3

SHE was called Margot Peters. Her father was a house-porter who had been badly shellshocked in the War: his gray head jerked unceasingly as if in constant confirmation of grievance and woe, and he fell into a violent passion on the slightest provocation. Her mother was still youngish, but rather battered too—a coarse callous woman whose red palm was a perfect cornucopia of blows. Her head was generally tied up in a kerchief to keep the dust from her hair during work, but after her great Saturday clean-up—which was mainly effected by means of a vacuum cleaner ingeniously connected to the lift—she dressed herself up and sallied forth to pay visits. She was unpopular with the tenants on account of her insolence and the vicious way she had of ordering people to wipe their feet on the mat. The Staircase was the main idol of her existence—not as a symbol of glorious ascension, but as a thing to be kept nicely polished, so that her worst nightmare (after too generous a helping of potatoes and sauerkraut) was a flight of white steps with the black trace of a boot first right, then left, then right again and so on—up to the top landing. A poor woman indeed, and no object for derision.

Otto, Margot’s brother, was three years her senior. He worked in a bicycle factory, despised his father’s tame republicanism, held forth on politics in the neighboring pub and declared as he banged his fist on the table: “The first thing a man must have is a full belly.” This was his guiding principle—and quite a sound one too.

As a child Margot went to school, and there she had her ears boxed rather less frequently than at home. A kitten’s commonest movement is a soft little jump coming in sudden series; hers was a sharp raising of her left elbow to protect her face. In spite of all, she grew up into a bright and high-spirited girl. When only eight she joined with much gusto in the screaming, scraping games of football which schoolboys played in the middle of the street using a rubber ball the size of an orange. At ten she learned to ride her brother’s bicycle. Bare-armed, with black pigtails flying, she scorched up and down the pavement; then halted with one foot resting on the curbstone, pensively. At twelve she became less boisterous. Those were the days when she liked nothing better than to stand at the door and chatter in undertones with the coalman’s daughter, exchanging views upon the women who visited one of the lodgers, and discussing passing hats. Once she found on the staircase a shabby handbag containing a small cake of almond soap with a thin curved hair adhering to it, and half-a-dozen very queer photos. On another occasion the redhaired boy who always used to trip her up at play kissed her on the nape of the neck. Then one night she had a fit of hysterics, for which she got a dousing of cold water followed by a sound wallop.

A year later she had grown remarkably pretty, wore a short red frock and was mad on the movies. Afterward she remembered this period of her life with a strange oppressive feeling—the light, warm, peaceful evenings; the sound of the shops being bolted for the night; her father sitting astride on his chair outside the door, smoking his pipe and jerking his head; her mother, arms akimbo; the lilac bush leaning over the railing, Frau von Brock going home with her purchases in a green string-bag; Martha the maid waiting to cross with the greyhound and two wire-haired terriers.… It grew darker. Her brother would come along with a couple of burly comrades who gathered round and jostled against her, plucking at her bare arms. One of them had eyes like the film actor Veidt. The street, with the upper stories of the houses still bathed in yellow light, grew quite silent. Only, across the way, two baldheaded men were playing cards on a balcony, and every guffaw and thump was audible.

When she was barely sixteen she became friendly with the girl who served behind the counter of a small stationery shop at the corner. This girl’s young sister was already earning a decent living as an artist’s model. So Margot dreamed of becoming a model, and then a film star. This transition seemed to her quite a simple matter: the sky was there, ready for her star. At about the same time she learned to dance, and now and then went with the shopgirl to the “Paradise” dance hall where elderly men made her extremely frank proposals to the crash and whine of a jazz band.

One day, as she was standing at the corner of the street, a fellow on a red motorcycle, whom she had observed once or twice already, drew up suddenly and offered her a ride. He had flaxen hair combed back and his shirt billowed behind, still full of the wind he had gathered.

