The Brothel in Rosenstrasse
Michael Moorcock





Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque crowd together: the early basilica of St Vaclar 
stands 
between the sixteenth-century Chemnitz fortress and the eighteenth-century 
Capuchin 
monastery, all noteable examples of their periods, and are joined just below, in 
Konigsplatz, by the beautiful new Egyptianate concert hall designed by Charles 
Rennie 
Mackintosh. It has been fairly said that there are no ugly buildings in 
Mirenburg, only some 
which are less beautiful than others. Many travellers stop here on their way to 
and from the 
Bohemian spas of Karlsbad, Manenbad and Franzenbad. Mirenburg is joined to 
Vienna by 
water, rail and road and it is common to change here from one mode of transport 
to 
another, or merely to make the appropriate train connections. The station is by 
Kammerer: 
a Temple to Steam in the modern 'Style Liberty'. From it one may progress easily 
to 
Prague or Dresden, to St Petersburg or Moscow, to Wroclaw or Krakow, to Buda-
Pesht or 
Vienna, and beyond to Venice and Trieste, which may also be reached by canal.
Mirenburg's wealth comes from the industry and commerce of Walden-stein, whose 
capital 
she is, but it is enhanced by the constant waves of visitors, who arrive at all 
seasons.
The revenues from tourism are used to maintain the older structures to 
perfection and it is 
well-known that Prince Badehoff-Krasny, the hereditary ruler of Waldenstein, 
spends a 
considerable proportion of his own fortune on commissioning new buildings, as 
well as 
works by living painters, composers and writers. For this reason he has been 
fairly called a 
'present-day Lorenzo' and he is apparently quite conscious of this comparison to 
the great 
Florentine. Mirenburg is the quintessential representation of a Renaissance 
which is at 
work everywhere in modern Europe.

R.P. DOWNES, Cities which Fascinate, Kelly, London,



CHAPTER ONE
Mirenburg

      I am at last able to move my right hand for extended periods of time. My 
left hand, 
although still subject to sudden weakness and trembling, is satisfactory. Old 
Papadakis 
continues to feed me and I have ceased to be filled with the panic of 
prospective 
abandonment. The suffering is now no worse than anything I knew as a small boy 
in the 
family sickroom. In fact minor discomforts, like an irritated groin, I welcome 
as wonderful 
aids to memory, while I continue to be astonished at my difficulty in recalling 
that 
overwhelming emotional anguish I experienced in my youth. My present tantrums 
and fits 
of despair cannot bear comparison: the impotence of sickness or old age at least 
reconciles one to the knowledge there is nothing one can do to improve one's own 
condition. Those old wounds seem thoroughly healed, yet here I am about to tear 
them 
open again, so possibly I shall discover if I have learned anything; or shall 
find out why I 
should have suffered at all.
      Mirenburg is the most beautiful of cities. Great architects and builders 
have 
displayed their best talents here since the tenth century. Every tenement or 
hovel, 
warehouse or workshop, would elsewhere be envied and admired as art. On a 
September 
morning, shortly before dawn, little paddle-steamers begin to sound their horns 
in the grey 
mist. Only the twin Gothic spires of the Cathedral of St-Maria-and-St-Maria are 
visible at 
this time, rising out of the mist as symmetrical sea-carved rocks might thrust 
above a 
sluggish silver tide.
      I was completely alive in Mirenburg. Ironically, during the days of the 
Siege, I feared 
death far more than I fear it now when death exhibits itself in every limb, in 
every organ; an 
unavoidable reality. Life was never to be experienced so fully. For years I 
yearned for the 
dark, lifting sensuality, that all-embracing atmosphere of sexual ecstasy I had 
known in 
Mirenburg. To have maintained that ambience, even if it had been in my power, 
would 
have led to inevitable self-destruction, so I have not entirely regretted living 
past the 
Mirenburg days. I have made I think the best of my life. Since I retired to 
Italy it has been 
simpler of course and I have been forced to review many habits I had not much 
questioned. Friends visit; we have memories. We relive our best times and 
usually joke 
about the worst. Changing events have not greatly disturbed us. But there is no-
one who 
shared the Mirenburg period and few believe me if I speak of all that happened. 
There was 
so much. Alexandra. My Alice. She is still sixteen. She lies surrounded by green 
velvet and 
she is naked. I have arranged blossoms upon her skin, pink and pale yellow 
against her 
tawny flesh; flowers from a Venetian hothouse to warm her in our early autumn 
days, while 
in the ballroom below we hear the zither, the Cafe Mozart Waltz, and I smell my 
sex 
mingling with her scent, with honey and roses. Her eyes are heated, her smile is 
languid 
yet brilliant in the dark curls which surround it. She spreads her little arms. 
Alexandra. She 
called herself Alex. Later it will be Alice. I am enchanted; I am captured by 
Romance. 
Beyond the window the spires and roofs of Mirenburg glitter like a mirage. I am 
about to be 
betrayed by my own imagination. Those huge eyes, the colour of ancient oak, seem 
to give 
me all their attention and I am flattered, overwhelmed. My Alexandra. Her head 
moves to 
one side, her shoulder goes up, she speaks my name:
      'Ricky?'
      I am tempted to put down my pen and push myself higher in
my pillows to try to peer over the top of the writing-board and look to see if I 
really did hear 
her; but I continue to write, glad to touch just a little of that ambience 
again.
      As a child, when I played with my toy soldiers, arranging battalions, 
positioning 
cavalry and artillery, I would sometimes receive an unexpected thrill of intense 
sexual 
pleasure, to the point of achieving not only an erection but often an orgasm. 
Even now, 
when I see a display of toy soldiers in a shop, I may be touched by that same 
sensation, 
almost as poignantly as when I was twelve or thirteen. Why I experienced it then 
and why I 
continued to experience it I do not know. Perhaps it had something to do with my 
complete 
power over those little men which, in turn, released in me all the power of my 
sex, full and 
unchecked by convention or upbringing. Certainly I had very little power as a 
boy. My 
brothers and sisters being so much older than I, I had a relatively solitary 
childhood. My 
mother was never mentioned. I was to discover she was in disgrace, somewhere in 
Roumania, with a Dutchman.
      Shortly before her death, I met her briefly, by accident, in a fashionable 
restaurant 
off the Avenue Victor Hugo and recognised her from her photograph. She was small 
and 
serene and was very polite to me when I pointed out our relationship. Both she 
and her 
Dutchman were dressed in black. My father's interest was in politics. He served 
the 
government and was close to Bismarck. At our estates in Bek I had been brought 
up chiefly 
by Scottish governesses, doted on by pretty housemaids who, when the time came, 
had 
been more than willing to educate me sexually. I have been in the power of 
women, it 
seems, all my life.
Dawn comes and Mirenburg begins to rattle like a beggar's cup: the first horses 
and trams 
are abroad. The shutters are being raised, windows are being opened. The sun is 
pale 
brass upon the mist which thins to reveal a sky of milky blue. White and grey 
stone 
shimmers. She speaks the affected 'English'-accented German of fashionable 
Vienna; she 
pronounces R as
      She is captivating, artificial, an object to treasure. From ome secluded 
tree-lined 
square comes the tolling of a Catholic bell. At certain heights it is possible 
to see most of 
Mirenburg's antique turrets and gables, her twisting chimneys, her picturesque 
steeples 
and balconies, her bridges built by old kings, her walls and canals. The modern 
apartment-
houses, hotels and stores, as noble and inspiring as the palaces and churches 
which 
surround them, are monumentally designed by Sommaragu and Niermans and Kammerer. 
She is a symphony of broad paved avenues and cobbled alleys, glinting spires and 
domes 
and stained glass. She lies staring up into my face, her small breasts held fast 
against my 
slow penis. It is warm in the room. The sun cuts between the heavy curtains and 
falls, a 
single slab of light, upon the bed, across my back. Our faces and our legs are 
in deep 
shadow; the white sperm strikes at her throat and she cries out in unison with 
me; my 
Alice. I roll to my side and I am laughing with pleasure. She lights me a 
cigarette. I feel like 
a demigod. I smoke. Every action is heroic. And she is a spirit, an erdgeist out 
of Wedekind 
become my very own reality. We joke. She smiles. It is dawn in Mirenburg. We 
shall sleep 
later and at about noon I will rise to wrap myself in my black and white silk 
robe and stand 
on the balcony looking out at the exquisite view which, to my mind, cannot be 
matched, 
even by Venice. I glance at the table and the dark blue leather notebook in 
which I shall try 
to write a poem for her; the book was a present from my middle sister and has my 
name in 
gold stamped on the front: Rickhardt von Bek. I am the youngest son; the 
prodigal of the 
family, and in this part I am tolerated by almost everyone. The senile trees 
rustle in a light 
East wind. I smell mint and garlic. Papadakis brings me fresh materials and a 
little 
morphine. I can feel myself trembling again, but not from pain or infirmity; I 
am trembling as 
I trembled then, with every sense at almost unbearable intensity. I touch the 
skin of an 
unripe peach. Down the wide Mladota Steps, also known as the Tilly Steps, 
carefully 
descends a single student, still drunk from a party, still in his light blue 
uniform except that 
instead of his cap he wears a Homburg hat at least three sizes too large for 
him. It covers 
his ears and his eyes. His immature lips are pursed to whistle some 
misremembered 
Mozart. He is trying to make his way back to the Old Quarter where he lodges. 
Two 
working girls, pink-faced and blonde in shawls and long dark smocks, pass him as 
they 
ascend, giggling and trying to flirt with him, but he is oblivious to them, for 
all the sharp 
clack of their clogs. He reaches the bottom of the steps and casts himself off 
across the 
roadway. The embankment on both sides is planted with firs and cypresses; 
immediately 
opposite him are the wrought-iron gates and carved granite pillars of the 
Botanical 
Gardens.
      These mansions on the very fringe of the Old Quarter were once the 
residences of 
the ruling class but are today primarily public buildings and museums. They 
retain their 
grounds and their imported trees and shrubs. The largest house which the 
student, now 
clinging to the railings, would be able to see if he lifted his hat, was the 
summer place of 
the Graf Gunther von Baudessin who said he loved the city more than his own 
Bavarian 
estates. He was for a while special ambassador for his homeland and did much to 
help 
Mirenburg retain her independence during the expansionist wars of the mid-
eighteenth 
century when three enemies (Russia, Saxony and Austria) converged on 
Waldenstein's 
borders, then failed to agree who should own the province.
From the Gardens come a thousand scents: autumn flowers and shrubs; the small, 
scarlet 
deeply-perfumed rose for which Mirenburg is famous blooms late and sometimes 
lasts until 
December. There is still dew on the grass. The student steadies himself and 
continues, 
turning back up the broad avenue of Pushkinstrasse. He is alerted momentarily by 
the cry 
of some exotic beast awakening in the nearby Zoo. A milkman's cart, decorated in 
blue, 
red and green, passes him, its cans jingling, its boney horse rolling her old 
eyes in the 
shade of her blinkers as she takes her familiar course. He reaches the 
Lugnerhoff at last, 
where the Protestant martyrs were burned in 1497. Here the houses are suddenly 
close-
packed, leaning one upon the other like a crowd of old men around a game of 
bowls. In the 
centre of the cobbled court is a baroque fountain: the defiant Hussites about to 
mount their 
pyre. The student crosses
Lugnerhoff to reach the narrow entrance to Korkziehiergasse and sunlight touches 
a green 
copper roof. Only the upper floors on the right-hand side of the alley are so 
far warmed by 
the sun; all the rest remain in deep shadow. The student opens a door into a 
courtyard and 
disappears. His feet can still be heard climbing the iron staircase to the room 
over what 
was once a stable now used by Jewish street-traders to store their goods.
      Further up Korkziehiergasse, ascending the steep grey serpentine slope 
which 
leads from here to Cutovskiplatz, her knuckles blue as her fingers grasp inch by 
inch the 
metal bannister, the old candy-woman is a threadbare silhouette in the morning 
light. This 
hunched, exhausted and vulnerable little creature was once the darling of the 
Schoen 
Theatre: 'a spark of true life-force surrounded by the putrescent glow of 
simulated vitality', 
as Snarewitz described her fifty years ago. Marya Zamarovski lived for love in 
those days 
and gave herself up to the moment thoroughly and generously. Her men, while they 
continued to be attractive to her, had everything they desired. With every 
lover, she 
discarded houses, jewels, furniture and money, until almost simultaneously her 
wealth 
became exhausted together with her beauty and her public success. She opened a 
chocolate shop, but was cheated out of it by the last man she loved. Now she 
sells her 
sweets from the heavy tray about her neck. She will stand in Cutovskiplatz until 
evening, 
not far from the theatre where she used to perform (it continues to put on 
popular 
melodramas and farces). I buy candied violets from her for Alexandra who nibbles 
at one 
and offers it to me. I bite. The scented sweet mingles its strong perfume with 
her subtle 
cologne and I resist the urge to draw her to me. There is a noise from the 
river. On the 
quays the coal-heavers carry sacks to the little steamers. The docks of 
Mirenburg are 
sometimes as busy as any seaport. In winter the merchants, wrapped in overlarge 
fur coats 
which will give them the appearance of so many sober fledgelings standing in 
concourse, 
will supervise their cargoes. It is now seven o'clock in the morning and the 
express from 
Berlin is steaming into the station. The workman's cafes, bristling with 
newspapers in 
German, Czech and Svitavian, fill with smoking red sausages and dark coffee, 
purple arms 
and blue overalls, the smell of strong cigarettes, the sound of cutlery and 
argument. 
Waiters and waitresses, their big enamel trays held above their heads, move 
rapidly 
amongst the crowded marble-topped tables. We hear a bellow from the Berlin 
train.
On the balconies of the hotels above Cutovskiplatz a few early risers are 
breakfasting. One 
can locate a hotel at this hour by the distinctive aura of cafe-au-lait and 
croissants. Soon 
the English tourists in their Burberrys and Ulsters will emerge and make for 
Mladota where 
they will disdain the little funicular car running up beside it and insist on 
trudging all one 
hundred and twenty steps, irrespective of the weather; then they will head for 
the Cathedral 
of St-Maria-and-St-Maria, or go to the Radota Bridge which spans the Ratt. The 
balustrades of this bridge are supported on both sides by Romanesque pillars 
representing 
the famous line of Svitavian kings whose power was broken in 1370 by the Holy 
Roman 
Emperor Charles IV who, by diplomacy and threat, set his own candidate upon the 
throne 
and insisted Svitavia be called by its German name of Waldenstein and Mirov-
Cesny 
become Mirenburg, with the effect that Svitavian is now only spoken fluently in 
the rural 
districts.
      The Ratt is a fast-flowing river. Upstream is the Oder and downstream the 
Danube. 
She is loved by barge-men as a good, safe river, spine of the most sophisticated 
canal 
system in the world. The Ratt is the chief contributor to Waldenstein's 
prosperity. Several 
hundred yards from the Radota Bridge, beside older cobbled quays, are cramped 
coffee-
houses and restaurants, covered in hand-written advertisements and posters so 
that it is 
almost impossible to see through windows where weathered barge-captains and pale 
shipping clerks drink thick Rattdampfen soup from Dresden crockery and wipe 
their lips on 
Brno linen. The conversation is nothing but lists of goods and prices in a dozen 
currencies. 
Steam from tureens behind the counters threatens to peel placards from the glass 
and on a 
misty evening one can go outside and scarcely notice any difference in 
visibility from the 
interior.
      In the tall white and brown cafe on the corner of Kanalstrasse and 
Kaspergasse, 
underneath the billboard advertising a brand of Russian tea, sit drinking the 
Slav 
nationalists. Many have been up all night and some have just arrived. They argue 
in fierce 
but usually inexpert Svitavian or Bohemian. They quote the poetry of Kollar and 
Celakovsky: Slavia, Slavia! Thou name of sweet sound but of bitter memory; 
hundred times 
divided and destroyed, but yet more honoured than ever. They refuse to speak 
German or 
French. They wear peasant blouses under their frock-coats. They affect boots 
rather than 
shoes and rather than cigars they smoke the yellow cigarettes of the peasant. 
Though 
most of them have been educated at the universities of Prague and Heidelberg, 
even 
Paris, they reject this learning. They speak instead of 'blood' and 'instinct', 
of lost glories 
and stolen pride. Alexandra tells me her brother was for a while of their number 
and it is the 
chief reason her parents decided to take him to Rome. I tell her I am grateful 
to her brother 
for his radicalism. Her little stomach is so soft. I touch it lightly with my 
fingertips. I move my 
hand towards her pubis. She jumps and gently takes hold of my wrist. What 
yesterday had 
been of peripheral interest to me today becomes central, abiding, almost an 
obsession. I 
take as keen a delight in the contents of jewellery shop windows, the 
couturiers, the 
fashion magazines as I once took in watching a horse-race or reading about 
exotic lands. 
This change has not been gradual, it seems to have occurred overnight, as if I 
cannot 
remember any other life. Alexandra has me. My blood quickens. Now I am 
remembering 
the detail of the pleasure. I wave Papadakis away. I cling to the sensation. It 
becomes 
more than memory. I experience it again. What have I invented? Is she my 
creation or is 
she creating me? Commonplace events are of no consequence. The room darkens. A 
background of red velvet and roses. Her passivity; her weakness. Her sudden, 
fierce 
passion and her sharp, white teeth. She becomes strong, but she remains so soft. 
The 
cathedral bells are chiming. We are playing a game. She understands the rules 
better than 
I. I break away from her and stand upright. I go to the window and part the 
curtains. She is 
laughing from the twisted sheets. I turn towards her again:
      'You are hopeless.'
      Papadakis is at my shoulder, asking for instructions. I tell him to light 
my lamp. She 
pushes her head under the pillow. Her feet and calves are hidden by the linen; 
her bottom 
curves in the brown gloom and her vertebrae are gleaming. She comes to the 
surface, her 
dark curls damp with sweat, and I return to her, forcing her down on her face 
and laying my 
penis in the cleft of her rear, denying myself the heat of her vagina: I have 
never known 
such heat, before or since, in a woman's sex. She bites at my hand. Traffic is 
noisy in the 
square today; a political demonstration of some kind, Papadakis says: he is 
contemptuous. 
'Communists.' We hire a carriage and driver to take us east to Staromest, the 
hilly semi-
rural suburb of Miren-burg where proud-eyed little girls watch over goats and 
chickens and 
shoo off strangers as if they were foxes. Here, amid the old cottages and 
windmills, we 
shall stop at an inn and either lunch there or ask them for a picnic. One or two 
fashionable 
'Resting Houses' have been built in Staromest. They are frequented by invalids 
and the 
elderly and are staffed by nuns. Thus the peace of the hills is somewhat 
artificially 
preserved from the natural encroachment of the city. The apartment blocks stand 
below, 
silent besiegers who must inevitably conquer. We pass a small convoy of vivid 
gypsy 
wagons. Alexandra points at a brown and white pony as if I could buy it for her. 
The earth 
roads are still dry. From the dust the plodding gypsies do not look at us as we 
pass. We 
stop to gaze on the rooftops.
      I point out, in the curve of the river, the old dock known as Suicide Bay. 
By some 
trick of the current most of those who fling themselves off the Radota Bridge 
are washed in 
to this dock. We can also see the distant race-track, dark masses of horses and 
spectators, 
bright silks and flags against the green turf. Closer to us is the cupola of the 
great Concert 
Hall where tonight one can hear Smetana and Dvorak on the same programme as 
Wagner, 
Strauss and Debussy. Mirenburg is more liberal in her tastes than Vienna. Not 
far from the 
Concert Hall is a gilded sign, by Mucha, for the Cabaret Roberto, which offers 
popular 
singers, comedians, dancers and trained animals in a single evening's 
entertainment. 
Alexandra wishes to attend Roberto's. I promise her we shall go, even though I 
know she is 
as likely as I am to change her mind in the next half-hour. She touches my cheek 
with 
warm lips. I am enraptured by the city's beauty. I watch a green and gold 
tramcar, drawn 
by two chestnut horses, as it moves towards Little Bohemia, the Jewish Quarter, 
where 
from Monday to Thursday a market flourishes.
      The tramcar reaches its terminus, near the market. The core of the market 
is in 
Gansplatz but nowadays it has spread through surrounding streets and each street 
has 
come to be identified by its stalls. In Baverninstrasse is second-hand clothing, 
linen, lace 
and tapestries; in Fahnestrasse antiques and sporting-guns; in Hangengasse 
books, 
stationery, prints; and in Messingstrasse fruit and vegetables, meat and fish; 
while the main 
market has a little of everything, including Italian organ-grinders, gypsy 
fiddlers, mimes and 
puppeteers. Stallholders and their customers haggle beneath bright stripes of 
the awnings, 
all in the shadow of the Great Synagogue, said to be the largest in Europe. Her 
rabbis are 
amongst the world's most famous and influential.
      Dignified men, dark and learned, come and go on steps where gingerbread 
sellers 
rest their trays, where little boys sell cigarettes out of inverted drums and 
their sisters, in 
pretty tinsel, perform simple dances to attract attention to their cakes and 
sweets.
      The stalls are crowded with toys, tools, jams and sausages, musical 
instruments 
and domestic wares. Vendors shout their bargains, and sardonic hausfraus 
challenge them 
above the noise of guitars, accordions, violins and hurdy-gurdies.
      At the far end of Hangengasse a large crimson automobile, imported from 
France, 
bucks and rumbles on its springs, its driver seated high above his passengers 
and wearing 
the cap, goggles and overcoat of his calling so he resembles a comical lemur in 
his 
profound sobriety. The chaffeur's gloved fingers squeeze a horn: a tin trumpet 
blown by a 
mouse announces the progress of Juggernaut. The crowd divides, from curiosity 
rather 
than fear, and the crimson machine is on its way to more fashionable parts, to 
Falfnersallee, the Champs Elysees of Mirenburg, and the Restaurant Schmidt, all 
silver, 
mirrors and pale yellow. Here the nouveaux riches display themselves, to the 
chagrin of 
waiters who until a year or two ago served only Mirenburg's aristocracy. The 
upper 
classes, they say, have been driven out by the vulgar owners of steamships and 
mechanical looms, whose wives wear the pearls of ancient impoverished families 
about red 
throats and speak a kind of German hitherto only heard in the Moravian district, 
the 
industrial suburb on the far side of the river.
      This class has come to be known as 'les sauvages' or'die Unbebaut', the 
subject of 
cartoons in the illustrated papers and mockery in cabarets which these days all 
but fill 
Kodaly Square, yet its money allows the journals and entertainments to flourish 
while its 
trade, especially with Berlin, increases Waldenstein's prosperity.
      At a large round table near the window, looking out upon the trees, the 
kiosks and 
the traffic of Falfnersallee, sits in corpulent well-being, in English tweed and 
French linen, 
Pasitch the Press King, a loyal supporter of the government of Prince Badehoff-
Krasny and 
believer in stronger ties with Germany. His newspapers persistently emphasise 
the Austro-
Hungarian threat and pillory an opposition favouring the views of Count 
Holzhammer 
currently exiled to Vienna, where he is courted by those who believe firmly in a 
'union' 
between Bohemia and Waldenstein.
      Herr Pasitch eats his Kalbsaxe and discusses international politics with 
his uncritical 
sons and daughters. They are expecting a guest. My first memories of Mirenburg 
are of the 
Restaurant Schmidt. Father had taken me to the city for a
eason. I had spent some part of the summer at a private academy before being 
sent on to 
school in Heidelberg. I recall skiffs and tea-gardens. Mirenburg had seemed a 
haven of 
peace and stability in Europe. I am inclined to resent any politics here. 
Mirenburg is a 
retreat; I escape to her. I always expected to find an Alexandra in Mirenburg so 
I scarcely 
question my fortune. We drive into the early afternoon.
Herr Pasitch's guest has arrived, seating himself with a flourish and drawing 
the full 
attention of the Pasitch daughters. He is Herbert Block, the popular song-
writer; selfish, 
humorous and charming. Without favouritism he has looted the romantic lyrics of 
antecedents and contemporaries to considerable profit. Few of the victims 
complain. His 
charm is such that, although he is now nearing forty, people still regard him as 
a schoolboy 
whose pranks do no real harm, and, while he remains witty and vain, he will 
always have 
tolerant friends, especially amongst women. His dark eyes are professionally 
active. His 
dark hair might now be dyed. He leans back in his chair and flashes an expert 
smile. Herr 
Pasitch explains the strategies of Bismarck. Herr Block turns the conversation 
to the 
exploits of Count Rudolph Stefanik, the famous Czech balloon adventurer, who was 
recently forced to leave Zurich under scandalous conditions and narrowly missed 
having 
his vessel seized and burned by outraged citizens. They had welcomed him as a 
hero and 
he had thoroughly abused their hospitality. 'Caught in the basket!' says Herr 
Block. 'He is a 
dear friend of mine. But, O!' This episode, involving a young lady of previously 
good 
reputation, was not dissimilar to many others in the Count's history. 'His 
adventures have 
spanned five continents.' Getting some wind of the composer's drift, Herr 
Pasitch firmly 
steers the topic back to Bismarck. Herr Block smiles at the women as if in 
defeat. He 
suggests that they might like to repair later to the Straus Tea Gardens, to the 
south of 
Mirenburg, on the river. 'To catch the last of the summer.'
      From these gardens, some five miles away, one can watch the trains 
crossing the 
long viaduct which spans the valley where the Ratt widens. It has thirty-two 
arches and 
was completed in 1874 by engineers from the Rhineland.
According to legend a man lost his life for every arch completed and some of the 
victims 
are said to lie beneath the plinths, their ghosts occasionally appearing on the 
track at night, 
causing drivers to apply their brakes and bring trains to an alarming halt. 
Usually these 
ghosts are discovered to be baffled deer or wolves which have strayed on to the 
bridge and 
are unable to escape.
      Five minutes from the Restaurant Schmidt, in Edelstrasse, a narrow street 
running 
parallel to Falfnersallee, is the Restaurant Anglais. Socialists gather here, 
followers of 
Kropotkin, Proudhon and Karl Marx, to debate how much support they have in 
Parliament 
and how soon the workers in the Moravia will grow tired of their lot and rise 
against their 
masters. They wear grey frock-coats and high collars but only a few have the 
soft felt hats 
and loose ties of the conventional radical. In the same street, at the Hotel 
Dresden, are 
members of the League of St Ignatz, a little older, on average, but otherwise 
very similar to 
the clientele at the Restaurant Anglais. These strong conservatives are almost 
as 
suspicious of the socialists as they are of the Jews, the Jesuits and the 
Freemasons, whom 
they term the'super-national powers', deliberate fomentors of war and rebellion. 
It is early 
afternoon. Socialists and conservatives begin to return to offices where they 
will mingle and 
conduct the business of Mirenburg with exactly the same degree of zeal shown by 
their 
non-political colleagues.
A squadron of cavalry, its bright blues and golds softened by the September sun, 
rides past 
one end of Edelstrasse, on its way to guard the Kasimirsky Palace, where 
Parliament 
meets (today it debates a new Armaments Bill); and in the other direction goes a 
closed 
carriage bearing the arms of Hungarian Archduke Otto Budenya-Graetz, exiled from 
his 
own country by relatives who pay him to stay abroad. His reputation is so 
villainous not 
even the lion-hunting ladies of the Regenstrasse mvite him to their salons. It 
is said he 
always has a small revolver with him. So many attempts have been made on his 
life by 
jealous lovers or their husbands, he carries the weapon for self-defence. The 
carriage turns 
down toward the river, passing the neo-classical Customs House, and heading 
inevitably 
for Rosenstrasse. Alexandra's teeth touch the pale flesh of chicken and I raise 
my 
champagne glass to her. The shadows already begin to lengthen. I recall my 
second visit 
to Mirenburg, the lilacs against a bright blue sky which deepened to violet at 
sunset; then I 
had spent considerable time and most of my money at the Casino. I had a passion 
for 
roulette and the Circus. Both Casino and Circus still exist, but I have so far 
visited neither.
      Our landau takes us back to our hotel. We smell crisp Leckerli gingerbread 
in the 
hands of schoolchildren who file out of the bakeshops on their way home. I tell 
Alexandra 
of the summer in the cottage when I was a boy, of my father coming to visit us. 
I had the 
impression almost everything was white and yellow, and even now when I recall 
the 
cornflowers I am astonished at this sudden infusion of brilliant blue into my 
memory. I can, I 
tell her, with effort also re-experience the red-orange of the poppies, but I 
suspect this 
might be a false recollection, or at least one from a later period.
      The smell of those poppies, however, is almost always with me, whenever I 
think of 
them. I am under the impression I am losing Alexandra's attention, but we shall 
soon be 
back at the hotel and I know how to recapture her quickly enough. I begin the 
story of the 
consumptive twins and their dog, even before we have left the carriage, although 
my mind 
is still obsessed with that scent of poppies and I wonder why I should associate 
it so 
strongly with sexual passion. Perhaps both are capable of absorbing one's total 
attention. 
Yet I could not have been more than seven when we paid our last visit to the 
country. 
Papadakis wishes to retire. He asks if he can douse my lamp. I shake my head and 
tell him 
to go. I remember, as I escort Alexandra through the lobby, the first woman I 
became 
infatuated with. She was married and her husband was abroad in some small German 
colony. 'You are a sympathetic friend,' she had said to me. 'And sometimes that 
is the last 
thing one seeks in a lover.' She had laughed. 'That is the job of the husband.' 
She taught 
me an excellent lesson. Once again, as I prepare to bathe, I consider the 
relationship 
between passion and power, between sexuality and spiritual fulfillment, the 
realisation of 
the Self. I complete the story of the twins. Alexandra begins to laugh and 
becomes 
helpless.
Her arms grip my back, her legs encircle my thighs; I begin the slow injection. 
'Never stop 
loving me,' she says. 'Promise me.' I promise. 'And I will never stop loving 
you,' she says. 
But I am a fiction. My reality could destroy me. She is a dream and I shall 
never stop loving 
her. We are silent now. I move further into that tiny flame, the gateway to a 
universe of 
pleasure; beyond her vagina is infinity, immortality, marvellous escape. She is 
yelling. Her 
nails stab into my buttocks and my cries join hers. She lies with her curls 
against my neck 
and shoulder. I stroke her arm in the long twilight. 'Shall we go to Roberto's?'
      'I am too tired,' she says, 'for the moment. Let us have an early supper 
here and 
then see.'
In Zwergengasse, once the home of a famous eighteenth-century Italian circus 
troupe, a 
knife-grinder pushes his cart over the cobbles. The street is barely wide enough 
for him 
and not much more than thirty yards long. It runs up to the old wall of the 
city. Its lower 
floors are large and vacant, occupied only by a tribe of beggars who will, when 
winter 
comes, move on to warmer quarters near the quaysides; they squat amongst the 
remains 
of the circus - painted tin and rotting velvet -discussing their adventures in 
loud voices 
while Pan Sladek reaches his premises at last, lowers the handles of his cart 
and unlocks 
the doors of his workshop, suspicious as always of the beggars (who would be far 
too timid 
to rob him). His grey face shines like a hatchet as he sweats to manipulate his 
grinding 
equipment into the shop. His nose is blue and pointed. He has had a hard day. He 
locks up 
and enters the doorway next to the shed, climbing the stairs slowly, but two at 
a time on his 
spidery legs until he reaches a door painted a fresh and startling yellow. He 
opens it. The 
smell of frying comes from the kitchen. Today is schnitzel day. When Pan Sladek 
remembers this he brightens. He goes into the kitchen and kisses Pani Sladek as 
he 
always kisses her. She smiles to herself. Below, as Zwergengasse grows dim, more 
beggars flit back, rooks to a rookery, their hands full of sour wine and loaves 
of yesterday's 
bread. Somewhere close by, students of the Academy and the Polytechnic are 
fighting 
again, shouting obscure private battle-cries from street to street and lying in 
ambush for 
one another in alleys and shop doorways, brandishing stolen colours, caps and 
scarves, 
which they nail to the walls and beams of the beerhalls, their headquarters. 
Willi's in 
Morgenstrasse and Leopold's in Grunegasse are respectively strongholds of the 
Academy 
and the Polytechnic. Near Leopold's is The Amoral Jew, a cabaret populated 
entirely by 
proponents of the New Art, young Russians and Germans with bizarre notions of 
perspective.
Alexandra likes The Amoral Jew and I have acquaintances there. We arrive at 
about nine 
o'clock to watch the negro orchestra which delighted her on our last visit. She 
is 
overdressed and heavily painted for this cabaret but so beautiful that nobody 
cares. 
Kulacharsky, barrel-chested and ferociously bearded, in a peasant blouse and 
clogs, 
fondles the ostrich feathers in her diamond aigrette and says something wicked 
to her in 
Russian which pleases her, though she does not understand a word. It is dark and 
noisy in 
The Amoral Jew and Rosenblum himself presides, his goatee twitching as he 
strolls 
amongst the tables and glances secretly here and there from mysterious eyes 
which could 
be drugged. There are murals on the walls, in gaudy primaries. Were it not for 
the strange 
manner of their execution they would be thought indelicate. They were painted by 
a 
Spaniard who passed through. Alexandra accepts a glass of absinthe, still the 
drink of the 
bohemian from St Petersburg to Paris. Voorman, sweating in his heavy jacket and 
tweed 
shooting breeches, begins to talk about his telescope; he is considering giving 
up painting 
for astronomy. 'Science is today the proper province of the artist.' Alexandra 
laughs, but 
because she finds him attractive not because she understands him. Bodies press 
around 
us like mourners at a wake. Alexandra enjoys the attention of the avant-garde. 
In the old 
barracks a few streets away, built into the walls of Mirenburg, privates at an 
off-duty card 
game drink surreptitiously from illicit jugs while avuncular sergeants turn 
blind eyes. In the 
upper storeys of the garrison captains and lieutenants passionately discuss the 
Armaments 
Bill which, if implemented, will mean a stronger Waldenstein. 'Everyone is 
arming. If we 
wish to keep our freedom, so should we. We are the prize of Europe, never forget 
that. We 
are coveted by all: three empires flank us and the only security we have is that 
one empire 
will not risk warring upon another in order to win us. Remember Bismarck's 
words: 
Waldenstein is the most beautiful bride the masculine nations have ever courted: 
a virgin 
whose dowry opens the gateway to power over the entire continent. Whoever wins 
her 
shall win the world. The Prince thinks our neutrality is all the security we 
need. But we must 
be prepared to defend ourselves from within. There are those who would sell the 
virgin to 
the highest bidder.' So says Captain Thomas Vladoroff, a distant cousin of mine, 
as his 
batman clears away the cheese. Vladoroff has the pale and misleadingly vacant 
good 
looks of his family. 'We must be alert for the agent provocateur in our midst. 
There are 
many, in the army and out of it, who support Count Holzhammer.' His friends 
smile at his 
zeal. He loosens the collar of his dress tunic. Someone tells him that there 
could never be 
a civil war in Waldenstein. 'We are too sensible, too united, too fond of 
comfort.' Alexandra 
dislikes my cousin. He is bloodless, she says, and more interested in machines 
than in his 
fellow men. He is leaving now, to visit his mistress in Regenstrasse, the widow 
of an officer 
killed some twenty years ago as a volunteer on the russian side during their 
last war with 
the French. Her name 18 Katerina von Elfenberg and she was seventeen when her 
husband died. She told my cousin he could be a reincarnation °i that dashing 
Hussar, 
who was blown to pieces by a huge UPP gun he was attempting to recapture. Her 
other 
lover is a ^aron, a chief of the Stock Exchange, and her advice is making my 
cousin 
moderately rich, although he becomes concerned about the nature of the 
speculation, for it 
seems to him to anticipate strife. There is a small party tonight. I have been 
invited but I 
could not take Alexandra for fear of meeting members of her family. As it is, 
her servants 
have had to be heavily bribed to tell callers she is out and to bring messages 
in secret to 
our hotel so that she can reply and thus preserve the pretence of being in 
residence. Her 
parents write regularly from Rome and she dutifully replies with news of friends 
and 
relatives, the weather, expeditions with her friends to museums and the more 
suitable tea-
gardens. She is expected, next year, to go to be finished in Switzerland, but 
she plans 
instead, she tells me, to meet me in Berlin. From there we shall discuss the 
possibilities of 
Paris, Marseilles and Tangiers, for of course she is below the age of consent.
      My cousin is introduced to the members of the Mirenburg Royal Ballet 
Company, 
some of the finest dancers in the world. The women offer him controlled hands to 
be 
kissed. He will tell me later how he feels uncomfortable, as if corralled with a 
squadron of 
ceremonial horses, all of which can pick up their feet and none of which can 
charge. I look 
toward the little stage, my arm about Alexandra. She loves the comedy, borrowed 
from 
Debureau, she says. Pierrot pursues Columbine and is defeated by Harlequin. A 
large silk 
moon ripples in the draught from the door and Pierrot plucks his guitar, singing 
in French. I 
am told it is Laforgue. Projected against the backdrop are silhouettes of 
balloons, trains 
and automobiles, of factories and iron ships. The song is in praise, I gather, 
of the 
machine, for Pierrot's accent is so gutteral I can scarcely understand one word 
in three. 
Then on come the novelty dancers; some little ballet of primitive lust and 
discordant fiddles. 
In the morning, as soon as there is sunlight a lark will begin to sing from our 
roof. We touch 
glasses and sip the heady wormwood. There is no time. I am adrift. I lean 
towards my ink. I 
have no pain now. I am full of delight. In Mirenburg's gaslight I call for a 
cab. Around us is 
ancient beauty, delicate lacework-stone silent under the deep sky. I resist the 
temptation to 
brave Katerina von Elfenberg's salon and we drive instead to the Yanokovski 
Promenade 
to marvel at its electrical lights and to listen to the music from the 
bandstand. I am an old 
man now and my white suits have become yellowed by the sun; but there is a 
bandstand in 
the town, where Italians play selections from Verdi and Rossini. A pleasure boat 
goes past 
in the jewelled water. Excited girls and boys of Alexandra's age play innocent 
games 
amongst the deck-chairs and the hatch-covers. A flotilla of grim barges passes 
in the 
darkness on the other side; a steam-whistle hoots. The pleasure boat disappears 
beneath 
the Radota. Mirenburg is the merriest of cities at night. Her citizens belong 
spiritually to 
more Southern regions of the continent. In Bachenstrasse, which winds down to 
the 
Promenade, Carl-Maria Saratov, his heart broken and his mind desperate for 
diversion, 
wanders into the unlit alleys known as the Indian Quarter, perhaps because there 
was 
once a cheap waxwork show here with its main tableaux representing the Wild 
West. Carl-
Maria Saratov has come all the way from Falfnersallee where he saw his 
sweetheart 
entering the Cafe Wilhelm with his oldest friend, another student at the 
university. He has 
heard that opium is to be found in the Indian Quarter and so it is. The den 
would be unlikely 
to welcome him. It is typical of its kind, but unlike the one Carl-Maria has 
heard about from 
a friend. Mirenburg's best opium-den is not the sordid hovel one finds in 
Hamburg or 
London. Even the Chinese attendants at 'Chow-Li's' are not really Chinese, but 
Magyars 
dressed in elaborate robes. The place is awash with blue silk and golden 
brocade. The 
couches are deep and thickly padded and the owner is British, an exile, James 
Mackenzie, 
the Scots military engineer, who committed some crime in the Malay Archipelago 
and dare 
not enter any country of the British Empire, yet runs his den with all the tact, 
discretion and 
lavish decoration of a fashionable restauranteur. Archduke Otto Budenya-Graetz 
is there 
tonight, with two young friends from the military school. Mackenzie will not 
refuse him 
entrance, but makes sure he is sent to a remote room and that the pipes are paid 
for 
before they are smoked.
The Archduke has not enjoyed his visit to Rosenstrasse and swears the place is 
overrated 
and he will never return. He complains of his entrapment in'this provincial 
town' and speaks 
to the fascinated students of the glories of Vienna, Buda-Pest and Paris, of the 
women of 
St Petersburg, where he was very briefly an attache, of the boys of 
Constantinople, and he 
hands them their pipes with his eyes on their serge thighs and takes a deep 
breath to relax 
himself before inhaling. He lets himself remember his days in the service of the 
Mexicans; 
that splendid time of unchecked satisfaction when the air was so full of fear 
one had merely 
to wave a sabre to fulfill one's grossest needs. 'I can still smell the blood,' 
he murmurs. 
'There is nothing like it to enliven any sport, say what you will.' He takes his 
pipe as if it 
were a crop and his eyes, full of pagan Asia, brighten and then cloud. 'But the 
Jews have 
robbed me of my birthright… ' Alexandra is growing bored. She asks me to 
take her 
to'some secret place' and so we, too, head for 'Chow-Li's' for I must grant her 
everything 
she asks. Here she will cough on the smoke and complain it has no effect, but 
later she will 
ask me about my women and will lick her lips while I describe their charms and 
become 
terrifyingly passionate so that my dreams will be of some transfigured 
Mirenburg, some 
Mirenburg of the soul, where tawny young lionesses purr above the trembling 
corpses of 
handsome baboons. Now, just when I have awakened from a thoroughly restful sleep 
for 
the first time in weeks, it seems that Mirenburg is all around me. I can see her 
austere 
Gothic spires in the mist of the September morning. She is completely alive 
again. On the 
river a line of rowing boats drifts gradually to rest against the Hoffmeister 
Quay. The smell 
of baking comes from Nadelgasse, seemingly from every window there drifts the 
odour of 
fresh bread, of cakes and pastries. As a child I dreamed frequently of a golden-
haired 
young girl, whom I loved. I had carried her away from harsh parents in an open-
boat and 
we had been captured by Norse pirates, but again I was able to save her. She 
loved me as 
wholly as I loved her. I used to think of her more than I thought of any real 
person, as I lay 
awake in my room in daylight, trying to sleep, but knowing that the rest of the 
world was still 
awake, hearing my sisters' voices from below. Must we always seek in lovers to 
satisfy the 
frustrations we have experienced with parents? An 'echo'. Unable to ease the 
cares of 
those who have given birth to us we attempt to improve the lot of a mistress, a 
husband or 
a wife. So many women have tried to make me into their ideal father and in 
resisting I have 
frequently lost them. Alexandra would rather I were a demon-lover and this role 
is almost 
as difficult, but I play it with more relish, for it entails very different 
responsibilities. My ideal 
is fair-skinned and blonde, so why should I sense this 'echo' in my little 
Alexandra, this 
resonance in the soul which entwines me to her as if we were a single note of 
music? We 
speak again of Tangiers. I would take her there now, for fear of her escaping me 
when she 
tires of this game, but it is impossible. Instead I acquiesce to every 
adventure.
She requests instruction. I am inventive. I bring to life every dream. I add all 
experience to 
my repertoire, I tell her. I resist nothing. I forget nothing. Sexually I am a 
chameleon. 'You 
have the disposition of a whore,' she tells me, laughing. I cannot deny it. We 
visit my old 
friend, Professor Eckart, who teaches at the University now and continues his 
experiments. 
