The Berlin Stories

  “I must confess, William, I was beginning to find you a little slow in the uptake. That isn’t like you, you know.”

  “I’m sorry, Arthur. But all these riddles make me a bit giddy. Suppose you stop asking them and let’s have the whole yam from the beginning?”

  “I assure you, my dear boy, I’m more than ready to tell you all I know about this affair, which isn’t very much. Well, to cut a long story short, Pregnitz is interested in one of the largest glass-works in Germany. It doesn’t matter which. You wouldn’t find his name on the list of directors; nevertheless, he has a great deal of unofficial influence. Of course, I don’t pretend to understand these matters myself.”

  “A glass-works? Well, that sounds harmless enough.”

  “But, my dear boy,” Arthur was anxiously reassuring, “of course it’s harmless. You mustn’t allow your naturally cautious nature to upset your sense of proportion. If this proposition sounds a little odd to you at first, it’s only because you aren’t accustomed to the ways of high finance. Why, it’s the kind of thing which takes place every day. Ask anybody you like. The largest deals are almost always discussed informally.”

  “All right! All right! Go on.”

  “Let me see. Where was I? Ah, yes. Now, one of my most intimate friends in Paris is a certain prominent financier —”

  “Who signs himself Margot?”

  But this time I didn’t catch Arthur off his guard. I couldn’t even guess whether he was surprised or not. He merely smiled.

  “How sharp you are, William! Well, perhaps he does. Anyhow, we’ll call him Margot for convenience. Yes . . . at all events, Margot is exceedingly anxious to have a chance of meeting Pregnitz. Although he doesn’t admit it in so many words, I understand that he wishes to propose some sort of combine between Pregnitz’s firm and his own. But that’s entirely unofficial; it doesn’t concern us. As for Pregnitz, he’ll have to hear Margot’s propositions for himself and decide whether they’re to the advantage of his firm or not. Quite possibly, indeed probably, they will be. If not, there’s no harm done. Margot will only have himself to blame. All he’s asking me to arrange is that he meets the Baron socially, on neutral ground, where they won’t be bothered by a lot of financial reporters and can talk things over quietly.”

  “And as soon as you’ve brought them together, you get the cash?”

  “When the meeting has taken place,” Arthur lowered his voice, “I get half. The other half will be paid only if the deal is successful. But the worst of it is, Margot insists that he must see Pregnitz at once. He’s always like that when once he gets an idea into his head. A most impatient man . . .”

  “And he’s really prepared to give you such a lot simply for arranging this meeting?”

  “Remember, William, it seems a mere bagatelle to him. If this transaction is successful, he’ll probably make millions.”

  “Well, all I can say is, I congratulate you. It ought to be easy enough to earn.”

  “I’m glad you think so, my dear boy.” Arthur’s tone was guarded and doubtful.

  “Why, where’s the difficulty? All you have to do is to go to Kuno and explain the whole situation.”

  “William!” Arthur seemed positively horror-stricken. “That would be fatal!”

  “I don’t see why.”

  “You don’t see why? Really, dear boy, I must own I credited you with more finesse. No, that’s entirely out of the question. You don’t know Pregnitz as I do. He’s extraordinarily sensitive in these matters, as I’ve discovered to my cost. He’d regard it as an unwarrantable intrusion into his affairs. He’d withdraw at once. He has the true aristocratic outlook, which one so seldom finds in these money-grubbing days. I admit I admire him for it.”

  I grinned.

  “He seems to be a very peculiar sort of business man if he’s offended when you offer him a fortune.”

  But Arthur was quite heated.

  “William, please, this is no time to be frivolous. Surely you must see my point. Pregnitz refuses, and I, for one, entirely agree with him, to mix personal with business relationships. Coming from you or from me, any suggestion that he should enter into negotiations with Margot, or with anybody else, would be an impertinence. And he’d resent it as such. Therefore, I do beg of you, don’t breathe one word about this to him, on any account.”

  “No, of course I won’t. Don’t get excited. But look here, Arthur, do I understand you to mean that Kuno is to go to Switzerland without knowing that he’s there to meet Margot?”

