the question.
“Indeed? And where did you meet?”
This time I did not miss the tone in his voice. I looked hard at him. But his extraordinary eyes were neither suspicious, nor threatening, nor sly. Smiling pleasantly, he simply waited in silence for my answer.
“We got to know each other in the train, on the way to Berlin.”
Bayer’s glance became faintly amused. With disarming, bland directness, he asked: “You are good friends? You go to see him often?”
“Oh yes. Very often.”
“You have not many English friends in Berlin, I think?”
“No.”
Bayer nodded seriously. Then he rose from his chair and shook my hand. “I have to go now and work. If there is anything you wish to say to me, please do not hesitate to come and see me at any time.”
“Thank you very much.”
So that was it, I thought, on my way down the shabby staircase. None of them trusted Arthur. Bayer didn’t trust him but he was prepared to make use of him, with all due precautions. And to make use of me, too, as a convenient spy on Arthur’s movements. It wasn’t necessary to let me into the secret. I could so easily be pumped. I felt angry, and at the same time rather amused.
After all, one couldn’t blame them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Otto turned up at Arthur’s about a week later, unshaved and badly in need of a meal. They had let him out of prison the day before. When I went round to the flat that evening, I found him with Arthur in the dining-room, having just finished a substantial supper.
“And what did they use to give you on Sundays?” he was asking as I came in. “We got pea-soup with a sausage in it. Not so bad,”
“Let me see now,” Arthur reflected. “I’m afraid I really can’t remember. In any case, I never had much appetite… Ah, my dear William, here you are! Please take a chair.
That is, if you don’t disdain the company of two old gaolbirds. Otto and I were just comparing notes.”
The day before Arthur and I visited the Alexanderplatz, Otto and Anni had had a quarrel. Otto had wanted to give fifteen pfennigs to a man who came round collecting for a strike fund of the I. A. H. Anni had refused to agree to this, “on principle.”
“Why should the dirty communists have my money?” she had said. “I have to work hard enough to earn it.” The possessive pronoun challenged Otto’s accepted status and rights; he generously disregarded it. But the adjective had really shocked him. He had slapped her face, “not hard,” he assured us, but violently enough to make her turn a somersault over the bed and land with her head against the wall; the bump had dislodged a framed photograph of Stalin, which had fallen to the ground and smashed its glass. Anni had begun to curse him and cry. “That’ll teach you not to talk about things you don’t understand,” Otto had told her, not unkindly. Communism had always been a delicate subject between them. “I’m sick of you,” cried Anni, “and all your bloody Reds. Get out of here!” She had thrown the photograph-frame at him and missed.
Thinking all this over carefully, in the neighbouring Lokal, Otto had come to the conclusion that he was the injured party. Pained and angry, he began drinking Korn. He drank a good deal. He was still drinking at nine o’clock in the evening, when a boy named Erich, whom he knew, came in, selling biscuits. Erich, with his basket, went the rounds of tKe cafés and restaurants in the whole district, carrying messages and picking up gossip. He told Otto that he had just seen Anni in a Nazi Lokal on the Kreuzberg, with Werner Baldow.
Werner was an old enemy of Otto’s, both political and private. A year ago, he had left the communist cell to which Otto belonged and joined the local Nazi storm-troop. He had always been sweet on Anni. Otto, who was pretty drunk by this time, did what even he would never have dared when sober; he jumped up and set off for the Nazi Lokal alone. Two policemen who happened to pass the place a
“Indeed? And where did you meet?”
This time I did not miss the tone in his voice. I looked hard at him. But his extraordinary eyes were neither suspicious, nor threatening, nor sly. Smiling pleasantly, he simply waited in silence for my answer.
“We got to know each other in the train, on the way to Berlin.”
Bayer’s glance became faintly amused. With disarming, bland directness, he asked: “You are good friends? You go to see him often?”
“Oh yes. Very often.”
“You have not many English friends in Berlin, I think?”
“No.”
Bayer nodded seriously. Then he rose from his chair and shook my hand. “I have to go now and work. If there is anything you wish to say to me, please do not hesitate to come and see me at any time.”
“Thank you very much.”
So that was it, I thought, on my way down the shabby staircase. None of them trusted Arthur. Bayer didn’t trust him but he was prepared to make use of him, with all due precautions. And to make use of me, too, as a convenient spy on Arthur’s movements. It wasn’t necessary to let me into the secret. I could so easily be pumped. I felt angry, and at the same time rather amused.
After all, one couldn’t blame them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Otto turned up at Arthur’s about a week later, unshaved and badly in need of a meal. They had let him out of prison the day before. When I went round to the flat that evening, I found him with Arthur in the dining-room, having just finished a substantial supper.
“And what did they use to give you on Sundays?” he was asking as I came in. “We got pea-soup with a sausage in it. Not so bad,”
“Let me see now,” Arthur reflected. “I’m afraid I really can’t remember. In any case, I never had much appetite… Ah, my dear William, here you are! Please take a chair.
That is, if you don’t disdain the company of two old gaolbirds. Otto and I were just comparing notes.”
The day before Arthur and I visited the Alexanderplatz, Otto and Anni had had a quarrel. Otto had wanted to give fifteen pfennigs to a man who came round collecting for a strike fund of the I. A. H. Anni had refused to agree to this, “on principle.”
“Why should the dirty communists have my money?” she had said. “I have to work hard enough to earn it.” The possessive pronoun challenged Otto’s accepted status and rights; he generously disregarded it. But the adjective had really shocked him. He had slapped her face, “not hard,” he assured us, but violently enough to make her turn a somersault over the bed and land with her head against the wall; the bump had dislodged a framed photograph of Stalin, which had fallen to the ground and smashed its glass. Anni had begun to curse him and cry. “That’ll teach you not to talk about things you don’t understand,” Otto had told her, not unkindly. Communism had always been a delicate subject between them. “I’m sick of you,” cried Anni, “and all your bloody Reds. Get out of here!” She had thrown the photograph-frame at him and missed.
Thinking all this over carefully, in the neighbouring Lokal, Otto had come to the conclusion that he was the injured party. Pained and angry, he began drinking Korn. He drank a good deal. He was still drinking at nine o’clock in the evening, when a boy named Erich, whom he knew, came in, selling biscuits. Erich, with his basket, went the rounds of tKe cafés and restaurants in the whole district, carrying messages and picking up gossip. He told Otto that he had just seen Anni in a Nazi Lokal on the Kreuzberg, with Werner Baldow.
Werner was an old enemy of Otto’s, both political and private. A year ago, he had left the communist cell to which Otto belonged and joined the local Nazi storm-troop. He had always been sweet on Anni. Otto, who was pretty drunk by this time, did what even he would never have dared when sober; he jumped up and set off for the Nazi Lokal alone. Two policemen who happened to pass the place a
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