He is obsessed with Count Rudolph Stefanik and the possibilities of heavier-
than-air flight. 
He shows us his own designs. His room is almost bare, save for drawings pinned 
here and 
there upon the panelling. The large window looks out onto geometrical gardens, 
full of 
evergreens and Mirenburg's famous roses. He tells us that he has personally 
entertained 
Stefanik. Alexandra, who has been bored, asks what the Count is like. 'The man 
is a 
rogue,' I say. 'And you are not?' she asks. I have forgotten my part. 'But a 
genius,' says 
Professor Eckart, tugging at his sleeve and casting about for the wine he has 
offered us. 
Professor Eckart looks like a countryman. He is round and bucolic; he might be a 
huntsman on some Bavarian estate. 'Would you care to meet him? I am giving a 
dinner-
party next week.'
      'We should love to,' says Alexandra. Privately I decide to discover the 
names of the 
other guests before I accept. I am suspicious of Alexandra's curiosity; I have 
some 
measure of how far she will go to satisfy it. Papadakis brings me my oatmeal 
gruel. I 
breakfast on, champagne and smoked salmon with my Alexandra. Not long ago even 
the 
gruel was painful to my palate and would  sometimes seem over-flavoured, but now 
I 
disdain its blandness. Papadakis suggests he should have the doctor in today. 
Angrily I 
resist the idea. 'I have not felt so well in two years,' I tell him. He leaves 
to collect the post 
from the town. I visited my brother Wolfgang at his place in Saxony about a year 
before I 
arrived again in Mirenburg. He had just; recovered from tuberculosis. 'My cure 
was sudden 
and miraculous,' he told me. 'The disease appeared to be killing me. I was its 
slave. Then, 
within a matter of weeks, it had released me. I grew steadily stronger, but as I 
did so I knew 
enormous regret for the passing of that warm and permanent eroticism which had 
attended 
my illness for over forty months. As I returned to normality I experienced the 
acutest 
depression and sense of descent into a world whose familiar delights were no 
longer 
pleasurable to me.' At the time I had scarcely understood him. Now I know very 
well what 
he meant. There is a kind of debilitating insanity which a person will cling to 
desperately for 
as long as it possesses them. Only when it has given them up will they begin to 
describe it 
as an aberration. 'The world is a dull place now, Ricky,' my brother had said. 
He had taken 
to drinking heavily. If it had not been for the threat of dismissal from the 
diplomatic service 
he might easily have become a permanent drunkard. But until he died his face 
held the 
look of a man who had once known Heaven. Papadakis returns and helps me to the 
WC. 
Today the agony of urinating is not so great and I realise that I had grown to 
look forward to 
the pain as preferable to any of the other sensations which my disease offers 
me. But I 
hurry back to Mirenburg, urging Papadakis on as if he were a coach-horse and I 
flying for 
the coast in fear of my life.
      At night Mirenburg is both peaceful and mysterious: a perfect mistress. 
Her shadows 
do not seem dangerous and her lights do not reveal any ugliness; her desperate 
aspects 
are contained; she is tranquil. She is an intelligent city, willing to accept 
novelty. She is 
secure and self-possessed. The secret police of three empires conspire in her, 
observe 
each other, play peculiar games of intrigue, and she permits it, a tolerant 
stepmother; the 
political exiles make their speeches, publish their broadsheets; she does not 
discourage 
them so long as her own peace is not disturbed. In the white and brown cafe on 
the corner 
of Kanalstrasse and Kaspergasse, The Cafe Slavia, the young nationalists have a 
guest. 
He is Rakanaspya, an anarchist of uncertain origin; a friend of Kropotkin and 
Bakunin.
      Many believe him to be well-connected in aristocratic circles. Tonight he 
speaks 
passionately against privilege, against nationalism, and debates with the youths 
the virtues 
of internationalism, mutuality and self-reliance, while in other parts of the 
cafe two spies, in 
the employ of Austria-Hungary and Russia respectively, take surreptitious notes. 
They are 
commissioned to report on all agitators. Rakanaspya wears a greatcoat with a fur 
collar, a 
bearskin cap; one hand rests on a silver cane. The other hand lifts glasses of 
brandy to his 
lips. His voice is unusually thick and husky and is not natural; it was obtained 
in a duel 
when his palate was shot away. His imperial hides most of the scar on the left 
side of his 
face. He chain-smokes papyrussi so that his fingers, moustache and teeth are 
stained as 
yellow as the abandoned tubes which litter his surroundings wherever he stops 
for more 
than half-an-nour. They are made for him by an old Russian woman who works for 
the 
British Tobacco Company at No. 11 Kanalstrasse. His thin face is pinched and 
drawn, he 
has keen, unquiet eyes behind large round glasses and his emaciated, nervous 
frame 
speaks of despairing poverty assuaged by fanaticism, perhaps an inheritance from 
his 
days in Siberia. Yet when he smiles his tace becomes suddenly innocent; it is 
sympathetic. 
He speaks several languages fluently and is well read in every 
European'terature. As a go-
between for the emigres and the Walden-ein authorities he has become almost an 
official 
represent ative. He manages to conciliate both sides (who trust him). He keeps 
even the 
fiercest Bohemian or Russian expatriate from expulsion, in spite of constant 
pressure on 
the authorities. Austria in particular would welcome any excuse to go to war 
with 
Waldenstein; but she will not risk war with Russia, Germany or both. Waldenstein 
lies 
balanced between the spheres of these empires, as a small planet might be 
supported by 
the opposing gravitation of larger ones, and it is thought to be in nobody's 
interest to 
disturb that balance. Rakanaspya has momentarily forgotten his politics. Someone 
has 
mentioned Odessa, his home. 'I sometimes feel,' he says, 'as if I am the 
emissary from one 
magic city to another.' As he becomes drunk Rakanaspya begins to talk of the 
sea, 
catching bullheads off the Odessa rocks as a boy, sailing in flat-bottomed boats 
around the 
lighthouse, of the foreign vessels lying at anchor on a turquoise ocean, the 
sailors in the 
harbour taverns. Many by now know Rakanaspya himself has never been, and 
probably 
never will go, to sea; he is fascinated and comforted by the romance of it. His 
face 
becomes completely human only when the conversation is turned to salt-water. He 
never 
claims experience of sailing, yet believes himself an authority on naval matters 
and the 
ways of the world's great ports. The spies are puzzled by this turn in the 
conversation, 
wondering at the significance of it. Rakanaspya describes Odessa for his 
listeners, the 
smell of the spices in the harbours, the little tramp steamers which ply the 
Black Sea, the 
great military ships. Alexandra, wrapped in a coat which hides the extravagant 
gown I 
bought her this afternoon, whispers that she finds Rakanaspya intriguing and 
boring at the 
same time. 'Are all men so full of talk? Such general stuff?' We slip away from 
The Cafe 
Slavia. She seems angry Rakanaspya did not notice her. We walk beside the river. 
Men in 
donkey-jackets stand and smoke their pipes, talking in small groups, glancing at 
us as we 
pass. Two Customs officials stroll by. They wear dark blue uniforms, their coats 
belted at 
the waist and supporting swords; both have large, carefully-grown moustaches and 
their 
caps are at identical angles on their round heads. Papadakis frets over me. He 
believes I 
am feverish. He is becoming too insistent. I indicate the paper. 'I am writing 
again,' I tell 
him. 'Is that not a sign of my spiritual and physical recovery?' He goes 
mumbling from the 
room. He must forever be simplifying experience. He irritates me. I run my 
thumb-nail down 
the flesh of her back. She gasps and clutches at bedding but insists I do not 
stop. I 
suppose men can learn from women that capacity to make a positive virtue of pain 
and 
despair. Women frequently through self-deception and lack of power believe that 
pain and 
desperation have meaning in themselves. I tell her she should always seek 
pleasure and 
optimism; to seek pain as a form of salvation is to destroy oneself. When we 
suffer the pain 
of solitude (as I have done in prison, for instance, or in exile) we are fools 
if we regard this 
state as preferable to the ordinary vicissitudes of the world, though we can 
make of 
solitude a habit of self-reliance which when needed can stand us in good stead. 
Pain offers 
us certain kinds of knowledge which enable us to live in greater harmony with 
our complex 
world. An animal which seeks out pain, however, is a mad animal, just as a 
hermit, who will 
avoid it, is a mad animal. She is asleep. I rise and go to the window and part 
the curtains. 
The square is quiet. I regret, as I smoke a cigarette, I shall not be able to 
attend the 
reception being given tomorrow at the Palace.
      I met the amiable Prince Damian von Badehoff-Krasny only once, three years 
ago at 
a concert given in Munich by his cousin Otto, an old friend from my early years 
at the 
Academy. The Badehoff-Krasny family are of Slavonic as well as Teutonic ancestry 
and 
came originally from the Ukraine. The Province of Waldenstein was an 
inheritance, 
achieved through marriage, and in the seventeenth century, when the family had 
fallen on 
hard times and everything else was sold or stolen from them by a variety of 
warring 
monarchs, the people asked the Prince's ancestor, who was still an Elector of 
the Holy 
Roman Empire, to become their ruler. The family maintained its ^dependence of 
Germany, 
Russia and the Hapsburg
      Empire partly by chance and partly through clever diplomacy, by playing 
one faction 
against another and by continuing to marry well. Their intellectual and artistic 
interests had 
made them at some time patrons to almost every famous painter, composer and 
writer in 
Europe. They had in their possession a thousand mementos of the scholars and 
actors 
who had sampled their hospitality. Indeed, my own little Alexandra is a cousin 
twice 
removed of the present Prince. I believe her interest in me was aroused when I 
mentioned 
at our first meeting, during the dinner-party given by Count Freddy Eulenberg 
just after my 
arrival in the city, that I had published one or two small volumes of verse and 
reminiscence. 
There is a traditional rivalry in her family for the patronage of any academic 
or artistic lion, 
however small and provincial, and I think even Alexandra saw me as something of 
a kitten, 
but as the only catch of the season not wholly demeaning. This is not, of 
course, the chief 
quality which makes me attractive in her eyes. I have been the subject of gossip 
both in 
Mirenburg and in Munich and have acquired that sort of exaggerated reputation 
which so 
fascinates young women and so greatly facilitates their seduction. Alexandra 
speaks of her 
uncle with considerable affection and some impatience (plainly imitated from her 
elders), 
telling me that he lives with his head in the clouds, refusing to be alarmed 
either by 
Bismarckian ambition or Austro-Hungarian arrogance, convinced that the likes of 
Holzhammer mean no great harm and are as content as himself merely to play at 
politics. I 
know that soon there must be a scandal; our deception can last only a few more 
days, but I 
refuse to confront the problem, as does she. Papadakis hovers at my shoulder. 
Alexandra 
breathes deeply. I tell Papadakis to leave me alone. The door closes. The 
inkwell is crystal. 
It reflects the light from the window. It is quieter today. The political 
meeting has dissipated 
everyone's energy.
      Is Waldenstein, I wonder, too complacent as my cousin Thomas suggests? 
Should 
she not defend herself better? I think about that mixture of sentimentality, 
romance and 
self-deception which sustains a nation in its myths and which enables it to act 
in its own 
immediate self-interest. We are most of us a characteristic segment of the 
nations from 
which we spring and it can almost be said we measure our individuality by the 
degree to 
which we free ourselves from our inherited prejudices. Many of us talk about it; 
but talk, I 
think, is not enough. Words and actions must coincide. Waldenstein's myth is 
that because 
she has for so long been free she can never be enslaved. I turn to look at my 
Alexandra, 
who has captured me so thoroughly. I have been swayed by lust before. I have 
taken 
considerable risks to fulfill it. But now I am not sure that I am any longer 
moved by simple 
lust. It is desire which moves me and I do not understand the origin or the 
nature of that 
desire, even though I am obsessed by it.
      I deny all reality in order to maintain it; I am even prepared, Iknow, to 
relinquish lust, 
to ignore affection, normal companionship. I feel contempt for the ordinary yet 
I know this 
state of mind is self-destructive. Such desire is incapable of ever being 
satisfied. I believe I 
have aroused the same terrible energies in Alexandra. With it comes a fierce 
carelessness 
which considers no-one: be it myself or the object of my desire. There is only 
the present, 
here in Mirenburg. I erase the past; I refuse the future. I tear off my robe and 
stretch my 
naked body against hers, turning her towards me and kissing her startled, still 
sleeping 
mouth. I remember being sent on a ludicrous errand by my sister who wished her 
brother-
in-law to put an end to an unsuitable courtship. He had received me in his 
study. He was 
not defiant, yet his attention had hardly been on me at all. He was a good-
looking man of 
the conventional, military sort. 'I see her three times a week,' he had told me. 
'She gives 
me no more and no less. My life is ruled by this routine. I let nothing 
interfere with it. I live in 
terror that it will be broken. I will go to any lengths to sustain it. She has a 
husband, you 
see. He is °ld but she feels affection for him. Her consideration of his 
sensitivities 
drives her to elaborate strategies in her deception °f him, even though he 
acquiesces 
and even encourages her in her affair with me, whom he has never met. This 
consideration 
somehow gives dignity to a life which on the surface is sordid enough. He offers 
her 
security. In return she allows him to live in the ambience of her wonderful 
sensuality. It 
seems enough for both. She will not, naturally, permit me to possess her 
completely, but 
she is equally considerate of me. She rarely fails to keep an appointment. When 
she does I 
am in agony until she communicates with me. She will never leave him. So long as 
she 
acknowledges his feelings and thinks of his well-being he is content. She is a 
wonderful 
creature. She would not harm either of us.
      'And you can stand this stasis?' I had asked.
      'It is the best I can hope for,' he had said. A bell had rung then. He had 
risen. 'If you 
wish to call on Friday, I shall be able to see you again.' He walked sadly with 
me to the 
landing and watched as I descended the stairs. 'Please give my warmest regards 
to your 
sister and tell her how much I appreciate her thoughtfulness.'
      There is an evening service at the Cathedral. I leave a note for Alexandra 
and walk 
the long cobbled way, up the hill, to listen to the music. I cannot argue with 
Alexandra. She 
robs me of logic. When last in Mirenburg I had described to a young lady, with 
whom I had 
been having an affair, my state of mind. How, amongst, other things, I had been 
confused 
for several years, since my wife had left me for a ship's officer in 
Friedrickshaven only three 
months after we were married, about whether or not I should marry again. The 
young lady 
had smiled: 'You do not think I wish to marry you?' I said that I had wondered. 
'But I assure 
you....' She had begun to laugh. She had pretended that her laughter was 
uncontrollable. I 
had waited until she had finished. 'There is no question,' she had said.
      'Excellent.' I had stood up, wondering at that time why she should have 
denied what 
had evidently passed through her mind and why I had not the courage to make a 
direct 
proposal, for I had been in the mood to do it. That evening, having disappointed 
myself so 
thoroughly, I had taken a cab to Frau Schmetterling's and requested a room and a 
girl - my 
habit, twice a week, for nearly a year. This, however, had been a third visit in 
the week and 
caused Frau Schmetterling some amusement. As I had taken the key from her hand I 
marvelled at my ability, without intention, to make women laugh. I had seen no 
reason to 
suspect that I was held in contempt by them or even that I was unpopular with 
them, yet I 
could not fathom how I aroused their humour.
Why do women seem to triumph so often in men's misery, even when they love them? 
Again I find myself considering the nature of power and of love. Only a few 
weeks after my 
failure to propose to the young lady I had occasion to inform another that I no 
longer 
wished to see her. 'But I love you,' she had said, 'with all my heart and soul. 
I will love you 
forever. I wish to be yours, whatever you want me to be. I want to help you in 
any way that 
I can.' And within a week (I think it was six days) she had fallen in love with 
an official in the 
Revenue Service to whom she was, by all accounts, a loyal and faithful 
companion. The 
trees thicken as one nears the Cathedral. It is almost rural. There are wild 
flowers amongst 
the grass. In the spring and summer cherry- and apple-trees blossom here. I 
mount the 
uneven pavements. The spires of the Cathedral are high above my head. The choir 
is 
singing from within: Gospodt pomiluj ny -Lord have mercy upon us. I turn and go 
back. 
There is other music to be heard, from the cafes, from the street performers. I 
pause on the 
corner of Falfnersallee. The last No. 15 tram is on its way to the terminus in 
Radoskya. I 
have known Mirenburg in all her seasons, but this is the one I have always 
favoured. I pass 
by the statues of Waldenstein's great men and women. I find myself craving the 
famous 
bortsch to be found in the Mladota district. It is made with beets and ham-
bones, in the 
traditional way, but to it is added a dash of a particular Tokay which for some 
reason 
affects the palate and makes lt sing. I remember Alexandra telling me it even 
makes her 
ears tingle. It is delicious: a drug. I decide to return to the hotel, to rouse 
her and ask if she 
will join me in a plate. As I turn into Mirozhny Square a group of beggars comes 
by. I give 
them all the coppers I have. They are returning to the Schlaff estate, to the 
old fever 
hospital and desolate graveyards. Only the railway track brings any kind of life 
to that area. 
It is a goods line. Not even local trains to the northern suburbs and outlying 
villages take 
passengers through. This estate is all that is left of the Schlaff family lands. 
The family has 
lived exclusively in Paris and Berlin for three generations but refuses to lease 
the estate to 
anyone who would make use of it. Thus houses, mills, churches and workshops are 
occupied only by the homeless and the lawless. Orphans and old men climb amongst 
the 
ruins and the neglected graves and more respectable citizens pay to have their 
garbage 
and other embarrassments they wish to discard transported there. Strange fires 
burn in this 
contradictory wasteland; the flames are unhealthy in colour and mysterious in 
shape. It is 
Mirenburg's shame. 'Only a little shame, compared to most,' an ex-Mayor of 
Mirenburg will 
later insist to me. I will be bound to agree with him. In daytime even the 
Schlaff estate looks 
picturesque, overgrown as it is with wild flowers, but at night it must be 
sought to be seen. 
It is almost dawn. I hurry back to Alexandra, suddenly afraid she will awake and 
leave 
because I am not there to help her maintain our dream.
It was during a particularly drunken expedition to the Schlaff that I had met 
Caroline 
Vacarescu, the Hungarian adventuress, who also currently stays at the Hotel 
Liverpool and 
whom I pass in the lobby as I make my hasty ascent to our suite. If Alexandra 
wakes, 
realises her predicament and decides to go I shall be unable to reclaim her. She 
might, of 
course, have similar fears, but if so she does not exhibit them. Caroline 
Vacarescu smiles 
at me. She is doubtless keeping an appointment with Count Mueller, her lover. A 
wonderful 
mixture of Magyar beauty and English delicacy, her furs and silks exotically 
scented, she is 
the illegitimate daughter of an English duke and a Hungarian aristocrat, born in 
Pesht. Her 
father was attached to the Foreign Office, her mother, until her pregnancy, was 
a lady-in-
waiting to the Princess. She received a superb education in Vienna, England and 
Switzerland and at the age of eighteen married Christoff Beraud, the financier. 
When 
Beraud crashed as a result of the Zimmerman scandal of he shot himself, leaving 
his wife 
penniless and having to seek the protection of the man who was already her 
lover, Hans 
von Arnim, the successful pianist. Unable to be seen with von Arnim in public, 
Madame 
Vacarescu grew bored and eventually left Berlin for Danzig with Count Mueller, 
who 
describes his occupation as 'freelance diplomat' but who is known as'the 
Messenger Boy of 
Europe', a spy, an arms-dealer and a blackmailer. Mueller will die this year and 
it will be 
rumoured that Caroline Vacarescu has rid herself of a man who had in a dozen 
ways 
compromised and humiliated her. She is a warm-hearted, rather detached woman; a 
very 
cold lover with me. Alexandra is awake and my terrors vanish; she complains 
breakfast is 
late. Perhaps it is my own lack of resolve I mistakenly bestow upon her. The 
breakfast 
comes and goes. As we make love I have an intense vision of that massive stone 
Cathedral; her flesh contrasts with the carved granite; such opposites and yet 
so similar in 
their effect upon the hand and eye. It occurs to me that there may be fewer 
better 
pleasures than to make love in the St-Maria-and-St-Maria with the light from the 
stained 
glass falling on our bodies as I pass my fingers from youthful flesh to ancient 
stone while 
the organ plays some favourite piece of music. And would it be blasphemy? Most 
would 
see it as that. But I would thank God for all His gifts and pray more joyfully 
than anyone 
had ever prayed before. The violence of Alexandra's passion had almost 
frightened me at 
first; now it becomes exhilarating, infectious and I respond in kind. Sometimes, 
inexplicably, she becomes nervous of me. I ignore her fear, and press ahead 
until she has 
again forgotten everything but her lust. But I must be forever controlling, 
guarding against 
depressions, against commonalities which threaten our idyll. I do not always 
reckon with 
the power of Alexandra's determination. When they decided to go to Rome her 
parents had 
left her in the charge of her aunt, who in turn Put her in the care of an old 
housekeeper. 
She had already begun to dream, to prepare herself for adventures which, Aspired 
by the 
reading of certain French novels, she had Vearned to experience for several 
years. I still do 
not know whether she sought me out for her instruction or whether she instructs 
me. I was 
unable, in spite of sane reservations, to master my lust. I swiftly gave myself 
up to her. I do 
not know how long it has been, but I know that I did not believe for more than a 
few days 
that I was fully in control of her as I began that process of subtle debauchery 
she so deeply 
desired and which, of course, she also feared, as the laudanum-taker fears the 
drug which 
is friend and enemy in one. That she will eventually resist any dependency upon 
me and 
break my heart will be a tribute to her determination and a confirmation, 
finally, of my 
judgement that I had not only met my match but been beaten at a game I had 
played half-
consciously for years. Alexandra grunts and pants; her eyes are burnished 
copper. I am 
familiar, as are most men, with the woman who will translate her own will to 
power through 
a male medium, but Alexandra is either more subtle or more naive in her attempts 
to affect 
her world. This is partly what fascinates me. It has been several years since 
any woman 
obsessed me; now I am surely caught. Eros usurps Bacchus. I rise on that dark 
euphoria 
which appears to bring objectivity but in fact produces nothing save confusion, 
uncontrollable misery and eventual collapse. Papadakis steps out of the shadows 
with a 
rattling tray. I can only admit now that I gave myself up to Eros deliberately, 
in the belief it 
does a man or woman good to make such fools of themselves occasionally; there 
are few 
risks much wilder and few which make us so much wiser, should we survive them. 
Papadakis stretches out his emaciated arms. I smell boiled fish. 'It will do you 
good,' he 
says in his half-humorous, half-insinuating voice; a voice once calculated 
during his own, 
brief, Golden Age to rob the weak of any volition they might possess; but it had 
been the 
single weapon in his arsenal; he had used up all his emotional capital by the 
time he was 
forty. He speaks of the past as if it were a personal God which came to betray 
him. 'They 
ruined me,' he sometimes says. In his more egocentric moments he claims 
deliberately to 
have ruined himself. Even as we fall into the abyss, we men must explain how the 
descent 
was predicted and calculated. When the world refuses to be handled by us, we 
turn to 
women. And women, for purposes of their own, usually temporary, help us pretend 
to a 
power permitted, in reality, only to the securest of tyrants. Papadakis has 
become a 
wizened satyr, a monument to mis-spent juices, keeping me alive from motives of 
dimly-
perceived self-interest. I tell him to leave the tray, to bring me white wine. 
He refuses. He 
tells me it is not good for me. He is scowling. Perhaps he senses he no longer 
has any 
power over me. Alexandra begins to ask me lascivious questions about my other 
women. I 
tell her romantically there are none but her and she seems disappointed.
      The heat of her saliva is on my penis; the soft lips close, the teeth 
touch the skin; 
her head moves slowly up and down and the future is once more successfully 
banished. 
Death does not exist. Playing with her clitoris and wiping sperm from her cheek 
she asks 
me again about other women. I am anxious to keep her curiosity. I begin to 
invent stories 
for her. I tell her of adventures involving several ladies at a time. She says 
unexpectedly: 
'Would you like me to do that for you?' I am interrupted. 'What?'
      'Sleep with other women,' she says. 'With you?' I hesitate. 'Have you 
slept with girls 
before?' She smiles. 'With school-friends, certainly. We have all done it. Most 
of us. I love 
female bodies. They are so beautiful. Beautiful in a different way.' She touches 
my penis 
which is erect again. I laugh. 'Where,' she says, 'can we find another lady?' I 
have the 
solution. Papadakis is crooning to himself in the corner near the wardrobe. He 
is doing 
something with a screwdriver. He is not in good temper. 'Have you taken your 
pills?' I ask, 
mocking him. He becomes furious. 'You should see the doctor,' he tells me. 'I 
cannot be 
responsible.'
      Caroline Vacarescu boasted to me once that she had slept with five 
reigning 
monarchs and thirteen heirs apparent, four them women. The Age of Kings appears 
to 
have ended in an orgy of royal lust. The Dictators, according to established 
Pattern, seem 
extraordinarily celibate in comparison, perhaps ecause they are not so casually 
acquainted 
with power. But with Caroline it was a question of service, not pleasure. She 
was adding to 
Count Mueller's secret fortune. We are looking for some cigars for me. Walking 
up 
Koenigstrasse in bright sunlight we see an old woman leaning against a shop 
window full 
of soap and popular potions. She has a half-eaten cake in one hand and seems 
drunk. Her 
clothing is predominantly dark brown. It does not fit her properly. Her left 
foot is bandaged 
to just above the ankle. She tugs up her skirt and pees on the paving stones. 
Her collection 
of bundles lies to one side of her and the urine spreads slowly towards it. 
Nearby a street 
sweeper brushes at the gutter with polite patience, as if waiting to clean the 
pavement as 
soon as she has finished. People pass her without stopping, without looking, 
although they 
do not appear to be disgusted or afraid. 'There is nothing we can do,' says 
Alexandra, 
pulling at me. The sun shines on white roofs and is reflected in elegant 
windows.
      There is a great deal of traffic in Koenigstrasse today; carriages and 
carts of all 
sorts. The street smells like a farm. Papadakis refuses to tell me when he will 
return. He 
closes the door with unusual force. I am content. A procession of swaggering 
lancers, 
jangling metal and bobbing gold braid, trots by on the other side. 'There are so 
many 
soldiers about,' says Alexandra. 'Do you know why?' I do not. 'It could be 
something to do 
with the Armaments Bill,' I tell her. The Bill has passed through Parliament. 
The Prince is 
expected to sign it today. Alexandra takes a cab for Nussbaumhof to see if her 
parents 
have written to say when they are returning from Rome. My earlier fears of 
losing her have 
disappeared because we are about to embark on another intrigue; she has set her 
mind on 
it. How much of her am I destroying, or allowing her to destroy of herself? I 
relax with a 
glass of Alsatian beer and some Cambozola at an outside table of the Cafe 
Internationale 
on the corner of Falfnersallee facing the Radota Bridge and the river. The air 
is unusually 
warm: everywhere I look I see beauty, reassurance. If Vienna is gay, then 
Mirenburg IS 
happy; a sane city whose character may be infinitely explored, and yet she has 
no real 
secrets; even her vices are admitted and the subject of common knowledge.
      Bismarck says Mirenburg is a feminine city and a natural bride for 
masculine Berlin. 
He once said that a marriage with Vienna would be a perversion of everything 
that was 
natural. My brother knew Bismarck quite well. Apparently the great Chancellor 
had a habit 
of describing nations in terms of their sexual characteristics; he loved France, 
for instance: 
'She challenges us expecting to be conquered, then complains she is a victim, 
that we 
have robbed her of her honour. What other country would give herself up so 
completely to 
a Corsican adventurer, offering him her liberty, her lifeblood, her fortune 
again and again, 
and then continue to love him, even when he has so patently abused and ruined 
her?' Now 
Bismarck is dying, caustic and sometimes bitter when he considers the actions of 
his 
successors or the policies of his Austrian counterpart, the Graf Kazimierz 
Badeni, who 
possesses much of Bismarck's ruthlessness and little of his intelligence. The 
balance of 
power is threatened. A detachment of flying artillery makes the bridge noisy 
with its showy 
hooves and iron-shod wheels. The sun bursts upon the bouncing metal of the new 
Skoda 
field-guns: perhaps this is another deliberate display.
      I am resentful of their intrusion into my peace of mind. At the next table 
a German 
tourist laughs and points towards the artillery as it turns into Kanalstrasse. 
His wife looks 
blank. 'See,' he says,'the Waldenstein army!' He glances at me for appreciation. 
I smile and 
ask the waiter for a Mirenburg Zeitung. He brings me the newspaper and I give 
him fifty 
pfennigs, telling him to keep the change. The editorial sings of the greater 
prosperity the 
Armaments Bill will bring to the country. There is news of Count Holzhammer. He 
seems to 
have made some progress with his Austrian allies. There is a discussion of 
preparations 
being made for next year's large Exhibition, which will represent every nation 
in the 
civilized world; again, prosperity is the leitmotif. I seek out the stock Market 
reports and am 
reassured. There is an article by a ftühtary correspondent on the relative 
merits of buying 
arms r°m foreign sources or of setting up factories at home. I am astonished 
by prices 
given for the Krupp cannon and its ammunition: a hint of the significance of the 
new Bill, 
which could involve a considerable amount of taxation. Walden-stein's landowners 
cannot 
be pleased at the prospect. Yet the only alternative appears to be in treaties, 
'closer union' 
with one of the Great Powers and a consequent loss of independence. The British 
have 
uprisings in India. I fold the newspaper and put it under my beer glass. 
Alexandra joins me. 
She is flushed. She is smiling. She has changed her clothes again. 'They will 
not be back 
for ages. I've written. And no one suspects anything. I was full of Marya and 
our punting 
expeditions!'
      I congratulate her on the cleverness of her deception. Papadakis has 
returned. I 
hear him pushing furniture about in the next room. With a rustle of that 
seductive costume 
she seats herself beside me and whispering asks me if I have made arrangements 
to visit 
Rosenstrasse. I have sent a note to Frau Schmetterling. We shall be expected. In 
his 
famous Pamety - his memoirs - Benes Milovsky recalls a stream running the length 
of 
Rosenstrasse. It had its source in the hills beyond the walls and it fed into 
the Ratt. This 
stream became subterranean by the middle of the century. It forms the basis for 
a 
sophisticated modern sewage system and can still be heard running beneath the 
Rosenstrasse cobbles.
      In the afternoon we visit the Museum of Antiquities, the concrete traces 
of fifteen 
hundred years of history. A diorama represents Waldenstein's primitive settlers, 
the 
Svitavian tribesmen who built their camps in the great valley of the Ratt, 
between four 
ranges of mountains, fighting off the Teutonic invaders when they swept in 
during the ninth 
and tenth centuries. No Roman ever set foot in any settlement along the Upper 
Ratt. The 
diorama gives a lie to the sentimental nationalists. The present descendants of 
those tribes 
are no more'true Slavs' than they are'true Aryans'; the blood has mingled 
thoroughly to 
produce the Waldensteiner. But blood these days has become another word for 
ambition, a 
justification of greed, a rationalisation of those frustrated in their political 
needs, an excuse 
for terrible murder, a counterbalance to the Christianity we all profess to 
cherish and which 
certainly checks us in any honest, pagan rapacity we still possess. Men need 
myths to set 
against myths, it seems. They need the precedent of 'blood' or their consciences 
could tell 
them they are ineffectual, ruthless, wicked, and thus deny them what they want. 
A woman 
rarely seeks such complicated excuses; the means by which she disguises her 
desires 
usually take quite a different form. They say women substitute sentimentality 
for principle, 
that a woman's logic is entirely based upon her own immediate physical and 
emotional 
needs; yet men display similar logic, couched in terms of the highest ideals, 
and trap 
themselves quite as thoroughly when their actions diverge significantly from 
their words. 
Alexandra speaks softly of the wonderful past. She leans on my arm. Her body 
seems to 
wish to become absorbed in mine. Antiquity is a thing of broken statues and 
rusty iron. I am 
quickly bored with it. We descend the wide steps of the Museum and look across 
the city at 
the magnificent Greek church. Although primarily a Protestant city, Mirenburg 
represents 
many other religions within her walls; one would not be surprised to see a 
mosque here. I 
go with relief to the nearby Municipal Art Gallery. Here are paintings by all 
the masters, by 
new painters who take such an optimistic delight in form and light for its own 
sake. I am 
soon restored and my spirits lift. Alexandra examines paintings of women, 
showing me the 
figures she finds attractive and those which do not please her, and I know she 
is 
deliberately setting the scene for this evening. I continue to be astonished by 
her, by the 
violence of her determination to experience every fantasy she has imagined. It 
is almost 
inconceivable she will not have destroyed herself, or at very least her capacity 
for 
sensation and emotion, by the time she is twenty. And yet I still cannot 
determine which of 
us exploits the other, though I know °f course what the world would decide. 
As we 
drive back to the hotel through the haze of twilight I see the notices 
advertising evening 
newspapers. Count Holzhammer, apparently, has returned to Waldenstein. The 
importance 
of this news escapes me. Papdakis enters the room. I dismiss him impatiently. In 
the hotel 
we begin to prepare ourselves for sophisticated debauchery. My body has never 
felt more 
thoroughly alive. I almost gasp as the silk of my shirt touches my skin. Both of 
us seem to 
glow with power as we leave the Hotel Liverpool in a cab and drive towards the 
West Bank. 
Rosenstrasse is near the river across from the Moravian Precinct, on the very 
fringe of the 
respectable Jewish Quarter near the Botanical Gardens, and only a couple of 
streets up 
from the Niersteiner Quay with its trees and awnings and little cafes, between 
two streets 
which lead down to the quay, Rauchgasse and Papensgasse. In Papensgasse an 
archway 
is the only means of reaching Rosenstrasse, once a private street owned by a 
religious 
order. The monastery still occupies a site here. From Rauchgasse one enters 
through a 
narrow gap between two tall, seventeenth-century houses. There is a single gas-
lamp at 
either end of Rosenstrasse's cobbled surface. The plane trees and flowering 
chestnuts 
give an air of isolation, of seclusion to what is an ideal setting for Frau 
Schmetterling's 
brothel. It is in some ways more like a country courtyard, even a garden, than 
an ordinary 
city street. The high houses make it seem even narrower than it is. These are 
primarily 
eighteenth-century terraces, apparently the residences of moderately well-to-do 
tradespeople. On the eastern side is the oldest building, single-storeyed, 
roofed in red 
slate, with no outward-facing windows at all and to one side massive double 
doors set in a 
Gothic arch. The doors are black wood bound in dark iron; they open directly 
into the 
cloisters of the disused monastery. Ivy grows over the roof and up the walls of 
the terraces 
from the unseen garden. Opposite the monastery is a short row of shops: a 
bookbinder's, 
an artists' colourman, a seller of prints and old books. Dominating these is a 
mansion, No. 
10 Rosenstrasse. It is well-kept, impressive; the town-house of a wealthy family 
until the 
middle years of the century. The windows at the front are always covered from 
the inside 
by heavy curtains or from the outside by green wooden shutters. It is a big, 
square, solid 
building, as reassuring as the street itself. Opposite there is a terrace, some 
more small 
shops and the entrance to a large apartment house occupied mostly by students. 
As the 
sun sets Rosenstrasse fills out with soft shadows. The lamplighter comes through 
the 
archway from Papensgasse and ignites the gas, then continues on his business 
down 
Rauchgasse towards the river. In the warm September night Mirenburg grows 
drowsy.
      At No. 10 Rosenstrasse shutters are being opened and curtains are being 
closed, 
as if the house prepares for guests. Gentle voices can be heard and some 
laughter. To 
many travellers Mirenburg is a synonym for Europe's most famous brothel, whose 
customers speak of it with unqualified affection and respect. Gentlemen will 
make a 
diversion of hundreds of miles to spend an evening here. There are women too who 
will do 
the same and the friendship they feel for Frau Schmetterling is apparently 
reciprocated by 
the madam whose discretion and tact are a byword, as is the range and breadth of 
her 
services. The brothel has been described as Mirenburg's greatest treasure. It 
has become 
an institution. Those who live near it are almost proud to be associated with it 
and the few 
complaints Frau Schmetterling receives are dealt with intelligently and with 
considerable 
charm. Her place threatens only those who are patently prone to such threats. It 
is 
protected by every authority and tolerated by the Church; important political 
assignations 
frequently occur here: one can only enter the doors if one is armed with the 
most 
impressive bona-fides. Papadakis tidies the sheets. 'You are too thin,' he says. 
'You are 
wasting yourself.' I ignore him. Alexandra and I step out of the cab in 
Rauchgasse and 
pass between the tall white houses into Rosenstrasse. A soft, sultry wind blows 
through 
Mirenburg's baroque facades; she seems singularly quiescent. Alexandra's breast 
rises 
and falls and her little hand tightens °n my arm. We mount the steps of No. 
10. Her 
eyes have a distant, drowsy look, inturned; at once innocent and secretive. At 
the end of 
my bed Papadakis coughs and makes some banal remark. I think he is trying to 
joke. I 
shout at him to leave. I hit my arm and ring the bell of Frau Schmetterling's 
door. It opens. I 
press Alexandra through and pause, taking a grip on myself. My legs are 
trembling slightly. 
The door closes behind us. Trudi, a pretty young woman, perhaps an idiot, with 
blonde hair 
and vacant blue eyes, takes our street clothes from us. She curtseys. She is 
wearing 
peasant costume. There is distant music. The small lobby is furnished in 
discreet crystal, 
with hangings of heavy wine-coloured velvet, some flowering plants on polished 
wood, a 
mirror in a modern 'Liberty' frame, and several paintings, chiefly portraits of 
the last French 
emperor. The air is heavy with the scent of roses and hyacinths.
      Now Alexandra holds back a little, a wary cat. I smile down at her as we 
wait to be 
received. She smiles in response, wetting her lips with the tip of her red 
tongue. Mirenburg 
has begun to sleep a deeper than usual sleep. Even her bells, when they mark off 
the 
hours, seem muffled and distant. A moon rises to touch the purity of her 
architecture so 
that it gleams like bone. The waters of the river hardly move. Alexandra makes a 
small 
sound in her throat, then looks at me with the adoring expression of a 
schoolgirl about to 
have her deepest dreams fulfilled. I steady myself against her violence and find 
myself,in 
turn, hesitating. I have a momentary desire to wrench open the door and flee 
Rosenstrasse, leave Mirenburg behind me, return to the bland formality of 
Berlin. But then 
Frau Schmetterling, that dignified matriarch, appears in the lobby and I bow, 
extending a 
hand towards her even as a small, swiftly-disguised frown crosses her face. 
Perhaps she 
has noticed my hand shaking. She looks towards Alexandra.
      'Dear Ricky,' she says, and takes a key from her delicate pocket. 
'Everything you 
desire is ready for you. You know the blue door, of course.' She puts the key 
into my hand. 
'Good evening,' she says to Alexandra.
      We climb the dark red stairs, our fingers on the bannister's gilded wood. 
'She 
doesn't like me,' whispers Alexandra. 'She doesn't know you,' I reply. We reach 
the empty 
landing and walk on soft carpet towards the blue door. The pen is heavy in my 
hand; 
suddenly the paper hurts me when I touch it.
      Papadakis comes back to busy himself with pillows and I do not resist him. 
He puts 
a glass to my lips. I swallow. Mirenburg enjoys her last tranquil night; she 
fades. For the 
moment I let her leave me.



CHAPTER TWO
The Brothel

      The brothel in Rosenstrasse has the ambience of an integrated nation, 
hermetic, 
microcosmic. It is easy, once within, to believe the place possessed of an 
infinity of rooms 
and passages, all isolated from that other world outside. Doubtless Frau 
Schmetterling 
creates this impression deliberately, with detailed thoroughness. Reminded of 
childhood 
security and delicious mystery, the explorer discovers his cares disappearing, 
together with 
any adult lessons of morality or self-restraint. Here he may not only fulfill 
his desires, but he 
need feel no guilt or concern for doing so: the brothel can be departed from and 
visited 
again at will. Money is all he needs. Here there are anodynes for any kind of 
wound, there 
are no sharp voices, no pointing fingers, no complicated emotional involvements. 
Here a 
man (and occasionally a woman) may feel himself to be what he most wishes to be. 
Nietzsche's socially destructive admonitions can be safely followed in this 
enclosure. The 
ego is allowed full rein. Yet publicly everyone is discreetly polite and 
compliant; bad 
manners are frowned upon and must never be displayed in the salon. A maternal 
and firm-
winded woman, neat and plump, Frau Schmetterling runs her brothel with the skill 
of the 
captain of a luxury ship. Most of her working day is spent in her head-quarters, 
her 
elaborately-equipped kitchen. This is territory generally forbidden to clients 
but is a haven 
for her charges. The kitchen is where Frau Schmetterling interviews new girls 
and where 
every day she discusses menus with Ulric, her cook. The room is dominated by a 
massive 
oak dresser which stretches from floor to ceiling and displays brightly-
decorated plates of 
outstanding quality from every country in Europe; her collection. What it 
represents to her 
nobody knows but she is unquestionably in love with it. She will allow no-one 
else to 
handle it or even polish the carved surfaces of the wooden shelves. Shrewd in 
all other 
matters, she is easily flattered through her china and the taste she displays in 
it. She sits in 
a peasant rocking-chair to one side of the dresser so that she can observe both 
the long, 
clean table and her collection. Her servants, such as the simple-minded Trudi 
(whom Frau 
Schmetterling personally dresses), make tea, coffee and chocolate for the women 
as they 
come and go. Very occasionally Frau Schmetterling will entertain two or three of 
her 
special girls here for dinner. Through the barred windows of the kitchen is her 
garden 
which she cares for almost as jealously as her china, though she allows 'Mister' 
to do some 
of the work. 'Mister' is the enfeebled, grey-haired gentleman with the face of a 
boy whom 
she will sometimes describe as her 'protector'. He lives at the top of the house 
and dotes 
on her, showing temper only if he feels she has been threatened or insulted. He 
is in 
charge of Elvira, the madam's little daughter (who goes to the Lutheran school 
in nearby 
Kasernestrasse) when she visits the brothel on Sunday afternoons. Elvira is ten, 
a demure, 
dark-eyed creature, and has no idea of the madam's business. If asked, she would 
say that 
it had something to do with ladies sewing things, for on Sundays the girls 
usually gather in 
the big kitchen after lunch to do their mending. She is, as any child would be, 
very popular 
with her mother's charges. 'Mister' must go every day to the house where Elvira 
is boarded 
and check that she is properly cared for and has everything she needs. In the 
brothel he 
supervises the cleanliness of the rooms; he frequently goes shopping for the 
girls; he 
makes sure that fresh flowers are permanently in evidence, that the paint of the 
shutters 
and doors is impeccable; that Frau Schmetterling's black chow dogs are walked 
and fed 
twice a day. These dogs are not popular with every customer, most of whom have 
at some 
time tried to pet and show a friendly interest in them. They seem surly beasts 
and have 
been known to nip the odd client. I have always fed them with pate and little 
pieces of liver 
and have consequently I believe won their friendship. Frau Schmetterling will 
often remark 
to me how much Pouf-Pouf and Mimi love their gentlemen and will add that she 
judges 
people very much by how the dogs take to them. This anthropomorphic fiction 
surrounding 
pets is a common one of course with many women and it is within their power 
quite 
unconsciously to give signals to their animals as to whether they like or 
dislike a particular 
person. Therefore I have never really known if I have become popular entirely by 
means of 
bribery or whether, for uncertain reasons of her own, Frau Schmetterling finds 
me 
attractive. I think I was an early customer of this particular establishment. My 
father sent 
me here as a boy to be instructed, so I am often 'her' Ricky and she shows a 
mother's 
interest in my career. She possesses signed copies of my little books and seems 
quite 
proud of them. Frau Schmetterling is Jewish. Nobody knows her real name. She is 
well-
educated. She is fastidious in her habits, always wearing simple but 
beautifully-cut old-
fashioned dresses trimmed with lace, and she treats 'Mister' with affectionate 
formality, a 
queen to her consort. Their mutual respect for each other is touching. Because 
of her 
tendency to plumpness, her comfortable homeliness, it is difficult to guess her 
age, but I 
believe she must be close to fifty. She speaks several languages very well, and 
her native 
tongue seems to be a Russian dialect, suggesting that she was born in 
Byelorussia or 
perhaps Poland, ^y girls,' she says, 'are ladies. I expect them to behave 
accordingly and to 
be properly treated. In private with a client lhey may choose to be whatever 
they and the 
client wish them '° be but at all other times they must behave with tact 
and'scretion.' 