She smiled, got up behind him, arranged her skirt and next moment was traveling at a terrific speed with his tie flying in her face. He took her outside the city and there halted. It was a sunny evening and a little party of midges were continuously darning the air in one spot. It was all very quiet: the quietude of pine and heather. He alighted and as he sat by her side at the edge of a ditch he told her that last year he had pushed on to Spain, just like this. Then he put his arm round her and began to squeeze and fumble and kiss her so violently that the discomfort she felt that day turned to dizziness. She wriggled free and began to cry. “You may kiss me,” she sobbed, “but not that way, please.” The youth shrugged his shoulders, started his engine, ran, jumped, swerved and was gone; leaving her sitting on a milestone. She returned home on foot. Otto, who had seen her go off, thumped his fist down on her neck and then kicked her skilfully, so that she fell and bruised herself against the sewing machine.

Next winter the shopgirl’s sister introduced her to Frau Levandovsky, an elderly woman of goodly proportions with a genteel manner, albeit marred by a certain fruitiness of speech, and a large purple blotch on her cheek the size of a hand: she used to explain it by her mother’s having been frightened by a fire whilst expecting her. Margot moved to a small servant’s room in her flat, and her parents were thankful to be rid of her, the more so as they considered that any job was sanctified by the money it brought in; and fortunately her brother, who liked to speak in threatening terms of capitalists’ buying the daughters of the poor, was away for a time, working at Breslau.

First Margot posed in the classroom of a girls’ school; then, later on, in a real studio where she was drawn not only by women, but by men also, most of whom were quite young. With her sleek black hair nicely cut, she sat on a small rug, stark naked, her feet curled under her, leaning on her blue-veined arm, her slim back (with a sheen of fine down between the pretty shoulders, one of which was raised to her flaming cheek) bent slightly forward in a semblance of wistful weariness; she watched askance the students lift and lower their eyes and heard the faint whir and grating of carbon pencils shading this curve or that. Out of sheer boredom she used to pick out the best-looking man and throw him a dark liquid glance whenever he raised his face with its parted lips and puckered forehead. She never succeeded in changing the color of his attention, and this vexed her. Before, when she had pictured herself sitting thus, alone in a pool of light, exposed to so many eyes, she had fancied that it would be rather exhilarating. But it made her stiff, that was all. To amuse herself she made up her face for the sitting, painted her dry hot mouth, darkened her eyelids, although indeed they were quite dark enough, and once even touched up her nipples with her lipstick. For this she got a good scolding from the Levandovsky woman.

So the days passed and Margot had only a very vague idea of what she was really aiming at, though there was always that vision of herself as a screen beauty in gorgeous furs being helped out of a gorgeous car by a gorgeous hotel porter under a giant umbrella. She was still wondering how to hop into that diamond bright world straight from the faded rug in the studio, when Frau Levandovsky told her for the first time about a lovesick young man from the provinces.

“You can’t do without a boy friend,” declared that lady complacently as she drank her coffee. “You are much too lively a lass not to need a companion, and this modest young fellow is wanting to find a pure soul in this wicked city.”

Margot was holding Frau Levandovsky’s fat yellow dachshund in her lap. She pulled up the animal’s soft silky ears so as to make their tips meet over the gentle head (inside they resembled dark pink blotting paper, much used) and answered without looking up:

“Oh, there’s no need for that yet. I’m only sixteen, aren’t I? And what’s the use? Does it lead you anywhere? I know those fellows.”

“You’re a fool,” said Frau Levandovsky calmly. “I’m not talking to you about some scamp, but about a generous gentleman who saw you in the street and has been dreaming of you ever since.”

“Some old dodderer, I expect,” said Margot, kissing the wart on the dog’s cheek.

“Fool,” repeated Frau Levandovsky. “He is thirty, clean-shaven, distinguished, with a silk tie and a gold cigarette holder.”

“Come, come for a walk,” said Margot to the dog, and the dachshund slipped from her lap to the floor with a plop and trotted off along the passage.

Now the gentleman referred to by Frau Levandovsky was anything but a shy young man from the country. He had got in touch with her through two hearty commercial travelers with whom he had played poker on the boat train all the way from Bremen to Berlin. At first, nothing had been said about prices: the procuress had merely showed him a snapshot of a smiling girl with the sun in her eyes and a dog in her arms, and Miller (that was the name he gave) merely nodded. On the appointed day she bought some cakes and made plenty of coffee. Very shrewdly, she advised Margot to wear her old red frock. Toward six o’clock the bell rang.