  “You put it in a nutshell.”

  “H’m . . . That certainly complicates things rather. All the same, I don’t see why you should have any special difficulty. Kuno probably goes to the winter sports, anyhow. It’s quite in his line. What I don’t altogether follow is, where do I come in? Am I to be brought along simply to swell the crowd, or to provide comic relief, or what?”

  Arthur chose and divided another toothpick.

  “I was just coming to that point, William.” His tone was carefully impersonal. “I’m afraid, you see, you’d have to go alone.”

  “Alone with Kuno?”

  “Yes.” Arthur began speaking with nervous rapidity. “There are a number of reasons which make it quite impossible for me to come with you, or to deal with this matter myself. In the first place, it would be exceedingly awkward, having once left this country, to return to it, as I should be obliged to do, even if only for a few days. Secondly, this suggestion that we should go together to the winter sports, coming from me, would sound very odd. Pregnitz knows perfectly well that I haven’t the constitution or the taste for such things. Coming from you, on the other hand, what could be more natural? He’d probably be only too delighted to travel with such a young and lively companion.”

  “Yes, I quite see all that . . . but how should I get into touch with Margot? I don’t even know him by sight.”

  Arthur dismissed these difficulties with a wave of the hand.

  “Leave that to me, dear boy, and to him. Set your mind at rest, forget everything I’ve told you this evening, and enjoy yourself.”

  “Nothing but that?”

  “Nothing. Once you’ve got Pregnitz across the frontier your duties are at an end.”

  “It sounds delightful.”

  Arthur’s face lit up at once.

  “Then you’ll go?”

  “I must think it over.”

  Disappointed, he squeezed his chin. The tooth-picks were divided into lengths. At the end of a long minute he said hesitantly:

  “Quite apart from your expenses, which, as I think I told you, will be paid in advance, I should ask you to accept a little something, you know, for your trouble.”

  “No, thank you, Arthur.”

  “I beg your pardon, William.” He sounded much relieved. “I might have known you wouldn’t.”

  I grinned.

  “I won’t deprive you of your honest earnings.”

  Watching my face carefully, he smiled. He was uncertain how to take me. His manner changed.

  “Of course, dear boy, you must do as you think best. I don’t want to influence you in any way. If you decide against this scheme, I shan’t allude to it again. At the same time, you know what it means to me. It’s my only chance. I hate begging favours. Perhaps I’m asking too much of you. I can only say that if you do this for me I shall be eternally grateful. And if it’s ever in my power to repay you . . .”

  “Stop, Arthur. Stop! You’ll make me cry.” I laughed. “Very well. I’ll do my best with Kuno. But, for Heaven’s sake, don’t build your hopes on it. I don’t suppose he’ll come. Probably he’s engaged already.”

  On this understanding, the subject was closed for the

  evening.

  Next day, when I returned from the tea-party at Kuno’s flat, I found Arthur waiting for me in his bedroom in a state of the most extreme anxiety. He could hardly wait to shut the door before hearing my news.

  “Quick, William, please. Tell me the worst. I
can bear it. He won’t come? No?”

  “Yes,” I said. “He’ll come.”

  For a moment joy seemed to have made Arthur quite speechless, incapable of motion. Then a spasm passed over all his limbs, he executed a kind of caper in the air.

  “My dear boy! I must, I really must embrace you!” And he literally threw his arms round my neck and kissed me, like a French general, on both cheeks. “Tell me all about it. Did you have much difficulty? What did he say?”

  “Oh, he more or less suggested the whole thing himself before I had opened my mouth. He wanted to go to the Riesengebirge, but I pointed out that the snow would be much better in the Alps.”

  “You did? That was brilliant of you, William! Positively inspired . . .”

  I sat down in a chair. Arthur fluttered round me, admiring and delighted.

  “You’re quite sure he hasn’t the least suspicion?”

  “Perfectly sure.”

  “And how soon shall you be able to start?”

  “On Christmas Eve, I think.”

  Arthur regarded me solicitously.