The girls, whether on duty or off, are perfectly °sturned. Clients are 
expected to wear 
evening dress. I myself am clothed as carefully as if I were attending a formal 
dinner at the 
Embassy. Alexandra has on rose silk and a deep green cape. I open the blue door 
for her 
and follow her in. Our first impression is of subtle perfume, dark polished 
wood, mirrors and 
rust-coloured drapery. The room is lit by a single ornamental lamp. From another 
part of 
the brothel comes the faint sound of barking. Everywhere is luxury. Everything 
is soft or 
heavy or dark and the young woman who waits on the coverlet of the four-poster 
seems 
small and delicate in contrast. She is apparently relaxed and rather delighted 
by the 
adventure. 'M'sieu.' She rises and walks up to Alexandra, kissing her prettily 
on both 
cheeks. 'Are you French?' I ask. I go from habit to the sideboard and pour 
absinthe for all 
three of us. The lady shrugs as if to say that it is for me to decide her 
nationality. 'What's 
your name, mademoiselle?'
      'It is Therese'. She has a Berlin accent. Her attention is on Alexandra. 
'You are very 
pretty. And young.'
      'This is Alexandra.'
      Therese is about twenty, with straight black hair drawn back from her oval 
face. She 
has light blue eyes. Her skin is pink and her hands are long. In her white 
undergarments, 
which are trimmed with peach-coloured lace, her figure is fuller than 
Alexandra's and tends 
to puppy-fat. She has a large nose, prominent red lips, and a self-contained way 
of holding 
herself. She has small pointed breasts. I stipulated the colouring of the girl 
and the size of 
her breasts in my note to Frau Schmetter-ling. In this familiar ambience I 
become relaxed 
and my mood seems to be transmitting itself to Alexandra, who remains, however, 
a trifle 
ill-at-ease and begins to move around the room looking at pictures and 
ornaments. 
Therese hides her amusement. All three shadows are thrown onto the large 
autumnal 
flowers of the wall-paper. Alexandra is a little taller than Therese. Old 
Papadakis is 
scowling at me. 'What is it?' I ask him. 'You should let me fetch the doctor,' 
he says. 'You 
are not in your right mind. You are weak. You should rest. You are overtaxing 
yourself.' Is 
he trying to persuade me to dependency upon him? He cannot be genuinely 
concerned. I 
do not employ him for that. 'Go to the village,' I tell him. 'Get me something 
with cocaine in 
it.' He mutters in Greek. 'The doctor will give me morphine,' I say. 'It will 
dull my brain. I 
need my wits. Can't you see I'm doing something worthwhile again?' I hold up the 
pages. 
'These are my memoirs. You are mentioned in them. You should be pleased.' He 
comes 
forward as if to see what I have written. I close the cover. 'Not yet. They will 
be published 
when I am dead. Perhaps when you are dead, too.' Therese says to Alexandra: 'Is 
this the 
first time you have been here?'
      'Yes,' says Alexandra. 'And you? How long have you worked here?'
      'Two years this Christmas,' says Therese. 'I was an artists' model in 
Prague, for 
paintings as well as photographs. Will this be your first time?'
      'With a lady?' says Alexandra. The rose silk hisses. 'No. In a brothel, 
yes.'
      'And your first time with both a lady and a gentleman,' I remind her 
gently.
      'Yes.'
      An encouraging smile from Therese. 'You will like it. It is my favourite 
thing. You 
mustn't be afraid.'
      'I'm not afraid,' said Alexandra removing her cape. She stares hard at 
Therese. 'I am 
looking forward to it. The surroundings are new to me, that's all.' She keeps 
her distance 
from Therese, who makes a kind-hearted effort to be pleasant to her. In the past 
it was 
Alexandra who took the initiative with her schoolfriends. 'What are you 
receiving for your 
services?' she asks suddenly. Therese is surprised, answering mildly. 'M'sieu 
has 
confirmed the usual arrangements with Frau Schmetterling, I think.'
      'Therese is on a fixed weekly income,' I say. 'It is one of the benefits 
Frau 
Schmetterling offers to those who want to work here. It is a form of security. 
Part of the 
money is paid directly, art is kept in a savings account.'
      'You're looked after well, then,' says Alexandra. 'Safer than Carriage, 
even.'
      'Far safer,' says Therese. She continues to assume that Alexandra is shy. 
'Your 
dress is lovely. Levantine silk, isn't it?'
      'Thank you.' Suddenly Alexandra puts down her glass and crosses to 
Therese, 
embracing her and kissing her full on the mouth. Therese is a little taken 
aback. Alexandra 
grins. 'You're lovely, too. You're exactly my type, did you know? Did Ricky ask 
for you 
specially?' Therese begins to relax, as if she now has a notion of what is 
expected of her. 
She makes no further attempts to put Alexandra at her ease. 'I'm glad I appeal 
to you.' 
There is a touch of irony, a swift glance towards me, but I refuse a part. 'I've 
always longed 
to meet a real whore,' murmurs Alexandra, stroking Therese's hair. She puts an 
arm 
around the girl's shoulders and leads her to the sideboard. 'Pour us another 
drink, Ricky. I 
want you to make love to Therese first.' Her tone implores but her stance 
commands. 'I'll 
wait here.' She indicates a gilded chair padded with brown velvet. She has the 
manner of a 
determined little girl setting out the rules of a dolls' game. Not for the first 
time I find this 
aspect of her character faintly disconcerting. She seems almost prim. As I 
finish my drink 
Therese begins to remove her chemise, her pantaloons, her cherry-coloured 
stockings. I 
feel some trepidation, not for the action I am about to take but for the spirit 
in which I shall 
commit myself to the performance. Alexandra has discovered a closet. I remove my 
jacket 
and hand it to her. I remove my waistcoat, my tie and my shirt. All are neatly 
stowed by 
Alexandra. I lower my trousers and these she folds. I take off my socks, my 
underpants. 
Alexandra steps back from me and I turn towards the bed. Therese is also naked, 
with her 
hair loosened and her head propped against the pillows. She has become 
professional; her 
pink body waits for me. Her lips are slightly parted, her eyes hooded. There is 
no apparent 
difference between her artful desire and Alexandra's blind passion. If I was not 
aware that 
Therese was a whore I would believe that she yearned for me alone. Her youthful 
skin 
might never have known a man's touch. Do all women slide so indiscriminately 
into lust? 
How are they taught such things? I kiss Therese's cheeks, her neck. She moans. I 
kiss her 
soft shoulders, her breasts, her stomach. She shudders. Her calf presses against 
my 
penis. I kiss her face again. Her tongue is hot on my neck, her hand finds my 
penis and 
testicles and fondles them. I hear silk behind me, but I do not turn. I press my 
fingers into 
Therese's cunt. It is already wet. I push her legs apart and she draws me into 
her. Her 
body is more generous than Alexandra's, but Therese cannot reproduce that 
thrilling 
urgency, that desperation of movement which removes us entirely from the world 
of 
ordinary perception. Several years ago, at the Villa D'Este, or rather in the 
little ravine 
which runs below it and where there is an older garden, some ancient Emperor's 
villa, I 
came upon a very respectable young couple walking there under the trees amongst 
the 
toppled columns and broken marble and was certain that I recognised the modestly 
dressed wife as a whore I had once visited regularly. Then she had been an 
unreal 
creature. Now she was a perfectly ordinary bourgeoise. The transformation was 
considerable. I lifted my hat and introduced myself, saying that I thought we 
were 
acquainted. I was in no doubt that it was she. The couple had given some 
ordinary Roman 
name and she had politely denied knowing me. But I had confirmed her identity 
for myself. 
She was the same nameless child I had fucked at least a score of times at the 
brothel in 
Rosenstrasse. I had paid, moreover, a great deal of money for the privilege. 
Then she had 
never spoken and it was said by some that she was dumb. Frau Schmetterling had 
prized 
her above her other girls at that time; she had referred to this wonderful 
beauty as her 
'niece' and had offered her only to customers for whom she had a special 
affection. 
Whenever one went to her room it would always be the same. The draperies would 
be of 
darker than usual material and the only light would come from a large candle in 
a glass 
funnel, creating all kinds of peculiar, agitated shadows. The nymph would lie 
upon grey 
velvet, immobile and passive. About her waist, on a chain as a necklace might be 
worn, 
would be hung a massive insect, at least four inches long, about two inches 
thick, with a 
wing-span of five inches. The insect's body was carved out of morbid green 
obsidian, and 
its wings gave the impression of transparency, being made of crystal and silver. 
Imbedded 
as markings on its head and carapace were various murky gems: agates, carnelians 
and 
discoloured pearls. This splendid, sickly fly would rest upon her swarthy flesh 
as if about to 
dine. From her throat would be suspended a chain of heavy gold, a series of 
linked 
scarabs, Egyptianate and massive, reaching to a point just short of centre 
between her 
small, rouged breasts. One of her soft arms would be bare, but the other would 
have on it a 
gold and amethyst bracelet forming two intertwined serpents, and on her left 
ankle would 
be a solid bangle of gold, set with a single large ruby, matched by a similar 
ring on her 
fourth toe. She had a variety of small rings on her thumbs and fingers, and the 
hardness of 
the gold accentuated the delicacy and fragility of her youth.
      As an old friend of Frau Schmetterling I had been allowed to enjoy that 
child on a 
number of occasions but I believe my chief delight in her came not from her 
body, which 
was delicious, but from a particular quality of mind she possessed: she seemed 
half-mad. 
Just as with Alexandra, for whom I have of course far more responsibility, the 
child had 
been consumed by a subtle urgency, an almost inhuman sexuality, which had in it 
a 
peculiar and perhaps unwholesome intelligence. It was as if she had come into 
the world 
with her intellect and her appetites fully-formed, with a pagan greed for a 
conscious and 
specific form of sensual experience which never waned and was yet never 
completely 
satisfied; a mind which was unsleepingly aware of itself, its surroundings, of 
those souls 
who came into its sphere. She had feasted upon me during the course of a season 
and I 
had been powerless for every second I had spent in her company; as drained and 
as 
miserable when I departed from her as I was enriched and inspired when with her. 
She had 
possessed virtually no reality for me. I had never attempted to converse with 
her. I had 
come and gone in silence, almost in secret. The business had taken on the 
atmosphere of 
a shameful liaison. By the end of that season I had become exhausted and my 
morale was 
in ruins. Yet that same insect-child who had so sapped my vitality was now an 
ordinary 
young woman walking with her husband at Tivoli on a Sunday afternoon. Had she 
been in 
any way responsible, then, for my condition? Or had I been entirely a victim of 
my own 
dreams? So I wonder as I move my body in and out of Therese, forcing myself not 
to 
become afraid of the girl who sits a few feet away from me drinking her absinthe 
and 
watching me with eyes which neither reflect nor absorb the light: blank eyes, 
lost entirely in 
a universe of private fantasy. Yet will she always be like this? Was she like it 
before? 
Momentarily the terror grows in me. I began as her seducer and now I feel that I 
am her 
pawn, performing sexually for her entertainment. How does she see it? The same? 
She 
says she wished only to please me. I have beaten her. I have raised bruises and 
welts on 
her body, with rods, with shoes, with straps; I have played the cruel master and 
she the 
slave; I have practised all kinds of humiliations upon her with her consent. She 
has been at 
times wholly in my power. And yet I feel that I am now in hers, willing to 
renounce all 
ordinary happiness, ordinary pleasure, spontaneous lust, in order to please her, 
while she 
continues to pretend herself my victim. It is a child's game. I know it is a 
child's game. I tell 
myself that I should know better, yet the child in me, the child I thought 
vanished but whom 
I had merely silenced, is yelling for satisfaction again. Therese thrusts back 
at me with 
skilled strength; my orgasm when it comes is thin and quickly dissipates. 
Alexandra kneels 
beside us on the bed, still fully clothed. She strokes my rump with hesitant 
fingers. Perhaps 
it is her inexperience which binds me to her, why I am so willing to help her 
discover 
novelty after novelty so that she will forever be encountering something which 
is fresh to 
her. Will I continue to love her when all sexual experience is familiar to her? 
And what are 
her motives in this? hat does she really want from me, save companionship in her 
adventure? She says that she loves me, but she is too young for the words to 
have any 
substance. She is fascinated by my reputation, which like most reputations of 
the sort is 
greatly exaggerated: I have probably been rejected by as many women as I have 
conquered and for every one who has believed me an inspired lover I have had 
others 
whom I have failed to satisfy. The needs of the body are actually as subtle as 
the needs of 
the personality. She is kissing Therese even as she strokes me. The feel of her 
dress on 
my skin is delightful. She touches Therese's nipples, again with that same sweet 
hesitation. 
She lies across my back, slowly moving her groin against me. Therese strokes her 
wrist. 
Their perfume almost drugs me. I am passive between them as their passion 
increases. 
Alexandra lets Therese begin to unbutton her dress. Eventually both naked bodies 
press 
on mine and gradually grow more confident with each other. A breast brushes my 
shoulder; 
a knee leans on my thigh. Lying face down in the bed I find it almost impossible 
to tell 
which little body is which. The sensation is wonderful as their ardour grows; 
the moans and 
grunts become sighs and gasps; they touch, they stroke, they scratch, 
wonderfully 
oblivious of me as anything more than a body. I slip my hand down to my cock and 
begin to 
masturbate as their movements grow more urgent. Papadakis says: 'You haven't 
enough 
light in here.' He pulls back the curtains. There is a glimpse of distant blue, 
the sea. I can 
hear it quite clearly today and it does not irritate me. The sun seems mild and 
warm. 
'What's today?' I ask him. 'The first of May,' he says. 'You might be able to go 
outside 
soon.' I become suspicious of him, protective of my manuscript. I put it under 
the pillow 
when I sleep. He must not see it, at least until it is finished. 'It reminds me 
of Nicosia this 
morning,' he says. Then he scowls. 'That bastard of a father.' He will often 
sink into these 
private references. 'And I felt such a fool in the hat.' I become impatient with 
him again. 
'You are disturbing me,' I say. 'I am not interested in your childhood. Bring me 
some tea in 
half-an-hour.' I am making more of an effort to be polite to him. Perhaps I have 
misjudged 
him. He seems to be showing some respect for me at the moment. But I cannot 
afford to 
allow him too much of my time now or he could go on about his frustrations and 
his 
achievements all day. He claims to have academic degrees, but becomes vague when 
asked where they were obtained. He also boasts, sometimes, of the famous 
painters and 
writers he has known and it is true that he once acted as a go-between for some 
artists I 
knew in London. That was how he eventually came to work for me. I do not deny 
his 
usefulness, but it is a bad idea to let him begin talking. I know he resents it 
when I silence 
him. I know that he sees my work as some sort of rival, although he originally 
claimed that 
he wished to support me in my efforts. That was before I became ill. He is 
abstracted 
today, still staring out of the window, whistling some popular tune under his 
breath. It 
sounds like I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles. 'Let me finish this,' I say, 'and I 
will earn enough 
money to send you home to Nicosia.' He is surprised. 'Why should I want to go 
there? I 
was thinking of Venice.' I tell him to play some Chopin on the phonograph in the 
next room. 
'And don't let the record wind down as you usually do.' I remember when he was 
more 
agreeable, when he thought my title meant something and that I had more money.
      Deciding to leave Alexandra and Therese in each other's company for a 
while, since 
this will benefit me, I believe, in the long term, I dress myself and go 
downstairs into the 
public salon. There are a few gentlemen here, chatting in quiet voices, and one 
or two of 
Frau Schmetterling's girls, looking like any young ladies one might meet at a 
provincial ball. 
Frau Schmetterling, as usual, has retired to her kitchen. The whores are acting 
as 
hostesses. I ask for a glass of champagne and take a seat near the far window, 
casually 
watching a card game between two upright middle-aged gentlemen and two women 
whom 
I know as Inez and Clara. Inez claims to be Spanish (though she speaks German 
without 
an accent) and dresses accordingly. Clara wears a costume suggesting that she is 
an 
English countrywoman. Her speciality is with the crop and the tawse. The men are 
probably rich professional people. Both have grey beards and one wears a monocle 
while 
the other has pince-nez. All four are absorbed in their bridge at present. I 
make an effort to 
read the evening newspaper, but in spirit I am still upstairs with Alexandra and 
Therese. I 
have decided that I will dine here. Frau Schmetterling always provides an 
excellent light 
supper for those who require it. My earlier concern has vanished for the time 
being. I enjoy 
a cigar. The salon is furnished comfortably, in restrained good taste, 
reminiscent of the 
better class of Parisian hotel. Next to it is a billiard room and I am about to 
rise to go into it 
when the double doors of the salon open and the Princess Poliakoff comes in on 
the arm of 
a nervous young man whom I assume to be her latest gigolo. I get to my feet and 
bow. She 
recognises me and seems relieved to see me. I kiss her hand. She is as usual 
wearing a 
mannish black costume with a ruffle of lace at her breast. Her thin face is 
bright with severe 
paint and by the size of her pupils I would say she is drugged. She draws her 
young man 
forward. 'Ricky, this is my eldest son, Dimitri. We are on tour, to finish his 
education.' I 
shake hands with Dimitri. He has a pleasant, awkward smile. 'We shall be leaving 
for 
Trieste tomorrow,' she says. 'I am so glad you are here. You are just the man 
Dimitri 
should talk to.' I am amused. 'Why so, my dear Princess?' I ask. 'It is obvious, 
surely! You 
are a man of the world.' She speaks sardonically and yet it is a compliment. 'I 
am at your 
service, m'sieu,' I say to her son, and bow again. We are speaking French. The 
Princess 
Poliakoff is a notorious Lesbian. She has for some time had the reputation of 
frequenting 
the Rat Mort and La Souris in Montmartre where she gathered about her a group of 
female 
admirers, chiefly actresses and opera singers, who would vie subtly with one 
another to be 
her choice of the evening. I am glad to see her, for she is a familiar face, but 
I have no 
great liking for her. Her beauty is of that neurasthenic, slender kind; her skin 
seems almost 
transparent and the rouge only heightens its pallor. She has a long, thin nose 
and large, 
wide lips, high cheek bones, exceptionally large, languid hands, and she wears 
nothing but 
black or, in winter months sometimes, a tawny wolfskin cap, cloak and gloves. 
She is 
rumoured to have had affairs with half the famous female stage-performers and 
painters in 
Paris and I heard that when she appeared in public with Louise Abbema at 
L'Opera, 
embracing and kissing, her father upon receiving the news at his Russian estate 
shot 
himself and has never properly recovered from the head wound which left him with 
only 
one ear and one eye. She is now about forty. She still retains that look of 
boredom which to 
many makes her so fascinating and apparently remote. It was her boredom, she 
claims, 
which led her to experiment with almost every vice and it was vice, she says, 
which led her 
ineffably back to boredom. To which, she usually adds, she is now completely 
reconciled. 
'You must explain the secret of your success with women, Ricky,' she says. 
'There is no 
secret, Dimitri,' I tell her son. 'All one needs is a relish for sexual pleasure 
and a certain 
amount of time to dedicate to its pursuit. After a year or two one becomes known 
as a rake 
and women's curiosity does the rest.' Princess Poliakoff laughs. 'You are such a 
terrible 
cynic, Ricky. What would your eminent brother think of you?' I shrug. 'The von 
Beks have 
one black sheep in every other generation,' I say. 'It is a tradition. My 
brother is content 
because he believes that family customs should be firmly maintained. I have an 
agreeable 
nature and the assigned role happens to suit me very well.' Princess Poliakoff 
lights a small 
cheroot for herself. 'And what are you doing here now? I had heard that you have 
taken up 
with schoolgirls. Or was it schoolboys?' I am a little alarmed at this. It means 
that very soon 
my liaison with Alexandra will be discovered. 'Negroes,' I tell her, hoping to 
divert her from 
the truth. 'What?' she says, 'Really?' She can be extremely gullible. 'They are 
wonderful,' I 
tell her. 'I should have thought that in Paris… She sighs. 'It is their 
size. I am 
absolutely terrified, dear Ricky, of large organs.' The girl comes with a tray 
of champagne. I 
hand them each a glass. Her son is smiling like a puppet at a fair. 'They are 
not always 
monstrous,' I say. 'And this schoolboy?' she continues relentlessly. 'He is 
black, then?'
      'As your hat,' I say in English. 'He is the son of a king in Africa. Being 
educated 
here.' She chuckles, willingly believing me. 'You must pass him on to me when 
you are 
finished with him.' Princess oliakoff has always characterised me as a hard-
hearted roue 
who uses people as she does. She makes no allowances for my Achilles heel, my 
sentimentality, and I see no reason in admitting to her that I am not what she 
would wish 
me to be. 'It's a bargain,' I say. I look at the ormulu clock over the 
fireplace. 'I shall see you 
later, I hope, at dinner. I must get back to my little negro.' Again her hand is 
kissed, her 
son's shaken. He is blushing deeply. I wink at him and return up the stairs, 
deciding that we 
shall have to dine in our room. Knowing what a gossip Princess Poliakoff is I 
hope that her 
talk of me will create a useful smokescreen. I am somewhat surprised at how 
cunning I 
have become since I began my affair with Alexandra. I pass the two bridge-
playing 
gentlemen as they emerge from the toilet. 'This raising of an army hasn't 
perturbed him 
much,' one says. 'But I gather he found the desertion of about half the garrison 
something 
of a shock.They say he's at his hunting lodge now, with those mechanical models 
of his. 
The business will be bloodless if it comes off at all. Holzhammer isn't a bad 
sort. And he'll 
keep taxes down.' The significance of the conversation escapes me. I reach the 
blue door 
and knock before I enter. Therese and Alexandra lie in each others' arms, 
smiling and 
giggling. Both look thoroughly dissolute, with their hair wet and scratch-marks 
on their 
bodies. 'And how have you enjoyed yourselves?' I chuckle, glad that they are 
happy and 
that Alexandra is no longer in her original mood.
Papadakis brings me a cup of tea. 'And will you eat something now?' he asks. 
'Perhaps 
some Camembert,' I tell him. 'And something blue and soft. Something tasty. What 
have 
we?' He strokes at his beard with his finger and thumb. 'There's a little 
Cambozola. You 
used to enjoy that.' I nod at him. 'Excellent. And a glass of red wine.' He 
purses his lips. 
'Wine? It will kill you!' I put down my pen. 'I am better now. Can't you see 
that? Some red 
wine.' He shakes his head. He is becoming surly again. 'Not according to the 
doctor. But I 
will bring it if you want it.' He leaves. Alexandra, Therese and I dine off 
smoked salmon and 
cold duck in our room. The two girls manufacture secrets and I pretend to be 
intrigued, to 
please them. Later we shall make love again, playing games with considerable 
zest and 
good humour. Then, at about three in the morning, Alexandra and I will order a 
cab and 
leave the brothel, promising to see Therese the next evening.
Papadakis takes the limousine to town. He likes, I know, to pretend that it is 
his because it 
gives him stature with the local peasants. Papadakis says he understands 
peasants and 
how they think. He hates them, he says. But his information about them is useful 
to me and 
gives me a greater knowledge of his attitudes. He is supposed to get me some 
patent 
medicine containing a stimulant but he will quite likely forget; most of the 
time he thinks 
only of himself, living in a dream of an unsatisfactory past and an unattainable 
future. 
Sometimes across his face comes the enthusiastic expression of a boy, a memory 
of his 
former charm. Pyat, the famous confidence trickster, had a similar appearance 
when I met 
him at Cassis with Stavisky in the mid-twenties. I have told him it is his duty 
to care for me 
when I am ill. He will sometimes reply it is the doctor's job. He was hired, 
after all, to be my 
secretary. The fact was I took pity on him. I offered him his last chance and he 
accepted it. 
Now he wriggles to be free, but there is nowhere for him to go. And he brings me 
my soup 
and fish and he changes my linen when the old woman is too drunk to do it. The 
pain has 
come back in my groin. Is Alexandra a mirror? Is the ugliness I believe I detect 
in her 
simply a reflection of my own? Since I was sixteen women have told me that I 
must 
change. I have always said to them that I am too old to change. If they do not 
like me as I 
am then they have the right to find someone they prefer. But I think I am 
changing for 
Alexandra and that is perhaps why I am occasionally frightened. I tell everyone 
that I am in 
love with feminine beauty in all its aspects. The fact is I become bored in the 
company of 
women who have no sexual presence, no matter how intelligent they niay be. I 
think I 
dislike such women because their condition indicates their own fear of 
themselves and 
consequently of the world around them. I have known many women who express the 
same 
impatience with non-sexual men. Sexuality is the key to personality. She 
undresses. She 
removes the rose silk frock, ie delicate chemise; she rolls down her stockings 
and puts 
them carefully on the back of the chair. She has a habit of slipping her garters 
over her 
wrist while she removes the rest of her underwear, then, holding them in her 
right hand, 
she will go into the bathroom and set them on the ledge in front of the mirror. 
If they are a 
pair she particularly cares for she will give them a little parting kiss. I say 
it is too late to 
bathe, we should go to sleep at once, but she insists. While she is in the bath 
I fall asleep. I 
awake briefly at dawn. My blood has quickened. I begin to anticipate what we 
shall do 
together later. I turn, thinking she is still bathing, but she is fast asleep 
with her back to me, 
the sheets pulled tightly about her as if she fears something. Can she fear me? 
Will she 
come to resent me? Asleep, with her face in repose, she sometimes resembles a 
baby. At 
other times, when she is snoring and her mouth is open she reminds me of a dead 
rodent. I 
wonder if that is really all she is when she is not responding to me: a tiny 
unimportant 
predator. But when she wakes her eyes destroy my prejudice. Did her eyes always 
possess that strange, heated glaze? I remember how she had seemed so innocent 
when 
we first met. The prospect of making love to a virgin had driven all caution 
away within a 
few minutes. Then, I think, the expression had been there, but hidden. She had 
only 
glanced at me directly once and her eyes had told me of her desire for me. Is 
she a natural 
predator? She says she loves me, but that is meaningless. She loves what she 
thinks I 
must be, what she thinks I possess, and she lusts after my cock. She is 
doubtless 
surprised, also, that she can achieve control over others through her sexuality. 
Unless she 
is an unusual female she will continue to use her sex as her only certain means 
to power. 
She will have no notion of any other way to get what she will want for herself. 
Even if other 
ways are described to her she will not quite understand what is said, for her 
chief 
experience will have been of sexual control coupled, perhaps, with certain 
practical 
services given to the one who desires her. Her will to power, which she has in 
common 
with everyone, if satisfied only through sex could ultimately leave her empty of 
feeling and 
therefore could destroy any ordinary capacity to know desire, causing her to 
pass from 
lover to lover in a perpetual cycle of lust to dissatisfaction. As I fall back 
to sleep I wonder if 
I have created a whore. More likely, I think with grim amusement, a monster 
which will turn 
on me and take my soul. I do not believe I possess the character of a natural 
whore-
master. I am not strong enough to control her. And this is the knowledge which 
sometimes 
excites me and brings flagging senses back to peak again. These are the thoughts 
of my 
infrequent solitude. When she is awake I scarcely think at all but remain 
perpetually 
fascinated, perpetually on guard, like the tamer with his tigress. We breakfast 
late in the 
sitting room. She pours coffee for us both. The light is pale, slanting into our 
windows from 
misty skies. The air is cooler today. She sits in her maroon dressing gown, 
wonderfully 
composed, seeming thoroughly rested. She makes no reference to the previous 
night's 
adventure. Indeed, she seems healthier, younger, more cheerful, than she has 
seemed for 
some while. I compliment her on her good humour and her freshness as I light a 
cigarette. 
'I have never felt more alive in all my days!' she says. 'My body is waking up. 
It never stops 
now. It wakes and wakes and wakes.' Her smile is spontaneous and beautiful. She 
says: 
'Are you looking forward to this evening?' I am surprised. 'Yes.' I expected her 
to have 
doubts. She sits back in her chair in a posture of contentment. She looks 
towards the 
window. 'Isn't it wonderful outside?' I smoke my cigarette and stare carefully 
at her. Her 
courage, I believe, is the courage of ignorance. But whatever its nature it 
transmits itself to 
me. 'You enjoyed Therese?' I ask.
      'Well enough,' she says. 'I have had better. Younger and without any 
experience. I 
think I should like a different girl after this evening. There are things 
Therese told me. Girls 
with special skills, apparently.' I nod: 'Oh, yes.' She takes my hand and kisses 
it. 'Could any 
woman possess a finer teacher? I want to experience everything you have 
experienced. I 
want us to be together when we discover new things.' I love the softness of her 
lips on my 
wrist, the way her slender body curves in the gown. 'There could be experiences 
you will 
not enjoy,' I tell her. 'Of course,' she says, 'but then I will know what they 
are.' I laugh. 'You 
are too fond of the novels of Huysmanns and de Goncourt. The critics are right 
about them. 
They have a pernicious influence!' I am, in my fashion, expressing my 
hesitation. This is 
the moment when I could call a halt to the adventure. But of course my curiosity 
overwhelms me. I acquiesce. She becomes suddenly active and begins to clothe 
herself. 
We take a drive in the afternoon, she in her cream frock trimmed with broderie 
anglaise 
and a hat with a thick veil, I in my tweeds. I shade my face with a wide-brimmed 
hat. After a 
little while I begin to notice that the tempo of Mirenburg is subtly different. 
There are many 
more soldiers in the streets today. Carriages hurry past us on their way to the 
station. An 
unusual number of people are leaving the city. I tell our driver to stop in 
Falfnersallee and 
send him to buy a paper from one of the kiosks. He says: 'It is the war, your 
honour. The 
Civil War. Hadn't you heard?' Alexandra looks with some impatience at the 
newspaper as if 
at a passing rival. Count Holzhammer has half the country on his side, including 
a good 
proportion of the Army. He has issued a proclamation demanding the abdication of 
Prince 
Badehoff-Krasny and the dissolution of Parliament. He argues that the new 
Armaments Bill 
will ruin Waldenstein. He claims the Prince has deliberately set himself against 
the will of 
the majority of the people and that he is in the power of a handful of alien 
industrialists. 
Count Holzhammer is financed with Austrian money, of course, and his ranks are 
swelled 
by Bulgarian cavalry and artillery loaned by Austria but calling themselves 
Volunteers. The 
newspaper wonders if the Germans will now send aid to the Prince. So far there 
has been 
no response from Berlin. Count Holzhammer has his headquarters in an armoured 
train. 
His forces have won a battle at Brondstein. The loyalists have regrouped near 
Mirenburg. 
Count Holzhammer awaits a response to his demands. His train is some seventy 
miles 
down the line, at Slitzcern. The paper believes the Prince will refuse the 
Count's demands. 
Mirenburg has never been taken by siege, says the editorial, in all its long 
history. During 
the Thirty Years War she successfully withstood five separate attacks. She 
remains 
impregnable. Count Holzhammer must know this and is therefore almost certainly 
bluffing. 
There is a likelihood that the Prince will order Parliament to scrap the 
Armaments Bill and 
make one or two concessions to the great landowners who are giving Holzhammer 
their 
backing. I shrug and hand the paper to Alexandra. The whole business has a comic 
opera 
aspect to it and I cannot take it seriously. It is a storm in a tea-cup, I tell 
her. A full-scale 
Civil War is in nobody's interest; the matter is bound to be settled by 
negotiation. I express 
some admiration for Count Holzhammer's audacity and remark on the cunning of the 
Austrians, who doubtless hope their support of Holzhammer will increase their 
influence 
over Waldenstein. But Alexandra is concerned about the effects of the business 
on her 
own plans. 'It could mean my parents will return,' she says. 'Or will send for 
me.' I give the 
problem swift consideration and arrive at a solution. 'Then go home now. Tell 
your 
housekeeper you are leaving Mirenburg with friends who fear for your safety. 
Give her an 
address in Brussels - anything will do - then send an appropriate telegram to 
Rome. In that 
way we can benefit from this situation.' She is impressed by my cunning and 
agrees to do 
as I say. The carriage leaves me at my usual corner opposite the Radota Bridge. 
The water 
is like silver in the early afternoon light. I sit at one of the outside tables 
and order anis and 
a sandwich while I wait for Alexandra to do as I have instructed. Troops come 
and go 
across the bridge. They seem in fine form. The officers wave batons and swords, 
pointing 
this way and that. They have a decisive, self-important manner which I find 
amusing. They 
are so wonderfully pompous, like eunuchs who have overnight been blessed with 
testicles. 
Alexandra seems to take no time at all, even though she returns with two or 
three new 
trunks. 'I am going with her full approval,' she says with a smile. 'She thinks 
it is for the 
best!' We drive to the hotel. The manager, an anxious beaver, approaches me, 
seeing the 
new luggage being taken up by the porters. He would be obliged if I could tell 
him if I intend 
to leave the hotel in the morning. I shake my head. 'I have every intention of 
staying for 
some time.' He is relieved. Apparently most of his residents will have departed 
by 
tomorrow. 'They are running special trains to Danzig,' he explains. He has the 
distracted 
look of a man who fears ruin. 'Surely they are being overcautious,' I say. 'Even 
if the Count 
takes control it will scarcely effect your guests. They are all foreigners. This 
squabble will 
be resolved in a few days and everything will be back to normal.' His 
estimation, he agrees, 
is much the same as mine. 'But there is a panic. Half our business people are 
leaving for 
Berlin and Paris. The Stock Market is chaotic. Exchange rates are fluctuating. 
Such things 
bother them, you know. Many visitors are returning to their firms. And Count 
Holzhammer 
is very direct about his hatred of industrialists, particularly the Jews and the 
Germans. They 
have a right to be nervous, I think. I suggest they will all come creeping back 
within a week. 
'What can they do to Mirenburg? Who would threaten her beauty with cannon-
shells? It is 
impossible.' The manager laughs. He seems relieved by my reassurance. I order a 
pot of 
tea and some pastries to be sent to our rooms. We take the lift to the third 
floor.
      We dress ourselves carefully. Alexandra wears her flowing red evening gown 
and 
has over it a full cape of dark brown velvet. The streets are almost deserted as 
we make 
our way in a cab to Rosenstrasse. Here and there are groups of silent soldiers, 
standing 
guard over nothing. Groups of urchins run about pretending to shoot at one 
another. There 
are unexpected echoes to make the twilight eery. The brothel, when we arrive, 
seems like 
a haven of normality. We are received by Trudi but do not see Frau 
Schmetterling. Therese 
awaits us behind the blue door and we again enjoy, with increasing assurance and 
relish, 
our pleasures of the previous night. As we rest, Therese is more talkative. She 
speaks 
enthusiastically of Frau Schmetterling and the establishment. She expresses her 
affections, her jealousies, her dislike of certain other girls. Alexandra has 
assumed the role 
of her confidante, greedy for every bit of information. We smoke a little opium. 
Therese 
repeats a great deal of what I have already told Alexandra, about the special 
rooms, the 
preferences of some clients (who according to the brothel's protocol she cannot 
name) and 
the predilections of the girls, the attitudes they have to their work, their 
clients, themselves. 
Growing bored with this I take Alexandra almost by force, deliberately 
humiliating her in 
front of Therese, then I make Therese kneel and accept my cock, wet with 
Alexandra's 
juices, in her mouth while Alexandra licks my anus. I come in a convulsion of 
release that 
has little actual pleasure in it, forcing Therese to swallow my semen. Alexandra 
stops her 
activities but I order her to continue, telling Therese to fetch one of her 
ivory dildoes from 
the drawer. Then I hand the dildo to Alexandra. Together they take turns 
buggering me 
while I sob in pain and helpless terror until I am so weak they can turn me any 
way they 
please, teasing me, making me shudder. Therese lies with her vagina rubbing 
against my 
face while her lips nip at my cock, bringing it to life again. Alexandra joins 
her, fondling my 
balls and then squeezing them hard to inflict greater agony. They are taking 
their revenge 
on me. Slowly they bring me to the point of orgasm and then, with deliberate 
cruelty, they 
begin to kiss one another, ignoring me completely. I put my hand to my cock. 
Alexandra 
sees my movement from the corner of her eye and forces my hand back while she 
pushes 
herself against Therese's thigh. I do not possess the strength to take either of 
them and yet 
my frustration continues to build. Again I am turned over. Again the dildo is 
rammed into 
my anus and left there. Therese rests her head on my buttocks while Alexandra 
sits over 
her, leaning her hands on my back and scratching at my flesh, letting Therese 
lick her 
clitoris until she achieves an orgasm which makes her scream and rip at my skin. 
My body 
begins to vibrate and it is as if the shock of Alexandra's orgasm has 
transmitted itself to 
Therese and myself. We are all shaking, almost as if we experience petit mal. I 
turn and 
tug weakly at Therese's hair, drawing her up towards me. Still shaking I enter 
her and we 
tremble together, making virtually no movernent, letting our bodies shake us to 
orgasm. 
This time Therese comes first, her vulva contracting and distending rapidly and 
I am 
yelling, feeling Alexandra's hand slapping again and again at my bottom, at 
Therese's 
thighs, as she laughs in high-pitched harmony with our noises. I become suddenly 
blank. I 
have passed out for a few seconds. When I awake Therese and Alexandra are lying 
one 
on each side of me, cuddled in my arms like two tranquil puppies.
      'Tell us a story,' says Alexandra. She is by no means the first woman to 
make this 
demand of me. I can think of nothing but sexuality so I begin to tell them of 
the beggar girl I 
met in Naples three years ago. It remains one of my strangest experiences. I had 
been 
walking alone by the sea just before nightfall when one deep shade of blue 
merges with the 
other; over the water I had been able to detect the lights of Capri and Ischia 
and had come 
to this area of the front in the hope of meeting an attractive whore since my 
mistress of the 
moment had elected to spend an evening with her husband. The air was filled with 
the 
music of hurdy-gurdies and accordions coming from the little cafes where the 
working 
classes enjoyed themselves at supper. The few whores I encountered were not 
pretty - 
Neopolitan women of that sort are generally too plump and lewd for my taste - 
and I began 
to long for Clichy or Montmartre. Pimps approached me and were waved away with 
my 
stick. The air, I remember, was very humid. I was conscious of the sweat on my 
back, 
wondering if it would begin to show through the linen of my jacket. The music 
kept me 
cheerful enough and I was preparing to go home unsatisfied when a black-haired 
little thing 
with ringlets falling over her oval face appeared before me, deliberately 
blocking my path. 
She was slender, in ragged pinafore and petticoats and probably no more than 
fourteen. 
Her expression was singularly attractive, that mixture of innocence and 
defiance. Her 
boyish stance and figure were very much to my preference and although I could 
scarcely 
understand a single word of her voluble patois I humoured her, smiling. This 
seemed to 
make her lose her temper. She gesticulated, this little Carmen of the 
waterfront, rubbing 
her fingers together in that universal sign for money and pointing over her 
shoulder with her 
thumb. 'Do you wish me to go home with you?' I enquired in my polite Roman 
Italian. This 
question was unexpected and caused her to frown. Realising I was a foreigner she 
spoke 
more clearly. 'I need money,' she said. 'You are rich. I want a few lire, that's 
all. Are you 
French?' I told her I was German and this seemed to disappoint her. 'You do not 
have the 
look of a German.' She began to turn away but I stopped her, putting my hand on 
her 
shoulder. The feel of her tensing muscles under my grasp increased my desire for 
her. She 
was lovely. 'Why do you want money?' I asked her. 'It is for my father,' she 
replied. 'Is he 
ill?' I said, willing to show sympathy. She became angrier. 'Of course he is 
ill. He has been 
ill for years. He fought with Garibaldi. He was one of the conquerors of Naples 
and was 
wounded by the Austrians. He has lived on the charity of others ever since. He 
has 
educated me. He has supported me. And now he is too ill even to beg.' I was not 
entirely 
convinced by her story, even if I did not doubt her sincerity. 'So you beg for 
him now?' She 
had rounded on me. 'I ask for Christian help, that is all.'
I smiled at this. It was a phrase often heard in Naples. 'I am willing to give 
it,' I told her. 'But 
what will you or your father give me? You see I am not a believer in charity. 
Giving it or 
receiving it reduces human dignity. Look at you now. You are angry because you 
are 
forced to ask a stranger for help. You resent me and would resent me if I gave 
or if I 
refused. This in itself, I will admit, makes you an unusual beggar-girl. 
However, if your 
father has something to sell, I'll be pleased to consider a bargain.'
      She frowned. 'We have nothing.' I shook my head. 'On the contrary. You 
possess 
one of the most wonderful treasures in the world.' She pouted, but I had engaged 
her 
attention. 'You sound like a priest,' she said. 'I assure you,' I told her,'that 
I am no priest. I 
have no interest at all in your soul. It is yours and should remain yours. The 
treasure to 
which I refer has yet to be discovered by you. It has to be brought out into the 
light and 
then it has to be polished before you will believe how beautiful and valuable it 
is.' I 
caressed her dirty neck and she did not draw away. Her curiosity held her. I 
believe she 
guessed my meaning but wished her suspicion to be confirmed. If I confirmed it 
at once I 
would probably lose her. It was up to me to maintain her interest a little 
longer. 'If you take 
me to your father I will explain what I mean,' I said. Again she was surprised. 
'My father? 