“I’m not going to run any risks, I’m not,” thought Margot. “If I hate him, I’ll tell her so straight out, and if I don’t I’ll take my time to think it over.”

Unfortunately it was not such a simple matter to decide what to make of Miller. First of all, he had a striking face. His lusterless black hair, carelessly brushed back, longish and with an odd dry look about it, was certainly not a wig, although it looked uncommonly like one. His cheeks seemed hollow because the cheekbones protruded so, and their skin was dull white as if coated with a thin layer of powder. His sharp twinkling eyes and those funny three-cornered nostrils which made one think of a lynx were never still for a moment; not so the heavy lower half of his face with the two motionless furrows at the corners of the mouth. His attire seemed rather foreign: that very blue shirt with a bright blue tie, that dark blue suit with enormously wide trousers. He was tall and slim and his square shoulders moved splendidly as he picked his way among Frau Levandovsky’s plush furniture. Margot had pictured him quite differently and now she sat there with arms tightly crossed, feeling rather shocked and unhappy, while Miller fairly gobbled her up with his eyes. In a rasping voice he asked for her name. She told him.

“And I’m little Axel,” he said with a short laugh, and brusquely turning away from her he resumed his conversation with Frau Levandovsky: they were talking sedately of Berlin sights and he was mockingly polite with his hostess.

Then suddenly he lapsed into silence, lit a cigarette and, picking off a bit of the cigarette paper which had stuck to his full, very red lip (where was the golden holder?), said:

“An idea, dear lady. Here’s a stall for that Wagner thing; you’re certain to like it. So put on your bonnet and toddle off. Take a taxi, I’ll pay for that too.”

Frau Levandovsky thanked him, but replied with some dignity that she preferred to remain at home.

“May I have a word with you?” asked Miller, obviously annoyed, rising from his chair.

“Have some more coffee,” suggested the lady coolly.

Miller licked his chops and sat down again. Then he smiled, and in a new good-natured manner launched into a funny story about some friend of his, an opera singer who once, in the part of Lohengrin, being tight, failed to board the swan in time and waited hopefully for the next one. Margot bit her lips and then suddenly bent forward and went off into the most girlish fits of laughter. Frau Levandovsky laughed too, her large bosom quivering softly.

“Good,” thought Miller, “if the old bitch wants me to play the lovesick fool, I shall—with a vengeance. I’ll do it far more thoroughly and successfully than she supposes.”

So he came next day, and then again and again. Frau Levandovsky, who had received only a small advance payment and wanted the whole sum, did not leave the pair alone for a moment. But sometimes when Margot took the dog for a walk late in the evening, Miller would suddenly emerge from the darkness and stroll along by her side. It flurried her so that she involuntarily hurried her steps, neglecting the dog, which followed with its body at a slight angle to the line of its wobbly trot. Frau Levandovsky got wind of these secret meetings and henceforth took out the dachshund herself.

More than a week passed in this manner. Then Miller resolved to act. It would have been absurd to pay the huge price demanded since he was on the point of getting what he wanted without the woman’s help. One night he told her and Margot three more funny stories, the funniest they had yet heard, drank three cups of coffee and then, walking up to Frau Levandovsky, gathered her up in his arms, rushed her into the lavatory, nimbly drew out the key, and locked the door from the outside. The poor woman was so utterly taken aback at first that for five seconds at least she did not utter a sound, but then—oh, God! …

“Pack up your things quick and come along,” said he, turning to Margot who was standing in the middle of the room with both hands pressed to her head.

He took her to a little flat which he had rented for her the day before, and no sooner had Margot crossed the threshold than she yielded with pleasure and zest to the fate which had been lying in wait for her quite long enough.

And she liked Miller enormously. There was something so satisfying about the grip of his hands, the touch of his thick lips. He did not speak to her much, but he often held her on his knees and laughed quietly as he mused over something unknown. She could not guess what he was doing in Berlin or who he really was. Nor could she find out his hotel; and when she once tried searching his pockets, he gave her such a rap on the knuckles that she decided to do it better next time, but he was much too careful. Whenever he went out she was afraid that he would never come back; otherwise she was extraordinarily happy and hoped they would always be together. Now and then he gave her something—silk stockings, a powder puff—nothing very expensive. But he would take her to good restaurants and to the pictures and to a café afterward, and once, when she gasped as a famous film actor sat down a couple of tables away from them, he looked up at the man and they exchanged greetings, which made her gasp all the more sweetly.

