37.

THE ARTISTS' BALL

As we got out of the taxi at No. 4 Pariser Platz the church bells were ringing. "Just like Cinderella!" said Lili furiously. She had taken off her mask and folded up the huge white Spreewald bonnet because it was too hard to handle in the taxi, but she had refused to kiss me on the way home.

"Look, this isn't my fault, why are you taking it out on me?"

"You're going right back there, aren't you?"

"Well -"

"Well, the party just begins at midnight and I'm supposed to go to bed like a child?" Lili was crying with anger now. The taxi driver was waiting because I hadn't paid him.

"Don't you understand that I promised to have you back? If I didn't keep my promise they'd ... I don't know what they'd do. Are you trying to get me in trouble with your parents?"

"I think you are quite happy to go back there and dance with those other girls. Especially with Helena! "

"With Helena? I promised Christoph I'd dance with her because he really can't, you know all about - "

"Ach, what nonsense, she had more partners than any woman in the place, it's almost disgusting, at her age -"

"She looks good in that outfit."

"A woman in hussar uniform, to show her legs and her behind! That was considered erotic in 1912. Today it's just embarrassing. I think." She stood there beside the huge door, holding the white bonnet and the mask, a very angry girl.

She rang the bell.

"Lili, I'll pay the taxi and come in for a drink."

"No, they've gone upstairs but they are awake and they would not like it. Go back to the ball."

A footman opened the door. "Good evening, Fräulein."

"Evening, Joseph." She looked at me. "All right, one glass of wine in the library. Go pay the taxi."

Christoph and I had dressed at the Villa Keith. On such short notice there was no time for elaborate costumes. Frau Keith had gone out somewhere with her colonel. Frau Meier climbed up to the attic, groaning and talking to herself but actually enthusiastic about the project. Die Herren gehen auf Maskenball!

Meier served sausages and boiled potatoes and beer. Then we went upstairs to Christoph's room, where Frau Meier proudly displayed what she had found: for me, a dark green hunting costume - green hat with a peacock feather, green wool shooting jacket with antler bone buttons, green knee breeches and gaiters; for Christoph, a leather flying suit just like the one he had worn at Verdun, and an aviator's cap complete with goggles.

When we came down the stairs, the Meiers stood in the hall and applauded.

"Oh Mister Ellis, it fits you perfectly! " exclaimed Frau Meier. "Herr Oberleutnant will not need a mask, but I found this for you." She handed me a children's false-face mask, a yellow Chinaman with Fu Manchu moustaches and a rubber band to hold it in place.

"Whose shooting outfit is this, Frau Meier?"

Her husband had opened the door. "Here is the taxi, gentlemen."

"That was made for Herr Kaspar years ago, Mister Ellis -"

"Just a moment," I said. I forgot something. "Get in the taxi, Christoph,

I'll be right there." I ran up the stairs into my room, took the little Smith & Wesson out of the drawer of my bedside table and dropped it into one of the deep pockets of the shooting jacket.

Why? That was the first thought that struck me - struck me like a blow between the eyes - when she opened the door to her apartment, stuck out her chest and clicked her heels at us.

Why did she do that?

"My God!" was all that Christoph said at first and I glanced sideways to see if it meant anything special to him. Hadn't she told him about the Stosstrupp Adolf Hitler? Hadn't he heard about it some other way? What is she trying to say and to whom is she saying it?

She wore the dress uniform of the Death's Head Hussars: grinning white skull-and-crossbones on a black fur shako, beneath which some golden hair appeared; a black domino mask across her eyes; a short black jacket braided with silver, buttoned tightly across her breasts; skin-tight black trousers tucked into gleaming black riding boots; and spurs.

"The boots aren't quite right -" she began, sounding frightened, I thought." I had to use my own because the real ones didn't fit -"

"My God, you look fantastic!" said Christoph. He didn't know.

"You like it? You don't think it's a little ... old-fashioned? "

"I think it's absolutely splendid. Don't you think it's splendid, Peter?" He took her in his arms and kissed her. "I've never kissed a hussar before." The shako fell off and her hair tumbled over the leather sleeve of his flying suit. "I've never made love to a hussar either."

"Give me my tickets, Christoph, I'll get Lili and we'll meet you at the ball."

The library smelled of cigars and oiled leather bindings. A few coals in the grate and a small reading lamp provided the only light. The atmosphere was romantic, but we had too much fuss.

First there had been a fuss about the wine. The wine was locked up and this footman didn't have the key. There was a little Cognac in Herr Baron's decanter in the dining room....

"Well, bring that."

He brought it on a silver tray, with two glasses.

Then there was a fuss about who would lock the front door.
"Thank you, Joseph. You can go up now, I will let Mr. Ellis out.

"With respect, Fräulein Elizabeth, It is my job to lock the house-" but when he had retreated and closed the library doors, the real fuss began.

"Now wait a minute, Lili-"

"Don't talk, I don't want to talk!"

"You just told me your parents are awake upstairs."

"Those doors won't open from the outside."

"That's a line from SchnitzIer."