He is a good man. Few are as saintly. He has taught me virtue, signer.' I 
offered her my 
arm, bowing to her. 'I am sure that he has. What father would not? You are a 
lovely young 
woman. It is easy to see you are of a different class to most. Was your mother a 
refined 
woman?' The girl nodded. 'She was. She owned land. She gave up everything to 
support 
Garibaldi and my father. She was a Sicilian. From a very old family.'
      'Just as I thought,' I said. 'Well, let me escort you to your home.' She 
consented, of 
course, because she had little to fear. She took me into a warren of alleys 
where children, 
dogs, women and old people seemed in perpetual conflict, and down the steps of a 
cellar 
from which came the faint smell of urine. She pushed open the door. Everything 
was damp 
and the mould gave off such a pervasive stench that it almost took on the 
character of 
perfume; it excited me. She lit a little oil-lamp, nothing but a floating wick, 
which made 
flickering shadows and revealed the sleeping face of a man who in health must 
have been 
a giant. I was surprised by the face. It had far more character than I might 
have expected. I 
could see that my attempt to buy his daughter from him would not be as easy as I 
had 
thought. He opened clear blue eyes and looked at me as if he had seen an old 
friend. An 
expression of irony crossed his face. 'Signor,' he said. 'I am glad to see you.' 
He spoke with 
easy familiarity and it was plain this was not his normal tone with strangers, 
for his 
daughter looked from one to the other and said: 'Are you acquainted?' Her father 
lay 
amongst rags. It was impossible to tell what was his body and what its 
coverings. He shook 
his head. 'Not really,' he said. 'But I hoped it would be this way. You are a 
gentleman, 
signer?' There was considerable meaning to the question. 'I hope that I am,' I 
said. 'And 
you are wealthy?' I inclined my head. 'I am modestly well-to-do. But, of course, 
I am 
carrying virtually nothing on my person.' He nodded. 'I can see that you are 
also no fool.' 
He knew exactly my reason for being there. 'Well, have you come to offer my Gina 
the 
chance to appear on the stage? Or is it to be service in a fine house? Or do you 
wish to 
take her away to educate her, signer?' Gina was still too surprised by all this 
to speak. She 
went to the far side of the cellar and sat down on a mattress, her elbows on her 
knees, her 
face in her hands, watching us. I smiled at him. 'None of those things,' I said. 
'I think it 
would be insulting to you if I pretended to any but the real feelings which 
brought me here. I 
have indicated as much to your daughter. You know what I wish to buy. But I will 
promise 
you this. If you sell, I will leave you both with something of increased value, 
and your 
daughter will still be yours. I will not take her away.' Gina heard this. 'I 
would not go!' she 
said. 'She would not,' said her father, 'unless I insisted upon it. I have some 
power left, do 
you see?' I acknowledged this. 'You have considerable power, signer.' I felt 
almost 
humbled by his dignity. 'And I am willing to negotiate, as I believe, now, you 
are.'
      He sighed. 'I think so. I think so. You seem a man of the world. You have 
no 
disease?' I shook my head. 'None.' He sucked in his lower lip then once more 
offered me 
that direct, blue stare. 'The price will be high and there will be conditions.' 
And so we began 
negotiations for the virginity of his daughter while she listened without 
resentment, having 
absolute trust in her father, who proved to be one of the most honest and 
realistic men it 
had ever been my pleasure to meet. A price was agreed and it was, as he said, 
high, but 
he understood the rarity and value of what he sold and was relieved that Gina 
was not to 
give herself away out of infatuation, which could have ruined her and 
consequently left him 
without support. His other condition was harder to agree to. She had to be 
enjoyed here, in 
the cellar, and he must be present to ensure, as he put it, that no harm came to 
her. 
'Moreover, signor,' he admitted, 'I am denied most pleasures so it would hearten 
me to be 
able to live through what you both experience.' My desire for the girl was so 
positive that I 
found myself at last giving in to what he asked. It was agreed I should return 
the next 
morning with the money and I said I would arrange for fresh bedding. I did not 
intend to 
take possession of my purchase in such utter filth. He told me he could make the 
cellar into 
a fairy palace if I chose since everything else I brought would add to his 
comfort and 
become an asset. And the price was for a twenty-four hour period. If I wished to 
stay 
longer, I must renegotiate the bargain. I accepted this, also. We both asked 
Gina if she was 
prepared to enter into this contract and she said she owed everything to her 
father and she 
would do whatever he thought best. The old man cared for her very deeply, I 
could tell, and 
by this means he was able to maintain his protection and ensure that both of 
them 
benefitted from his daughter's defloration without unduly disquieting 
consequences. I 
returned the next day with some new lamps, furnishings, in fact a whole van-load 
of 
comforts, which were efficiently installed by the two carters I had employed.
Her father's body, seen in good light, was swollen and bloated, although his 
face and 
hands were not at all fleshy. He allowed rags to be removed and cushions, 
carpets and 
mattresses to be brought in. With the aid of the carters he was transferred from 
the old to 
the new without difficulty and sat amongst his luxuries like a Buddha. Both he 
and his 
daughter had washed themselves and were wearing clean rags. I had brought her 
several 
simple dresses which she thanked me for and hung on a hook in an alcove, making 
no 
attempt to wear them. The beggar directed the carters to replace the pile of 
straw with the 
mattress in the opposite corner while Gina spread one of the new sheets on it, 
together 
with the long bolster I had also brought with me. The smell of mould remained, 
but since 
this was pleasant to me I was not disturbed by it. My lust was building with 
every 
improvement to the appearance of the cellar and at one point the beggar reached 
out to 
pat my leg, murmuring: 'Patience.' A peculiar conspiracy had grown amongst the 
three of 
us. The carters sensed it and were disturbed. I was anxious they should leave 
and paid 
them off rapidly. They made a bewildered departure, the door was closed, and we 
were 
alone. 'You may begin as soon as you like,' said Gina's father. She poured him 
some of the 
milk I had brought. He accepted it gracefully. 'And my cheese, I think,' he told 
her. 'The 
cheese I could not eat last night.' She fetched it for him and put it in his 
other hand. She 
had begun to blush. He recognised her confusion and took her little face in his 
finger and 
thumb. 'This gentleman can be trusted,' he said. 'You could not wish for a 
better initiation, 
my love. It will be exquisite, I am sure.' He waved her towards me. I now stood 
beside the 
mattress, coatless, ready to embrace her. She brought her slight, delicate body 
up to mine. 
I kissed her head, stroking her neck, slowly beginning to undress her. I was 
unusually 
gentle. There are some women, no matter how physically strong they are in 
actuality, who 
one is always convinced will break if handled too roughly. They are often the 
fiercest 
lovers, but it can be an effort to forget that sense of their fragility and give 
oneself up 
completely to one's passion. And so I took her and she was as delicious as I had 
expected. 
She, under my caresses, completely forgot the presence of her father and at 
times I was 
hardly aware of it. She had her back to him, but frequently I could observe him. 
To my 
great satisfaction I was able to bring her to orgasm by means of my mouth and 
hands 
before I had completely entered her. It is not always possible to do this at 
such an early 
stage with a virgin. But she had natural generosity and lust and I have always 
found that 
the more generous the spirit of the woman, the more easily she can attain the 
fullest sexual 
delight. My chief memory of this encounter, however, is of her father. I can 
still see the 
tolerant wisdom in the eyes of that unnaturally bloated veteran republican as he 
sat 
amongst his cushions, a piece of mouldy cheese in one strong fist, a wooden bowl 
of milk 
in the other, almost gracefully regal in his relaxed and unselfconscious 
posture, drawing my 
attention away from the blank, ecstatic face of the girl, even as my body 
performed its 
'unctions and satisfied its lust. He watched without curiosity, without 
pleasure, almost 
without interest. He was benign. It was as if God Himself blessed our passion.
      As I came he raised his head and sniffed, smiling. The scent of our fluids 
was an 
ovation. He took a sip of milk and sniffed again, nodding, approving, perhaps 
recalling a 
memory of love. I fell to her side, still regarding him. He saluted me with his 
piece of 
cheese and spoke a few sultry words in his own dialect. His daughter, as if 
noticing him for 
the first time, turned her head towards me and beamed. Our mutual joy was so 
intense we 
all three found ourselves laughing aloud, the sound completely drowning the 
noise of 
perpetual contention from those Neopolitan alleys. With Gina's father's consent 
I returned 
to their cellar every day for something over a week, paying for every visit. My 
enjoyment of 
the girl was not at all marred by the presence of the old man; we made love for 
his benefit 
as well as our own. When the time came for me to leave Naples I gave him an 
address 
through which he might contact me if Gina became pregnant. 'She is our daughter 
and our 
mistress,' he said to me as we shook hands. 'She now knows what it is possible 
to have 
from a man. And she knows that she need not feel guilty in seeking that out. 
Thus I ensure 
myself of her company while quieting my own fears for her future. On the money 
you have 
paid us I will be able to support us for at least a year. Thank you, signer. 
We'll remember 
you with gratitude and affection. And we shall pray for you.' Gina kissed me 
gravely, like a 
wife saying farewell to a husband leaving for work. I have not seen or heard 
from either of 
them since. Therese says: 'It is good for a young person to be instructed by an 
older one, 
whether it be a man or woman. But the parting can be a great tragedy. Your Gina 
cried for 
you, I think, when you had gone.' I am not sure. 'She had her father, don't 
forget,' I say. I 
leave them to sleep and dress myself to go downstairs as I did yesterday. 
Rudolph 
Stefanik, the Czech aviator, is in the salon. He has dark untidy hair and a look 
of distracted 
boredom. His evening clothes seem to restrain his massive body which threatens 
to burst 
through them. His beard bristles as he speaks. At least half the men and women 
in the 
salon have gathered around him to listen to his balloon adventures, but it is 
plain he is as 
impatient with them as he is with his own anecdotes. He looks from girl to girl. 
He has 
come to Frau Schmetterling's for a purpose and does not really care to be 
diverted from it. I 
hear him say: 'So they caught their daughter sucking at my cock in the gondola. 
I had no 
choice but to fling her out and cut the tethering lines. Another two seconds and 
they would 
have set fire to the canopy.' And I hear an old Mirenburger bore interrupt with 
what he 
supposes is wit: 'You have flown the world in the service of Venus. But what 
now? Will you 
fly in the service of Mars? Will you help the Prince against Count Holzhammer?' 
Rudolph 
Stefanik looks over his questioner's head. 'One makes love in silk, and makes 
war in iron. 
My balloon is silk and hemp and wicker.'
      'What a beautiful combination.' Clara, the Englishwoman, puts long nails 
on the dark 
cloth of his arm. She is tall and thin. Her figure and her face have those fine 
brittle bones 
one associates with red setters. I have decided that she has no character. Few 
whores 
have; or rather they assume so many characters it is impossible to tell if one 
is real and the 
others false. In this they are like all mediocre actresses. A great whore, like 
a great stage 
performer, has the brains and the sense of survival always to present one face 
to the world 
when off-duty. Clara looks to me for approval. I am prepared to smile. It costs 
me her 
attention, for she immediately detaches herself from Stefanik. Her perfume seems 
acrid. 
'Do you know the Count?' she asks. 'I have not had the pleasure.' I am dragged 
towards 
him and introduced. It appears to me that we exchange nothing but sympathetic 
and 
knowing looks, and bows. 'You arrived recently, I gather,' say I. 'Yesterday, I 
think,' he 
says. 'Poor timing,' say I. 'So it would seem,' he says.
And you will leave in your balloon?
      He shakes his head. The truth is that he cannot afford to fall, as a Czech 
nationalist, 
into Austrian hands. 'Not with those trigger-happy Bulgarians all over the 
place. They'll 
shoot at me. There isn't a soldier in the world who doesn't automatically shoot 
at any 
balloon. I have stored it and shall leave it stored until this stupidity is 
over. It cannot be 
more than a week.'
      'Less,' say I. 'Nobody has anything to gain.'
      'Oh, let us hope so.' It is little demure Renee. 'My father was at Metz. 
He told me 
how wretched the citizens had become when at last the army entered the city.'
      'Count Holzhammer is not a brute,' says Clara.
      'He is a gentleman. He and the Prince must soon come to a civilised 
agreement,' 
says the plump banker Schummel, all insouciant confidence and avuncular good 
humour. 
'My dear von Bek. How is your illustrious brother?' We chat about Wolfgang for a 
few 
minutes, about Bismarck, but already I become impatient to return to Alex and 
Therese. 
The salon contains that blend of cigar-smoke and rosewater I find delicious, a 
blend of 
characteristically masculine and feminine scents. The perfection of the 
candelabrum, cold 
fire and crystal, the depth of the Persian carpet and the elegance of the 
company have 
revived in me that euphoria I was losing. Schummel stands with his back to the 
rose-
marble fireplace. His balding white head is reflected in the mirror, together 
with the large 
central chandelier. Renee holds her folded fan at her side and listens while he 
speaks 
about his recent visit to Algiers where he stayed at the Grand Hotel St George, 
Mustapha-
Superieur. The manager, a Swiss named Oesch-Muller, is such a splendid, helpful 
fellow. 
Do I know him? I agree with his opinion of the manager, though I can hardly 
remember 
him. I prefer Kirsch's Hotel, near the English Club. Renee seems very attractive 
tonight. 
She wears pale blue and gold. Her auburn hair is allowed to fall on one side in 
three thick 
ringlets to her naked shoulder. She, too, has memories of Algiers, where her 
mother 
worked as a housekeeper for a German trader. Schummel is delighted. 'Aha, admit 
it! You 
were a white slave in a harem. But you escaped!'
      'True,' says Renee. 'Life in a brothel is so much more comfortable!'
      'Well, at least you have the choice of how to spend your later years,' 
says 
Schummel. I feel almost jealous as he offers her his arm and moves away. I 
decide I will 
have a word with Frau Schmetterling and perhaps book Renee for another night. 
'And you 
have so many friends,' he adds, 'you never need get bored as you would with one 
master.'
      I glance at myself in the mirror. I am handsome. My moustache is perfect, 
my figure 
exquisite and my evening clothes are a wonderful fit. I have deep, dark eyes and 
glossy 
hair. My bearing is elegant without being in any way arrogant. It is no surprise 
to me Alex 
should find me so attractive. I look at my mouth. The lips are red and have a 
kind of refined 
sensuality. I am a catch for any woman. Does Alex have hopes of marrying me, I 
wonder. I 
cannot think how it would be possible, at present. It would be foolish of me to 
consider it. 
She is too young. And I do not believe she really loves me. As I return to the 
group around 
Count Stefanik I have a sudden frisson of fear. I refuse to admit I love her. 
Yet there is 
already pain, even at the thought of her desertion.
      The talk is still of the war and Count Stefanik grows visibly restless. I 
have the notion 
that soon his buttons will begin to pop off his waistcoat. 'Four of the new 
Krupp cannon 
could destroy Mirenburg in a day,' says Stefanik, almost with vindictive relish 
towards those 
who are keeping him away from his pleasures. We look about for a military man 
who will 
confirm or deny this. There are none present. Frau Schmetterling discourages 
even 
generals from Rosenstrasse. She says they spoil the atmosphere, that their talk 
is coarse 
and too much about death. But Herr Langenscheidt, the Deputy, believes he can 
speak for 
the Army. After all, his son is a captain - a loyalist, thank God - and Herr 
Langenscheidt 
supplies the livestock and provisions to the garrison. 'Holzhammer has no German 
artillery,' he says. 'He has inferior Austrian and French guns.'
      'Nonetheless,' says Clara, attaching herself again to me and scratching 
delicately at 
my wrist with her thumbnail, 'it should not stop you ascending, Count.'
      Stefanik is dismissive.
      'A white flag would do it,' says Langenscheidt, his little body all a-
quiver. 'Wave a 
white flag!' Schummel argues that for Count Stefanik to rise above the walls of 
Mirenburg 
brandishing a white flag might mislead Holzhammer into believing the entire city 
had 
surrendered and that would not be sporting. Indeed, it could be exceptionally 
embarrasing 
to everyone.
      The aviator sighs. 'My balloon stays where it is.' He signals to Lotte and 
Hyacinta, 
both beautiful natural blondes, and with the briefest of acknowledgements to the 
rest of the 
company, departs upstairs with them. I take a glass of red Graves from the 
buffet which 
tonight has been placed near the window. As always the windows are thickly 
curtained in 
red velvet glowing like a fresh rose. I smell patchouli, and woodsmoke from the 
fire, the 
cheeses and cold fowl on the table, and I am now completely relaxed, no longer 
so eager 
to return to my two girls. Clara comes to eat another peach. 'It's my third. 
Aren't I greedy? 
They're all the way from Africa, I believe.' I wonder why she is pursuing me. I 
have no 
desire, tonight, to enjoy her special talents. She fixes me with a compulsive 
eye. Or 
perhaps it is Alex she desires, having heard about her from Therese. 'I so enjoy 
Count 
Stefanik,' she says,'don't you? He is absolutely committed to the idea of 
powered flight. He 
calls it heavier than air? What does that mean?'
      'Such machines are notional, and probably not possible. It means to fly 
like a bird, 
which is heavier than air, not like a dirigible, which contains lighter than air 
gas.'
      'What?' she exclaims with a laugh designed to please and flatter me. 'Are 
we all to 
be angels?'
      'Some of us are already so blessed,' I say with reluctant and unconvincing 
gallantry, 
looking up eagerly as the doors open and a woman enters. It is Princess 
Poliakoff, but now 
she no longer has her son with her. I cannot leave, for she has seen me and will 
be 
suspicious if I repeat my ploy of the previous evening. I smile at her and go to 
greet her.
      I do not recognise her thin female companion. 'Sent on,' she says of the 
boy, to 
Vienna. I couldn't risk an encounter
      Holzhammer. He holds such awfully long grudges. Do you know Rickhardt von 
Bek, 
Diana? Lady Cromach.' We are introduced. Lady Diana Cromach is a writer, a 
correspondent for several English and French journals. A Lesbian, she lives in 
Paris. 'What 
brings you to Mirenburg, Lady Cromach?' I enquire in English. 'I am a 
professional vulture,' 
she says. 'The whiff of blood and gunpowder, you know. The war.' Everyone seems 
to be 
babbling tonight. The salon is fuller than usual. Someone has placed a record on 
the 
cabinet phonograph in the corner. It plays a sentimental German song. All at 
once the 
place has the atmosphere of a provincial wedding-breakfast. Lady Cromach wears 
her dark 
curls close to her head, a circlet of pearls. She has an oval face, a rounded 
chin, grey-
green eyes, a strong no^e and a slightly down-turned but full mouth, very 
flexible for an 
Englishwoman. Her family estates are in Ireland. She is almost as tall as me and 
has an 
excellent, if slight, figure in an ivory gown trimmed with very light brown 
lace. Her voice is 
soft. Every statement seems full of implicit irony, no matter how banal it 
sounds on the 
surface. Has she learned to modify an otherwise mundane personality by 
cultivating this 
mannerism or is she really as clever as the Princess now insists? 'Have you read 
her 
articles for the Graphic or La Vie Francaise? So perceptive! She is a seeress. 
You are a 
Cassandra, my dear.' The Princess is plainly intoxicated with her friend. In her 
black 
costume she contrasts so emphatically that I smile and tell them I feel I am 
addressing a 
pair of chess queens. This pleases the Princess who laughs coarsely. 'But we 
play a game 
without kings, dear Ricky.' At this, Lady Cromach smiles and looks down at her 
fan. I find 
the Englishwoman, with her boyish shoulders and gestures, extremely attractive 
and give 
her more of my attention than I Wieve she desires. I am at my most charming, but 
she is 
not charrned, though she seems pleased to acknowledge the effort I ain making 
and so is, I 
believe, flattered at least. Princess oliakoff notices and almost growls at me. 
'Where is your 
little igger tonight .Ricky?'
      Resting,' I reply. Lady Cromach displays more curiosity than before and it 
is my turn 
to smile a little. Doubtless she has heard an elaborate story from the Princess 
but only now 
believes it. Such apparently unconscious confirmations give substance to the 
most 
outrageous lies. I feel satisfied on a number of levels and my spirits lift 
considerably. I have 
excited Lady Cromach's imagination; I have become interesting to her. I offer 
them both my 
cigarette case but Lady Cromach does not smoke and Princess Poliakoff prefers 
her little 
cheroots. She is quick to introduce her Diana to a safer acquaintance and once 
again I find 
I am with Clara, whom I now believe is either a little drunk or has made use of 
the box of 
cocaine for which she is well-known. She has never shown such interest in me 
before and I 
cannot understand why she is attracted to me tonight. She has an eye for 
vulnerability. Can 
I seem vulnerable to her, when I am so full of confidence? The phonograph is 
playing a 
Strauss waltz. 'It is like a Friday or a Saturday,' remarks Clara. 'Not like a 
Wednesday at 
all.' She is pleased, but I am beginning to feel slightly irritated and 
claustrophobic. All the 
same Clara's pursuit has its effect. I have no intention, however, of returning 
to Alexandra 
with the marks of a birch on my behind; not yet. 'You are looking so beautiful 
tonight, 
Ricky,' says Clara. 'You have only to ask Frau Schmetterling and I could join 
you a little 
later.' I laugh. 'You are after my - ' I hesitate. She makes a movement of 
triumphant 
withdrawal and our eyes meet even as she straightens her back. 'We shall have to 
see,' I 
say. 'But I think it could be arranged.' We all seem to be playing the same game 
tonight. 
And Clara grins, biting her lower lip, and winks. She is off into the press. I 
am alone. My 
first impulse is to leave quietly but before I know it I have crossed the carpet 
to where 
Princess Poliakoff and Lady Cromach, arm in arm, are amusing themselves at the 
expense 
of a red-faced dodderer who has mistaken them for whores. 'I do hope we shall 
meet 
again, I tell them. I kiss their hands. Princess Poliakoff is a little cold, but 
I am under the 
impression that Lady Cromach has almost imperceptibly squeezed my fingers. To 
the 
strains of the waltz I make a lighthearted departure and spring up the stairs to 
our room. I 
find with disappointment that my little girls are asleep. Alexandra has her 
mouth open and 
is snoring. She looks, as she often does, like a replete rat, and I turn my 
attention first to 
her youthful flesh, then to Therese who, in sleep, seems slightly puzzled, just 
a trifle 
worried by something, and yet her lips are innocently curved in a smile. 
Alexandra opens 
alarmed, accusatory eyes, then composes her features in a way I have only seen 
on a 
much older woman. 'I wish I could join you down there,' she says. 'You've 
enjoyed yourself, 
haven't you?' Her voice is low and loving. 'I was missing you.' I lean down to 
embrace her. 
Therese grunts and stirs but does not wake up. 'I think we should go,' I say. 
'Are you 
satisfied.'
      'With Therese?' She frowns. 'Oh, yes. We'll come again tomorrow, shall we? 
For a 
different lady?' I am indulgent. 'You don't think we should rest, be by 
ourselves, at least 
until Friday or Saturday?' She is displeased. 'But it is getting so exciting. 
Are you bored 
already?' I shake my head. 'Not bored. Merely patient.'
She puts her feet to the floor and looks at herself in the mirror. 'What's 
wrong?' I reassure 
her and, of course, within moments am promising her that we shall return 
tomorrow, that I 
will speak to Frau Schmetterling before we leave. I would do anything to 
preserve this 
dream and will avoid, if I can, any hint of conflict between us. 'You are a 
wonderful, 
wonderful friend.' Naked, she raises herself to put her arms around my neck. 'I 
adore you. I 
love you so much, Ricky.' I kiss her violently on the mouth and then pull away 
from her, 
attempting gaiety. 'Get dressed. We must slip into the night.' Sadness and 
distress have 
invaded me so swiftly that I am angry, as if faced with a physical enemy. Much 
as I control 
myself she notices. When she is ready for the street she says quietly. 'Have I 
upset you?' I 
deny it, of course. 'Not at all. I met an old buffoon downstairs who insisted on 
boring me 
about the war. He all but ruined my evening.' She becomes tactful. 'Perhaps 
you're tired of 
our adventure? Perhaps we should rest tomorrow, after all.' But I am by now 
fierce in my 
insistence that we continue. 'You're certain you want to?' she says. 'Of 
course,' I reply. The 
anger fades. She appears to be mollified. I, in turn, become astonished at how 
easily she 
can be reassured. But she is a child. It is experience which encourages us to 
pursue our 
suspicions; that and the memory of past pain. She has not known pain. Only 
boredom. In a 
woman of my own age I should sense an echo, some form of sympathy. But with 
Alexandra there is no sympathy. And I continue to conspire in her ignorance 
because it is 
the child I love. If she were to become a woman I should lose interest in her in 
a matter of 
weeks at the most. We persist in a conspiracy in which I alone am guilty, for I 
know what I 
am denying her. I refuse my own reason. I refuse to consider any sense of 
consequence. 
She is what I want. I will not have her change. And yet I have no real power in 
the matter. I 
can only pray the moments will last as long as possible for it will be 
Alexandra, in the end, 
who will make the decision either to stop dreaming or, more likely, substitute 
one dream for 
another. I look carefully at Papadakis's sallow, bearded face. At the deep 
hollows under his 
morbid eyes whose melancholy is emphasised by the spectacles he affects. Even 
the grey 
streaks in his beard have an unhealthy look, as if a saprophytic plant invades 
it. He turns 
away from my stare to pick at something with a quiet, fussy movement. I have 
made him 
self-conscious. I enjoy my moment. 'You should take more exercise,' I say. He 
grunts and 
shifts towards the shadows: a need to hide. His shoulders seem to become more 
stooped 
than usual. I am driving him into the darkness where he feels safest. 'Have you 
been 
looking for the evidence again?' I ask. 'I have told you, the photographs are 
not in the 
house.' He pushes back the heavy green curtain which covers the door of my 
bedroom. He 
disappears behind it. I pause to refill my pen. Alexandra is petulant. Her full 
lips turn 
downward and she pulls a hand through wet hair. Her skin seems to have lost its 
lustre this 
afternoon. Her shoulders and her breasts in particular have a lifeless look: a 
wax statue. 
'You are eating too much custard,' I call after Papadakis. 'Too much bread and 
jam!' 
Alexandra pulls herself together, evidently displeased with her own mood.
      I hand her a glass of champagne. She accepts it; she is placatory - 'Could 
we find 
some opium? My nerves. Or some cocaine?' I shrug. 'Are you afraid? Do you want 
to go 
home?' I am still sluggish and am not properly awake. She shakes her head. 'Of 
course 
not. But with all this news, not knowing who is doing what or where my parents 
are and so 
on - Well, it's not surprising I'm a little agitated. Could you get some opium?' 
She begins to 
dry her hair, staring hard at her face in the mirror of the dressing table. 'I'm 
sure it's 
possible,' I tell her. 'But is it wise?'
      She pouts, glares at me in that gesture I have come to recognise as her 
substitute 
for direct anger. 'Is any of this wise?' And then turns as if to say What have 
you made of 
me? I am in no mood for accusations. 'Are you suggesting -?' But of course she 
has 
suggested nothing in words. 'You are only what you were before we met. I am 
merely the 
instrument of your desire. I have told you that from the beginning. You can 
return to your 
parents' home if you wish and we'll say goodbye as friends.' I know that she 
will not go. I 
have countered her attempt at manipulation. 'I love you, Alexandra,' I say. She 
begins to 
cry. 'You have overtaxed yourself. Lie down for half-an-hour. Tonight I'll see 
if there is any 
opium to be had. When you've rested we'll go shopping. Some new clothes.' She 
cheers 
immediately. She has almost no sense of the future. She lives only for 
immediate, 
meaningless victories. She chooses not to rest but to get dressed so we shall 
not find the 
shops closed. I put on my dark brown suit with the buff waistcoat and kid boots 
and gloves, 
the cream cravat, a pearl pin. I am pleased with the effect. Today I think I 
look younger 
than she, but her paintbox and her powder soon adjusts the balance. She wears 
pale 
green silk with darker green lace ruffles, a matching hat with pheasant 
feathers. Her boots 
and gloves are also of the dark green. I pick up my stick, she her reticule, and 
we are off on 
our expedition. Carriages are lined up outside the hotel, eager for business. I 
am 
uncomfortable with the situation, for we, almost the only guests left, are more 
conspicious 
than usual. I wonder about changing hotels, but once we are in the carriage and 
she has 
lowered her veil I dismiss my anxieties. On the way to the fashionable arcades 
of 
Falfnersallee we note the increased number of soldiers. Some of the shops have 
their 
shutters up. Here and there workers are moving sandbags against walls. I smile. 
'They are 
taking this all very seriously, eh?' She smiles mindlessly at me for she is 
already thinking of 
the dress she will buy. The ladies of Falfnersallee are delighted to see us. We 
have all their 
attention as we move from shop to shop. She orders dresses, underclothes, a tea-
gown, 
an umbrella, a Japanese kimono, all of which I must approve and pay for. Trade 
is slow at 
present, I am told. For my own satisfaction I take her to a jeweller's and there 
buy a Lalique 
brooch for her, green and white wisteria which looks perfect on her dress. She 
kisses it, 
kisses me and she is my happy schoolgirl again. We return via the quays and stop 
the 
carriage to watch two swans bobbing on the choppy waters. The misty light of the 
evening 
softens their outlines and they seem to merge with the silver river and vanish. 
The poplars 
in the dusk of Falfnersallee are black as Indian ink on a grey wash and rooks 
are calling 
from them like bored boys on a Sunday; noisy but unenthusiastic. Otherwise the 
great 
avenue is eery, virtually deserted. 'Has everyone abandoned the city?' I say. 
'Have we the 
whole of Mirenburg to ourselves?' We embrace. In our rooms, with the gas lit, we 
inspect 
her parcels, her new hats, her brooch, a gold chain, a silver bracelet, her 
shoes. She 
spreads them all over the bed. She has the air of a soldier, triumphant from a 
looting 
expedition. She bites her lip and grins. She might have stolen all this. 
Unexpectedly I 
realise I could be preparing her for someone else, someone for whom she will 
make every 
sacrifice she will not make for me. It is not that I frighten her, though she 
says I do, it is that 
I do not frighten her enough, for real, committed love must always have a little 
fear in it or it 
would hardly be so precious. It is I who am afraid. I hate myself for my 
mysterious 
cowardice. I cannot identify its source. I continue to smile like a fool. I am 
more intelligent, 
more powerful, more experienced, even more humane than she: yet I am helpless. I 
grin 
like a clown as she parades her booty. My cheque-book is almost exhausted. I 
must go to 
my bank and get a new one tomorrow. I can always telegraph for more funds if 
necessary. 
I have not yet overstepped the mark with my family, I am certain, although of 
course they 
would not support me if they received any word of this escapade. I begin to 
doubt the 
wisdom of asking for Clara, as I did last night. There is still time to 
telephone to Frau 
Schmetterling. Alone, I would enjoy Clara's attentions, would happily give 
myself up to her, 
but now I am afraid Alexandra will think less of me. Even as I smile at her I 
become 
determined to make a show of strength tonight.
      Just before we enter Rosenstrasse I pause in the darkness, certain I can 
hear 
distant gunfire. 'They must be fighting quite close,' I say. She shakes her 
head, impatient 
with me, eager to reach the house. 'It's just the river. Loading a boat or 
something.' It is 
definitely gunfire. We mount the steps. There is a pretty French song coming 
from the 
salon. As usual, we go straight to the room to which Trudi directs us. It is a 
little larger than 
the other two, with rather less furniture in it: some potted palms and two vases 
of gladioli 
which I know Clara favours. 'Beautiful colours,' says Alexandra. Her maroon 
linen rustles. 
'Not one stem is the same.' Although she has accepted my rules for the evening 
her hand 
shakes as she reaches for a flower. I take off my jacket and throw myself into 
the big 
armchair. I feel exhausted, but I am controlling myself well. She is far too 
self-involved at 
present to notice any subleties of mood in me. 'I prefer this room,' she says. 
'The other one 
was vulgar.' I light a cigarette. 'I enjoy vulgarity. And surely these are the 
premises for 
discarding good taste occasionally.' Someone taps on the door. 'Our mistress has 
arrived. 
Open it for her.' With a deliberate gesture of submission she obeys. Clara 
stands there, all 
in grey, with a silver choker about her throat. To this is pinned a small, 
blood-red rose. 
'Thank you Alexandra. You are as lovely as I was told.' She kisses my child on 
the 
forehead and closes the door herself. 'Well, another crowded evening downstairs. 
So hot!' 
She opens her fan and waves it once or twice under her face.
      There is a suggestion of mockery in the composed smile she offers me. 'Sit 
down, 
Alexandra.' She indicates a straight-backed chair. Alexandra hesitates. Clara 
frowns. 
Alexandra sits. She is beginning to join in the spirit of this game. 'First we 
shall have some 
cocaine,' says Clara. 'Do you know how to take cocaine, Alexandra?' The child 
shakes her 
head. 'I will show you how to prepare it for sniffing. For my part, I prefer the 
syringe.' She 
touches her own cheek, laughing at herself. 'Like Sherlock Holmes.' From a 
drawer she 
takes a square box covered in black velvet. 'Do you know the stories, 
Alexandra?' She 
expects no reply and receives none. Alexandra is fascinated. Clara opens the box 
and 
takes a bottle of clear liquid from it. Beside this, on the marble of the 
chest's top, she lays a 
silver syringe. 'That is for me. But for you two, the crystals.' Out comes a 
tiny cut-throat 
razor with a mother-of-pearl handle, a small green-glass jar with a black screw-
top, a hand-
mirror in a silver frame. Clara works like a surgeon with these instruments. 
Every 
placement is precise. Without turning she says: 'I think you can remove your 
clothes now, 
Alexandra.' I avoid looking at either of them until Alexandra has actually begun 
to undress. 
Clara's rituals are often different and this one, of course, is completely 
unfamiliar. 'You may 
keep the necklace and bracelets,' says Clara. 'Fold your clothes neatly. I hate 
untidiness. 
Then come over here.' With deep concentration she shows Alexandra how much 
cocaine 
to take from the jar on the little spoon, how to chop it this way and that with 
the razor until it 
is as fine as it can be, measuring it into four lines of near-identical length 
and width on the 
glass of the mirror. 'You will prepare the next one,' she says. She fills her 
syringe and takes 
a little piece of cotton-wool which she has saturated in disinfectant, laying 
the syringe's 
needle on it. 'Now both of you may undress me,' she says. 'You may behave as you 
like 
during this part of the evening.' Therese had worn only a chemise and drawers, 
but Clara is 
all buckles and pins and combs. We set upon her, Alexandra and I, like hungry 
peasants at 
a chicken, picking and pulling, until our mouths can fasten on breasts, stomach, 
thighs. 
And all the while Clara is a statue, hardly moving, maintaining dignity and 
equilibrium at 
every tug and pressure, as if she challenges us to move her. Then Alex is 
kneeling and 
licking at her sex. 'That is enough,' says Clara. 'Get undressed Ricky.' I do as 
she 
commands. Now we are all naked save that Clara keeps her necklet with the rose 
and 
Alexandra retains her jewellery. Clara dabs at her upper arm with more cotton-
wool, then 
very slowly applies the syringe. When she has finished she takes two thin silver 
tubes from 
her box. 'One measure in each nostril,' she tells us. 'You first, Ricky.' I lean 
over the mirror 
and sniff up first one line, then, changing hands, the second. Alexandra 
imitates me and is 
surprised, I can tell, that she feels no immediate sensation. Clara gives a 
little gasp and 
looks towards her bottle with the affection one normally reserves for a loved 
one or an 
especially fine wine. My head is suddenly all delicious tingling sensitivity, a 
feeling which 
spreads through every nerve of my body and seems to excite blood and flesh to 
new, 
exquisite life. 'Oh!' Alexandra is receiving the same effect. I envy her this 
first experience, 
as I am sure does Clara. 'Oh! Oh, Clara!' She looks with gratitude towards the 
whore who 
continues to smile that same knowing smile. Then Clara orders me to my chair, 
Alexandra 
to the bed. With cold concentration she begins to explore the girl's body, 
scratching here, 
stabbing with a nail there, discovering her most sensitive parts. She takes a 
hatpin from the 
table and deliberately slides it down Alexandra's left-side, drawing spots of 
blood, so 
Alexandra moans and gives vent to a strange, thin wail. She tries to move, to 
embrace 
Clara, but Clara will not allow it. She repeats the operation on the girl's 
right side, from 
shoulder to waist, over the buttock, down the thigh, the calf, to the foot. She 
leans to lick 
the blood, rolling it on her tongue like a connoisseur. I now lie beside 
Alexandra on the bed 
and receive two fiery lines to match hers. Then Clara begins to scratch, to 
slap, to whip 
with a thin cane until we are both writhing for her, moaning for her and I am 
certain I shall 
die if all this delicious agony is prolonged another second. Alexandra's voice 
is hoarse with 
those thin sounds she has almost continuously made. Clara is grunting. She turns 
us on 
our backs and repeats the process until almost every inch of our flesh is tender 
with 
bruises and tiny cuts. Then Alexandra lies with her face pressed to my genitals 
while Clara 
produces a china dildo shaped like a penis and, using a minimum of cream, 
thrusts it into 
Alexandra's small behind. There is now naked pleasure on Clara's face. With 
cruel delight 
she rams the dildo in and out while I hold Alex's head against my groin, 
glorying in the hot 
gasping breath on my cock. Alex's nails dig deep into my thighs. The movements 
of the 
struggling skull excite me and I begin to roll in unison with Clara's relentless 
thrusts. I find 
Alex's lips and try to enter them, but Clara pushes the girl aside and, leaving 
the dildo 
where it is, squats astride me to move herself to a banshee's orgasm. She yells. 
Alex is 
astonished, but I know Clara of old and begin to shout with her, reproducing all 
but the act 
of spending before, with hardly any hesitation, I turn Alexandra onto her front, 
remove the 
dildo and replace it with my cock, buggering and buggering while Clara slaps at 
my arse 
like a jockey on the winning stretch. My orgasm is monumental, horrifying, 
draining. Clara 
takes my place and the dildo is used again, this time in Alex's cunt, brutally, 
until with arms 
spread wide, with legs spread wide, she begins to shake like an epileptic, her 
hoarse 
screams rising to a shuddering crescendo until it seems to me she is going to 
vomit. Then 
it is over. A full five minutes later Alexandra begins to weep. Her sobs are 
deep-throated 
and, like her orgasm, move her entire body. Clara leans back on her pillows and 
smokes a 
cigarette with an expression of complete satisfaction. I am still unable to 
move. My vision is 
blurred, perhaps through the effects of cocaine. I can smell nothing but sex. My 
skin is still 
flaming; my groin aches. There is no question of visiting the salon tonight. 
Lulled by 
Alexandra's sobs, I fall asleep. When I awake my body feels white hot and my 
mind is 
overwhelmed by such appalling desolation I can think only of death. When I 
eventually turn 
my head it is to see Alexandra's bruised and bleeding body bending over the 
chest as she 
prepares more cocaine. I am ready to weep with hatred and jealously at her 
ability to 
recover so rapidly. I retreat into sleep. I am soon awaked by the soft touch of 
Alexandra's 
hand; it is a tender gesture, a gesture of love. My mood changes to one of easy 
happiness 
almost at once. 'There is more cocaine for us,' she murmurs. 'Come, my darling. 
See if you 
can sit up.' Clara wears a white lace negligee. 'You men have no stamina,' she 
says 
affectionately. 'The drug will revive you, Ricky. What a beautiful couple you 
are.' She has 
the air of a woman proud of her prizewinning dogs. 'I have some ointment for you 
to put 
on.' I lift my head to sniff up the cocaine and almost immediately feel 
improvement. 
Alexandra begins to rub the ointment into my skin from top to bottom. When she 
has 
finished I tend to her. A certain perspective returns. Clara is in no hurry to 
leave and just 
now I have no great desire to be alone with Alexandra. We smoke cigarettes and 
discuss 
the charms of other lovers we have known. Clara is rather more willing to gossip 
than 
Therese. We drink some good claret and eat tiny pieces of cheese. Clara wants to 
know 
about Lady Cromach, but I can only repeat what I have heard. 'She seems to like 
you,' she 
says. 'Who is this?' asks Alexandra, not really jealous. 'They have a room 
here,' says 
Clara. 'She and the Princess. But they do not seem interested, as yet, in any of 
the girls.'
      'Oh, I would love so much to go down there,' says Alexandra. 'Wouldn't it 
be 
possible, Ricky?'
      'Too dangerous. And I doubt if Princess Poliakoff would be deceived, even 
if we 
smeared some burnt cork on your face and lent you a pair of my trousers.' I move 
in the 
bed. The touch of the soft linen on my body, the effect of the cocaine, are 
superb. We are 
all three so happy that my former fears, my caution, my common-sense seem banal 
to me. 
'But what can anyone say?' she asks. 'Oh, there are ways of saying things. But 
I'll put my 
mind to the problem. Let's get dressed while we can.' Slowly I lower my feet to 
the carpet 
and stand on trembling legs. Clara brings my clothes to me. We laugh as the 
material 
makes us wince. 'We've overdone it. Tomorrow we must definitely rest. I thought 
I was 
going to die tonight.'
      'Me, too,' says my Alex. 'But what a beautiful death. You have taught me 
so much, 
Clara. Thank you.' She is far more enthusiastic about Clara than she was about 
Therese. I 
cannot fathom her tastes or her motives. There is a knock. Frau Schmetterling is 
apologetic. 'I'm glad I haven't interrupted you. I thought you'd be leaving. I 
wanted to speak 
to you, Ricky.' Alexandra is alarmed, like a schoolgirl caught smoking. 'Good 
evening, my 
dear.' I have never known Frau Schmetterling to visit one of the rooms before. 
She is 
stately as ever, in black and white, but seems agitated. 'Would you excuse me 
while I have 
a word with your gentleman? Ricky?' We move out into the passage. 'This is not 
the best 
time,' she says, 'but I have decided to go to bed early. It has been too busy 
for a weekday. 
We were not really prepared. Poor Mister can hardly stand up. Ulric has 
threatened to 
leave. It is the War. The threat of death is a great encourager of lust. I 
thought I'd invite you 
to stay here, in one of the private suites, if you would feel better. I am 
keeping it aside for 
you. Until the business with Holzhammer is over. I have heard rumours. Well, as 
you'd 
expect. No truce has been reached and Holzhammer… He means to win, I 
gather, at 
any price. The city could suffer. You know how fond I am of you. Your hotel is 
so near the 
centre. Here, we are more secluded. Well?' Her dark, maternal eyes are earnest.
I am moved by her concern. 'You have always been so kind,' I say, touching her 
arm. 'I'm 
comfortable enough at the Liverpool, at least for the moment. There is also the 
young lady 
to consider.'
      'If you could promise me there would be no scandal I'd willingly extend 
the invitation. 
The Prince intends to defend -Oh, Ricky - Simply reassure me.' She seems 
doubtful, 
reluctant to have Alexandra as a guest. Her little fat face is full of worry.