He, for his part, developed such a taste for Margot that often, when he was on the point of going, he would suddenly shove his hat into a corner (incidentally, she had discovered from its inside that he had been to New York) and decided to stay. All this lasted for exactly one month. Then one morning he got up earlier than he usually did and said that he had to leave. She asked him for how long. He stared at her and then walked up and down the room in his purple pyjamas, rubbing his hands as though he were washing them.

“Forever, I guess,” he said suddenly, and he began to dress without looking at her. She thought that he might be joking, kicked off the bedclothes, as the room was very hot, and turned her face to the wall.

“Pity I haven’t a photo of you,” he said as he stamped into his shoes.

Then she heard him pack and lock the small suitcase he used for the odds and ends he brought to the flat. After a few minutes he said:

“Don’t move and don’t look round.”

She did not stir. What was he doing? She twitched her bare shoulder.

“Don’t move,” he repeated.

For a couple of minutes there was silence except for a faint grating sound which somehow seemed familiar.

“Now you may turn,” he said.

But Margot still lay motionless. He walked up to her, kissed her ear and went out quickly. The kiss sang in her ear for quite a while.

She lay in bed the whole day. He never came back.

Next morning she received a wire from Bremen: “Rooms paid till July adieu sweet devil.”

“Good Heavens, how shall I do without him?” said Margot aloud. She leaped to the window, flung it open and was about to throw herself out. But at that moment a red-and-gold fire engine drove up, snorting loudly, and stopped in front of the house opposite. A crowd had collected, clouds of smoke billowed from the top window, and black scraps of charred paper floated in the wind. She was so interested in the fire that she forgot her intention.

She had very little money left. In her distress she went to a dance hall as abandoned damsels do in films. Two Japanese gentlemen accosted her and, as she had taken more cocktails than were good for her, she agreed to spend the night with them. Next morning she demanded two hundred marks. The Japanese gentlemen gave her three fifty in small change and bustled her out. She resolved to be more wary in the future.

At a bar one night a fat old man with a nose like an overripe pear put his wrinkled hand on her silken knee and said wistfully:

“Glad to meet you again, Dora. Do you still remember what fun we had last summer?”

She laughed and replied that he had made a mistake. The old man asked her with a sigh what she would drink. Then he drove her home and became so beastly in the darkness of the car that she jumped out. He followed her and almost in tears begged her to meet him again. She gave him her telephone number. When he had paid for her room till November and had also given her enough money to buy a fur coat, she allowed him to stay for the night. He was a comfortable bedfellow, dropping fast asleep the moment he had stopped wheezing. Then he failed to keep an appointment, and when at last she rang up his office she was told that he was dead.

She sold her fur coat and the money kept her until the spring. Two days before this transaction she felt an ardent longing to display herself to her parents in her splendor, so she drove past the house in a taxicab. It was a Saturday and her mother was polishing the handle of the front door. When she saw her daughter, she stopped dead. “Well, I never!” she exclaimed with much feeling. Margot smiled silently, got back into the cab and through the back window saw her brother come running out of the house. He bawled something after her and shook his fist.

She took a cheaper room. Half undressed, her little feet shoeless, she would sit on the edge of her bed in the gathering darkness and smoke endless cigarettes. Her landlady, a sympathetic body, dropped in now and then for a soulful chat and one day told Margot that a cousin of hers owned a little cinema which was doing quite well. The winter seemed colder than winters used to be; Margot looked about her for something to pawn: that sunset perhaps.

“What shall I do next?” she thought.

One raw blue morning when her courage was high she made up her face very strikingly, looked up a film company with a promising name and succeeded in making an appointment to see the manager at his office. He turned out to be an elderly man with a black bandage over his right eye and a piercing gleam in his left. Margot began assuring him that she had played before—and very successfully.

“What picture?” asked the manager gazing benevolently at her excited face.

