoon? You think that will help the situation? Pay the bill, Peter. We meant well."
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