      'There would be no scandal, I promise.' But I am lying, of course. If 
Alexandra's 
parents were to find out where their daughter was it would be the end of Frau 
Schmetterling's business in Mirenburg. For that reason I am firm in declining 
her offer. 
'What danger can there be to civilians, even if Holzhammer marches in tomorrow? 
Mirenburg is not Paris. There is no Commune here!'
'The Prince means to resist,' she says again.
      'Then Germany will come to help him and Holzhammer will be trounced once 
and 
for all.'
      'The guns,' she murmurs. 'They say; Holzhammer will not bombard Mirenburg. 
He 
would arouse the hatred of the civilised world.'
      Frau Schmetterling is unconvinced.
      'I'm a little exhausted,' I tell her gently. 'I desire very much, madame, 
to get to bed.'
      'Of course.' She squeezes my hand. 'But you must remember, Ricky, that I 
am your 
friend.' She waddles away down the passage, then pauses. 'I care for your well-
being, my 
dear.' She waves her plump arms as if to dismiss her own sentiments. She lets 
out a 
matronly chuckle. 'Good night, Ricky.'
      Our carriage is loud in the expectant streets; Alexandra wants to know the 
substance of my conversation with the madam. I tell her. 'But it would be so 
convenient,' 
she says. 'Why didn't you accept?' My instincts are against it. I can hardly 
explain my 
feelings to myself and I am already tiring. My nerves are bad, my body no longer 
sings. I 
desperately want the comfort of the Liverpool's sheets. Alexandra is still 
euphoric. She 
kisses and hugs me. I am her master, she says, her beautiful man, the most 
wonderful 
lover in the world. Horses race by with soldiers on their backs. I see lamps 
moving, hear 
the occasional voice and I wonder how much of the tension I sense is external, 
how much 
comes from within. I am thinking of Princess Poliakoff. Several years before, in 
Venice, I 
attended one of her parties at which, she told me, I was to be the guest of 
honour. She had 
brought in some peasants from her country estate: young men and women whom, I 
believe, worked for her. 'Here,' she had said, 'are your pupils. They know all 
about you and 
are willing to be educated by you.' Those strange, fresh faces, so wholesome and 
natural 
in tone and colour, yet so fundamentally degenerate, looked towards me eagerly 
as if I 
were Satan Himself, a Magister of Corruption to whom they could offer their 
souls as my 
apprentices. The responsibility was completely beyond me. I told Princess 
Poliakoff such 
games bored me. I fled the house. I am aware of my own limitations and, to some 
degree 
at least, my own motives. I live as I do because I have no need to work and no 
great talent 
for art; therefore my explorations are usually in the realm of human experience, 
specifically 
sexual experience, though I understand the dangers of self-involvement in this 
as in any 
other activity. Those peasants had been creatures for whom sexuality had become 
an 
escape rather than an adventure. They had made no choice at all; they were 
dependent 
upon the Princess for their bread. They had no faith in themselves, no belief in 
their rights 
as individuals to strengthen and maintain their own wills and to accept any 
consequences 
of their own actions. And in this they are dangerous. In this, I would go so far 
to say, they 
were evil. And I believe Princess Poliakoff evil, I think. Yet, surely, I am now 
doing 
something which I refused to do then, in Venice. Have I no morality left to me, 
after all? 
Alexandra clings to me, kisses me with soft, little girl kisses. It is all I can 
do at this moment 
not to shudder.
We tug off our clothes as soon as we are in our bedroom. She laughs and kisses 
my 
wounds. She looks at herself in the mirror at her bruises and welts, as if she 
surveys a new 
gown. 'Oh, Clara is marvellous. Such presence! Don't you think so, Ricky?'
      I am already in bed. 'Would you wish to be like Clara?' I ask.
      'A whore? Of course not. But to have such power!'
      I shake my head. 'She has no power in reality. She pretends it, to serve 
her clients. 
She is paid to act that part. The fact that she enjoys it is probably why she is 
paid so well. 
But she -'
      Alexandra crawls in beside me. 'Ssh, Ricky. You are too serious. Can you 
see me 
as a Clara?'
      I take her tenderly to me. She is almost immediately asleep, her face in 
the pillows. 
It is as if she lies just below the surface of freedom; head down in an 
unsecured coffin from 
which, if she merely turns her body once, she can immediately escape. I dim the 
lamp but 
do not extinguish it. The sky outside becomes grey. I intend to sleep at least 
until the 
evening. I dream of a dark femme fatale whom I cannot identify, mother and 
priestess, 
wicked and tender; she laughs at me and pulls thorny roses from her body; her 
laughter is 
gutteral and there is a thin, overbred dog at her side which whines, cringes and 
bares its 
teeth at me, barking whenever I try to approach her. Panting, I awaken. Dawn is 
yellow 
ivory barred with dusty gold. My body aches, my muscles are tense. I have no 
energy; my 
skull seems clamped. There are noises from outside. Momentarily I mistake them 
for the 
sounds of surf and wind. I hear a distinctive whistling, a boom. I hear voices 
from the open 
window. Taking up my dressing gown I walk on stiff legs to the balcony and stand 
there, 
supporting myself on the iron railing. The light is painful. There is smoke 
rising everywhere, 
as if from large fires. I look across the square where figures are running this 
way and that. 
Another terrible whistling, and before my eyes I see a Gothic spire crack and 
fall. My 
predictions were meaningless, comforting, without foundation; little tunes 
hummed to keep 
dark realities at bay, for Holzhammer is bombarding Mirenburg! I turn into the 
room. 
Alexandra continues to sleep. She has pushed away the covers. There is a smile 
on her 
face. I check the impulse to wake her and stumble back to bed to light a 
cigarette and lie 
looking up at the bed curtains, listening to the sounds of destruction. Then I 
am drawn 
again to the balcony. For most of the morning I remain there, still incredulous, 
as the 
enemy shells smash a Romanesque column or erode the delicate masonry of a modern 
apartment building. It is probable that I am not yet free of the cocaine because 
I begin to 
think the bombardment is bringing a new kind of beauty to the city, for the 
moment at least, 
perhaps also a dignity it has not previously possessed. Just as a woman in 
middle or late 
years will achieve grace and poise through vicissitude and pain making her more 
attractive 
than ever she could have been in the prime of her youth and looks, so Mirenburg 
seems 
now. I do not grieve for her. It seems relief must soon come in the form of a 
truce. It is not 
possible that, in all humanity, the besiegers could place upon their consciences 
the 
responsibility for the annihilation of so much nobility and optimism, those 
centuries of 
civilisation. And sure enough, at exactly mid-day, the guns become silent. 
Prince Badehoff-
Krasny will not let his city be destroyed. The autumn light is washed with grey; 
clouds rise 
from the ruins like baffled souls. I return to bed and sleep, my own wounds 
forgotten. Old 
Papadakis brings more boiled fish. I am surprised because I can smell alcohol on 
his 
breath. 'You were so proud of all your abstinences,' I say. 'You sought them out 
as if they 
were positive virtues; as if they gave you merit. You were so full of yourself. 
But you know 
what it is, too, don't you, to be ruined by a woman?' He sighs and puts the tray 
over my 
knees, below my writing case. 'Eat if you want to. Haven't you finished your 
story yet?' We 
are both exiles. We have no other bond. 'Are you afraid of it?' I ask. 'Look how 
much I've 
written!' His dark eyes stare into a corner of the room. I remember when, 
relaxed, he used 
to seem like an eager boy. 'Self-denial is not the same as self-discipline,' I 
tell him. 'You 
remain an infant. But you have lost your charm. She found out what you were, 
didn't she? 
Widow-hunter!' I believe I am making him angry. For the first time he looks me 
full in the 
eyes, as an equal. 'All those dead painters! Vulture! Bring me a bottle of 
decent claret. Or 
have you drunk it all yourself? Why do you feel you should be rewarded? You have 
spent 
your life responding to others and you thought it would always pay. And now you 
have only 
me and you cannot bear to respond, can you? I am your nemesis.'
      'You are mad,' he says, and leaves. I continue to laugh. I disdain his 
pieces offish. I 
continue to write. I am writing now. The ink is the colour of the Mediterranean, 
flowing from 
my silver Waterman. What have the Italians become? What does their Duce mean to 
me? 
And Germany is destroyed. What dreadful perversity led to this? Was it all 
prefigured? How 
could we have known better? Can God be so small-minded that he disapproves of a 
Lesbian salon? But it is not that which He set out to destroy. Oh, the pain of 
movement. 
Alexandra is whispering in my ear. 'Ricky, I'm hungry.' One dream washes into 
another. I 
smile at her. 'I love you. I am your brother, your father, your husband.' She 
kisses my 
cheek. 'Yes. I'm hungry, Ricky. Do you feel rested? I feel wonderful.'
      I begin to sit up. 'Have you looked outside?' It is nearly dark. 'No,' she 
says. 'Why 
should I?' I tell her to go to the balcony and tell me what she sees. She thinks 
it is a game. 
Frowning and smiling she obeys. 'What's happened? Oh, God! They have pulled down 
-'
      'They have shot down,' I say. 'Holzhammer's seige is beginning in 
earnest.' First she 
is frightened, and then she begins to show delight. 'But Ricky, it means I'm 
completely free. 
People must have been killed, eh?'
      I draw in a deep breath. I have never known any creature so 
unselfconsciously 
greedy. 'What a wonderful animal you are. Don't you want to try to get to 
Vienna? Or 
Paris?'
      'And leave Rosenstrasse? Is there anywhere else like it?'
      'Nothing quite like it.'
      'Then we'll see what happens.'
      That night we visit the brothel and before the new girl (an unremarkable 
creature 
called Claudia who submits to Alexandra's rather clumsy imitations of Clara) 
arrives, Frau 
Schmetterling pays us a call. 'Remember my offer,' she says. 'They are not 
interested in 
this corner of town.'
      On our way home we are stopped by soldiers. I tell them who I am. 
Alexandra 
invents a name. The soldiers refuse to laugh at my jokes and insist on escorting 
us back to 
the hotel. The next morning I receive a visit from a policeman with orders for 
me to 
accompany him to his headquarters. He is perfectly polite. It is an examination 
to which all 
foreign nationals must submit. I tell Alexandra to wait for me in our rooms and 
if I do not 
return by evening to inform Frau Schmetterling. At Nurnbergplatz, however, I 
find an 
apologetic police captain who claims to have met my father and to be an admirer 
of the 
new Kaiser. 'We have to be cautious of spies and saboteurs. But, of course, you 
are 
German.' I ask if it will be possible to have a safe-conduct from the city. He 
promises to do 
his best, but is not very helpful. 'My superiors,' he says. 'They cannot risk 
anyone reporting 
to the enemy. Have you been told about the curfew?' No private citizens are 
allowed to be 
on the streets after nightfall without special permission. This threatens my 
routine. I hardly 
know what is happening. While we are talking, more shells begin to land within 
the city 
walls and now I am aware that the defenders are firing back. The policeman is 
despondent. 
'We are being attacked with our own guns. Holzhammer seized the train from 
Berlin. Those 
are Krupp cannon. Even more powerful than the ones you used against Paris. But I 
should 
not tell you this, sir. It is hard to become secretive, eh? We are not very 
experienced at 
such things in Mirenburg.' I return, despondent, to The Liverpool. Alexandra is 
half-
dressed, busy with her pots and brushes. 'Oh, thank goodness,' she says, without 
a great 
deal of interest. 'I thought they had arrested you.' She returns to her mirror. 
I find her 
amusing today, perhaps because I am relieved to be free. 'The guns stopped at 
twelve,' 
she says. 'I thought so. Some ultimatum of Holzhammer's. I believe, though the 
newspapers are vague. They are being censored.' I put them down on the bed and 
remove 
my jacket. 'Are you sure you want to go to Rosen-strasse tonight? There's a 
curfew. We 
must leave before dusk and return after dawn. We could eat at the hotel and have 
an early 
night.'
      'But it's Friday,' she says. 'Clara promised to bring that friend. You 
needn't do 
anything. Just watch. I know you're tired. Don't you want some more cocaine?'
I am incapable of complaint. 'Then we must be ready to leave by six. Did you 
have lunch?'
      'I wasn't hungry. You could order something now.'
      I go into the sitting room and ring the bell. I tell the waiter to bring 
some cold ham 
and a selection of cheeses and pates, some bread, a bottle of hock. I retrieve 
the papers 
from the bed and return to the sitting room. The idea that I am trapped in this 
city makes 
me uneasy. I hope that my bank will not be affected, have forgotten to get a new 
book of 
cheques. The papers say there is every expectation that the food-rationing 
system will 
preserve supplies of basic commodities for the duration of the War. A well-
informed source 
has assured a correspondent that Germany is bound to send troops soon. There is 
no 
reference to Holzhammer's capture of the Krupp cannon. A sortie by Bulgarians 
has been 
successfully driven back at the Cesny Gate, to the south. Various regiments are 
deployed 
about the first line of defences beyond the walls. All the loyalist soldiers are 
in good spirits. 
Morale amongst Holzhammer's 'rag-tag' of mercenaries, misguided peasants and 
treacherous rebels, is said to be already very low and the world has received 
the news of 
the cannonade with horror. Comparisons are made to the Siege of Paris, to Metz 
and 
elsewhere, but in all cases those cities were, we are told, far less well-
prepared. 'Her name 
is Lotte,' says Alexandra, her cosmetics in place. She smiles at me and comes to 
nibble on 
a piece of cheese. 'The one Clara says had to leave Paris in a hurry. Why was 
that?'
      I decide to take a bath. As I undress I tell Alexandra what I know of 
Lotte. She used 
to specialise in a bizarre tableau known as The Temptation, Crucifixion and 
Resurrection of 
the Female Christ, in which she would resist any temptations invented by her 
customers, 
be tried, punished and then tied to a large wooden cross, whereupon she would be 
revived 
by the attentions of the clients. This tableau had been famous in Berlin and 
Lotte had been 
the most sought after'specialist' in Germany. She had transferred herself to 
Paris and 
continued with her presentation there until pressure from the Church, which 
owned her 
house, caused her to seek the protection of Frau Schmetterling who accepted her 
on 
condition that the tableau no longer be performed. Frau Schmetterling, although 
Jewish in 
origin, is a pious woman. The last time I had talked to Lotte she told me she 
planned to 
return to Berlin eventually and start up in business again; but she would not 
skimp. You &d 
to spend money to earn money. She prided herself on the c'aborate details of her 
show. 
She was saving every pfennig in order to make a rapid return from'the 
wilderness'. She 
was an actress, she had told me, at heart. Alexandra listens. 'She sounds an 
interesting 
woman. You know Clara has invited us to her own room tonight. She seems to like 
you 
very much. And me.'
      It is perfectly true that Clara is attracted to both of us and this 
puzzles me; to some 
extent it alarms me, also. Refreshed, I dress in my evening clothes. Alexandra 
is wearing a 
pink dress trimmed with red. She looks unusually beautiful. Our cab takes us 
through 
streets full of gun-carriages and supply-wagons; workmen labour amongst the 
half-
destroyed shells of houses and shops, shifting beams and rubble. Alexandra 
hardly notices 
as she chatters to me, until we have turned into Sangerstrasse and she gasps. 
'Oh, my 
God! The Mirov Palace!' The seventeenth-century building has received a direct 
hit which 
has caved in part of the roof and left a huge gap in its upper floors, and yet 
the trees 
surrounding it remain as tranquil as ever, the ornamental gardens as orderly. I 
expect her 
to be frightened, but she is not. I suspect she has still failed to understand 
the reality of 
what is happening. She is half-grinning as she stares around, wide-eyed, at the 
destruction. 'Oh, my God!' And I realise that for her it is merely another dream 
come to life. 
Perhaps that explains her peculiar attitudes: she perceives all this experience 
as merely a 
more intense form of dreaming. Something in her still expects to wake up and 
find 
everything ordinary again. That is why she is so heedless of consequence. Yet 
surely I am 
dreaming, too. A scarlet motor-car goes past. In it, looking rather self-
conscious, are four 
high-ranking officers in tall helmets and a great deal of gold braid. Alexandra 
giggles. 'Each 
one could be Franz-Josef himself. Are they in the right army, do you think?'
I insist that she wear her heavy veil as we pay off t16 carriage and enter the 
peace of 
Rosenstrasse. Starlings are swarming overhead in the hazy October sky and the 
beeches 
are beginning to shed their leaves. 'The air smells so good,' she says, hugging 
my arm. 'I 
am very happy, Ricky.' ^'t'te compliments me for her state of mind. At the door, 
Tru takes 
my hat, stick and gloves, my top-coat, but Alex remains dressed until we reach 
Clara's 
quarters, two large rooms near the top of the house, overlooking the lawn and 
fruit-trees of 
the garden. I have never visited Clara's private rooms before. The hangings, 
cushions and 
upholstery are predominantly dark blue, black and gold, and the perfume seems to 
come 
chiefly from the large, yellow lilies which fill vases on either side of a 
mahogany desk. 
There are books in this room, and a small piano, showing that Clara has, after 
all, some 
taste for culture, for the pieces on the music-stand are by Mozart and Schubert 
and the 
books are either German translations of Fielding, Scott and Thackeray, or works 
by Goethe 
and Schiller. Clara claims to be English, but she has nothing in English on her 
shelves. 
There is a modern novel or two by von Roberts, some French novels of the cheaper 
sort, 
as well as Zola's Nana (which all the whores of my acquaintance read with 
jeering 
fascination, more interested in his originals and how they correspond with the 
fictitious 
characters than the story or the moral), a number of histories and biographies, 
some books 
of travel. Clara comes in from the bedroom. She is wearing a black and white 
riding 
costume. 'I am so pleased you could come,' she says. She kisses first Alexandra 
and then 
me. 'Lotte will be with us in a little while.' I remark on her good taste. 'I'm 
easily bored,' she 
says. 'Only substantial music and books seem to please me these days.' I 
indicate the 
bookcase. 'Yet you have nothing in English… She smiles. 'I prefer German 
and 
French. After all, it is years since I was in London.' She resists my interest 
in her story, 
cocking her head and smiling into my face. She is so pale. I would think her 
consumptive if 
I did not know otherwise. As she chats about her favourite novels and composers 
she 
begins to undress a passive Alexandra. She leads my girl into the bedroom and I 
follow, 
leafing through a volume of Le Sage and remarking on the quality of the 
engravings. 
Alexandra is spread on the dark yellow bed, face down. Clara tells me that the 
book had 
been a gift from a novelist who had travelled all the way from Brussels to be 
with her. She 
applies cream to Alexandra's anus and crosses casually to a chest of drawers to 
take out 
her china dildo. 'Do you care for Le Sage?'
      'I had the usual enthusiasm for him once,' I say. 'Like Moliere, he can 
seem like a 
revelation when one is young.' She smiles in accord, parting Alexandra's cheeks 
and 
pushing the dildo in hard. Alexandra groans. 'Cocaine,' she says. 'Not yet,' 
says Clara. 'You 
can have some later. This is my little pleasure, before Lotte arrives. And I 
think Ricky 
needs arousing tonight. You look tired, Ricky.' I let her know I had not planned 
to join in 
much. 'To tell you the truth the only use I have for a bed is to sleep in one. 
But I might feel 
better later.' Clara removes the dildo, wipes it and replaces it neatly in its 
drawer. This 
exercise, then, has been for me. Alexandra does not move but I can tell from the 
set of her 
shoulders that she is petulant, though not as yet prepared to demand anything of 
Clara. 
'Stay there, ma cherie,' says Clara. We both go back into the other room. Clara 
hands me a 
book. It is by Flaubert, his Salammbo. I admit that it has always defeated me. 
Clara is 
pleased. 'I am glad to hear it. My friend from Brussels recommended it. I have 
started it so 
many times and have perhaps managed a hundred pages at best. I am not much 
interested in the exotic aspects of history. So many of these modern painters 
leave me 
cold. Moreau, for instance.' I cannot agree with her. 'My moods change. 
Sometimes I like 
the smell of incense and the feel of heavy gold. It can be soothing to the 
senses. You are 
more of an epicurean than I, Clara.' I give her back the Flaubert and she 
replaces it 
precisely. 'Are Princess Poliakoff and Lady Diana still in residence?' She nods. 
'They have 
hardly left their rooms, either. I think it must be the beginning of an affair, 
or one which was 
interrupted. I don't know. Certainly the Princess is infatuated. As for Lady 
Cromach, I am 
not sure. She seems anxious to please the Princess but not from what I would 
call any 
driving enthusiasm. She is perhaps too intelligent. Are you attracted to her?' I 
shake my 
head. 'Not attracted, but I think she is interesting. She is a type of Lesbian I 
have not really 
encountered before. Very self-assured, eh? Yet, oh, let's say less narcissistic 
than the 
general run of those one associates with Princess Poliakoff.' Clara sits down on 
a Liberty 
chair and lights a cigarette. 'I know what you mean. That woman goes about her 
business 
and takes exactly what she wants from people. Yet she has none of 
Poliakoff'sgreediness. 
Would you like me to send for Lotte yet?' I shake my head. 'I've been ravenous 
all day. I 
can't stop eating. Let me leave you here with Alexandra. She loves you and might 
like to be 
alone with you for a while. I'll go down to the salon for half-an-hour or so.' 
Clara seems 
concerned. 'If you would like some of the drug now…?' I shake my head. 
'Perhaps 
later. Really, I am quite content. Tell Alexandra some of your stories. Or let 
her sleep. I'll 
come back shortly.' As I descend the staircase I realise that I am curious about 
the 
progress of the War and am hoping that I shall learn something more than what 
has been 
reported. Newspapers are particularly untrustworthy at this time. The salon is 
half-empty. 
There are many more women here than men. Some of the girls have not even 
bothered to 
give themselves the special 'poise' which Madame demands. They are still 
relaxed. The 
casual way in which their legs are positioned hints not at any particular 
carelessness of 
temperament; they unconsciously assume the habitual attitudes of their calling, 
as a soldier 
will stand at ease even in civilian dress, or an off-duty coal-heaver will rest 
one side of his 
body in favour of the other. But they are beginning to become 'ladies'. Caroline 
Vacarescu 
is here, agitated, speaking urgently to an old dandy in a French-cut coat who 
spreads his 
hands and shakes his head. 'But why arrest him? What has he done?' She sees me 
and 
appeals to me. 'Ricky. Tell Herr Schmesser that the Count is a man of honour.' I 
raise my 
eyebrows. 'Mueller?' Herr Schmesser shrugs. 'He was caught red-handed with the 
documents destined for Holzhammer. My dear lady, if you had been with him, you 
too 
would now be under arrest. Think yourself lucky.'
      'They will shoot him, Ricky,' she says. I am sympathetic. She is about to 
lose a 
powerful protector and is in no position to und another quickly. I cannot pity 
Mueller. Indeed 
I feel only satisfaction he has at last been caught. 'Caroline,' I say. 'If I 
can help you, I shall. 
I am not entirely certain at present how much money I have. But I shall do 
everything in my 
power to save you from embarrassment.' I have always liked her. 'Mueller is to 
be shot,' 
she says, as if we have not absorbed the enormity and then, realising we are 
unmoved, 
rushes from the room, presumably to seek help elsewhere. Herr Schmesser looks at 
me. 'If 
she goes out after curfew, she, too, will be arrested. But not,' he adds with a 
small 
smile,'shot. You know of Mueller's activities?'
      'I can assume he was spying.'
      'And you can be sure that Fraulein Vacarescu was helping him. Together 
with 
Budenya-Graetz, who discovered an opportunity to reinstate himself, of course, 
and is 
probably already in Vienna with every detail of our defences. It is a disgusting 
business. 
The treachery, my dear sir! I cannot tell you how much there has been. My faith 
in human 
nature has been ruined in the space of a few days. And this bombardment! Can 
Holzhammer justify it? His own countrymen. His own city!' He sighs and lifts a 
glass of 
champagne to his lips. 'I am very sad.' I pat him on the arm. 'You will cheer up 
here. After 
all, there are no disappointments at Frau Schmetterling's, eh?' He nods 
seriously: 'I hope 
you are right.' I make a good meal of the buffet. The evening begins. The salon 
fills. The 
girls become elegant and alert to the conversation of their guests. The 
phonograph plays a 
waltz and everything is as normal. At length, I return to Clara's. Alexandra has 
by now had 
some cocaine. Lotte, a plump dimpled blonde, all thighs and bust, is using the 
dildo on 
herself while they watch her. I take off most of my clothes and, wearing a 
dressing gown 
supplied by Clara, sink down into a chair and become part of the audience. 
Alexandra will 
later play the part which Clara played earlier, but somehow without Clara's 
delicate 
assurance, and I will continue to watch until I am aroused enough to couple 
naturally and 
cheerfully with Clara for a few minutes before falling soundly asleep until 
morning. At about 
ten o'clock, after a good breakfast in Clara's rooms, we return through the 
chilly October 
sunshine to the Liverpool. The shells are directed more towards the East of the 
city this 
morning and our journey seems safe enough until the cab turns the corner into 
the square 
and we see that the building next to The Liverpool has sustained a good deal of 
superficial 
damage. I look towards our apartment. Servants are nailing boards across 
shattered 
windows. We hurry upstairs. There is glass everywhere in the room. The manager 
is there. 
He is deeply apologetic and tells us that we can move to'safer' rooms at the 
back of the 
hotel. Without a word to him or to Alexandra I go downstairs and telephone Frau 
Schmetterling. She has one of the few private telephones in Mirenburg. 'I would 
like to take 
you up on your offer,' I tell her, 'if it is still possible.'
      'Of course,' she says. Til have the rooms prepared at once. When will you 
arrive.'
      'Probably in an hour or two.'
      She hesitates. Her voice becomes faint as the line fades. 'You are 
bringing your 
friend?'
      'I am afraid that I have no choice.'
      'I will see you at lunch-time,' she says.
      While Alexandra sees to the packing, I make enquiries after Caroline 
Vacarescu. 
She has not returned to the hotel, says the manager. I pay my bill with one of 
his blank 
cheques. He continues to apologise so much I feel sorry for him and am able to 
smile 
cheerfully enough. 'Please don't worry. I will be back here, I am sure, within a 
couple of 
weeks.' I do not inform him of my destination. Alexandra and I are about to 
disappear. If we 
should be discovered, when the War is over I can always make her father an 
offer. I can 
marry her and save the scandal. But for some reason I do not tell Alexandra of 
my plan as, 
with boxes and trunks in three cabs, we flee the ruined Liverpool to the 
sanctuary of 
Rosenstrasse.
      

Chapter Three 
The Siege

      The atmosphere at Rosenstrasse had become increasingly convivial during 
that first 
week of bombardment and, even though the shelling has stopped and the Siege 
proper 
has begun (the city now has an air of desperate calm) this mood remains with us. 
It is 
Friday, October 29th 1897. Seven of us who are permanent residents have taken to 
eating 
together, rather like passengers on a small ship or guests at a provincial 
boarding house. 
Frau Schmetterling presides: our landlady, our captain. Alexandra continues to 
be my 
secret and grows resentful of her exile from the public rooms. She is beginning 
to exhaust 
me. Clara has developed a habit of keeping her company, largely I suspect to 
relieve me. 
'The child is bored. I'll take her for a stroll,' she says, or, 'I've invented a 
new game for our 
little girl.' At night Alexandra and I sleep together as usual, reserving our 
evenings for 
'adventures'. We go out rarely. Mirenburg has become depressing. I cannot stand 
to see 
the boarded windows and doors, the sandbags, the rubble. We have now enjoyed, 
singly 
or in combination, almost all Frau Schmetterling's whores. The only other 
residents who 
hardly ever make an appearance at the table together are Princess Poliakoff and 
Lady 
Cromach. The Englishwoman is frequently out, presumably gathering material for 
her 
articles. I lunch Alexandra goes with Clara to Falfnersallee'to look for 
bargains'. I enjoy a 
good bortsch and a veal cutlet. 'Mister' and Trudi wait on us. Frau 
Schmetterling is kind to 
both of them. Occasionally 'Mister' will be asked to join us, but usually he 
smiles and 
refuses, preferring the company of Chagani, the brooding ex-acrobat, who 
sometimes 
assists him. His gentleness can be disconcerting, even sinister. His drunkard's 
face, so 
youthful and open, and at the same time so cruelly ruptured, expresses a 
peculiar 
eagerness. The ruined veins, the rough, red flesh, the set of his soft mouth and 
the watery 
innocence of his eyes give immediate notice of his despair, his determination to 
remain in 
some way unprotected against the terrors of the world and so, surely by an 
effort of will 
alone, retain the untroubled perceptions of boyhood. Elvira, Frau 
Schmetterling's daughter, 
sometimes dines with us. When she and 'Mister' are together she seems the more 
mature; 
a self-possessed, tiny version of her mother. 'Mister's' expression becomes 
softer, more 
attractive, in her company. Madame's chow dogs, black and unpredictable, 
complete the 
menage, panting around our feet as if they are waiting for one of us to drop 
dead. The 
Dutch banker, Leopold van Geest, sallow and animated, wearing a sort of 
invalid's blanket-
jacket, cuts enthusiastically at his meat. He has decided that it will be at 
least a month 
before Berlin sends help. 'The Prince should have made a Treaty with one or 
another of 
the Powers. Then Holzhammer could not have acted at all. Badehoff-Krasny was too 
confident. He thought he stood on a platform balanced over the torrent. But it 
was a 
tightrope, yes? He leaned back to relax and - Pouf!' He gestures dramatically 
with his fork. 
'Now the Germans will let him drown a little before fishing him out. They want 
the best 
terms, after all.' He shrugs. He has a wife and thirteen children in the Hague 
and is in no 
hurry to return home.
      'The whole city could be destroyed within a month,' says Rakanaspya in 
that husky 
voice of his. The anarchist has been placed under a sort of house-arrest by the 
police. Frau 
Schmetterling had agreed to his staying'so long as he behaves himself,' she 
said. 'We want 
no morbid subjects discussed here'. He wipes his lips and beard with his napkin. 
'All those 
poor people dead while kings and princes play at diplomacy!' Frau Schmetterling 
catches 
his eye and utters a small cough. He sighs. Caroline Vacarescu, beside him, is 
sympathetic. She, too, is on sufferance, having been released from custody four 
days ago. 
She is dressed magnificently as usual. She has no intention, she assures us, of 
lowering 
her standards. Her face is heavily made-up. Mueller was tried by military 
tribunal last week 
and executed for espionage. The papers have been emphatic: his fate was an 
example to 
others. Some of us are a little uneasy in her defiant, knowing presence. Count 
Belozerski, 
the eminent Russian novelist and the most recent arrival, leans his handsome 
face over 
the table and murmurs in French: 'I have never seen so many dead soldiers.' He 
was 
turned back from the walls while trying to leave Mirenburg. He alone has 
witnessed the 
reality outside and is allowed to say more than anyone on the subject. Frau 
Schmetterling 
indulges him because she admires, she says, his mind. But she is also impressed 
by his 
connections and his beauty. His pale blond hair, together with his slightly 
Oriental cast of 
features, give him a striking and dominating appearance. He is tall and slender 
and his 
military stance is tempered by a natural grace which serves to soften the first 
impression of 
a distant and somewhat menacing figure. Count Belozerski is proud, he says, of 
his Tartar 
forebears. He sometimes refers romantically to his 'Siberian blood'. He is in 
all important 
respects a gentlemanly European. 'Of the best type,' says Frau Schmetterling. 
Caroline 
Vacarescu also dotes on him, but Belozerski has confided to me that he is 
determined to 
have nothing to do with her. 'Her selfishness,' he told me last night, 'is 
mitigated only by her 
recklessness. Of course both qualities are alarming to a man like myself. One 
should be in 
love with such women in one's youth. To take up with the likes of Caroline 
Vacarescu in 
middle-life is to risk too much. My cousin was, short while, involved with her. 
She almost 
ruined him. She is the most extravagant creature I have ever known and I Prefer 
to admire 
her from a distance.' I, of course, feel friendly towards her, but that could be 
because I 
have nothing that she would want. It is my belief Count Belozerski is attracted 
to her. He is 
a little inclined to overstate his case. He adds: 'One is dealing, as a 
novelist, all day with 
ambiguities, with problems of human character. One does not need any more 
ambiguities 
in one's life.' Perhaps he is right. I am not a novelist. I tell him I thrive on 
ambiguity. For me 
a woman must always have it or she is not attractive to me. He laughs. 'But then 
for you life 
is a novel, eh? Thank God not everyone is the same, or I should have no 
readers.'
      'The hospitals cannot cope with the wounded.' Egon Wilke sits immediately 
to the 
left of Frau Schmetterling, across from Belozerski. He is a stocky fellow, with 
the body and 
bearing of an artisan. His hands are huge and his large head has brown hair, 
cropped 
close to the skull. He wears a sort of dark pea-jacket and a white cravat. He is 
an old friend 
of Frau Schmetterling's, apparently from the days when she ran a house of an 
altogether 
different character in Odessa, where criminals had gathered. These acquaintances 
from 
her past are usually discouraged from visiting Rosenstrasse, but Wilke, who has 
been 
introduced to the company as a jewel merchant, is the exception. Frau 
Schmetterling is 
evidently very fond of him. He saved her, it is rumoured, from ruin (perhaps 
prison) in the 
old days and lent her the money to start the Rosenstrasse house. He always stays 
with her 
when visiting Mirenburg and, like me, is treated as a favoured client. He 
behaves 
impeccably, never bringing his business to her house, though he is almost 
certainly still a 
successful thief. He chews his food thoughtfully, takes a sip of wine and 
continues: 'They 
are requisitioning convents, private houses, even restaurants, I have heard. 
These 
Mirenburger soldiers, poor devils, aren't used to fighting.'
      Frau Schmetterling says firmly: 'We know how hellish it is a( the 
defences, and I am 
sure we sympathise, but this is scarcely appropriate conversation for luncheon.' 
Wilke 
looks almost surprised, then smiles to himself and continues to eat. There is 
not much else 
to talk about. We have no real information
Holzhammer has made a grandiose declaration in which he has praised his own 
sense of 
humanity and love of beauty in stopping the bombardment'to give Prince Badehoff-
Krasny 
time to reconsider his foolish and unpatriotic decision which is causing misery 
to so many'. 
He claims that most of Waldenstein is now his. The newspapers on the other hand 
are 
continuing to report failing morale and shortage of supplies amongst the rebels. 
The 
peasants and landowners have all deserted Holzhammer, they say, and he is 
entirely 
reliant on his 'Bulgarian butchers', his Austrian cannon. Prince Badehoff-Krasny 
took his 
State Carriage into the streets during the bombardment and rode the length of 
Mirenburg, 
from the Cesny Gate to the Mirov Gate, waving to cheering crowds. Deputations of 
citizens 
have signed oaths of undying loyalty to the Crown and the Mayor has sworn to 
take a 
sword, if necessary, and personally drive Holzhammer from the battlements, 
should he try 
to enter the city. Holzhammer has probably decided to attempt to starve 
Mirenburg into 
submission, saving his troops and his ammunition for a final attack. The 
blockade is total. 
The river is guarded on both sides and water-gates have been installed under the 
bridges 
on the outskirts so that no citizen can leave by that route or bring supplies 
in; while a huge 
barricade has been thrown up around the city, making it impossible for anyone to 
come or 
go either by road or rail. Belozerski has reported seeing corpses left to rot in 
trenches, or 
half-buried by their comrades as they fell back towards the walls. Field-guns, 
too, have 
been abandoned. He observed one trench which was 'a single, fluttering mass of 
carrion 
crows'. Private citizens are no longer allowed on the walls. We are under 
martial law. 
Yesterday, at lunch, Belozerski said: 'God knows what appalling treachery led to 
'his 
situation. It was a massacre out there.' And then he became embarrassed, since 
Caroline 
Vacarescu could probably have answered his rhetorical question, at least in 
part. She had 
continued to eat as if she had not heard him. We are all as tactful as possible, 
even 
Rakanaspya who sometimes fumes like °ne of his own anarchist bombs but never 
explodes. It is only in private, in the company of one or another of our fellow 
guests, that 
we express strong opinions. Last night I sat with Clara in her sitting-room 
while Alexandra 
giggled in bed with Aimee, who comes from my native Saxony. Clara is in a better 
position 
than many to hear what is actually going on. Her regular clients seem to make up 
half the 
Mirenburg Civil Service and she sometimes has a General come to see her. She is 
discreet, in the main, but she believes that the situation might be worse than 
most of us 
imagine. ' A military train is believed to have arrived from Vienna. If the 
Austrians give 
Holzhammer direct aid then Germany must either begin another war, which she does 
not 
presently want, or turn a blind eye to what is going on here. I think she will 
turn a blind eye.' 
I found this difficult to believe: 'With so many of her citizens still here?' 
Clara had looked at 
me knowingly. 'How many, Ricky? And how many German soldiers would die in a war 
with 
Austria-Hungary?' Then Alexandra had called to me and I had gone in to smile. 
She had 
tied one of Clara's dildoes onto her in some way and was inexpertly fucking 
Aimee who 
was helpless with laughter. 'Help me, Ricky, darling!' There is an ache in my 
back today. 
Papadakis says I am not resting enough. He says I should set these memoirs 
aside. 'You 
will kill yourself.' I tell him that it does not matter. 'Can't you see I am 
living again? Can't 
you see that?' He wets his red lips. 'You are mad. The doctor told me to expect 
something 
like this. Let me bring him up.' I set my pen on the pages, across the words. I 
am patient. 'I 
am more purely rational,' 1 tell him,'than I have been for two years. And I 
should point out 
that there is hardly any pain. It is quite evident that much of what I was 
suffering was 
psychosomatic. Haven't you noticed how much better my morale is. You would 
rather I was 
ill, eh? You have no power over rne now that I am recovering!' He will not 
respond to this. 
He sits beside the window, staring down towards the sea. His back i to me. I 
refuse to let 
him irritate me. Leopold van Geest and stroll in Frau Schmetterling's garden. 
Most of the 
flowers are gone. It is a mystery where she continues to find fresh on^s, fill 
her house. 
Beyond the walls are the roofs and turrets ot deserted monastery. 'In here,' 
says van 
Geest, 'one is permitted the illusion of power. But we know that Frau 
Schmetterling is the 
only one who really wields power and that she derives it from her ladies. From 
the cunt.' He 
shakes his head and pulls the blanket-jacket more closely to him. 'Yet we have 
power in 
the outside world to create a society which needs and permits brothels. Why 
cannot we 
exploit that power directly? Why do we feel the need to come here and be masters 
when 
we cannot feel that we are masters in our own homes, over our own women - at 
least, not 
sexually. Not really. You can sense the difference.'
      'I have very little experience of the domestic life.' Van Geest nods as if 
I have made 
a profound observation. He is moody this afternoon. 'Your instincts are good, 
von Bek. 
Marriages are based on romantic lies and decent women demand that we maintain 
those 
lies at all costs, lest the reality of their situation be brought home to them. 
Here the whores 
are paid to lie to us. At home we pay for our domestic security with lies of our 
own.' He 
looks up at the sky. 'Do you think it will snow?'
      'It's a little early for that.'
      He turns to go back inside. 'Well, I shall probably be home for 
Christmas,' he says.
      Clara comes to join me. 'Our Alice has bought herself a thousand new 
petticoats!' 
She kisses me on the cheek. Somehow we have taken to calling Alexandra 'Alice', 
while I 
use 'Rose' as a nickname for Clara. She, in turn, calls me 'Your Lordship' in 
English. 
Alexandra does not know our nicknames. 'She is upstairs, now, trying them on.' 
Van Geest 
lifts his cap and enters the house. 'What were you talking about?' She is all 
rustling velvet 
in her long winter coat. Marriage, I believe,' I say. 'I'm not altogether sure. 
Van treest 
seemed to want to get something off his chest.' Clara is amused by this. 'That's 
our job. 
Whores are trained to listen. What was he saying?'
      That domestic bliss is founded on a lie.'
      The argument is familiar to her. 'Working here, one begins to disbelieve 
in any great 
difference between people. The girls in this house have more varied 
personalities than 
most clients, and that's saying very little, I should think. You cannot pursue 
individuality 
here. There's more realism and virtue, perhaps, in celebrating commonality. 
There are 
certain lies, surely, we would all rather believe.' She links her arm in mine. 
We are almost 
like husband and wife.
      We go to peer in at Frau Schmetterling's little hothouse, at the orchids 
and the 
fleshy lilies, and at her aviary where a pair of pink cockatoos, an African Grey 
parrot and a 
macaw fidget. 'Frau Schmetterling has no interest in birds,' says Clara. She 
puts her lips 
together and makes kissing sounds at the gloomy creatures. 'These were given to 
her at 
the same time, I believe, as the peacocks. The peacocks died. She's sentimental 
enough 
to want to keep her parrots properly, but they get no attention from her. 
'Mister' looks after 
them. Some of us have asked to keep them in our rooms, but she says it would be 
vulgar.' 
I am becoming impatient to see Alexandra, even though I know she will be 
demanding 
something of me the moment I walk in to our room. 'Shall you be going to the 
celebration 
this evening?' asks Clara. I had forgotten. Frau Schmetterling had mentioned it 
at lunch. 
'To honour the end of the bombardment,' she had said. 'It will cheer us all up.'
      'I'll look in for half-an-hour or so,' I say. 'And you?' Clara nods. 'Oh, 
yes. I think it will 
be amusing.' Since Alexandra will sulk if I go I have almost made up my mind not 
to bother. 
'They are difficult, these children,' says Clara. 'More trouble than they're 
worth, sometimes.' 
I feel a moment's resentment of what I take to be her criticism, but she 
squeezes my arm 
and the mood vanishes. I enjoy Clara's company more and more and continue to be 
impressed by her tolerant intelligence. 'By the way,' she says casually,'did you 
hear that 
they had attempted to burn down the synagogue. The Jews are being held to blame, 
as 
usual.' I laugh at this. 'Where would we be without them?' But Clara is not 
pleased with my 
response. '1 came through the Quarter on the way home. It's miserable. No 
market, of 
course, to speak of. Such a terrible sense of fear, Ricky.'
      'You must guard against getting too sentimental, Rose my darling, at times 
like 
these. It's not like you.' I kiss her cheek She shakes her head and does her 
best to dismiss 
her mood. It occurs to me for a second that perhaps she is worried about her own 
fate. 
After all, Frau Schmetterling is Jewish, at least by birth. I return to the 
rooms. Alexandra is 
wearing a new negligee of chocolate-brown trimmed with cream lace and her little 
body, 
now marked with the fading reminders of a dozen violent nights, is pale in the 
afternoon 
light which enters through embroidered nets at the windows. Couch, floor and 
chairs are 
piled with new chemises and drawers, with white ostrich feathers, with an 
ermine-trimmed 
stole, like froth on a river, and she tugs at her curls, peering with ill temper 
into an oval 
mirror which hangs on the wall over a lacquered Chinese sideboard. 'Another raid 
on 
Falfnersallee,' I say with a smile. She pulls down an eyelid, looking for blood. 