"Will you not stop blabbering?"

We were on the leather sofa now, she on top of me. Her mouth, tasting of Cognac, covered mine. Her hair was in my eyes so I couldn't see anything, but I could feel her hands -

"Now wait a minute..."

"You don't want to!"

"Of course I want to, but not this way. Can't you understand that? If we get caught like this, they'll never let me see you again -"

"We'll not get caught."

"And anyway, this isn't ... You've never done it, have you?"

"Are you so cautious with all the girls?"

"I don't want to marry all the girls."

"Ah, quel sentiment!" She sat up, blew the hair out of her face and shook her head. "You really are incredible! You want to have a virgin bride. Is that some American tradition? Some religious requirement?"

"I thought most religions required it."

"I am not a student of religion and I think you better return to the ball."

"Darling, don't be mad at me, I love you, I'm a lot older, I don't want you to start this way -"

"How do you think anybody starts? I must be the only girl in Berlin in this position and I do not like it!" She was sweating. The Spreewald costume - she had shown me - required three petticoats, and they rustled as she jumped to her feet. "Back to the ball, Mr. Ellis. No virgins there!"

"Lili ... let's get married. Let's just hire a car and drive out to some little town and get married at their Standesamt, the way Helena and Christoph did."

"Another American custom? You can't do that in Germany. You need all kinds of papers, you need birth certificates - and I need my father's permission. In writing."

"Are you sure?"

"You think I'm the only girl in my class who wants to get married? Believe me, we have experts on this field of law."

"Then work on your parents. Why are they so concerned about your finishing school first? Why can't you marry me and then finish school?"

"Because I'm not allowed to finish school if I'm married. No married woman is allowed in school. My God, the girls in school are all virgins, you know. A married woman would tell them things. .. ." Suddenly she began to laugh and hurled herself back onto the sofa, a great blooming flower of lace petticoats, with two silk stems. "Oh, Peter, don't you see what an ass you are?"

Yes, we have no Bananas
We have no Bananas today....

Twice as many people now, the huge hall is packed.

Black band playing.

Helena's face is flushed.

Top buttons of Helena's black-and-silver jacket are unbuttoned.

Helena is tipped back in her chair with her black riding boots crossed upon the adjoining chair.

Helena is surrounded by a clown, a Venetian gondolier, a Highlander wearing a kilt -- all presumably artists.

Halli-Hallo, our huntsman returns from the hunt! Didn't expect to see you again tonight. Somebody give him a drink.

They are drinking Sekt.

Who is paying for all this? I wonder.

Where is Christoph ? I ask.

Probably still at the police station.

What!

Oh yes, you missed the excitement. Adolf Hitler appeared.

What?

Turned out to be a woman, says the gondolier.

Somebody knocked her down before they knew it was a woman, says the Highlander.

There was a fight and the cops came and Christoph and Hans Kowalski and Bert Brecht all had to go as witnesses or something, says Helena.

Hand on my shoulder.

A shadow in white and black: white flying cap, black mask, white silk scarf, long white driving coat, black trousers showing under the coat.

Lady over there wishes to dance with you, says Bobby.

What lady? Where?

The odalisque in harem trousers, drinking beer with that coal miner against the wall.

She turns away from the coal miner to watch: Black veil and a golden brassiere and trousers of white gauze and golden slippers and nothing else.

Achtung Achtung, shouts Helena as I stand up. Wird scharf geschossen! Making my way through dancers packed so tight they barely have room to dance, I remember what that means. It means live ammunition.

I thought I recognized the Chinese huntsman, she whispers into my ear.

She smells of beer and perfume and sweat.

Pressed hard against me she feels thinner. Ribs beneath my fingers. I don't have it anymore, she says. They gave me stuff that made me sick as a dog but I'm all right now.

That's wonderful.

Won't you come back?

That would be hard.

We need you.

I told him I wasn't coming back if he beats you.

He can't really help it. He drinks so much that he can't get it up anymore unless he can make a woman yell a little.

Is he here?

He was, but they took him to the Alexanderplatz. Some stupid bitch came dressed as Adolf Hitler, with a brown shirt and a swastika and Fritz was so potted that he didn't see it was a woman and he punched her in the mouth and she went right down and the people with her jumped on Fritz and somebody called the bulls and they took him -

Aren't you going to get him out?

Shit no, let him get himself out.

I can't understand why you stay with him.

I can't either. Maybe I'm just lazy. But it was better when you were there, Peter.

Is Baby here?

No, Fritz could only organize two tickets.

Is she home watching the boy?

Mutti's with the boy. Baby's in the Friedrichstrasse. The only reason I'm here is that Fritz thinks I'll find somebody. Like the Herr Baron I sent over to get you.

You know Bobby?

All the girls know Baron Bobby. He's always kind, he's always polite, he treats you like a princess. I'm not fancy enough for him, of course.

Is that coal miner an artist? He's been watching us the whole time.

He owns coal mines.

And of course he's got dollars.

He's got Dutch guilders.

And he wants you to go to his hotel?