Boldly she mentioned a firm, a film. The man was silent. Then he closed his left eye (it would have been a wink, had the other been visible) and said:

“Lucky for you that you came across me. Another in my place might have been tempted by your … er … youth to make you heaps of fine promises and—well, you’d have gone the way of all flesh, never to become the silver ghost of romance—at least of that special brand of romance which we deal in. I am, as you may observe, no longer young, and what I haven’t seen of life isn’t worth seeing. My daughter, I imagine, is older than you. And for that reason I would like to tell you something, my dear child. You have never been an actress and in all likelihood you never will be. Go home, think it over, talk to your parents if you are on speaking terms with them, which I doubt …”

Margot slapped the edge of the desk with her glove, stood up and stalked out, her face distorted with fury.

Another company had its office in the same building, but there she was not even admitted. Full of wrath she made her way home. Her landlady boiled her two eggs and patted her shoulders, while Margot ate greedily, angrily. Then the good woman fetched some brandy and two small glasses, filled them with a shaky hand, carefully corked the bottle and carried it away.

“Here’s to your good luck,” she said, seating herself again at the rickety table. “Everything’ll be all right, my dear. I’ll be seeing my cousin tomorrow and we’ll have a chat about you.”

The chat was quite a success, and at first Margot enjoyed her new occupation, though it was, of course, a little humiliating to start her film career in that way. Three days later she felt as though she had done nothing else all her life but show groping people to their seats. On Friday, however, there was a change of program and that cheered her up. She stood in the darkness leaning against the wall and watched Greta Garbo. But after a while she was fed up for good. Another week went by. A man coming out lingered by the exit and glanced at her with a shy helpless expression. After two or three nights he returned. He was perfectly dressed and his blue eyes stared at her hungrily.

“Quite a decent-looking fellow, though rather on the dull side,” mused Margot.

Then, when he turned up for the fourth or fifth time—and certainly not for the sake of the picture, because it was the same—she felt a faint thrill of pleasant excitement.

But how timid he was, that fellow! As she was leaving for home one night, she noticed him on the other side of the street. She walked slowly on without looking round, but with the corners of her eyes folded back like the ears of a rabbit: expecting that he would follow her. But he did not—he simply faded away. Then, when he came again to the “Argus” there was a wan, morbid, very interesting look about him. Her work over, Margot tripped out into the street; stopped; opened her umbrella. There he was standing again on the opposite sidewalk and calmly she crossed over to him. But when he saw her approaching, he at once began to walk away.

He felt silly and sick. He knew that she was behind and so was afraid to walk too fast lest he should lose her; but then, too, he was afraid to slacken his pace lest she should overtake him. At the next street-crossing he was obliged to wait while car after car sped past him. Here she overtook him, all but slipped under a bicycle van and jumped back, colliding with him. He grasped her thin elbow and they crossed together.

“Now it has started,” thought Albinus, awkwardly adjusting his stride to hers—he had never walked with so small a woman.

“You’re drenched,” she said with a smile. He took the umbrella out of her hand; she pressed still closer to him. For a moment he feared that his heart might burst, but then suddenly something relaxed delightfully as though he had caught the tune of his ecstasy, this moist ecstasy drumming, drumming against the taut silk overhead. Now his words came freely and he enjoyed their newborn ease.

The rain stopped, but they still walked under the umbrella. When they came to a halt at her front door, he closed the wet, shiny, beautiful thing and gave it back to her.

“Don’t go away yet,” he pleaded (holding the while one hand in his pocket and endeavoring to push off his wedding ring with his thumb). “Don’t,” he repeated (it came off).

“Getting late,” she said, “my aunt will be angry.”

He seized her by the wrists and with the violence of shyness tried to kiss her, but she ducked and his lips met only her velvet cap.

“Let me go,” she murmured, her head lowered. “You know you ought not to do that.”

“But don’t go,” he cried. “I have no one in the world but you.”

“I can’t, I can’t,” she answered, and turning the key in the lock she pressed against the great door with her small shoulder.

“I shall wait for you again tomorrow,” said Albinus.

She smiled at him through the glass pane and then ran down the dim passage toward the back yard.

He took a deep breath, groped for his handkerchief, blew his nose, carefully buttoned, then unbuttoned, his overcoat; noticed how light and bare his hand felt and hurriedly slipped on the ring, which was still quite warm.