'They're 
almost giving things away, Ricky.' She has bought a selection of new cosmetics, 
which she 
has scattered over the sideboard, and begins to try them out, asking me for my 
opinion of 
this lip-rouge and that powder. 'You'll destroy your skin,' I say 
dispassionately. 'You have 
youth and health, natural beauty; ' She makes a face. 'You are certainly no 
lover of what is 
natural, my dear.' I bridle. 'Nonsense. But play at grown-up ladies, if that's 
what pleases 
you. Did you buy a paper?' She is distant. 'I forgot.' I am irritated. 'It's not 
a great deal to 
ask.' I pick at feathers and linen, becoming even more angry when I think I 
shall have to 
ask Frau Schmetterling for more cash. I have given her a blank cheque, to cover 
our 
expenses. 'You should have told Clara to remember,' says Alexandra. 'She's 
always 
reliable. Anyway, what do you want a paper for? You told me there's nothing in 
it now but 
lies.' The negligee has fallen back to reveal her ribs. 'You're not eating 
properly,' I say. 
'You're getting too thin.' She sets down a little pot with a rap. 'Men want 
everything. A lady 
has to be thin in society and plump in bed. Yet you complain about the way I 
lace my 
stays!'
      'I'm concerned for your health. I feel some responsibility.'
      'You should not. It is none of your business.'
      I want to put an end to this. I embrace her, fondling her shoulders and 
breasts, but 
she pulls away. 'You treat me like a child! You spend all your time with other 
people. Are 
you fucking the whores while I'm out?'
      'You know I'm not. You enjoy Clara's company. You told me so. You're 
always off on 
expeditions.'
      'In a veil. Like a Turkish concubine! You don't love me. You're bored with 
me. You 
refuse to let me be myself. I'm not your daughter. I wanted to get away from 
that. You 
sound worse than my father sometimes.'
      'Then you should not behave like a little girl.' Such banal exchanges are 
terrible. I 
hate listening to the words on my own lips. I have said nothing of this kind 
since I was 
eighteen. 'All the interesting people are downstairs,' she says. 'You talk about 
them. I never 
see them. Princess Poliakoff, Count Belozerski, Rudolph Stefanik. You and Clara 
joke 
about them. I am left out of everything. Why do you want me? You could have a 
dozen 
whores and never notice I was missing.'
      'I love you,' I say. 'That's the difference.'
      She snorts. 'You don't know me.'
      'I'm beginning to think there is not very much to know. Perhaps you are 
entirely my 
invention.'
      'You bastard!' It is the first time she has sworn at me. She repeats the 
oath, as if to 
herself. 'You bastard.' She begins to weep. I go to comfort her. She pulls away 
again. 
'What have you made me!'
      'Nothing which you were not already, or did not wish to be. I told you at 
the start: I 
am the instrument of your pleasure. I put myself at your disposal. And when I 
have warned 
you of excess you haven't listened to me. Now you're overtired and self-pitying. 
And you're 
blaming me.'
      Her weeping becomes more intense. 'I don't know any better. How can I know 
any 
better? I want so much to go to the party tonight. But you're afraid I'll 
embarrass you. And 
when I try to look grown-up you complain. You confuse me. You lie tome.'
      'How dare you pretend to be so naive,' I say. 'You have no right to demand 
honesty 
of me and argue with such patent ingenuity when you know full well what you mean 
and 
what you want. It is malice and resentment which motivates you and your methods 
amount 
to blackmail. I will not be insulted by you in this way. I will not be silent 
while you insult 
yourself. What is it that you want?'
      But she refuses to be direct. The rhetoric continues between sobs. 'You 
have 
destroyed any will I might have had. Any self-respect. You spend your time with 
Clara. You 
laugh at me behind my back.
      'Clara is your friend. You told me that you love her.'
      'She criticises constantly.'
      'Not to me.'
      'I know what she's saying. You're a fool if you don't realise what she's 
up to.'
      I light myself a cigarette. 'You are attempting to manufacture a crisis,' 
I say, 'and I 
will not be drawn. Tell me what you want.'
      'I want respect!'
      'Eventually,' I continue, 'it is very likely that you will wear me down 
sufficiently so that 
out of weariness or exasperation I will make you an offer and thus save you the 
responsibility of making your own decision. Or I will become remorseful and give 
you that 
which your conscience cannot demand. Well, I will have none of it. When you have 
made 
up your mind to speak to me directly I shall be pleased to continue this 
conversation.' I 
sound ridiculously pompous in my own ears. She wants me to take her to the 
party. I am 
almost ready to do so, even though I know it would be unwise. But I want her to 
ask. 
Somehow I am carrying too much of the burden. I am at the door when she wails: 
'I want to 
go to the party!'
      'You know it would be too dangerous for us,' I say.
      'I don't know. I only know what you tell me. Are you frightened of their 
opinion?'
      I am frightened, of course. I am frightened of the dream ending, of 
reality intruding. I 
leave the room. She has wounded me and I am full of self-pity. I am furious with 
her. I had 
thought things had reached a decent balance. But she is not content with 
promises of Paris 
and I can scarcely blame her, since there is no means of knowing when the siege 
will be 
over. But she has changed. I can sense that she has changed. What alterations 
have 
occurred in her strange, fantastic brain. I am as much at a loss for a 
satisfactory 
explanation as if I had attempted to analyse the perceptions and motives of a 
household 
pet. Like a pet she is able to take on the colour of any master; to respond to 
whatever 
desires that master displays. Yet she is not doing that now. Does that mean she 
is ready to 
find a new master? I feel I am somehow making a mistake; as if I have failed to 
understand 
the rules of the game. Perhaps I should not have been so direct with her. 
Perhaps I should 
have disguised my desires and remained more of a mystery to her. Or will I lose 
her 
anyway? To someone else who will represent liberty and escape to her? It seems 
increasingly important that we should leave Mirenburg. I will go to Police 
headquarters in 
the morning and try again to get passports for us. I have miscalculated. I blame 
the drugs, 
the atmosphere of the whorehouse. Sensuality has given way to a sort of 
erotomania. It 
could destroy everything. I must make an effort to impress her with my own 
common-
sense. I must not weaken. Alice! I want what you were. My little girl! Have you 
no notion of 
all the emotions you have aroused in me? The tenderness, the willingness to 
sacrifice 
everything for you? You cannot know what I have given up already, what I am 
still prepared 
to give up. You are myself. And we are Mirenburg. I find that I am outside 
Clara's room. I 
knock. She tells me to enter. She has Natalia, her dark friend, with her. They 
are drinking 
tea. 'I am so sorry to disturb you.' I make to go, but both wave me in. 'Is the 
child sleeping?' 
asks Clara. 'No,' I say,'she decided to have a tantrum, so I've left her to cool 
down.' Clara 
and Natalia both seem to approve of this decision. I fall into Clara'scouch, 
immediately 
relieved. 'What am I to do with her?'
      'You wouldn't welcome my answer,' says Clara.
      'True. You think I should have told her to go back to her parents.'
      'It isn't my business to say.' Clara offers me her own teacup. I accept 
it. 'I intend to 
marry her,' I say, 'when we get to Paris. As a wife, she will have more power, 
more self-
respect. She'll begin to grow up in no time.'
      Natalia and Clara exchange a look which is meaningless to me. 'My father 
wants me 
to marry again. Her father will be only too happy to let her marry me once he 
finds out what 
has happened. I'm worrying about nothing. She wants to come to the celebration 
tonight. I'll 
bring her.'
      'That should relieve her boredom,' says Clara. 'I've heard Princess 
Poliakoff and 
Lady Cromach have decided to attend. And there are other guests. Some 
politicians. Some 
intellectuals. It will be a fine night. You might meet Dolly's fiance, too.' 
Dolly is the most 
sweet-natured girl in the house and much in demand with older clients. She is by 
no means 
beautiful, with her long nose, large teeth and her frizz of dark hair, but she 
is good-hearted 
and genuinely interested in the doings of her gentlemen, spending hours chatting 
with 
them. One of these, a pleasant man by all accounts, the owner of a large 
furrier's business 
in Ladungsgasse, is determined to marry her as soon as she wishes to retire. It 
is a 
standing joke between them. They often discuss the bridal gown she will have, 
the church 
they favour, the places they will visit on their honeymoon. Dolly has taken to 
wearing her 
gentleman's engagement ring: an emerald. She will accept presents from nobody 
else and 
on Wednesdays and Sundays when he calls will always make sure she is available 
only to 
him. Natalia and Clara continue with their conversation. They are discussing a 
woman I 
have not met. The mother had been supporting her drug-addicted daughter, I 
gather, for 
some years, paying for her opium and morphine, but her daughter had become 
homeless 
and needed work. Against her normal caution, and because the daughter was known 
to 
her, Frau Schmetterling had agreed she could work at Rosenstrasse for a few 
weeks until 
she saved the fare to go to relatives in Prague. 'Frau Schmetterling is so 
innocent in some 
ways,' says Natalia. 'She was surprised at the demand when it became known that 
a 
mother and daughter were working in the same house. She could not believe so 
many of 
her customers would insist on having the two women in the same bed at the same 
time! 
She was very glad when what's-her-name went on to Prague.' Clara takes her empty 
tea-
cup from me. 'She's a funny little woman. Quite prudish sometimes, eh? What do 
you think, 
Ricky? You've known her longer than any of us really.'
      'She's the mother I never had,' I say lightly. 'I love her. She worries 
about me so 
much!'
      'Oh, I think we all do,' says Clara. She seems to be making some sort of 
joke, so I 
smile.
      'I hear that General von Landoff will be here tonight,' says Natalia. 
'Madame has 
decided to treat with the military for once. She's making a big concession, eh?'
      'A prudent one at this time,' I suggest. 'She would rather have one 
general invading 
Rosenstrasse than a regiment of privates. War can make politicians of us all.'
      'We are expert politicians here,' insists Clara with a smile, 'every one 
of us. If Frau 
Schmetterling had been in charge, there would have been no War to begin with!'
      Natalia is weighing a piece of her lace collar in her small palm. 'It's 
pretty material,' 
she says, 'isn't it? That very fine cotton which sometimes I prefer to silk. 
Silk is too much 
like skin. There is no contrast. Shall I go on telling you what the Mayor asked 
me to do?'
      'I'd love to hear,' I say, settling back in Clara's cushions. 'You old 
eunuch,' says 
Clara affectionately. 'I sometimes think you'd rather gossip than fuck!' Natalia 
begins a 
rather ordinary tale about the Mayor's make-believe, his penchant for imitating 
farmyard 
animals. I learn more, too, about Caroline Vacarescu. Clara says she 
deliberately pursues 
and conquers the wives of famous men. 'It used to be her speciality. Her 
seductions 
became an inextricable mixture of business and pleasure. Her mistresses were 
often 
grateful for the opportunities for dalliance without much risk of scandal and 
they were party 
to secrets which proved useful to Caroline in her other activities. They say 
she's probably a 
millionairess. The truth is she's probably spent everything. Caroline 
Vacarescu's 
extravagances have taken on the nature of an art; her raw materials are other 
people's 
money (or, at a pinch, credit) and her canvas is the fashionable world. Her 
clothes are the 
most expensive, her houses the most richly furnished and her presents to her 
protectors 
(who, of course, supplied her with the means to make the purchases in the first 
place) are 
generous. But this affair with Mueller was more serious, I think. His death has 
affected her 
quite badly. She's desperate to get back to Buda-Pesht. She's asking everybody. 
If anyone 
can do it, Caroline can.' I take my leave of the ladies and return to my Alice 
to announce 
she can go to the ball tonight. She hugs me and kisses me as if I am a favourite 
uncle. We 
fall into bed together and once again the dream comes alive.
      Papadakis seems to be ill. Perhaps he weakens as I grow stronger. 'As soon 
as this 
is finished I shall be getting up,' I tell him. 'And we'll travel. We'll go to 
Venice first and then 
Vienna, or perhaps Paris. What do you think?' He is a mangy old spaniel. He 
looks at me 
and wheezes. 'You must be careful,' I say. 'You aren't getting any younger. What 
was the 
name of that woman who worked for you in London? The one I slept with?' He 
frowns. 
'Sonia, wasn't it?' I say. 'She was Jewish, I think. She used to sit in that 
little basement flat 
of hers in Bloomsbury and curse you. Then we'd go to the British Museum in the 
twilight, 
just before it closed. I can smell the leaves around our ankles. She made you 
seem far 
more interesting than you turned out to be. She was obsessed by Egypt, I 
remember. By 
the Book of the Dead. What's happened to your daughter? You haven't had a letter 
in a 
year. Two years. She has forgotten her Papa.' Papadakis has brought an uncorked 
bottle 
of Niersteiner and a glass. He puts it on the table beside the bed. 'Tell me 
when you need 
more,' he says. 'What? Is it poisoned? Or do you hope I'll drink myself into 
silence? Your 
daughter. Isn't she divorced yet, from that foolish Frenchman? Or are you a 
grandfather, do 
you think? Are you a grandfather? There is still time to accept the 
responsibilities of a 
parent. I am not going to be on your hands much longer.' He pours some of the 
wine into 
the glass. 'Think what you like,' he says. 'Do what you like. Say what you like. 
It's good 
wine. There are a few bottles left. Let me know when you want some more.' I sip 
the hock. 
It is perfect. I am in charge of myself again. 'Buy flowers when you're next in 
town,' I tell 
him. 'As many as possible. Deep reds and blues. Good, heavy scent. Whatever you 
can 
find. Spend what you need to spend. I'll have flowers instead of food. I am 
celebrating the 
death of an old friend and my own return to life. Did you ever really visit that 
doctor I 
recommended? That follower of Freud's?' He shakes his head: 'I have no time for 
psychoanalysis or any other fashionable remedies. My faith remains in Science. 
The rest is 
just quackery, no matter how it's dressed up.' He amuses me. 'Oh, what we owe to 
Vienna' 
I sing. I descend with Alexandra on my arm. I am dressed in perfect black and 
white, she in 
scarlet and gold, with diamonds, pearls, rubies, with black-rimmed eyes and 
gaudy cheeks, 
her age unguessable, her identity engulfed. She walks with back straight, her 
head lifted 
with arrogant cocaine. We reach the foyer and pause. From the salon comes 
Strauss and a 
swell of voices, smoke and the scents of fresh-cooked meat. Alice trembles with 
pleasure 
and I am my happiest. We have concocted our masquerade: She is to be the 
Countess 
Alice of Elsinore tonight, from Denmark, although her home is now in Florence. 
She is 
twenty-three and my cousin. The lie is not meant to convince, merely to confuse 
the 
curious. 'No one will recognise me,' she says. 'Friends of my father or my 
brother know me 
only as a little girl in sailor-blouses.' I am feeling so euphoric that I 
believe I might even 
welcome a scene in which her father, for instance, was present. We are through 
the doors 
now and into the plush and velvet, the crystal and marble, of the salon. The 
place is alive 
with potential danger: journalists and several of the great scandal-mongers of 
Mirenburg, 
including Herbert Block the song-writer and Voorman the painter. Voorman is the 
only real 
problem, but he has no memory of her as the same creature he pretended to court 
at The 
Amoral Jew. He kisses her hand as he is introduced and she listens with some 
merriment 
as he suggests, again, that she is the goddess he has always imagined he will 
one day 
paint. A young Deputy, Baron Karsovin, her distant cousin, suggests as he 
wrinkles his 
pink brow beneath an already balding head, that they must have met before, 
'perhaps in 
Venice', but he is anxious to return to his discussion of the Prince of Wales, 
Mrs Keppel 
and French foreign policy. And an old gentleman, wearing all his orders on his 
coat, says 
he believes he knew Alice's mother. 'Indeed he did,' she whispers. 'He was her 
lover four 
or five years ago and used to bribe me with chocolates from Schmidt's. He bribed 
Father 
with secrets of the Bourse and paid for our new house as a result!' The General 
is already 
here, back to the fireplace and looking so brave he might be facing a firing 
squad. I almost 
expect someone to blindfold him. He is very tall and thin, with blue veins in 
his long neck 
and white whiskers a little yellow about the lips and chin. His hair is quite 
long. He wears 
outdated evening-dress, standing with his hands behind him under his frock-coat 
and 
talking to Frau Schmetterling (in unusual off-the-shoulder royal blue and silver 
with a small 
bustle) and Caroline Vacarescu whose reputation, I suspect, he knows, for he is 
wary as 
well as reassuring, though she has succeeded in flattering him. Alice and I are 
introduced.
      'Is there no chance of getting up a group of those who wish to leave?' 
asks Caroline, 
all sweet perfume and vulnerable, whispering russet flounces. 'If only we could 
reach the 
mountains, say. Under a white flag. There must be some sort of communication 
between 
the two sides. Some understanding that the civilized world would be scandalised 
when it 
found out how decent people were being treated.'
      'But my dear lady, there is absolutely no danger to you here,' says the 
General. 
'Holzhammer has used up all his ammunition. And the bombardment, you must have 
noticed, was concentrated entirely on the centre of the city. You are far safer 
in Mirenburg. 
There are bandits abroad in the country areas. Deserters. Disaffected peasants. 
You can 
imagine.'
      'Are we to understand that no permits will be issued at all?' I say.
      'No chance whatsoever, at present.' The General speaks as if he imparts 
the best 
news in the world. 'Holzhammer can scarcely hold out another week with all the 
desertions. 
Then - a quick counter-attack, with or without Berlin's support - then it will 
be over. We are 
biding our time. It is a question of choosing the moment.'
      'So our losses have not been as great as they say?' says Caroline almost 
waspishly.
      'Our losses, dear lady, have been minimal. Austria is going to regret her 
involvement 
in what is, after all, little more than a domestic squabble.' Caroline darts me 
a look, as if 
she hopes for an ally, but I am helpless. With a little nasal sigh, like a 
lioness who has 
made too short a charge and has seen her prey escape, she stalks off in search 
of other 
game. Clara greets us. She has discarded her usual tailor-mades and is wearing a 
gold 
dress, her hair in a Pompadour. She looks at least five years younger and is arm 
in arm 
with a rather drunk Rakanaspya who wears a dove-grey suit a little too large for 
him, 
evidently borrowed. He speaks so elliptically to the General, in such thick 
French, that 
nobody understands him. 'You have nothing to fear,' says von Landoff, and nods, 
as if to a 
simpleton. 'Another week or less and you may go home.' Rakanaspya, with one eye 
on 
Frau Schmetterling, lapses into the security of Russian, plainly saying all he 
wishes to say 
in that language and so releasing his feelings without giving much offence to 
his hostess. 
Clara says: 'Good evening to you both. You look stunning. A perfect match,' and 
she bears 
against Rakanaspya with her shoulder to steer him off towards the middle of the 
room 
where Block enjoys the flattery of the ladies and Stefanik drones moodily on the 
subject of 
flight. Princess Poliakoff makes her entrance. She is in black tulle and pearls, 
true to form, 
while her lover is a swan in fold upon fold ot Doucet lace, approaching as if 
she has just 
landed on water and is coasting towards the shore. Her short curly hair has a 
torque 
around it bearing two pale mauve ostrich feathers which match her fan. She seems 
to wear 
no make-up but is delicately English in her healthy colouring. Alice wants to 
know who she 
is and when I tell her she whispers: 'Let's talk to them. They seem far more 
interesting.' 
Occasionally, by a less-than-careful movement she betrays her youth. We make our 
way to 
the Lesbian couple. Everyone is introduced. 'We have seen nothing of you,' I 
say. 'You 
snub us indiscriminately!'
      'I haven't been well,' says the Princess. 'And Diana has been a saint. 
Also, of 
course, she has to look for material.' Lady Cromach takes a testy interest in 
her fan, then 
offers me one of her soft, sardonic stares and says in that insinuating voice: 
'And how is 
your health, Herr von Bek?'
      'Excellent, as usual, Lady Cromach. Thank you. Are your articles about the 
War 
already entertaining the readers of the Gaulois and the News?'
      'The telegraph is down. And the carrier pigeons are unreliable. I have no 
idea. For a 
while I thought I was bribing a little man in the military despatch office, but 
he was 
dismissed a few days ago. I fear my work will be retrospective when it appears, 
and 
nobody is overly interested in the fate of Mirenburg. Are they?' She seems to 
want to know. 
'I content myself with doing atmosphere-pieces for the monthlies. I keep busy. 
What a 
charming brooch, my dear.' She peers towards Alice's breasts. 'You say that you 
are a 
guest here, too?' Princess Poliakoff looks distracted and jealous. She puts one 
of those 
elongated fingers to her mouth, then withdraws it carefully to her side. 'How's 
the minstrel, 
Ricky?'
      'Singing as sweetly as ever,' I say. 'And teaching me to play the banjo.' 
I'm surprised 
she still believes me. She pulls her companion away from us. 'You have a lovely 
cousin,' 
says Lady Cromach; she winks at me behind the Princess's back. I find her 
extremely 
attractive. I believe she is thoroughly intrigued by me. Alice fumes. 'What an 
awful witch!'
      'Lady Diana?'
      'Of course not.' She is on my arm again. We move towards the buffet. 'It's 
much 
more ordinary than I expected. I'd imagined it - well - Oriental. Decadent. It's 
almost like 
one of Mother's Evenings.'
      'Except that most of the women are whores and all the men are lechers.' I 
hand her 
some cold salmon.
      'Then it's exactly like one of Mother's Evenings.' She laughs. I have not 
for a long 
time known her so carelessly cheerful. I love her. It is such a relief to feel 
that things are 
normal again. 'You look very handsome tonight,' she says. 'As you always used to 
look. I'm 
glad you seem happy, Ricky.'
      'I'm happy that you're happy. It is so easy, my little one, to make you 
happy.' I am 
full of tenderness for her.
      'I'm happy because you've taken me seriously and are treating me - I don't 
know - 
as an equal. I'm far older than my age. People have often said so.'
You will always be my own sweet little girl, Alice. My lascivious child, my 
dreaming 
daughter-wife. I want the soft, sudden flesh, the sweet dunes, the little caves. 
The music of 
your shouts and your pleasure. I bite your neck, your throat, your shoulder. I 
will do 
whatever you want. I will say and become whatever you want, to keep you as I 
want you to 
be. This turn in her conversation begins to depress me. I ask her whom she would 
like to 
meet next. 'That's Van Geest, the banker, with Therese. And that, of course, is 
Count 
Belozerski. Our Lesbians are talking to Wilke, the jewel-thief. Would you like 
to meet him. 
He's usually very grave and of course doesn't talk much about his work.' The 
salon is 
growing noisier, a trifle more boisterous. The General moves away from the 
fireplace 
beaming like a baby with Natalia on one arm and Aimee on the other, to sample 
the buffet. 
He is here, after all, to forget the War. There is champagne everywhere. The 
corks are a 
cannonade which mocks recent events. We banish Holzhammer and the doors are 
rolled 
back before we can approach the Russian novelist; the little ballroom is 
revealed where, on 
a curtained dais amongst potted palms, sits an all-woman orchestra. 'How 
terrible,' says 
the Princess as she sweeps past with her friend,'that we should look to Vienna 
for our 
gaiety when she is presently causing us so much pain.' And she and her lover 
boldly begin 
the dancing, to the applause of the others, who gradually begin to join them on 
the floor: by 
Clara and a scowling Stefanik, watching his feet and hers, Frau Schmetterling 
and the 
courteous Belozerski, by Alice and myself. 'Ta ta ta, ta ta turn,' shouts 
General von 
Landoff, spinning with Natalia. It is as if we are suddenly all much drunker. 
The real world 
is whirling silk and painted flesh, wine and perfume and flowers. Soon I am 
standing back 
and laughing as Clara dances with Poliakoff and Alice with Lady Diana. Skirts 
are lifted, 
ties are loosened, petticoats bounce in the warmth of the chandeliers. The 
orchestra is 
made up chiefly of middle-aged women, a little shabbily dressed, and 
respectable, but 
there are three young girls, all dark-complexioned and possibly sisters. It is 
the cellist who 
attracts my attention. She is as plump as the others but considerably prettier 
and playing 
with evident passion, her legs spread to accommodate her instrument, and her 
whole body 
swaying as she plies her bow, her eyes as rapt as a woman's in the throes of 
love-making. 
Belozerski is talking to Natalia. 'I had decided to visit the estate of a 
favourite old relative in 
the Ukraine,' he says. 'I'd spent most of my boyhood summers there but this was 
the first 
time I'd gone in winter. Earlier that year I received a pardon from St 
Petersburg so was no 
longer an exile, but by then had established a home in Paris and felt no great 
wish to 
uproot myself. However, this visit was as much to confirm my pardon as to 
satisfy curiosity 
about cousins and aunts and uncles, whom I had not seen in fifteen years. Most 
of the 
journey from the railway station was by troika, for it was snowing. I had 
forgotten how wide 
the steppe was. The snow was like a white ocean and trees stuck out over the 
horizon like 
the masts of wrecks. My wife, who is French, chose to remain behind so I was 
alone save 
for the old peasant who drove the troika. We were about half-way to the estate 
when 
memory suddenly came back. I have never experienced the like. It was a dream: I 
seemed 
to drown in recollections which were as vivid as the original events. I relived 
those 
summers, even as the sleigh moved rapidly over the snow, so by the time I 
arrived I was 
actually shocked to notice it was winter. The poignancy of that experience, my 
dear 
Natalia, is indescribable. It left me rather depressed. I mourned for lost 
opportunities and 
deeply regretted the ill-considered romanticism which had led me to take up the 
cause of 
nationalism. Yet I know my life has been worthwhile and far more interesting in 
Paris than if 
I had remained in the Kiev gubernia where I was born.' He smiles wistfully. She 
smiles 
back in some astonishment, then turns to pour him another glass of champagne. 
Captain 
Mackenzie nods to me, on his way to speak to Count Stefanik. The Scotsman's eye 
contains a kind of alert sweetness at odds with his battered and drug-ruined 
features. Alice 
and I join him. A scar causes his lip to curl in a sort of grin and his soft 
German, 
pronounced with a distinctive Scottish accent, is often impossible to 
understand. When one 
of us attempts English, however, it becomes plain that he is even less 
comprehensible in 
that language. He speaks enthusiastically with Rudolph Stefanik on the subject 
of balloons. 
He has seen them used for scouting, he says, and he has heard they had also been 
employed in the bombardment of Paris thirty years ago, although the Prussians 
had of 
course denied they had ever done anything so inhuman. He laughs. 'Is Holzhammer 
denying the destruction of Mirenburg, I wonder? They are planning to dam up the 
river, 
apparently, and set it in a new course, so that we shall have no fresh water. 
Have you 
heard anything about that, von Bek?' I have not. 'I receive virtually no real 
news, captain. 
All we get here are fantastic rumours and a little gossip. We are a desert 
island. But you 
must be privy to a hundred revelations a night!'
      'I make it my business to hear nothing.' He is almost prim. 'It is 
necessary, I believe, 
to the rules of my particular trade. Confessors and the proprietors of opium-
dens.' He 
laughs. 'We have something in common with lawyers, too.'
      'And doctors,' says Alice.
      Captain Mackenzie nods slowly. 'And doctors, aye.'
      Rudolph Stefanik moves his body in his clothes as if he is about to burst 
them and 
reveal a pair of wings. ' It would make good sense,' he says. 'If they were to 
dam the river. 
This whole campaign has been unprofessional. It causes needless suffering, both 
to troops 
and to civilians. The Austrians, of course, can be hopeless. I understood 
Holzhammer was 
trained in Prussia.'
      'Most of the Mirenburg officers received their schooling there,' I tell 
him. 'But they 
have had no practical experience. And the conditions are unusual, you will 
admit. Do you 
believe that Holzhammer has had as many desertions as they say?'
      'I was approached to find out. They wanted me to inflate the balloon and 
take her up 
on a fixed mooring. I refused. One shot would destroy my vessel - and me, for 
that matter. 
They are now talking of manufacturing their own airships. I said I would 
willingly give them 
advice.' Stefanik smiles suddenly down on Alice. 'As soon as this affair is 
settled I shall be 
only too pleased to take a pretty passenger into the sky and show her the world 
an angel 
sees.' Her eyes are bright as they meet his. 'Oh, I am not innocent enough, 
Count, to be 
able to see what an angel sees.'
      'But you are able to tempt as the devil tempted,' I tell him, leading her 
away. He 
laughs. Voorman and Rakanaspya are deep in drunken conversation. Voorman is 
entertained by Rakanaspya's seriousness. 'The lure of this putrid sweetness!' he 
exclaims. 
'How can you resist it?'
      'It is the lure of disease, of dissolution, of death - the yearning to 
absolve oneself of 
all political and moral responsibility,' says the Russian earnestly. 'It is 
often attractive to 
those who have had the strictest of upbringings, who display the greatest guilt 
about 
themselves and how they should conduct their behaviour in society. They are, 
indeed, 
guilty. Guilty of stealing from the poor. Guilty of creating wars and famines. 
They are 
responsible for murder and they come here to find a kind of death, a release, a 
punishment… He is a ttle incoherent. 'They are the fathers of 
corruption!' he 
concludes unsteadily.
      Voorman giggles and turns to one of the floral displays. Lilies, lilies, 
lilies! I shall be a 
father to the lilies. I sh^il tend them as my own children. And when they die I 
shall bury 
them with proper ceremony and raise a stone to them and put more lilies upon it 
so that the 
scent of the living shall mingle with the smell of the dead. I know where my 
responsibilities 
lie. It is to the lilies!'
      Rakanaspya appeals to us, but we are laughing too heartily at Voorman. The 
Russian puts his back against a pillar and pretends to listen to the orchestra 
as it plays a 
sort of gypsy dance. The General joins us, with Frau Schmetterling on his arm. 
His face is 
red; not wishing to show he is in any way exhausted he controls his breathing. 
Frau 
Schmetterling is pleased; she seems to have extracted some sort of promise from 
him. '1 
will put young Captain Mencken in charge of the matter.' He hands her a glass of 
champagne. He bows to Caroline Vacarescu, who continues to court him. Caroline 
is 
talking first to Clara and then, as the two women approach closer, to Alice and 
myself. She 
is quite drunk. 'It was the chemistry between us,' she says, 'I could not help 
myself. I 
cannot explain. And yet it was failing. I know he felt this loss. The intensity 
was gone and 
without it one becomes very easily bored.' She seems to be referring to Mueller. 
Clara 
listens patiently. 'We tried to recapture passion which overpowers all 
constraint, all 
conscience, but it became hollow. Yet we were linked to each other, by virtue of 
what we 
had done to one another and to friends and strangers.' Caroline looks at me 
suddenly, as if 
to test my response. 'We were partners in crime. All I could do was watch as he 
seduced 
the others who would eventually all become linked to us. That was how we worked, 
how 
we affirmed the validity of our habits; and justified them. Was that so wrong? 
Is one reality 
any better than another?'
      Rakanaspya is the only person with an answer. 'One issan'', he says,'the 
other 
reality you describe is not. Such power ^ Romanticism eventually destroys its 
proponents. 
It is always the case. And the process of destruction is neither nornaal nor 
bearable. It is 
merely sordid. Save yourself, while you have the chance. Never link your star to 
a 
m» as Mueller again.'
      She becomes uncharacteristically sentimental. 'You can never understand 
what 
someone like Mueller has. He radiated authority. He snapped his fingers at 
convention. He 
made fools of them all.'
      'And now he is dead,' says Clara softly, trying to distract Caroline.
Voorman watches cynically as they move back through the salon. 'I heard Fraulein 
Vacarescu is only at liberty now because Mueller was caught through information 
she 
supplied. Perhaps she found her own way of freeing herself from that chemistry.'
      'Somewhat radically.' I do not believe him. Caroline seemed genuinely 
distressed by 
Mueller's fate. I catch sight of a man I have often seen here in the evenings 
and whom I 
continue to confuse with the current Mayor. He is in fact the ex-Mayor of 
Mirenburg. He 
reels about the dance-floor in a kind of vulgar parody of the polka. Herr 
Kralek's tie is lost. 
He has spilled food down his shirt-front. Dolly, alone, will dance with him. 
Almost every 
night he comes to visit the girls, to drink plum brandy and eat cream-cakes 
until dawn, 
when he returns to his wife, to make love to her, we have heard, until he is 
inevitably sick. 
His huge red neck ripples. His face is a eatureless mass of purple. He usually 
displays 
resentment and elf-pity in all his tiniest gestures: demands respectful 
attention and 
receives instead the amiable kindness of the girls, which he mistakes for fear. 
He describes 
himself as an honest burgher, or rather he describes his opinions as those of an 
honest 
burgher: 'Your honest burgher believes the Jews should all be expelled from the 
city 
proper,' he will say. 'Your honest brgher isn't happy with the idea of increased 
taxation.' I 
reember one naive visitor asking him why, since he was so dently the voice of 
the 
respectable citizens of Mirenburg, they had signed a petition to have him 
removed from 
office. He said seriously that most of the signatures had been forgeries, 
Petition had been 
a plot of Zionist elements afraid of his  power. 'Where I could no longer 
exercise my ever 
watchful eye.' He stumbles now and falls to the floor. Dolly attempts to help 
him up. Dolly's 
fiance is not here. Voorman tells Alice about another guest, a small, middle-
aged journalist 
on the far side of the room. 'He awoke in the hospital, still convinced he was 
at Frau 
Schmetterling's, and immediately ordered one of the sisters to remove her 
underwear. She 
had obeyed with alacrity. It was four days before it dawned on him he had 
somehow been 
transferred from the brothel. The sister had no wish for him to leave. Being 
responsible to 
her superior to report his condition, she continued to insist on his poor rate 
of recovery. 
She kept him for another week until one of her colleagues demanded a share of 
the patient 
and was refused. The sister was reported and dismissed on the spot. She 
accompanied 
him back to the brothel where she stayed for a while as medical advisor to the 
girls.' Alice 
is disbelieving. Voorman insists he is telling the absolute truth. The General 
confides to 
Frau Schmetterling, also on a medical matter: 'My physician had the nerve to 
suggest 
mercury treatment, which means he thinks I have syphilis. But until the fool 
comes out with 
it directly and tells me I have the disease I shall carry on as I have always 
carried on. The 
responsibility is his, not mine.'
      'You have put the question to him?' asks Frau Schmetterling.
      'In as many words.'
      'But not directly?'
      'Has he been direct with me, madam?'
      The air is growing warm. It is difficult to breath. We move closer to the 
door. Wilke, 
perhaps the most dignified person here, with a look of self-possessed humility, 
is talking to 
Clara about Amsterdam, which they both know. He seems untroubled by the noise 
and 
laughter which surrounds him. His large hands move in a circle as he describes a 
certain 
district of the city and asks her, with his usual gravity, how long it is since 
she was there. 
'Doesn't he look a marvellous brute,' murmurs Alice as we go by. 'Such a man, 
compared 
to the rest of these!' I pretend to be insulted. 'Perhaps I should introduce 
you?' She gives 
me a look of mock-irritation: 'Oh, don't be silly. Someone like that has no real 
interest in 
women.
      He is either friends with them, or takes them quickly and leaves, or is 
faithful to his 
wife, if he has one. That's obvious to me, even at my age!' How many of these 
observations has she received from her mother?
      I am again unsure why Alice should find me attractive. Is it a certain 
weakness 
which makes me more easily controlled, or less inclined to go my own way when it 
suits 
me? I have no idea. I look around at the crowded salon. How could I have thought 
that this 
was normality? We are all crazed. We are all in Hell. I stare at every face. 
There are only 
two women here I have not fucked. One of them is Frau Schmetterling herself. The 
other is 
Lady Cromach. She and Princess Poliakoff also stand near the door. Lady Cromach 
chews 
on an olive. 'Frau Schmetterling tells me that you write, Herr von Bek. Do you 
work for the 
Berlin journals?' I shake my head. 'I am a dilettante, Lady Cromach. I do not 
know enough 
about life to be able to write with any authority, and I am, moreover, horribly 
lazy.'
      'Is that why you prefer to stay in a place like this when you travel?'
Princess Poliakoff snorts, saying something coarse to Alice who begins to 
giggle. I 
continue to speak to the English woman. 'There are few houses as elegant as this 
and few 
which have such excellent ladies. I'm sure you know that most whores have a 
dislike of 
men and a crude sort of self-involvement which makes them very dull. How can one 
possibly be aroused very often or very satisfactorily by a dull woman?'
      'I find men much duller than most women,' she says.
      'I am inclined to agree with you. And the dullest of all men are German, 
eh?'
      'They have their points. What they lack in imagination they make up for in 
cleanliness. I nearly married one, when I was a girl. And at least they are not 
as boring as 
Frenchmen, who seem to believe their attractiveness is in direct proportion to 
their vanity. I 
blame their mothers. And Germany is so modern! Though, as you suggest, a little 
on the 
tame side. When were you last in Berlin?'
      'Several years ago. My family is content for rne to travel.'
      'An embarrassment of niggers, eh?'
      'Quite so.'
      Princess Poliakoff, her hands on Alice, tells my girl a story she heard 
about the de 
Polignac circle (she had a brief affair with de Polignac which ended with 
neither woman 
speaking to the other for over a year) and some female composer in love with the 
Singer, 
as she says, not the Salon. She continues on this theme of gossip by suggesting 
that there 
are now so many homosexuals of both kinds in Paris the city will be 'quite 
depopulated in 
another quarter-of-a-century'. She speaks to Alice as if she, the Princess, has 
perfectly 
conventional sexual preferances. Homosexuals are referred to as 'they'. I find 
her wit 
without much substance and let her continue to entertain Alice, who is thirsty 
for scandal.
I chat to Lady Cromach until we are joined by Clara. The women are friendly. 
This is a 
relief to me, though I do not know why. The five of us drift towards the dais to 
listen to the 
orchestra playing reasonable Chopin. The more athletic dancers have subsided. 
'It seemed 
to me earlier, this evening,' Clara links her arm in mine,'that we were all 
dead; that 
Mirenburg was destroyed and that we were ghosts dancing in the ruins. You're 
looking 
tired, Ricky. Would you care to borrow my little box. It might revive you.' I 
thank her, but 
refuse. 'I am trying to restore my sense of perspective, Rose, dear.' She finds 
this funny. 
'You have improved your relations with the child.'
      'We have found a balance, I think. I was restraining her too much. And 
please don't 
call her that, Clara. She is more grown-up than she seems.' Clara draws in her 
lips for a 
second. I wonder how I have angered her. 'I apologise,' she says. 'However, my 
offer 
remains, if you need a restorative.' She begins to talk to Lady Cromach. She is 
particularly 
fascinated by the Derby and whether the Prince of Wales's horses are always 
allowed to 
win. These girls. Their soft bodies brush against me; they smell so wonderful. 
They have all 
been mine, most of them in the space of a few days. And they have been
      Alice's. I hesitate in my rapture. My mood alters radically. We are in 
danger of losing 
what is individual to us. Alice has the over-animated, slightly guarded look she 
reserves for 
people who make her nervous. Princess Poliakoff holds her arm, hugs her 
shoulders, 
whispers in her ear and Alice laughs. Lady Cromach and Clara move to one side to 
continue their conversation. But I am in no mood to rescue Alice yet, so I take 
Natalia onto 
the dance-floor for a mazurka. We dance well together. It is strange, however, 
how trapped 
I feel here sometimes; I felt more secure in Rosenstrasse when I was not a 
resident. 
Natalia laughs and lifts in my arms like a happy gibbon.
      When I return to my ladies I discover that Diana Cromach has rescued 
Alice. They 
are talking seriously. Alice nods a great deal and smiles at the older woman. 
Lady 
Cromach is deliberately setting out to charm her. I relish the notion of an 
amorous liaison 
between them. Alice catches my eye. We exchange signals. If it happens I shall 
not mind 
at all: it is the best route through to Lady Cromach, who excites my imagination 
and my 
lust. I pause beside them for a few moments; then, making my own decision, I 
leave them 
to it. I chat to Block, who complains it will be 'months before I can visit 
Vienna again'. At 
about two o'clock in the morning I am approached by a furious Princess Poliakoff 
who 
wants to know if I have seen Diana Cromach and'that disgusting little cousin of 
yours'.
      They have escaped the salon. I feel a thrill of curious pleasure, deny all 
knowledge, 
and pretend to be utterly disconcerted.
      I spend the night in Clara's bed, fucking with a lusty carelessness I have 
not 
experienced for a year. It is so easy to summon the recollection of that 
delicious ambience, 
knowing my Alice and her beautiful English writer were enjoying each other to 
the full; that 
Princess Poliakoff fumed alone, while I relaxed in the arms of a tolerant Rose. 
I fall back on 
my pillows to smoke a cigarette, to relive the wonderful happiness I knew. How 
can I 
possibly relish it so much when I completely failed to anticipate the disaster 
to follow? 
Perhaps that night was a kind of apotheosis; my last true moment of happiness. 
The 
gladioli which Papadakis brought are already beginning to discolour at the 
edges; the 
leaves have streaks of brownish yellow in them, yet they are still beautiful in 
their pinks and 
delicate oranges, their blues and mauves and their deep scarlet. The carnations 
give off 
the richest scent. I lie here, resting from heady sensations. I have some pain, 
mostly in my 
groin but also, strangely, in my nipples, and my back hurts; but this is nothing 
more than 
old age. I had once hoped medical science would progress so swiftly I might 
expect to 
outlive the twentieth century, which I perceive as an insane intermediary period 
between 
one rational age and another; the Great War is over, but they fight in Spain. 
And Russia 
must soon begin another conflict; it is almost her certain destiny. One would 
need money 
for such medicine, even if it existed, and my capital shrinks; I have even less 
than 
Papadakis fears. My will, when I die, shall reveal a pittance and the name of 
the chief 
beneficiary will be unknown to anyone. I doubt that she still lives. Mirenburg 
has 
succeeded, for the moment, in restoring her balance. Clara and I take an early-
morning 
stroll. I am anxious to demonstrate my approval of Alice and Lady Cromach and 
have no 
intention of seeking them out, at least until lunch-time. I can be certain 
Princess Poliakoff 
will make some kind of scene and it would be best for me if I were not involved. 
'Let the 
vixen fight it out amongst themselves,' I think. In heavy coats (mine is 
borrowed) Clara and 
I stand beside the river. A thin pillar of steam comes from somewhere on the 
other side. A 
factory in the Moravia sounds its siren; cans clank as a milkman's wagon turns 
the corner, 
its wheels squeaking, the hooves of its horse plodding softly on the cobbles: 
the mingled 
smell of milk and a horse recently out of the stable brings a reminder of 
childhood safety. 