  “You don’t sound very enthusiastic, dear boy. I’d hoped this would be a pleasure to you, too. You’re not feeling ill by any chance, I trust?”

  “Not in the least, thank you.” I stood up. “Arthur, I’m going to ask you something.”

  His eyelids fluttered nervously at my tone.

  “Why — er — of course. Ask away, dear boy. Ask away.”

  “I want you to speak the truth. Are you and Margot going to swindle Kuno? Yes or no?”

  “My dear William — er — really . . . I think you presume . . .”

  “I want an answer, please, Arthur. You see, it’s important for me to know. I’m mixed up in this now. Are you or aren’t you?”

  “Well, I must say . . . No. Of course not. As I’ve already explained at some length, I . . .”

  “Do you swear that?”

  “Really, William, this isn’t a court of law. Don’t look at me like that, please. All right, if it gives you any satisfaction, I swear it.”

  “Thank you. That’s all I wanted. I’m sorry if I sounded rude. You know that, as a rule, I don’t meddle in your affairs. Only this is my affair too, you see.”

  Arthur smiled weakly, rather shaken.

  “I quite understand your anxiety, dear boy, of course. But in this case, I do assure you, it’s entirely unfounded. I’ve every reason to believe that Pregnitz will reap great benefits from this transaction, if he’s wise enough to accept it.”

  As a final test, I tried to look Arthur in the eyes. But no, this time-honoured process didn’t work. Here were no windows to the soul. They were merely part of his face, light-blue jellies, like naked shell-fish in the crevices of a rock. There was nothing to hold the attention; no sparkle, no inward gleam. Try as I would, my glance wandered away to more interesting features; the soft, snout-like nose, the concertina chin. After three or four attempts, I gave it up. It was no good. There was nothing for it but to take Arthur at his word.

  Chapter Thirteen

  My journey with Kuno to Switzerland resembled the honeymoon trip which follows a marriage of convenience. We were polite, mutually considerate, and rather shy. Kuno was a model of discreet attentiveness. With his own hands, he arranged my luggage in the rack, ran out at the last moment to buy me magazines, discovered by roundabout inquiries that I preferred the upper sleeping-car berth to the lower, and retired into the corridor to wait until I was undressed. When I got tired of reading, there he was, affable and informative, waiting to tell me the names of the mountains. We chatted with great animation in five-minute spasms, relapsing into sudden, abstracted silence. Both of us had plenty to think about. Kuno, I suppose, was worrying over the sinister manoeuvres of German politics or dreaming about his island of the seven boys: I had leisure to review the Margot conundrum in all its aspects. Did he really exist? Well, there above my head was a brand-new pigskin suitcase containing a dinner-jacket from the tailor only the day before. Arthur had been positively lordly with our employer’s money. “Get whatever you want, dear boy. It would never do for you to be shabby. Besides, what a chance . . .” After some hesitation, I had doubtfully followed his advice, though not to the reckless extent which he urged. Arthur even went so far in his interpretation of “travelling expenses” as to press upon me a set of gold cuff-links, a wrist-watch, and a fountain pen. “After all, William, business is business. You don’t know these people as I do.” His tone, when speaking of Margot, had become remarkably bitter: “If you asked him to do anything for you he wouldn’t hesitate to squeeze you to the last penny.”

  On Boxing Day, our first morning, I awoke to the tinny jingle of sleigh-bells from the snowy street below, and a curious clicking noise, also metallic, which proceeded from the bathroom. Through the half-open door Kuno was to be seen, in a pair of gym shorts, doing exercises with a chest-expander. He was straining himself terribly; the veins in his neck bulged and his nostrils arched and stiffened with each desperate effort. He was obviously unaware that he was not alone. His eyes, bare of the monocle, were fixed in a short-sighted visionary stare, which suggested that he was engaged in a private religious rite. To speak to him would have been as intrusive as to disturb a man at his prayers. I turned over in bed and pretended to be asleep. After a few moments, I heard the bathroom door softly close.