Wrong. He wants to do it in the Tiergarten.

In the Tiergarten, this time of year?

He wants to do it in the back of his limousine with his chauffeur driving us through the Tiergarten.

Very romantic.

Listen, if you take me home tonight I'll tell him to find somebody else to play in his car.

Can't do it, Bärbel. I'd like to.

You took your rich girl home, didn't you?

I still can't do it.

They're sure to keep Fritz in the can overnight. No? If you really think I'm still sick, you can screw Baby. We sort of need you down there....No use, eh? All right then, adieu, my gallant cavalier. I'll have to ride in the Tiergarten.

Very important people like Alfred von Waldstein don't bother with costumes. White tie and tails, and a black mask.

Sigrid wears a beautiful embroidered dress and a white apron and a white lace cap and her blond hair braided into pigtails, a peasant bride from the Mark Brandenburg -

And her eyes meet mine, her sky-blue eyes widen in horror, she lunges toward me and rips my Chinese false-face off and shouts: Where did you get that Jäger outfit?

I tell her.

Alfred asks: What is the matter with you tonight? Grabbing her arm.

Her face is red now, flushed with blood: I don't like it here. I want to go home.

Alfred says: You went all the way out to Zeydlitz to get your costume-

I don't like it here, and I want to go home. Biting her lips.

Alfred asks: Was it that skull out there? Is that what has upset you?

What skull? I ask.

Somebody in the crowd outside, there are hundreds of people trying to get in, one fellow wore a death's-head mask -

Where is Christoph? Sigrid asks.

I tell her where Christoph went, and just then I see him, with his goggles pushed up over the flying cap, limping back through

the wildly dancing crowd with his cane in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other. Hans Kowalski, wearing a tall white chef's hat, clears the path, and coming up behind is Bertolt Brecht, no mask, no costume, just a greasy leather jacket and dark trousers - and a guitar.

The black musicians walk off the bandstand, wiping their faces.

A babble of voices fills the hall.

I am standing in the crowd with Sigrid.

What did he look like? That man with the death's-head?

He had his arm in a sling.

A tremendous pounding begins. People are banging glasses and bottles on the tables.

We want Brecht!
We want Brecht!

Brecht climbs onto a table with his guitar. The hall is silent. He begins to strum. He begins to sing in his high hoarse voice, the same song he sang when I drew his picture, the song about Baal.

Applause and whistles, some shouts of "Schweinerei! " but more demands for more.

More? All right, one more, yells Brecht

The German is too hard for me, or maybe I'm drunk. I hear the words; I don't understand them.

.

Sigrid von Waldstein is not listening to the "Choral vom Grossen Baal."

Sigrid von Waldstein's eyes are searching the crowd.

Waves of applause, and up on the balcony two harlequins are dumping wicker baskets full of German marks.

Another band, not black this time, begins to play a waltz as falling banknotes fill the air like confetti. Like November leaves.

The waltz is an old song about the faithful hussar who loves his girl "ein ganzes Jahr," and I am dancing with the hussar now.

With her boots and her fur shako she is taller than I am, redfaced, waltzing beautifully although she has been drinking steadily through the night.

Sorry I'm so wet, my dear, I'm sweating champagne. What the devil's wrong with Sigrid?

She saw somebody wearing a death's-head -

She saw a ghost. I've looked all over this menagerie, and the only death's-head is right up here on my cap ... and he'll ward off the other ghost.... Smiling into my face: Will he not, Peter?

Another cold November dawn. The wind blows through the
open doors as people leave. The worthless paper marks swirl
around the emptying dance floor and out into the street, bills of
100,000 marks and 500,000 marks and 1,000,000 marks and
100,000,000 marks fly about our ankles and across the pavement and into the gutters as we climb into a taxi.

Where shall we go for breakfast, I ask.

Phew, I'm tired of people, says Helena. Come along to the Lützowufer and I'll make us an omelet. Clara is out and you can sleep in her room.

Christoph is very quiet, looking out of the window. Does that mean he doesn't want me in the apartment? I don't feel like going back to the Villa Keith. I must find my own place this week.

Is something wrong with you? Helena asks him.

Christoph shakes his head but he continues to look out the window.

Has this got something to do with all the fuss that Sigrid was making? But now we are at the Lützowufer, and there is the usual negotiation about the taxi fare and then we walk upstairs and the moment Helena has unlocked the door of the apartment she shouts There's somebody in here! and dashes five steps down the hall and rips open the door to the living room and even before we hear the shot that deafens us we see her smashed back against the opposite wall, see her drop in a heap with everything pouring out through the golden hair.

And I can't stop Christoph! I have the Smith & Wesson in my right hand, I'm trying to hold him back with my left but I cannot hold him and that is how he gets in front of me coming around the door post to face the apparition slouched back into the big sofa: blond hair, white skull false-face pulled down just enough to reveal his forehead and his eyes, a Luger in his right hand with the longest barrel I've ever seen expertly cradled across his plaster-cast left elbow - and the bullet that takes out part of my lung has already passed through his brother's heart.


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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