Then the milkman, crouched like a white hare on the high seat, gives voice: 
'Fresh milk!' 
and his bell begins to clang. We stop him and buy a cup, which we share. It is 
warm and 
soothing. 'There must still be cows somewhere,' says Rose. Neither of us has any 
desire to 
return to the brothel. 'Where now, your Lordship?' We go towards the ornamental 
lake in 
the Botanical Gardens. Our breath creates clouds around our heads, like 
ectoplasm. The 
Gardens are as neatly kept as they ever were, with no evidence of damage, 
although for 
some reason soldiers guard the great hothouses. They salute us as we pass. We 
walk 
along the gravelled main avenue, between marble statues of nameless heroes, 
until we 
reach the lake, which is flanked by willows, poplars and cypresses. There is a 
brownish 
scum on the surface. Water-birds make trails in it as they swim listlessly 
about, 
occasionally diving into the purer water beneath. Clara sniffs. 'It's becoming 
stagnant,' she 
remarks. 'It looks so foul and smells so good to me. Why should it remind me of 
being a 
little girl?' We stroll through the artificial peace. On the other side of the 
Gardens we enter 
Baudessinstrasse. Rather than mount the Mladota Steps we take winding 
Uhrmacherstrasse, with its shops and bourgeois houses; the street progresses 
slowly up 
the hill, following the curve of old roads which led to Castle and Cathedral 
when Mirenburg 
was young. There is a clapping noise. I mistake it at first for horses; then 
down the street 
towards us at a rapid trot come soldiers with shouldered rifles. The troop 
surrounds a 
collection of civilians wearing either a defeated or a defiant air. Not a few 
are hatless, as if 
they have been seized from their beds or captured while attempting flight. 'Who 
are your 
prisoners?' I call to the troubled young captain leading the party. 'Looters and 
profiteers,' 
he says curtly. The majority look ordinary enough to me: chiefly working-class 
and lower 
middle-class people from many walks of life. 'They are taking this very 
seriously,' says 
Clara. She indicates one of the recently-issued notices pinned to a tree. It 
threatens 
punishments and offers rewards and is signed by General von Landoff, 'Military 
Governor 
of Mirenburg for the Duration of Hostilities'. Up beyond the Hussite Square we 
come upon 
ruins. 'Oh,' says Rose,'that's where my milliner used to live. I hope she's not 
hurt.' 
Scaffolding is already erected around some of the wounded buildings and workmen 
attempt to make good the damage done by Holzhammer's cannon. 'Do you want to 
find 
out?' I ask her. We visit some local shops, learning that Frau Schwartz has 
already left the 
city, to stay with relatives in Tarndoff. We emerge from a little toy-shop in 
time to see an 
army band go by, all bugles and fifes, pompous in blue and red, in gold and 
silver braid. 
The soldiers are closely followed by about forty young men in badly-fitting 
uniforms 
wobbling on bicycles. I have read about them. They are the newly-formed 'bicycle 
volunteers'. The cycling-clubs of Mirenburg have joined up en masse. Things 
begin to take 
on a comfortably comic aspect. I for one am rather happy that all motor vehicles 
have been 
requisitioned for military use. The streets are far quieter than usual. In the 
coffee-houses 
the students display a new patriotism and drink to the death of Franz-Josef, 
speak of an 
alliance with the 'Empire of the Slavs' and go off to apply for commissions in 
the army. 
Exiles enjoy a greater sense of freedom since the Austrian secret policemen have 
been 
arrested. Schemes for defence, counter-attack and means of involving the Great 
Powers in 
the Waldenstein Question are noisily discussed at length. The Bourse continues 
to pretend 
it is trading. Shops have re-opened everywhere. Barricades have been removed, 
shutters 
thrown back. Fancy foods have been bought by the ton from grocers whose shelves 
are 
virtually empty; nothing can be replaced. Warehouses have been stripped. Boats 
on the 
river rock in silent moorings; there is stillness in the market-places and 
people bargain, 
when they bargain, in secretive voices. The railway stations are deserted. Empty 
trains 
stand at empty platforms and a few hopeful creatures read notices of 
cancellations or rap 
hopelessly on the shutters of ticket-offices. Pigeons and starlings are noisy in 
the great, 
hollow roofs; the dusty locomotives are covered with bird-droppings. Railway 
workers lean 
against the trains, smoking and chatting, adjusting useless watches. Mirenburg's 
turrets 
and gables have turned pale in the winter light; she is shocked and vague, like 
a cripple not 
yet come to terms with the loss of a limb. The Kasimirsky Palace is heavily-
guarded. 
Voices of soldiers are loud in the air. Guns are wheeled up
      Walls are continuously fortified. People stand in small crowds near the 
Central Post 
Office, hoping to learn that the telegraph has been restored. Everywhere 
officers move 
groups from place to place, dissipate gatherings, oversee requisitioned carts of 
food and 
raw materials, or stop individuals and inspect their new identity cards. Alice 
is now officially 
a Danish national. I have already explained to her how useful this will be in 
disguising our 
trail to Paris. At times of crisis it is easier to change one's name and 
background than it is 
to stroll uninterrupted in a park. Detachments of cavalry move slowly through 
Little 
Bohemia to discourage anti-Semitic gangs who have already tried to burn the 
Great 
Synagogue. Mirenburg is no Warsaw or Odessa and it would be a smirch on her 
honour if 
she tolerated such uncivilised behaviour. This official protection, of course, 
enables citizens 
sympathetic to Holzhammer to claim that Prince Badehoff-Krasny supports the 
interests of 
the financiers and foreign bankers. 'There will be no scapegoats,' General von 
Landoff has 
promised. 'Only those guilty of profiting from the general misery will be 
punished.' The army 
issues orders on every aspect of daily life, from hygiene to the price offish. 
'The poor have 
never been so protected,' observes Clara. 'Is this Socialism?' We pass the 
Liverpool. It has 
been repaired. It might never have been damaged. 'By next spring,' I say, 
'Mirenburg will 
be gayer and lovelier than ever. Look how wonderfully Paris recovered. The 
Prussians and 
the Communards between them should be praised. We'll scarcely remember any of 
this.' I 
was not born, of course, in '71, but I visited the city in '86, when I was 
fourteen, and was 
impressed by its beauty, though I prefer the denser texture of Mirenburg.
Clara insists we visit the Art Museum'to look at the Fragonards.' But half the 
museum is 
closed and the pictures are being crated. We glimpse a few Impressionists before 
we are 
asked to leave. I am infected, however, by Clara's enthusiasm. She is familiar 
with so 
many of the names. I have never known a whore like her. Few women have a genuine 
relish for Art. 'You could teach me so much,' I say. 'You are the best governess 
in the 
world.' Appreciating the double-entendre she laughs heartily as we descend the 
steps. 
'Let's have lunch out.' I am perfectly willing to agree. Half the dishes listed 
on the 
Restaurant Prunier's menu are 'unavailable'. Soups and sauces seem thinner than 
usual. 
We make the best of it, congratulating ourselves on our good fortune in being 
fed by Frau 
Schmetterling and her cook. 'You seem confident today,' Clara declares as we 
leave the 
restaurant. 'Even happy. Like a little boy on holiday from school. Aren't you 
worried about 
your Alice? Don't you anticipate some sort of awful scene?' I shake my head. 'I 
have 
designs on Lady Cromach myself. Alice will be only too willing to share her new 
pleasure 
with me. She owes me that.'
      'And Lady Cromach? What will she say?'
      'Lady Cromach finds me attractive. I suspect Alice is her passport to me.'
Clara shakes her head. 'You people are such predators! I am amazed by you. It 
must be a 
habit of mind, and perhaps of money. Do you inherit it, I wonder?'
      'I am in love, Clara. There are different expressions of love. You can 
accept that, 
can't you? What a whore will do for her pimp, I will do for Alice and Alice for 
me. It is the 
noblest kind of self-sacrifice, and brings pleasure to so many!'
      'I'm not sure,' she says,'that your kind of love is within even my 
experience.' She 
pats my arm to show she is not condemning me. 'We had better get back.'
      As we arrive on the steps of Rosenstrasse there is an old woman there, 
already 
ringing the bell. Clara knows her as Frau Czardak. She is withered to the colour 
of 
pemmican, yet her long double-jointed fingers are supple and flexible, for they 
turn cards 
all day. She is in great demand with the girls who, with so little emotional 
security in their 
lives, look to superstition to offer them an interpretation and analysis of the 
world. The 
abstract and the metaphysical are frequently preferred by prisoners of almost 
any kind, 
since it is usually the fear ot ordinary reality which leads them to their 
condition in the nrst 
place. 'And how soon will the Germans come to our relict>
      Frau Czardak?' asks Clara. 'Have you seen it in the cards?'
      'In the wax. In the wax,' says the old woman cryptically as she proceeds 
ahead of 
us. She is greeted by Trudi who directs her to Frau Schmetterling's kitchen. 
Through the 
open doors of the salon we see porters still clearing up. Maids sweep and dust. 
Great 
baskets of used glasses are carried down. 'Mister' supervises it all with the 
grim eye of a 
well-trained guard-dog. He might even snap at my heels if I try to interfere 
with the ritual. 
He looks impassively at an approaching porter. The man drags a reluctant maid, 
apparently his wife, who has up to that point been dusting. 'She refuses to 
visit the dentist. 
Look!' The porter forces her jaws apart to reveal her blackened, broken teeth, 
while she 
glares up at him. 'Does any man - any human being - have to live with that? She 
disgusts 
me. She has the habits of a wild-beast.' Clara and I pause to enjoy this scene. 
He sees us 
and appeals to us. 'In bed, when I require my rights, she bites me - with those 
horrible 
fangs! She could poison me. I could die. So what's wrong with wanting to leave 
her if she 
won't improve herself? Am I to remain chained to a subhuman because in my youth 
I 
thought her habits cureable? I support her, don't I? I find her good jobs, too, 
like this one. 
But I don't have to live in the same house with her!' He turns back to 'Mister' 
who blinks 
once. 'Do I?' At this his wife snarls at him and wrenches herself away. He 
throws up his 
hands and looks to us again for sympathy. 'You're laughing at me. You don't 
care! But this 
is my life! This is my whole life. I don't believe I shall have another. I am 
desperate. I am 
married to a beast and therefore I receive no respect. It is not funny. It is a 
tragedy.' His 
wife hisses at him and tries to bite his arm. Unable to contain our laughter we 
move on 
towards the stairs to find Frau Schmetterling confronting us. 'Ricky, you must 
do 
something. Your girl and Lady Diana.' She drops her voice. 'They've locked 
themselves in 
your room. Princess Poliakoff has threatened everything from murder to the Law, 
and now 
she's in her room, storming about and breaking things. She had Renee with her 
last night. 
The poor child's black and blue. I've had to make it plain to Princess Poliakoff 
what I think.
      You may stay, Ricky, but if your friend causes trouble, she must go. In 
any other 
circumstances you would all be out, immediately.' She looks frantic. 'I hate 
trouble. The 
ambience is so important. I expect people to behave like ladies and gentlemen. 
You've 
always been so good, Ricky. But this child!' She pauses, blocking our path up 
the stairs. 
'Will you do something?'
      'Princess Poliakoff is an hysterical trouble-maker, dear madame, as you 
yourself 
must know.'
      'You're the man. You must sort it out.' She is firm. 'And before this 
evening, too,' she 
adds as we pass.
      'What am I to do?' I say to Clara. 'Challenge Princess Poliakoff to a 
duel?'
'If you're to challenge anyone, it should be Lady Cromach,' Clara is weary of 
this.
      I smile. 'Unfortunately, it is not Lady Cromach who apes the male. What a 
difficult 
situation, my darling Rose.'
      'And one which your darling Rose will have nothing to do with,' she says. 
'I am 
entirely on Frau Schmetterling's side. It is up to you to settle matters quickly 
and quietly. At 
times like these, Ricky, the atmosphere of the house is even more important. 
Your intrigues 
and squabbles could drive customers away.'
      'I'll talk to Princess Poliakoff,' I promise. And I walk directly to the 
Lesbian's room at 
the end of the second landing.
      Although it is cold, Princess Poliakoff has opened a window. The room is 
finished in 
a sort of Louis XIV style, very much at odds with her own taste. She stands 
shivering by 
the gilded fireplace wearing a full set of masculine evening dress. The hat is 
on the 
mantelpiece near her hand which rests there, holding a cigarette. Her hair has 
been pinned 
and flattened. There is an expression of suppressed agony on her aquiline face. 
She is 
genuinely distressed. I have never been impressed by her in this way before. She 
looks 
older than her forty or so years. She refuses to appeal to me. 'What a strange 
pair of 
cuckolds we make, Ricky.' Since I have acquiesed in this adventure, albeit 
silently, I cannot 
feel genuine sympathy that sympathy of echoed self-pity. 'It's very unexpected,' 
I say. 
Then, because it will suit me, I try to pretend anger. 'I thought you had your 
eye on her, but 
I never guessed… I cross to the window and look down into Rosenstrasse. 
It is 
already growing dark. An old woman with a dog on a lead walks slowly towards the 
archway on the opposite side of the street. 'Men never notice,' she says. Women 
will 
always say that. Wh,at they actually observe is that men frequently do not 
comment. I am 
relieved, at least, that she has failed to blame me for the business. I take 
advantage of her 
need to see me as a fellow sufferer. 'What are we to do about them?' she wants 
to know. I 
suggest that perhaps they will see reason. It can all be cleared up in a few 
minutes if we 
are careful to reduce the tension. She is horribly distressed. 'I love Diana 
deeply. But as for 
reason, I sometimes think the very word is meaningless to her.' This suggests 
she has 
already tried to persuade her lover to have nothing to do with Alice. 'She is a 
cruel and 
heartless woman. It's up to you - up to you, Ricky - to remove that little 
wanton from this 
house.' I tell her I have given the idea consideration, but there is nowhere to 
go. 'There is 
Stefanik's balloon,' she says. 'He's already offered to help Diana escape. You 
could use it 
instead.'
'It's an offer he makes to every woman he desires. It's neither a possibility 
nor a danger.'
      'You didn't have a nigger at all, did you?' She knocks the hat, 
spasmodically, with 
her hand. 'Why were you lying to me?'
      'Oh,' I shrug, 'for privacy.'
      'Because you thought I'd try to take her away from you? There's an irony.' 
She fits 
another cigarette into her holder. Her hands continue to shake.
      I frown, pretending to consider the problem.
      'Well?' she says.
      Til see if they'll speak to me. But you must be patient. I'll come back as 
soon as I 
can.'
      'Please,' she says. 'This is unbearable. I'm suicidal.'
      I leave her and go up to our rooms, knocking softly on the door. 'It's me, 
Alex. Could 
you let me in? I'd like to change my clothes.' I keep my voice as light as I 
can. She - or 
more likely Lady Cromach - will be suspecting a ploy. Anything I say will seem 
like an 
excuse to them. Their curiosity or their tension or their high spirits are all 
that will decide 
them. There is some movement from within. Eventually Alexandra opens the door 
and I 
enter. She is wearing her Japanese kimono. She kisses me quickly and grins to 
involve 
me, to placate me. 'Have you been all right?' She smells of some new perfume. 
The door 
to the bedroom is closed. 'Yes, thanks,' I say. 'And you?'
      'Wonderful.' She pushes at her messy hair. 'I'd have told you, only we 
couldn't ruin 
our chances. We had to act quickly. That witch has been hammering on the door 
for half 
the night and most of the morning. What a harpy, eh? Have you seen her?'
      'She's calmed down.' I go directly to the bedroom and open the door. Lady 
Cromach 
is in bed. She looks offended, then flushes like a travelling salesmen caught 
with the 
farmer's daughter. 'Good afternoon, Lady Cromach. I'm sorry to disturb you. I 
thought, 
since lunch-time has come and gone…'
She recovers herself. I can almost see her controlling her colour. She drops her 
head a 
little and looks up at me, half-smiling. 'Of course. We have been thoughtless.'
      'Understandable, in the circumstances.' From the wardrobe I pick out a 
shirt and 
underclothes.
      'You have been sailing under false colours.' She is not accusatory. 'How 
unkindly 
you misled the Princess. You know she loves proof of the most extravagantly 
unlikely 
gossip. Is she all right, do you know?'
      I seat myself heavily on the bed and stare into her glowing face. 'She 
says she is 
suicidal. That she loves you. She seems very distracted.' The bed reeks of their 
love-
making. I fee' almost faint.
      'She won't kill herself.' Lady Cromach settles back in my pillows. 'She'd 
be more 
likely to kill one of us. The Princess can't bear to be thwarted.'
      'Neither can I.'
      She puts a hand on mine. 'But you have not been. Have you?' The sheet 
falls away 
from her shoulders. She is lovely, like a young boy. 'Alice tells me you are a 
stranger to 
sexual jealousy.'
      'I am becoming more familiar with it.'
      She accepts the flattery. Alice enters to stand looking at us, like a 
melodrama child 
which has affected a reconciliation between its parents. She is almost smug. I 
laugh and 
ask her to light me a cigarette. She obeys with cheerful alacrity, placing an 
ashtray beside 
me. Lady Cromach's hand has not left mine. 'Are you trying to mollify me, Lady 
Cromach? 
Or do you plan to include me in this seduction?'
      'You're straightforward,' the says.
      'Perhaps it's the atmosphere of this place. Perhaps it is the fact that we 
may all soon 
be blown to bits.' I remove my jacket, then my waistcoat. Alice takes them from 
me. 'I'll 
bring some champagne,' she says. Lady Cromach's eyes have narrowed and her 
breathing 
has become rapid. A nerve twitches in her neck. 'Champagne,' she says. 'What 
else did 
the Princess have to tell you?'
      'Very little.'
      Alice returns with a tray of champagne and glasses. She puts the tray on 
the little 
bedside table and curls up beside Lady Cromach. 'She must have yelled herself 
hoarse!'
      'I've promised to try to reason with you and then report back to her.' I 
accept the cold 
glass.
      'And are you reasoning now?' Lady Cromach wants to know.
      'In my own fashion. Or perhaps I'm bargaining.'
      'You wish me to give Alexandra up?'
      'You know I'm not so rigid. I have told her I will not object to her 
sleeping with other 
women, though I draw the line at other men. I'd like it understood, though, that 
my feelings 
must take priority with Alexandra.'
      'That's surely up to Alexandra.' Lady Cromach raises an eyebrow at my 
girl.
      Alice says in a small voice: 'I'll do what everyone thinks best.' Neither 
Lady Diana 
nor myself are even briefly convinced. 'I'm sure you will,' says Lady Cromach, 
fondling her 
head. 'Oh, well, I think it can all be arranged satisfactorily, Herr von Bek. 
This would not be 
the first time, eh?' We toast one another with our glasses.
      Later I remark to Lady Cromach that she has one of the loveliest bodies I 
have 
known. It is like fucking a supple youth with a cunt. It is a rare pleasure. 
'You are a pretty 
rare pleasure for me,' she responds sardonically. I get dressed. We have agreed 
I should 
pretend to Princess Poliakoff that I am persuading the women the affair is not 
possible. I 
will hint at my ability to blackmail one or both of them. But when I get to her 
rooms Princess 
Poliakoff has vanished. A maid at work on the stairs says she saw her go out 
half-an-hour 
ago. Downstairs, Trudi says the Princess left with a small hand-bag, in a cab. 
She did not 
say where she was going. Relieved at this, I return to my women. 'It's almost 
too good to 
be true.'
      'She has her pride,' says Diana thoughtfully. 'But she also has a taste 
for revenge.'
      I know. She is probably scheming vengeance in one of the empty hotels near 
the 
station. She is certainly not dead or planning to die. I clamber into bed. Later 
tonight I will 
sleep in Clara's room. In the morning we shall go to breakfast with Alice and 
Diana. There 
will be a slightly formal atmosphere until Clara produces her cocaine. Outside 
large flakes 
of snow will fall over Frau Schmetterling's garden. Alice will clap her hands. 
'It's going to be 
the most marvellous Christmas!'
      The next weeks at Rosenstrasse will be the happiest I shall ever 
experience. The 
intimacy between Alice, Rose, Diana and myself will grow. The affection will 
take on the 
nature of a family's and I shall fall cheerfully into my charming younger 
brother, ready for 
any sport, undemandingly cooperative. Who could fail to love such a man? We will 
scarcely 
notice the food growing poorer and sparser, or the brothel beginning to assume a 
run-down 
look. Frau Schmetterling, who will have taken charge of our rations and seen to 
it that 
doors and windows are properly barricaded, will not be quite so maternally self-
possessed 
as usual. More and more young officers will attend the salon, and fewer 
civilians. One 
officer, young Captain Adolf Mencken, is now resident here. The brothel is an 
official 
telephone post.
      The snow heals the scars on the city, softening the outlines of the 
fortifications, 
muting the sounds of distress. Mirenburg is visibly beginning to starve. There 
is no word 
from Germany. Holzhammer has strengthened his encirclement. The dribble of water 
in the 
river is brackish and filthy and reveals all kinds of horrors. These, too, the 
snow will cover. 
Sometimes in my imagination the brothel in Rosenstrasse will seem to be the only 
building 
still standing; the only security in a desolate and mutilated world. But then 
too often I will 
begin to notice the reality, the theadbare quality of the deception. Frau 
Schmetter-ling 
maintains it by her will alone. She once leaned easily on her cushions, 
controlling a 
universe of comfort, maintaining by moral strength and skill an illusion of 
absolute 
sanctuary, but now the effort is visibly draining her. 'Mister' has become more 
solicitous; 
her chow dogs can scarcely summon the energy to bark at the clients. She still 
dusts every 
piece of china in her vast dresser. Mirenburg is hungry. The meals at the 
brothel remain 
reasonable. We eat once a day. Nobody asks where 'Mister' finds his supplies. 
Nobody 
asks where the flowers come from.
      We move, all four of us, in a web of reference where our needs and 
attitudes are the 
only ones worth considering. Alice, of course, is trapped in this more 
thoroughly than the 
rest, who at least know on one level that what they are doing can ultimately be 
self-
destructive: we have conspired and chosen, she has merely accepted. Our games, 
our 
fantasies, our rituals become increasingly elaborate and abstract, yet we 
congratulate 
ourselves that they are 'humane'. So they are, I suppose, in this private world, 
and we 
would be impatient if we were forced to consider them in any different context. 
I am a 
woman amongst women; my perfume is their perfume; we share our clothes, our 
jewellery, 
our identities. Memory is floating scarlets and pinks shading into yellow and 
grey, the taste 
of sex, the sensation of being forever relaxed, forever in a state of heightened 
sensuality, 
forever alive. I can smell this paper: it has an old dusty odour, and the ink is 
bitter in my 
nostrils. After the War I spent a few months in Algeria, much of this time in a 
whorehouse 
having some of the atmosphere of Frau Schmetterling's, although it was a much 
rougher 
place. It was frequented by certain elements of the French Army. One of the 
girls, a pretty 
redheaded Russian called Marya, whose parents had been killed by the Bolsheviks 
and 
who had come here from Yalta, was dying by the hour. She was consumptive. She 
had a 
little cubicle off the main floor, where we sat on cushions and smoked hashish. 
On a 
certain night she had announced that it was 'free tonight, gentlemen'.
      One by one the customers went to her as she called for champagne - a 
bottle with 
every man - standing in her door in a pink chemise which had brownish stains on 
it, 
challenging them to come, while the blood flowed down her lovely chin, and her 
delicate 
shoulders and beautiful little breasts shook as she coughed. 'This is a farewell 
performance.' But gradually even the coarsest of the soldiers began to hesitate 
and look to 
one another in the hope that someone would put a stop to the matter. The 
proprietor of the 
brothel, a half-Arab who wore a fez and a European suit, remained 
expressionless, 
watching Marya, watching the customers, perhaps curious himself to see how far 
it could 
all go. The soldiers took up their bottles of champagne and went into her 
cubicle, but none 
went very willingly or stayed very long. I still do not know why they went: I 
like to think it 
was out of respect for a dying and desperate girl. Perhaps she thought their 
bodies would 
bring her renewed life, or perhaps she hoped they would kill her. She died two 
days later, 
quietly, full of hashish.
      Mirenburg huddles under the snow as if in a mixture of fear and pride. Her 
bells 
continue to chime; her lovely churches are crowded every day. There are no birds 
here 
now. They have all been caught and eaten. The factories are closed and every 
able-bodied 
man marches on the walls as part of his militia^ duty. Holzhammer's armour 
squats not a 
quarter of a mile from our abandoned trenches on the other side of an expanse of 
almost 
unbroken snow. We have heard that German and Austrian diplomats quarrel over the 
Waldenstein Question but no decision has yet been reached.
      We expect the cannon to begin to fire again soon. Van Geest is still 
wearing his 
blanket-jacket. He talks to me one afternoon as we sit side by side on a couch 
in the gloom 
of the salon. 'I continue to associate this place with the funeral parlour where 
we took my 
mother. Isn't that peculiar? Yet the atmosphere seems exactly the same to me. It 
always 
has. Even before the siege began. It could be the dark drapery and the smell of 
incense. 
The potted palms. Is that all? The cause of the association is beyond me.' He 
sighs and 
lights his cigar. 'But I am comfortable here.' Over on the other side of the 
room, in the half-
light, Frau Schmetterling sits at the piano, playing some mindless German song. 
As I get 
up to leave I hear a commotion in the vestibule and Therese comes storming in 
pointing 
behind her at the same porter who, a few weeks ago, complained about his wife's 
teeth. 
Therese is wearing a feather dressing-gown and mules. Only since the Siege have 
the girls 
been allowed to dress like this in public. She has lost all appearance of 
refinement. Her 
harsh gutter-Berlin rings out suddenly across the room. 'He's eaten Tiger! The 
horrible old 
bastard's eaten the cat!' Frau Schmetterling hurries from the piano. 'Not so 
loud, dear. 
What's the matter?' Therese points again. 'The cat. He said it was a rabbit.' 
She rounds on 
the man. 'And he offered me some if I'd doodle him. For a rabbit leg! Or a cat's 
leg, as it 
turned out. He's disgusting. Old swine! I'd rather eat his damned leg. Tiger was 
my only 
real friend.' She begins to weep, every so often pausing to glare at the 
bewildered porter. 
All he can say is: 'It wasn't Tiger. Somebody else got Tiger.' Frau 
Schmetterling tells him he 
is dismissed.
      'One should try to draw the line at cats.' Captain Mencken, all shaded 
eyes, 
colourless hair and sandy uniform, comes up to us and borrows a light from Van 
Geest. 
'They are eating worse in the Moravia and Little Bohemia, I hear.' He looks down 
on us 
through smoked glasses, a sober lemur.
People seem to have become obsessed with what should and what should not be 
eaten. 
Yesterday I was in the kitchen while Frau Schmetterling discussed menus with her 
cook. 
Herr Ulric has always impressed me. He was a butcher in Steinbrucke twenty years 
ago, 
and he still retains something of the smell of the shambles about his coarse and 
enormously gentle body. His hands, when at rest, lie upon his thighs as if they 
grip an axe 
and his eyes contain that familiar sad tenderness of a betrayer of lambs and 
ewes. His old 
calling proves useful again. Herr Ulric was amused by Frau Schmetterling's 
insistence that 
the food be described simply as 'meat'. He agreed. 'So long as it isn't 
described as prime. 
That nag was hardly the finest horse in the cavalry, even when she was young!' 
Frau 
Schmetterling had nodded in that dismissive way she has when she does not wish 
to hear 
what is being said to her. Van Geest sighs. 'I feel like one of those dark weeds 
which grows 
in the deep sea, which never observes the light of the sky, is never exposed to 
the air. I 
wave in fathomless currents. I am moved by profound, slow forces; I am never 
attacked; I 
give a hiding place to both predator and prey, yet I am scarcely aware of them 
and never 
affected by them. Is this power, do you think?' Captain Mencken hands back the 
box of 
matches and looks to me for a reply, but I know Van Geest too well by now to 
bother to 
answer. Captain Mencken has little to do and frequently seems embarrassed to be 
here. 
He is courteous enough, but always distant. He is unhappy, he has confided to 
us, with a 
state of affairs in which our soldiers do battle with starving citizens in their 
own streets. 
There have been several terrible incidents. 'We should take the offensive,' he 
has said. 
'That's my opinion. But we wait still for the Kaiser. And the Kaiser will not 
come. The only 
relief for Mirenburg depends on the actions of her soldiers. One good cavalry 
charge could 
take those positions. Or could have.' Now he moves away from us.
      'The horses are growing too weak,' he says. 'Well, you know what's 
happening to 
them.'
      He goes to the boarded-up window as if he hopes he will get some glimpse 
of the 
enemy. 'They're starving us rather successfully, aren't they?' He is one of the 
few 
Mirenburger soldiers to have seen active service. Frau Schmetterling returns and 
settles at 
her piano. Rakanaspya and Count Belozerski enter, speaking in low Russian 
voices. The 
Count has grown a thin pointed beard, and both men have become increasingly 
serious; 
they spend all their time together and appear to be discussing metaphysics. 
Count 
Belozerski's hair has been allowed to grow, too. It now touches his high fur 
collar, 
emphasising his Tartar blood and giving him a Mephistophelean appearance 
completely at 
odds with his behaviour, which remains amiably courteous. He has been to see 
Caroline 
Vacarescu once or twice, though she is determinedly in pursuit of a rather 
nervous and 
flattered Captain Mencken, while granting her favours most frequently to Rudolph 
Stefanik. 
She is playing several hands at once. We have heard nothing at all of Princess 
Poliakoff 
except a vague rumour she has escaped the city and thrown herself on the mercy 
of her 
ex-lover Holzhammer. I enquired at every hotel and boarding-house I was able to 
find. I still 
fear she has guessed my perfidy and might by now have discovered who Alice 
really is. 
She would betray me if she could. She would betray us all. In the Town Hall a 
day or so 
ago a fire had been especially prepared for an emergency meeting. The business 
people of 
Mirenburg were to meet General von Landoff and his staff to discuss the 
situation. The big 
mediaeval hall, with its gilded gargoyles and elaborate flags, was full of loud 
voices and 
tobacco smoke. A number of old men were in contentious discourse near the 
fireplace. 
Everyone still wore their overcoats. No member of the military staff had yet 
arrived and 
merchants and bankers continued to represent themselves as experts in the 
business of 
War. There were rumours of an emissary from Holzhammer, of new peace-terms which 
General von Landoff had dismissed out of hand as 'quite impossible'. One iron-
master 
joked that he had it on good authority that all women under twenty were to be 
given up to 
the Bulgarians. 'My mistress was in tears when I got there last night. She knew 
that it was 
nonsense, of course, but was I suspect enjoying the melodrama. There is so 
little 
entertainment, these days. I told her the story was untrue but that I had made a 
private 
agreement with General von Landoff to give her up to his uses in return for my 
own safe-
conduct.' No-one there knew anything of the Princess Poliakoff. 'You don't 
believe you're 
making sense, do you?' says Papadakis, uncorking a bottle of Chambertin. 'You're 
being 
foolish. What are you writing about? The girl? Because I won't listen any more, 
you're 
writing it down. Is that it?' Mirenburg is still alive. Her battlements have 
held off the Goth 
and the Hun and every empire Europe has known. 'She is indestructible.' 
Papadakis begins 
to pour the wine. 'Let it breathe!' I tell him. 'Let me breathe. Let us all 
breathe! God! You 
stink of disease. You are putrefying before my eyes. I can smell you night and 
day!' Clara 
joins me in the salon. She wears a sable coat, borrowed from Diana, and a 
matching muff 
and hat. We are going for one of our walks. Captain Mencken removes his smoked 
glasses 
and warns us to be cautious. His eyes have that pale, bloody look of dogs whose 
hair 
permanently covers their faces. 'The amount of crime in the city is 
prodigious…'
We laugh at him as we step into the path which has been cleared through the 
snow. The 
dismissed porter is close behind us, grumbling that it has become impossible to 
please 
anybody these days. He goes towards Rauchgasse while we turn in the opposite 
direction, 
to Papensgasse and the Botanical Gardens. The guards have stamped paths all over 
the 
gardens and we follow them. The smell of burning wood comes from near the 
Tropical 
Plant House. The white smoke rising over the snow adds to the haze. The sky is 
the colour 
of new steel and from the Moravia a score of belfries begin to peal. The people 
on that side 
are mostly Catholic. 'They pray four or five times a day now,' says Clara. She 
wants to 
investigate the source of the smoke, but I hold her back. 'It would be best not 
to find out 
what they are cooking,' I say. 'Have they become cannibals?' She makes to go on. 
'There 
are rumours,' I say. She shivers and her eyes brighten. 'Oh!' She tries to find 
a remark and 
fails. 'How terrible,' she says finally, in a small voice. 'I wonder what would 
happen to me? 
Would they prefer to eat me or rape me, do you think?' We take the turning for 
the 
ornamental lake. 'Probably both,' I say. Most of the trees are down. They have 
been used 
for firewood. The unbroken snow covers their stumps, however, so that it is 
still possible to 
pretend the Siege does not exist and all is as it was in September. I walk 
slowly, savouring 
the sense of peace. I am a little light-headed from hunger. In the distance 
glass buildings 
are heavy with snow. Every other outline seems black. There is a strong smell of 
urine from 
the lake. Clara holds her nose. 'They must be using it as a cess-pit. I suppose 
they can't 
empty the sewage into the river any more, though I don't see what difference it 
makes.' A 
soup-kitchen has been set up in the Lugnerhoff. The line of people, many of them 
well-
dressed, stretches the length of Korkziehiergasse and goes out of sight around 
the corner. 
I see an old acquaintance, Herr Prezant the tobacconist, and stop to talk to 
him. 'What's 
the soup like?' I ask him. 'It gets thinner every day,' he says, smiling. He is 
a grey ghost in 
astrakhan. 'Soon it will be only water, but we shall still go on queuing for it. 
By that time we 
shall not have noticed. It's as good a way as any of starving to death.' He 
seems to be 
quite serious. 'Relief will soon be here,' I say. He is fatalistic: 'There is 
nobody who would 
wish to help us in the current political climate. You must know that as well as 
I, Herr von 
Bek.'
      'I am optimistic by nature, Herr Prezant. There's little point in being 
otherwise.' He 
offers me his hand and I shake it. It is all bone; yellow with the stains of his 
calling. Then he 
turns back into the line and stands there, his shoulders straight, his fingers 
toying with the 
brim of his Homburg hat. 'He is a brave little old fellow,' says Clara. 'But why 
are people so 
frequently passive in the face of misery and death? Have they been reconciled to 
it all their 
lives? So few of them seem surprised, let alone outraged. Wouldn't you be 
angry?'
'I would not be in his position,' I tell her. 'But if I were I should probably 
behave very 
similarly. One makes choices, until there are no further choices to make. Then 
one accepts 
the results. His choices have led him to that queue. As have his circumstances, 
too, of 
course. My circumstances will never lead me to make Herr Prezant's choice. Let's 
count 
our blessings, Rose, my love.' There are no cabs. We must walk back. Black smoke 
floats 
towards the twilight. Fire has broken out in the Koenigsallee and has spread for 
several 
blocks. The hospital has been evacuated: the patients are lying on stretchers in 
the street 
until they can be removed to the Convent of the Poor Clares. The fire is said to 
be the work 
of incendiaries, of women patterning themselves after the communards of '71 and 
deciding 
it would be better to burn Mirenburg to the ground than to let it fall into the 
hands of the 
besiegers. The blaze is soon under control and several suspected 'petrolleuses' 
have been 
arrested. A crowd visits the burning buildings to warm itself and to loot 
whatever food might 
have survived. A few shots are fired in the dusk. A far less passive crowd 
rushes up 
Falfnersallee towards the Mirov Palace and is met by a fusillade. In the 
confusion some 
field-guns are discharged. We reach Rosenstrasse at dark, barely in time for 
curfew. 
Captain Mencken peers at us through the pools of his spectacles. 'You are safe, 
then?' 
Clara asks him what is happening. He tells us Holzhammer's agents have been 
creating 
dissension in the city. Those agents will soon be under arrest. I remark how hot 
it has 
become inside the house. Frau Schmetterling flusters through the door which 
leads down 
to the basement. 'He intends to burn us all up!' she says despairingly. 'Please 
help. It is 
'Mister' and Chagani!' Captain Mencken and I go down to the furnace-room. The 
boiler is 
roaring so high it threatens to burst. Two men stand in the flickering darkness 
hurling log 
after log through its blinding mouth. 'He will not listen!' wails Frau 
Schmetterling. 'He 
continues to cram in fuel. You would think he was in Hell already!'
      'Mister' stops suddenly. He is panting. He signs for his friend Chagani to 
continue 
their work. He looks at us in surprise. He has an enthusiastic, boyish 
expression on his 
ruined face. He is sweating. 'Every room in the house is at tropical heat,' says 
Frau 
Schmetterling. Captain Mencken steps forward. 'I think this will do. We are 
supposed to be 
preserving fuel.' He speaks gently, even hesitantly. 'There is no point now,' 
says 'Mister'. 
'Not now, sir. Why give them our firewood?'
      'You think Holzhammer has won?'
      'Holzhammer has won.' For the first time Chagani speaks. He does not look 
at us, 
but he drops the log he has been carrying. I recognise him. He sometimes 
entertains the 
girls with his monkey and his mimicry. Muscular and yet without strength, 
Chagani was an 
acrobat who destroyed his own judgement through self-demand and a lack of faith 
in his 
partners. This evening he has decided to wear his red, spangled costume. He 
steps back 
towards the boiler-room's outer door. The firelight shifts to silhouette him, 
frozen in 
loneliness, clinging to his pride as he might cling to the very sword which had 
killed him. 
'Holzhammer was won. His troops will be here by morning.' In faded red and 
tarnished gold 
he stands stretching his calves, reaching back to a memory of his youth, 
obstinately 
continuing to identify the impatience he had then possessed with the subtler 
forms of 
optimism he has detected in others and yet been unable to comprehend. 'That's 
rubbish, 
Chagani,' I say. 'What on earth's your game? Why have you alarmed 'Mister'?'
      Chagani laughs suddenly and springs into the depleted woodpile in the 
corner. He 
attempts a pirouette and lands on his back. The timber tumbles around him. He is 
still 
laughing. He is very drunk. 'Mister' goes to help him, his hands stretched. Frau 
Schmetterling says sharply: 'You are not to listen to him. He's always leading 
you into 
trouble. Why do you let him? Why do you get him the schnapps?' She crosses to 
the boiler 
and with a long iron rod taps and turns and slides until the thing is burning at 
a normal level 
again. She whirls around with the rod in her hand. 'Mister' has aided Chagani to 
regain his 
feet. The ex-acrobat flexes his upper arms. He is not hurt. 'I still know how to 
fall,' he says. 
He glares at us. 'Which is more than any of you do. Can't you see it's over for 
you? Your 
luck has failed.' Frau Schmetterling threatens him with the black rod. He arches 
his back 
like a ballerina and, limping, allows 'Mister' to help him to the outer door. I 
watch him as he 
mounts the steps up to the garden. There are several cavalry-horses stabled 
there now. 
The cockatoos, the macaws, the parrot, all have gone, and there are no more 
orchids. 
Captain Mencken follows behind Chagani as the man is challenged by a guard. 
'It's all 
right, Huyst.' And 'Mister' looks after his departing friend before descending 
the steps and 
tugging something out of his shirt. It is a half-empty stone bottle. Frau 
Schmetterling takes 
it, shaking her head, and drops the rod with a clang to the dusty flagstones. 
Mencken and I 
return upstairs. 'They are all going mad,' he says. 'It is hunger and alcohol, I 
suppose. Who 
can blame them?'
      The four of us, out of choice, are dining most evenings off morphine, 
opium and 
cocaine. It is better than the food we have, and thanks to Clara the drugs are 
still plentiful. 
When we require warming, we drink old cognac. Wilke, summoned by a maid, stands 
at 
the top of the steps as we come back up. 'I thought we were on fire,' he says. 
'And that was 
shooting earlier, wasn't it? I was asleep.' His big, passive head is drowsy and 
his voice is 
furred. He wears a red and white dressing gown; his feet are bare. 'What do you 
want me 
to do, chicken?' He addressed Frau Schmetterling. 'It is over,' she says. 'I am 
sorry you 
were woken up. 'Mister' lost control of the furnace.'
      'Do you want me to have a look at it?' asks Wilke. 'It is all right now,' 
she says. 'Go 
back to bed.' She kisses him on the cheek as he turns obediently about. He is 
quite as 
loyal to her, I suspect, as 'Mister'. They are a strange pair of children. 'I 
thought the 
Bulgarians had arrived,' he says, almost to himself, 'and had set us on fire.'
      'Could Chagani have some word?' I ask Captain Mencken. Behind his smoked 
glasses he is inscrutable. 'Hardly!' he says. 'A man like that? It would take 
much more than 
a day for Holzhammer to break through into the city. It was rubbish. He was 
drunk as a pig. 
Drunk as a pig.' I have sweat and grime all over my face. I go up to Clara's 
room to bathe. 
A maid fills the tub for me. We are gasping from the heat. 'Don't touch the 
radiators,' warns 
Clara. 'I have already burned myself.' She displays a red spot on the back of 
her hand. On 
her mirror she has laid out two thick lines of cocaine. 'Have one of those,' she 
says. 'It will 
spoil my appetite for dinner,' I tell her. 'Then have both,' she says with a 
laugh. She is 
wearing her Broderie Anglaise negligee. Her white body, with its firm breasts 
and big 
nipples, is beaded with perspiration. She sprays at herself with a cologne-
bottle. 'Ugh! Who 
could have expected this? That Chagani is mad. I've always said so. He hates the 
human 
race. He'll burn us down, yet.'
      'Wilke thought the Bulgarians had arrived.'
      'He's not the only one. We're all on edge, Ricky, dear.'
      After my bath I go to see my other ladies. They usually prefer to be 
together until 
mid-afternoon when they like to receive me. This arrangement suits Clara. She 
has her 
naps while I am away. Alice and Diana come to embrace me. They could almost be 
brother 
and sister. Twins. 'Oh, those guns again,' says Lady Cromach. 'My nerves! Did 
you hear 
them?'
      'Nothing to worry about.'
      'Why do men always say that to women and children?' Diana shakes her head 
and 
leads me towards the bedroom. 'And you seem so pleased with yourselves when you 
do it!'
      'Aha. Perhaps we're talking to ourselves.'
      'Perhaps you are, my dear.' Diana kisses me again. 'There is a child in 
all of us 
sometimes, who cries and must be comforted.'
      Alice follows behind us. She has her hands together on her stomach. Diana 
and I 
stretch ourselves on the bed but Alice continues to stand. 'We've got to leave,' 
she says. 
Our Alice is drawing attention to herself. She is looking a little fatter and, 
as a result, even 
lovelier than usual. Her skin's lustre reminds me of pink pearls in the deep 
sea, still 
enlivened by the movement of the waters. Her hands press against glass. Behind 
the glass 
are shutters, nailed with boards on the outside, and only a few bars of yellow 
light shed by 
the houses opposite, enter through the gaps. Within the brothel we live almost 
entirely by 
artificial light. There is no more gas. Oil and candles are in short supply. She 
wears one of 
Clara's grey silk dressing-gowns and the remains of last night's theatrical 
make-up - we 
had turned her into a doll, a Coppelia. 'This is wretched.'