  Our rooms were on the first floor of the hotel, looking out over the houses of the village scattered along the frozen lake to the sparkling ski-ing slopes, massive and smooth as the contours of an immense body under blankets, crossed by the black spider-line of the funicular which climbed to the start of the toboggan runs. It seemed a curious background for an international business transaction. But, as Arthur had rightly said, I knew nothing of the ways of financiers. I got dressed slowly, thinking about my invisible host. Was Margot here already? The hotel was full up, the manager had told us. To judge from my glimpse of the guests, last night, in the huge dining-room, there must be several hundred of them staying here.

  Kuno joined me for breakfast. He was dressed, with scrupulous informality, in grey flannel trousers, a blazer, and the knotted silk scarf of his Oxford college colours.

  “You slept well, I hope?”

  “Very well, thank you. And you?”

  “I, not so well.” He smiled, flushed, slightly abashed. “It doesn’t matter. In the night-time I had something to read, you see?”

  Bashfully he let me see the title of the book he was holding in his hand. It was called Billy the Castaway.

  “Is it good?” I asked.

  “There is one chapter which is very nice, I find . . .”

  Before I could hear the contents of the nice chapter, however, a waiter appeared with our breakfast on a little wheeled car. We reverted at once to our self-conscious honeymoon manners.

  “May I give you some cream?”

  “Just a little, please.”

  “Is this how you like it?”

  “Thank you, that’s delicious.”

  Our voices sounded so absurd that I could have laughed out loud. We were like two unimportant characters in the first act of a play, put there to make conversation until it is time for the chief actor to appear.

  By the time we had finished breakfast, the immense white slopes were infested already with tiny figures, some skimming and criss-crossing like dragon-flies, some faltering and collapsing like injured ants. The skaters were out in dozens on the lake. Within a roped enclosure, an inhumanly agile creature in black tights performed wonders before an attentive audience. Knapsacked, helmeted, and booted, some of the more active guests were starting out on long, dangerous tours of the upper heights, like soldiers from a luxury barracks. And here and there, amidst the great army, the wounded were to be seen, limping on sticks or with their arms in slings, taking a painful convalescent promenade.

  Attentive as ever, Kuno took it for granted that he was to teach me to ski. I should have much preferred to mess about alone, but my at
tempts at polite dissuasion were in vain. He regarded it as his duty; there was no more to be said. So we spent two perspiring hours on the beginner’s slope; I slithering and stumbling, Kuno admonishing and supporting. “No, excuse me, this is again not quite correct . . . you hold yourself in too stiff a manner, you see?” His patience seemed inexhaustible. I longed for lunch.

  About the middle of the morning, a young man came circling expertly among the novices in our neighbourhood. He stopped to watch us; perhaps my awkwardness amused him. His presence rather annoyed me; I didn’t want an audience. Half by accident, half by design, I made a sudden swerve at him when he least expected it and knocked him clean off his feet. Our mutual apologies were profuse. He helped me to get up and even brushed some of the snow off me with his hand.

  “Allow me . . . van Hoorn.”

  His bow, skis and all, was so marvellously stiff that he might have been challenging me to a duel.

  “Bradshaw . . . very pleased.”

  I tried to parody it and promptly fell forward on my face, to be raised this time by Kuno himself. Somewhat less formally, I introduced them.

  After this, to my relief, Kuno’s interest in my instruction considerably decreased. Van Hoorn was a tall, fair boy, handsome in the severe Viking manner, though he had rather spoilt his appearance by shaving off most of his hair. The bald back of his head was sunburnt to an angry scarlet. He had studied for three semesters, he told us, at the University of Hamburg. He was furiously shy and blushed crimson whenever Kuno, with his discreetly flattering smile, addressed him.

  Van Hoorn could do a turn which interested Kuno extremely. They went off for some distance to demonstrate and practise it. Presently, it was time for lunch. On our way down to the hotel, the young man introduced us to his uncle, a lively, plump little Dutchman, who was cutting figures on the ice with great skill. The elder Mr van Hoorn was a contrast to his grave nephew. His eyes twinkled merrily, he seemed delighted to make our acquaintance. His face was brown as an old boot and he was quite bald. He wore side-whiskers and a little pointed beard.