      'There is absolutely nothing we can do, dear.' Diana strokes the linen of 
my arm. 
'Where could we go?' She looks at me.
      'They were shooting at civilians,' I tell Alice. 'It was a riot near the 
Mirov Palace. 
Clara and I were almost caught up in it, but it wasn't really dangerous.'
'What was Clara doing, letting you go out in that?' says Alice. 'Clara is a 
fool! Clara will get 
you killed. She looks for danger. She loves to be near death. It's the way she's 
made. You 
shouldn't go along with her silly schemes.'
      'We were taking our usual stroll,' I say mildly, looking to Diana for an 
explanation. 
Diana gets up and goes into the other room to find her playing cards. Alice has 
pinched her 
cheeks together and juts her red lips at me. It is the expression she usually 
employs when 
she pretends to know somebody else's secret, or disbelieves a statement, or 
disapproves 
of an explanation. 'Don't do that,' I say. 'It makes you look ugly.' I will do 
almost anything to 
take that particular expression off her face. If you're frightened, then admit 
it. But you 
shouldn't try to turn your fear onto somebody else. Clara doesn't deserve that.' 
She is for 
the first time, however, thoroughly unreachable. She will not respond. The 
realisation gives 
me a physical shock. 'It isn't fair,' I add. But I am losing her. I can sense 
it. She needs me 
to give something which I do not have. I do not even know exactly what it is she 
wants. I 
would give it if I could. I hold back. Perhaps it is simply that she has used me 
up. Anything I 
say will be contrary to my interests. Alice is cold. 'You have changed,' she 
says. It is as if a 
judge has reached a verdict. 'You used to be so gay.' I am condemned and 
sentenced and 
still my crime is unknown to me. Diana returns. 'Shall we all go down to dinner 
tonight? she 
says. She seems innocent. Has she been speaking about me to Alice? Or against 
Clara? 
Nobody could do that unless Alice wanted it.
      'Why not?' I reply. 'We'll have Horsemeat Surprise. Or perhaps tonight it 
will be 
Pouf-Pouf stew.' My joke falls flat. Alice cries: 'Oh, my God!' and begins to 
cry into her 
hands. Diana comforts her. Somehow I have compounded my crime.
      'I'm very sorry,' I say.
      'It isn't your fault.' Diana is grim. 'You'd better bring Clara here. This 
is getting out of 
proportion. At all costs we four must stick together.' Alice looks up. Snails 
seem to have 
crawled across her caked face. 'The pair of them are already against us. Can't 
you see 
that, Diana?' Lady Cromach puts on her dark dressing gown. 'I'll get Clara. You 
stay here 
with Ricky.' As soon as she has left Alice sniffs and stops crying. She glares 
at me. She 
goes to her dressing table and begins to wipe the cosmetics from her face. She 
has 
become much more skilled with her clothes and her make-up. 'We've got to get 
away from 
here, Ricky,' she says. 'We haven't been trying properly. We'll be like those 
Romans - 
those people in Pompei - still making love when the volcano went off. Diana and 
Clara 
must take their chances. You surely know of some means… ' I am again 
shocked, 
both by her disloyalty and her volte-face. Why has she suddenly forgiven me? I 
am 
disturbed, yet flattered she should choose me as her conspirator against the 
others. 'We've 
got to get to Paris, Ricky.' The traces of tears are nearly gone. She begins to 
work on her 
hair, brushing rapidly. She leans into the mirror. 'It would be pointless to 
take Clara with us. 
She has no breeding. Well, you can't expect it from a whore, I suppose.'
      I am angry on Clara's behalf, yet to defend her would be to lose my child. 
Alice has 
fired her warning shot.
      'What about Diana?' I ask.
      'She's too unimaginative. You and I are the only ones with imagination, 
Ricky. It is 
our bond. Remember?' She turns with a lovely little smile. 'Twin souls?'
      I laugh. I recognise her motives and her techniques but I can't resist 
them. She is 
my muse, my alter-ego, my creation. 'Let's at least behave decently.' I attempt 
to save 
something of my old standards. 'There's no need to condemn either of them just 
because 
we're tired of them. Let's just admit we want to get to Paris together.'
      She is almost happy. She blows me a kiss from her reflection. 'All right. 
That's fair 
enough. What will you do?'
      'I'll make enquiries. I know someone. There's a chance.'. This is empty 
reassurance, 
of course. She must hope. She must pin that hope on me. She has given me an 
ultimatum. 
To lose her would be to lose myself.
      'I just want to be on our own again,' she says. 'In Paris. Or Vienna. 
Wherever you 
think. But we can't stay here, Ricky. There are too many dangers. Too many awful 
memories. I want to start afresh. I want to be your wife, as you promised.'
      I am enormously elated as she embraces me; I have had a last-minute 
reprieve. But 
there are conditions. We hear Clara and Diana coming back. She whispers: 'Get us 
away.' 
And she continues with her toilet. 'She's much better now,' I say. 'It was the 
shooting and 
the heat. We're all relaxing again.' I laugh. I look at the two women I intend 
to deceive. 
They seem merely pleased emotions have settled. I see no reason to feel guilt. 
It will 
simply be Alice and me again. We shall finish where we began. Nobody will have 
lost. 
There have been no bargains made. But I am already lost; I refuse to consider 
what I will 
receive in place of love; or what I shall win to replace the pain and the beauty 
of 
worshipping a woman rather than a child. I shall become a coward. The future 
threatens 
me and I refuse to acknowledge it. The moment is all that matters. I might have 
ended my 
days with affectionate memories and all I shall actually have will be a litany 
of petty 
revenges and self-pity. I will come to deceive all women as wilfully as I now 
plan to deceive 
myself. I will exploit their romance as mine was exploited. I know all this but 
I am compelled 
to continue. Alice has begun to sing that old familiar parting song; finding 
faults, compiling 
lists of supposed slights so that she might justify her next decision. And what 
she can turn 
against these two friends she can as easily turn against me. I am in that state 
of disbelief 
which can sometimes last for days or weeks before the fact of disaffection is 
accepted. I 
look away. When shall I be struck? In Paris? Before or after we are married? I 
will suffer 
that particular indignity. I will listen to lies about what we have done and 
distortions of the 
facts of our life together. I will not leave. I will not, as I should, let her 
sing that song alone. 
But all this knowledge is swamped by the tiniest hope that she will change: that 
what I see 
is not the truth.
Alexandra. You must not leave me. You must not change. From the triumph of eyes 
freshly-adult she will one day mock my misery. She will refuse the role which it 
will have 
suited her to play, which will no longer be useful to her. She will change her 
ambitions, but 
not her nature. I shall be hardly peripheral to her consideration when not long 
ago I should 
have been central. From a citadel of lace and velvet she will look down on a 
wretch. Now 
she flashes me a private smile. They are getting changed. They are chatting 
amongst 
themselves. They prepare themselves for the dinner. Then Clara and Diana leave 
me 
alone with Alice again. 'I must have your guarantee,' I tell her. 'I must know 
you will not 
betray me.' She hugs me. She kisses me warmly. 'How could I betray you, darling 
Ricky? 
You are my master!' I hold her to me, not daring to look at her face for fear I 
will see the 
deception too clearly. 'It's wrong to do this to Clara and Diana,' I say. She 
pulls away from 
me. 'That's stupid. What do we owe them?' I sit on the chair, my shoulders 
stooped. She 
offers me something in her gloved hand, palm outstretched as if to a pet. It is 
a little pill of 
opium. Wonder-ingly, I take it. She turns away. 'You know, Ricky, that I have no 
conception 
of your ideas of morality sometimes. We see things so differently. I don't plan 
to do any 
harm to either Diana or Clara. Do you think that?'
      'No'
      'I love them both. They are wonderful. But you and I have something 
special. What 
purpose would be served in blurting everything out? It can only cause trouble - 
and pain to 
others.'
      'I should have thought that we owed them -'
      She comes to kneel beside me. 'We owe them nothing. That is our freedom.'
      I listen to her as a disciple might listen to a holy man; striving to 
perceive the 
wisdom, the new attitude, the truth of what she says.
      'They're not like Poliakoff,' she says. 'They won't hurt us.'
'We ought to tell them.'
      'What's the point?'
      As I rise to my feet my legs are trembling. I cannot fathom the changes 
which have 
taken place in her strange, dreaming, greedy brain. I am as much at a loss for 
an 
explanation as if I attempted to analyse the perceptions and nature of a 
household pet. 
Like a pet she is able to take on the colour of any master; to be obedient and 
passive for as 
long as it suits her, to respond to whatever desires or signals one might 
display. But now I 
disguise my desires, for fear of losing her. Have I therefore lost her to 
someone who offers 
her clearer signals? To someone who represents what she calls 'freedom'? At 
dinner I look 
suspiciously around the table, at the Russians, at Count Stefanik, at Caroline 
Vacarescu, 
even at honest Egon Wilke, chewing his food with as much relish as if it were 
the finest 
beef. And Alice is merry. Alice is the darling of the company. Everyone dotes on 
her. 'You 
cheer us all up, my dear,' says Frau Schmetterling. She has become much more 
tolerant of 
late. Will Frau Schmetterling somehow betray me? I am scarcely in control of 
myself, 
though I appear to be as relaxed and as good-tempered and as witty as always. 
And yet, 
has Clara taken on that peculiar, impressive dignity of an injured woman; that 
dignity which 
induces in any reasonably sensitive man a mixture of awe, guilt, respect, and 
sometimes 
envious anger? We drink too deeply. In bed together that night we tire easily 
and fall 
asleep. A terrible depression has overwhelmed me. The dream is lost. I am 
desperate to 
rediscover it. I get up from that tangle of women early and go to Clara's room 
to sleep. I 
help myself to her cocaine. I look through her books and her musical scores and 
I cannot 
rid myself of the thought that I have resisted as heartily as has Clara the 
thought that she 
might love me and I her. This scarcely affects my obsession with Alice. I want 
it to be as it 
was. 'In Paris,' I murmur to myself. 'It will come back in Paris.' And then I 
ask myself: 'What 
am I?' I am corrupted and I am revelling in my corruption. I am the victim of my 
imagination, trapped in a terrible fantasy of my own devising. I am still awake 
when, at 
dawn, the Holzhammer guns begin to fire on Mirenburg. She trembles. She cries 
out. The 
shells blow up the Cafe Schmidt and flesh scatters into the morning air; the 
statues of St 
Varoslav and St Ormond fall in a haze of white dust, crashing onto the shattered 
slabs of 
masonry below. The Liberty apartments, the baroque and romanesque churches, the 
domes and the steeples, are falling one by one at first and then in their 
hundreds. 
Mirenburg, that city of all cities, is being murdered. She is being murdered. 
And here is 
Lady Cromach, startled and anxious, asking if I have seen Alice. Clara is behind 
her. Have 
I seen Alice? She cannot have left. But she has taken a coat, a hat. I go out to 
look for her. 
The shells are relentless. I can see them going past; I hear their wailing and 
their thunder. I 
know her family church, near Nussbaumhof. It is still standing, though most of 
the other 
buildings are flattened. I am in time to find her coming down the wide steps, 
dressed 
inadequately in a silk tea-gown and a summer cloak. The mysterious vulnerability 
of her 
face is emphasised by the stooped set of her shoulders, her nervous eyes, as she 
recognises me and comes towards me for a few paces before pausing and looking 
back at 
others also emerging from the white Gothic arch. 'What were you looking for in 
there?' I 
ask. She begins to shiver. I go up to her and put my own coat around her. 
'Comfort?' she 
says. 'Certainty? I don't know.' I try to lead her back to Rosenstrasse but she 
will not move. 
'It's unlike you,' I say. 'What?' she asks. 'To risk so much danger.' She 
frowns. 'There 
wasn't any. The guns started later.' I smile, almost in relief. 'I must leave 
you,' she says. 'I 
must leave you all. I must be free.' I am sympathetic. 'So you shall be. You can 
do what 
you like. But first we must escape Mirenburg. Get to Paris. Come.'
      'No.' She stands firm. I act as if I am dealing with a child. 'Very well.' 
I lift my hat and 
return down the steps, feeling that I have somehow hurt her and myself at the 
same time. 
Her confusion is infectious. I stop and look back. She is staring at me from 
those blank 
eyes. She is staring. 'Come along, Alexandra.' I stretch out my hand. 'I can no 
longer afford 
to indulge myself in this fantasy of youthful infatuation. Either you come with 
me or I shall 
abandon you.'
      'I want you to go.'
      I return, one by one, up the steps. The shells are like a chorus of 
harpies all around 
us. 'But what of me?' I say. I am still hoping to appeal to her. 'What shall I 
be left with?'
      She looks at me almost with contempt. 'Love and affection,' she says.
      I cannot recover myself. Mirenburg is being destroyed. All my romance is 
being 
taken from me at once and there is no one I can blame. This desolation is too 
complete. 
She shrugs and joins me. Through all the yelling and all the death we walk 
slowly home to 
Rosenstrasse. 'You were lying to me,' she says. 'There is no means of getting to 
Paris.'
      'I will find a way,' I promise. If only I can keep her with me, can get 
her free of all this 
terror, we can become calm again. She will love me again. She will know me for 
what I am, 
a decent, ordinary, kind-hearted man. In Rosenstrasse everyone is relieved to 
see us. Alice 
is put to bed. 'It is exhaustion,' says Lady Diana. 'She is only a child. She's 
in shock.' For 
twenty-four hours she hardly moves, although she is awake. We take turns sitting 
with her. 
'Don't leave me, Ricky,' she says suddenly, in the depths of the night. I grasp 
her hand. I 
have begun to seek out a plan of Rosenstrasse's sewers; it has occurred to me 
that this 
could be our best means of escape. Some of the sewers must run outside the 
walls, or 
connect with the underground river. She is so weak. She is fading. Her 
temperature is 
alarmingly high. Clara assures me there is nothing seriously wrong with her. I 
am 
suspicious of Clara. One is always suspicious of those one deceives. I too am 
dying, I 
suppose. That must be why Papadakis humours me so readily, no longer refusing me 
wine 
or anything else I demand. He can afford to be charitable. There is never any 
snow here, 
only relentless blues and yellows and whites occasionally softened by mist or 
rain. I can 
see no green trees from my window. How can they give beauty to me so easily and 
then 
take it away just as thoughtlessly? Why should she wish to do that? She stands 
in the 
snow with shredded flags limp on her remaining turrets, like a captured heroine. 
Mirenburg 
is defeated, but Holzhammer, perhaps so there should be no physical monument to 
his 
bestiality, is relentless. Hour after hour the shells fall on the city and at 
night she is livelier 
than by day, for her fires are now inextinguishable; her broken silhouettes 
possess a 
nobility they lack under the light of the sun. Mirenburg is all but dead. She 
makes sad, 
fluttering sounds and little whimpers: the steady booming we hear is the 
triumphant beating 
of enemy hearts. If they rape her now, they shall have only the satisfaction of 
violating a 
creature which has already made its peace with death. She will give them no 
pleasure; she 
will put no curse upon them. They have damned themselves.
      We are not allowed outside. Captain Mencken sits beside the telephone, 
waiting for 
the instrument to give him orders. In the street there is a horse and cart. We 
can see it 
through a hole in the boarded window. All the glass is broken. The horse is 
dead, from 
shrapnel. 'Mister' was bringing it back, with our provisions. 'Mister' was 
killed, too. His body 
was dragged inside. The cart has remained there for hours. At night its 
silhouette is thrown 
onto the blinds by any nearby explosion. 'That cart is the Devil's own 
carriage,' says 
Rakanaspya. 'It is waiting for one of us.' He laughs and pulls heavily on his 
brandy bottle. 
He is wearing an opera hat and cape. He has an ebony stick in his left hand, 
together with 
a pair of gloves. Captain Mencken wishes to know why the window is unprotected 
when all 
the others are boarded up. 'We needed some air,' says Rakanaspya. Frau 
Schmetterling 
has given shelter to a group of musicians. They are playing now. Their music is 
exotic, but 
its inspiration escapes me: there is an Oriental quality to it, though it 
follows the familiar 
form of a sonata. The musicians themselves have a slightly Asian cast to their 
features. 
Count Belozerski assures me they are not Russian. I have enquired the name of 
the 
composer, but I did not recognise it. They are still playing in the morning when 
I look 
through the blinds. I can smell the dead horse. In the half-light I see a young, 
naked child, 
squatting upon the carcass, picking with its claws at the tough, steaming meat, 
its own pink 
body seeming to merge into that of the dead beast, its black eyes hard and wary, 
like the 
eyes of a guilty crow. I once used to say that I had an ear for music, an eye 
for women and 
a strong distaste for death. While that little orchestra played and while I 
tortured myself 
over the question of Alexandra I came to doubt both former statements and to 
feel 
thoroughly reinforced in the latter. The whores do not bother to dress in their 
tasteful finery 
now. They make love in corners of the salon if they feel like it. Frau 
Schmetterling is hardly 
ever present. She has disappeared with Wilke. Only once did I hear her put her 
foot down 
in her old, firm way. It was when Inez, the Spanish girl, refused point blank to 
accompany 
Van Geest to the rocking-horse room. 'I will not do any of those things,' she 
had insisted. 'It 
is quite true,' Frau Schmetterling had said softly,'that Inez is not required, 
Herr Van Geest, 
to visit the rocking-horse room. Perhaps Greta would oblige?' But Van Geest, 
lost in the 
depths of his own brain and very drunk, had insisted that he wanted Inez. 'You 
said nothing 
of the rocking-horse room when you asked for Inez or I should have told you, 
Herr Van 
Geest, that she was not available. There has always been an agreement, after 
all.' Van 
Geest offered to pay double. Inez had considered this and then again shaken her 
head. 
Van Geest had said angrily: 'In other establishments girls like you are severely 
punished. 
There are Houses in Amsterdam which specialise in taming stupid, disobedient 
young 
women.' Frau Schmetterling had pursed her lips. 'Then I suggest you wait until 
you can 
return to Amsterdam, Herr Van Geest.'
      Van Geest had glared and then given up, stumbling back to his room. Inez 
had 
begun to giggle in relief. Frau Schmetterling had been disapproving. 'You should 
not have 
caused a scene,' she had said. But there have been other scenes since and she 
has not 
been present to make the peace. Sometimes, when I have been keeping vigil beside 
Alice's bed, I have had to go out into the corridor to beg people to be quiet. I 
have 
managed to get hold of the plans to the sewers. I have found a way of escape. 
When Alice 
murmurs to me and pleads for reassurance I tell her we are as good as free. All 
she has to 
do is to regain her strength. Soon she is a little better. I show her the plans. 
I describe the 
route we are going to take through the mountains to the border where we shall be 
able to 
get the train. She frowns. 'Is there no other way?' I shake my head. I begin to 
tell her how 
we shall drop into the sewers, what we can take with us, and what we shall tell 
the others. 
'It's tiring.' She sinks again into semi-sleep. 'I'll leave it to you.' I am 
disturbed by this 
response. I have managed to do what she wants and she scarcely thanks me. I 
cannot 
fathom this sickness. Clara is certain it is a sickness of the spirit. We can 
only blame the 
shock of War. The horse is eventually freed from the shafts and what is left of 
it is 
butchered for meat. The naked child disappears. Four or five of our girls put on 
a tableau 
meant to take our minds off the relentless sound of shelling. Clara and I watch 
together, 
comfortable in each other's company. The tableau represents something Arcadian 
and 
employs a great many artificial flowers which, of course, the girls have in 
abundance. Since 
only three of them speak reasonable German and the others have only the most 
limited 
vocabularies the 'play' becomes quickly incomprehensible with the result that 
the actresses 
are soon laughing more than the audience. Clara and I applaud. I glance 
furtively at her to 
see if she knows anything of my plan. She seems innocent of suspicion tonight. 
At dawn I 
slip away to look for the entrance to the sewer. It is not far from here, 
joining with the 
underground river which runs beneath Rosenstrasse. The intense light of the 
winter day 
threatens my eyes. I should be glad of Captain Mencken's glasses. I manage to 
open the 
metal hatch beneath the archway of Papensgasse and I hear water running below, 
but it 
stinks. There can be no fresh water, other than melted snow, left in the whole 
of Mirenburg. 
I know that one can go from here to the main sewer, or get to it directly from 
the riverbed. I 
lower the hatch and walk down Papensgasse to inspect the river entrance to the 
sewer. 
Looking over the embankment wall from this side I can just see it, a murky hole 
rimmed 
with slime. It seems large enough. When the siege is lifted, I wonder, will they 
redirect the 
river to its old course or will it continue to follow the new one? There is a 
familiar whistling 
overhead. A Krupp shell begins to fall towards me. I run for the relative 
security of 
Papensgasse. I hear the shell but I have not heard the gun which fired it, 
either because it 
was so far away or because I am so used to the sound of cannon.
      The shell falls not far from Rosenstrasse. Out of the dusty debris comes 
galloping a 
column of flying artillery. It stops in a flurry of hooves and steel on the 
embankment. The 
soldiers rush to position their guns so they point across the river at the 
Moravia. I slip back 
to the brothel and return to Clara. She stirs in her sleep. I am not sure she 
has noticed my 
absence. Since we all three take turns sitting with Alice Clara has become used 
to frequent 
comings and goings. Later that morning we both get dressed and go to see how the 
child 
is. To our considerable surprise she is not only up, she is eating cheese and 
drinking 
watered wine. Diana is full of joy. 'What a wonderful recovery.' Clara frowns.
      I do my best to disguise my pleasure. Alice must be ready to travel. When 
Clara and 
Diana go downstairs together I hug my little girl. 'Are you ready for our next 
adventure?'
      'Oh, yes!' she grins at me, a conspiratorial innocent. 'What's the plan?'
I tell her we shall leave separately tonight. I will wait for her at midnight in 
Papensgasse, 
round the corner from the archway. 'It might be easier than I thought. They've 
moved our 
guns up to the river. That probably means Holzhammer has broken through the 
defences 
and is in the Moravia already. We'll come out well behind his main lines. I'll 
buy horses, 
then it's a clear ride to the border and a train.' We hear sounds in the 
corridor. She says 
gently, with hesitant fingers on my arm:
      'You don't think you'd be happier going with Clara?' I am taken aback. My 
heart 
sinks. 'Of course not. Why?' She makes a little movement with her lovely 
shoulders. 
'Nothing.' The door opens. 'I'll be there.'
      Clara enters. She seems distressed. Has she guessed? 'It's Van Geest,' she 
says. 
'He's shot himself. God knows why. Downstairs is full of police and soldiers. 
They don't 
seriously think it's murder. But the building's now officially occupied. 
Soldiers are being 
billeted here. Temporarily, they say, because of the 'new emergency', whatever 
that is.' I 
return to the ground floor with her, so she will not get suspicious. I blow my 
smiling Alice a 
kiss as we leave. The vestibule is still hung with its many portraits of the 
French emperor 
whom Frau Schmetterling adored and who, some say, was her first lover. The 
soldiers 
show distaste for these pictures and seem discomfited by them. The officer in 
charge, 
Captain Kolovrat, attempts to order them removed from the walls. This Frau 
Schmetterling 
firmly refuses. She is the only one of us with any authority to resist them; my 
own choice is 
to pretend respect and to avoid them as much as I can. Unlike Mencken, these men 
are 
used to power and know how to gain it. A soldier must be broken in such a way as 
to make 
him wholly reliant upon his superiors, otherwise he cannot be controlled in 
battle. Most 
officers employ this knowledge in their dealings with women, first destroying 
their 
confidence, then supplying it themselves so that those they would command become 
entirely dependant upon them. I must admit to being nervous. They remind me of 
well-
trained hounds: their natural ferocity, their terror of their own madness, 
contained and 
controlled almost entirely by their wills. Such personalities yearn for 
uniforms, for rituals. 
They demand them in others, for they must order a world they fear and thus will 
simplify 
themselves and those around them as much as they can. Captain Mencken is in 
conversation with a police inspector wearing a kepi and gold epaulettes on his 
maroon 
uniform. Captain Kolovrat, presumably senior to Mencken, struts about the salon 
inspecting 
its contents as if he were kicking his heels in a provincial art-gallery. He has 
a Prussian-
style helmet decorated in gold and silver, a black and white uniform, and a 
variety of 
medals. His hand sticks his sword out behind him like the extended tail of a 
scorpion. His 
little fat face is embellished by a waxed moustache and a monocle. He wheels 
around and 
marches towards me to be introduced by a defeated Frau Schmetterling, whose only 
victory has been the pictures. He salutes me. I bow my head. He clicks his heels 
and says: 
'You must understand, sir, that every resident is now under military discipline. 
Your 
privileges, I regret, are at an end.'
      'They were over when 'Mister' died,' says Frau Schmetterling softly. And 
then, to 
him: 'I hope you don't expect to find supplies here, Captain Kolovrat. We were 
living hand 
to mouth as it was.'
      'We shall see,' he says. 'I shall want inventories. Anything we use will, 
of course, 
receive a receipt and you can claim full payment from the government after the 
War. 
Mencken? Inspector Serval?'
      'Suicide without doubt,' says Serval. 'He was probably suffering from some 
form of 
delirium. Maybe bad meat, maybe drink, maybe a disease. The doctor will let us 
know. But 
he shot himself through the temple with his own revolver. A familiar situation 
at present.'
      'Disease,' says Kolovrat, rubbing at his chubby chin. He rolls the word on 
his tongue 
and seems about to spit it out. 'Of course. There must be a medical inspection. 
I shall send 
to headquarters.'
      Frau Schmetterling is offended. 'I assure you that the likelihood;'
      'The likelihood is what a soldier must consider, madame.' He is fastidious 
and 
condescending. She falls silent, reconciled for the time being to this man's 
swaggering 
rudeness. Mencken seems embarrassed and apologetic. Clara, Diana and I go with 
the 
others, girls and clients, into the salon. Alice is mentioned and excused 
because she is 
unwell. I present her papers. Kolovrat has had a bureau placed in the middle of 
the floor. 
He sits at this now, making up a register. One by one we give our names and 
nationalities, 
showing him our identification cards. We are allowed to sit or to stand around 
the walls of 
the salon. Outside, the shells are constant and from time to time the whole 
building shakes 
or more glass crashes to the floor. Kolovrat's inquisition is frequently 
punctuated by the 
chiming of the chandelier over his head. One series of shots seems closer: I 
realise it is our 
own artillery, firing across the river. Kolovrat knows the sound, too, and looks 
up. I fail to 
read his fat little face. Eventually we are dismissed. Young soldiers stand to 
attention 
everywhere. Clara, Diana and myself are asked by Frau Schmetterling to accompany 
her 
to her kitchen. Whenever a shell lands nearby she jumps and looks at her 
shivering 
dresser, at her wonderful, rattling china. So far nothing is damaged. 'I am 
worried,' she 
says, 'about my daughter. With 'Mister' gone Elvira has no-one but me… 
She sits 
down at her long table. Trudi, smiling in the background, makes us something to 
drink. 
Outside, there is a lull in the bombardment and we can hear Herr Ulric the 
butcher-cook in 
the courtyard. His loud healthy voice rings and echoes. He is arguing with a 
young 
cavalryman: 'The horse is no good to you and no good to itself. It is dying of 
starvation!' 
The soldier is passionate. 'We shall die together!' he shouts. The butcher is 
reasonable: 
'Go inside and fuck one of the girls. While you're at it I'll deal with the 
horse.'
      'You are disgusting!'
      The butcher drops his voice and so does the cavalryman. We hear no more 
and 
soon the shells are landing again. The building is scarcely ever still. It is as 
if an ea-
thquake perpetually shakes it. Frau Schmetterling says to Lady Cromach: 'You 
have 
connections, I presume, in England. Could you get Elvira to school there? If 
anything 
happens to me.'
      'Nothing will happen to you, Frau Schmetterling, and of course I'll do 
whatever I can. 
Do you wish me to recommend some schools, somewhere where Elvira could stay? I 
have 
an old nanny who still lives in London.'
      'Yes,' says Frau Schmetterling. 'That's the sort of thing.'
      She produces a notebook. 'Some names and addresses?'
      Lady Diana makes an awkward, affectionate gesture. She frowns and then 
spells in 
English. When she has finished she says: 'If anything else comes to mind I'll 
let you know. 
You wish your daughter to leave soon?'
      'Oh, yes, soon.' Frau Schmetterling's large bosom rises and falls. 'I must 
stay with 
my girls. Elvira'
      'We'll see that's she's safe,' says Diana. 'I promise.' Her voice is soft 
and comforting. 
It has lost most of that inflexion which makes almost every word seem sardonic. 
She 
squeezes Frau Schmetterling's shoulder. The madam sighs. 'Thank you, Lady 
Cromach.'
      Our band has begun to play again in the salon. Presumably Captain Kolovrat 
has 
decided this will improve morale. The staccato, nervous quality of the tune 
becomes 
increasingly intrusive as we sit in silence round Frau Schmetterling's table, 
drinking spiced 
grog and getting a little drunk. The steady thumping of the guns, the shrieks 
and 
explosions, seem preferable to the music. Eventually, Frau Schmetterling rises 
and says 
she must speak to Ulric about lunch. She rings for the cook. He comes striding 
in, grinning 
widely. His leather apron is covered in blood. He bows to us. I envy him his 
insouciance as 
much as I envy him his sinewy arms, the strong veins standing out from the hard 
muscle. 
As we three leave the kitchen and return upstairs Diana remarks that I seem in 
unusually 
good spirits. We reach my door. Alice is sitting in the easy chair, reading a 
magazine. She 
kisses us, one by one. There is an air of excitement about her which amuses us 
all, even 
Clara. 'The shock has worn off as quickly as it came,' says my Rose.
      'That, I suppose, is the nature of such complaints. Particularly in the 
very young.' 
Lady Diana thoughtfully strokes Alice's hair. Alice puts lips to her wrist. We 
decide we shall 
all lunch together so that Alice can meet the new Captain. 'That's splendid!' 
exclaims Alice. 
At lunch Rakanaspya and Count Belozerski eat in silence, perhaps in mourning for 
Van 
Geest. Caroline Vacarescu hangs on Count Stefanik's arm but at the same time 
spares a 
bright smile for Captain Kolovrat and another for Captain Mencken, both of whom 
dine with 
us. Trudi is helped at the table by a young, red-faced military orderly who 
sweats visibly 
and whose smell is almost as vile as the meat we are eating. Egon Wilke, at Frau 
Schmetterling's elbow, has an embarrassed air about him. He is presumably not 
comfortable sitting down to eat with so much Authority on either side of him. 
Kolovrat 
attempts to make a joke across the table, addressing Mencken. 'Well, here we 
are, the two 
oldest professions in the world sharing a table. I suppose that is only proper. 
What would 
you rather be, Frau Schmetterling, a whore or a soldier?'
      'As a matter of fact, monsieur,' she says in French, 'I am neither. But I 
think I should 
rather be a whore. I see it as a superior calling.'
      Kolovrat pretends to be amused, again seeking to catch Mencken's eye and 
being 
baffled by the expressionless smoked glasses. 'What? Why so, madame?'
      'I think there is a considerable difference,' she says coolly, 'between 
those of us who 
kill for a living and those of us who fuck for a living.'
Frau Schmetterling has never used such a word in public before. But Kolovrat is 
the only 
one who does not realise it. Presumably he thinks the proprietress of a brothel 
capable of 
any language.
      'In the first place,' he says, 'we do not willingly kill for a living. We 
are protecting the 
citizens of Mirenburg. And in the second place, what is sold here, surely is not 
honest 
fornication. This,' he waves a fork,'this is death. This is corruption. The 
destruction of all 
true feeling. What has it to do with love? All you women have diseases. They 
kill my men, 
do they not? And turn them mad first, eh? Madame, I would prefer a bayonet in 
the 
stomach. That's a better death than one you purchase at a whorehouse!'
      Frau Schmetterling is calm. 'The only death you will find here is the 
death of 
sentimental illusion. But even that...'
      'There is a corpse still upstairs awaiting collection!' He laughs and 
chews the 
butcher's latest prize. 'That's what I call death. And I say again: I'd rather 
have a bayonet in 
the stomach.'
      Her smile is almost sweet. I have never seen her in this terrible, baiting 
mood, but 
Wilke, plainly, knows it well. He is privately amused. 'Monsieur,' she 
says,'there is a wide 
variety of alternatives. One does not necessarily have a disease and one may not 
go so far 
as to stab or be stabbed in the stomach. The soldier takes risks with his life. 
So do we. But 
we do not set out to kill or to enforce our wills upon others. I believe that 
our profession is 
the better of the two and can more easily be justified in moral terms. I do not 
wish to kill 
you, monsieur. I would wish, if I were a whore, merely to satisfy your lust in 
exchange for a 
crown or two.' She stares directly into his little eyes and he again looks to 
Mencken, then 
frowns. Alice snorts behind her hand. Lady Cromach smiles and tries to silence 
her. The 
two of them are like older and younger sister today. I suddenly regret that our 
time together 
is over. I shall miss Diana almost as much as I shall my Rose. As we are 
finishing lunch, 
Albert Jirichek, a journalist for the Weekly Gazette, is granted a brief 
interview with Captain 
Kolovrat who is reluctant to speak in anything but the vaguest terms. It is true 
Holzhammer 
is in the Moravia, but it is not true he is making steady inroads. 'Our armour 
is keeping him 
pinned down and there is every chance he will be defeated by tomorrow.' As 
Kolovrat 
continues to speak, Jirichek opens his notebook and begins to scribble rapidly 
in 
shorthand. This causes Captain Mencken some amusement. 'Are you unaware, Herr 
Jirichek, that the Gazette was blown apart by shell-fire this morning? I doubt 
very much if 
we shall see another edition within the next few days.' It is evident he has no 
liking for the 
journal, which takes a mildly left-wing bias. Jirichek has not heard the news. 
He closes his 
notebook. He lifts his hand to one and all and departs the room in silence. Most 
of us laugh 
at this. I am relaxed, unwilling to leave the company too soon. I know I shall 
never 
experience this kind of comradeship again. By tomorrow Alice and I will be far 
away from 
the main fighting. By the day after we should have crossed the border into 
Saxony. From 
there it will be an easy matter to take the train to Paris. In less than three 
days we should 
have new wardrobes, a comfortable hotel and (delightful anticipation!) the 
finest food in the 
world. Alice and Diana decide to return upstairs because Alice says she feels 
faint. I am 
generous enough to want them to spend what time together they can. I tell myself 
that 
jealousy would be petty. Clara and I remain at the table, drinking brandy. 
Captain Kolovrat 
watches Alice leave. I feel sudden hatred of him. He begins to court me, because 
he 
desires her. His eyes follow her as he speaks to us. 'Yesterday was hard work. 
The 
Vlodinya prison was shelled. In the confusion half the jailbirds escaped. We did 
our best to 
round them up; we herded them like wild cows but a few honest people got mixed 
in with 
them. It was a relief to be sent here. I don't know why they wanted to escape. 
Those 
bastards were better off where they were!' He is pleased with his joke and 
repeats it.
      Frau Schmetterling, still intent on baiting him, leans towards him. 'Have 
you ever 
been to prison, Captain Kolovrat?'
      'Of course not, madame.'
      'Has anyone else here been to prison?' Wilke alone lowers his eyes. The 
rest of us 
shake our heads.
      'It destroys your personality,' she says. 'To maintain your morale you 
have to 
become a Top Dog. That means accepting all the ruthless conditions of prison 
life. You pay 
a high price by becoming inhuman and coarse. But if you do not become a hardened 
prisoner you go back into the world with no belief in yourself whatsoever. 
Prisons have little 
social benefit, Captain Kolovrat, save to lock a criminal away for a while. 
Their main task is 
to make us passive and malleable: whereupon they return us to persuasive friends 
who are 
usually outside the law and glad to suggest ways to easy wealth… 
Destroying the 
human spirit is not merely immoral. It is anti-social!'
      I have never heard her speak so passionately. She has captured 
Rakanaspya's 
attention. He asks her, with deference, how she is so well-informed about 
prison. She 
shrugs. She has known short spells in Berlin and in Odessa. She has talked to 
many 
people whose experience of prison was far worse than her own. 'You know me, 
gentlemen. 
I am a law-abiding citizen. I believe in peace and quiet; an orderly society. 
You will not find 
me taking up the cause of anarchy. However, I can say from the bottom of my 
heart that 
the whole conception of prison is disgusting to me.' With that she continues 
pecking at a 
tiny piece of stale cheese. She has brought silence to the company. Perhaps that 
was her 
intention. The table is shaken by another blast. Count Stefanik has undone his 
collar and 
unbuttoned his waistcoat. He is the kind of man who should wear loose, peasant 
clothes. 
Even then he would not seem entirely comfortable. He puts his hand under his 
beard and 
pushes it up towards his face. He is wary and thoughtful, as if he listens for 
Holzhammer's 
footsteps in the vestibule. He is wanted by the Austrians for more than one 
offence, 
including the scattering of nationalist leaflets from the skies above Prague. If 
Holzhammer 
arrests him he knows that he, himself, faces prison, if not death. He sighs a- 
deep desolate 
sigh and rises, excusing himself. 'I feel sorry for him,' says Clara. Caroline 
Vacarescu 
makes to follow him, then returns to offer Captain Mencken all her attention. 
She has given 
up her hopes, it seems of balloon-escape. A little later he passes the open door 
of the 
salon to go out. He clears his throat and puts on his hat and overcoat. 'The 
man's a fool to 
walk the streets!' says Kolovrat dispassionately. 'Perhaps he'd rather be killed 
than 
captured,' says Rakanaspya. I am overwhelmed by a sudden depression, a fear of 
betrayal 
and loss. I excuse myself. I take Clara's hand and we go upstairs to her room 
where I insist 
on making slow, gentle love. She is warm. She is tender. She is womanly. I rise 
in agitation 
from the bed. I am disgusted with myself. Another shell explodes nearby. She is 
baffled by 
my behaviour. I silence her question with a gesture.
She sits up. 'This bombardment is getting on everyone's nerves. I'm almost 
praying for 
defeat now, for peace, even the peace of the grave. If the Bulgarians are 
allowed'. She 
cannot finish.
      'The house must be evacuated before that happens,' I say. 'Every effort 
must be 
made to get the girls out and split up. They must not be recognised for what 
they are. Frau 
Schmetterling won't keep this place going as a cheap soldier's bordello. It 
would destroy 
the point of it. She has always been clear on that.'
      Clara frowns. 'True. But it will be up to the girls. They will be 
frightened. Are you 
leaving, Ricky?'
      I ignore her question. 'You wouldn't stay here, would you? To service 
those pigs?'
      She lowers her head. 'No,' she says, as if keeping her temper, as if I 
have insulted 
her. 'No, I would not.'
      'That's good. That's good.' I am distracted. It is almost dusk. I look at 
my watch. 
't'tAy bag is packed and hidden. I assume Alice has also packed. The time is 
passing 
slowly. 'Let's have some cocaine,' I say. 'Then I think I'll go downstairs and 
see what's 
happening.' She begins to prepare the drug. 'Be careful,' she says, when I go.
      In the dirty snow of the quays the soldiers stagger to their guns with 
shells from 
boxes stored for safety's sake behind sandbags on the other side of the street. 
I watch 
them through the murk. They are ham-fisted, filthy, worn out. Black smoke 
billows across 
the southern suburbs. It would appear Holzhammer has fired that entire section 
of the city. 
An officer, mounted on a skinny horse, peers through field-glasses and sees 
nothing. The 
smoke is oily, moving sluggishly. It is snowing fitfully again. Papadakis! The 
pain is coming 
back! It is like shrapnel in my belly! Oh, God, I need a woman here. But I have 
spent too 
long taking revenge on women. Now there are none to comfort me. When romance 
dies, 
cynicism replaces it, unless one is prepared to relinquish all the consolations 
of religion at a 
stroke. I could not. I fled into lies, flattery, deceitful conquest. I fled into 
mistrustful artifice. 
Even my wholesome lechery became tainted by fear and wary cunning. I lost my 
capacity 
to trust. Was I so dishonest and so hypocritically cruel before Mirenburg? Too 
much 
romance was destroyed at once, in the space of a few days. Mirenburg crumbles. 
The twin 
spires of St-Maria-and-St-Maria are down. The Hotel Liverpool is obliterated. 
All the care 
and artistry of centuries, all the worship, the love, the genius, is ground up 
as if in a mortar 
and scattered on the wind. The museums and the galleries, the monasteries and 
the great 
houses, fall down before Holzhammer's insane ferocity. It is too late to parley. 
Holzhammer 
will not accept anything less than the absolute obliteration of the city. He 
wants no 
monuments to remind him of his crime. These are the actions of children, of wild 
beasts. 
Love and hope drown beneath the exploding iron. Clara is still in bed when I 
return. She 
stretches on her cushions, smoking a cigarette, looking at me with an expression 
I find 
unreadable, but which I fear is contempt. Tt is terrible out there,' I say. 'The 
whole southern 
side is burning. The Radota Bridge is destroyed and all the statues are down. 
The river is 
piled with corpses. Presumably they were trying to get away from the 
Bulgarians.'
      Clara nods to herself and offers me a lighted cigarette which I take. 'Are 
we to 
expect them tonight, do you think?'
      'Not tonight. But possibly tomorrow. At the latest the day after.'
      'Then perhaps we should do something.'
      'Yes,' I say. 'It would be a good idea. I have plans. I've some business 
this evening. I 
won't tell you about it now, not until I'm certain. But in the morning, 
everything should be 
clear.'
      I detect a smile on her long lips. She stretches and yawns. I want to see 
Alice, to 
remind her exactly of the plan, to be certain that she knows what we are to do. 
But I 
console myself that it is simple enough. She will meet me in Papensgasse at 
midnight, 
slipping out unseen as I shall slip a little earlier.
      'Shall we go to Alice and Diana, to see how the child is?' asks Clara. I 
dart her a 
look. 'Leave them. They said they wanted to rest.'
      She shrugs. 'Just as you like.' Then she says: 'Come here, Ricky. I want 
to make 
love to you.'
      I am disconcerted. Off-duty she is not normally so direct. But I do as she 
orders. I 
undress. She is ferocious. She kisses every part of me. She sits astride me, 
shoving my 
penis into her cunt. The pleasure is astounding. It seems altogether fresh. I am 
exhausted. 
She throws herself off me, laughing. 'That wasn't fair. But I enjoyed it.'
      I kiss her. 'What?' she says. 'You seem to be crying.' Of course I am not 
crying. 
Where is Papadakis? I need to piss and the pot is full. I am having trouble 
breathing. The 
lamp is flickering. There is not enough air in this room. The flowers are 
wilting.
      As soon as Clara is asleep I get up carefully and go to the cupboard where 
I have 
hidden my bag. I dress and creep from the room. The house rocks and vibrates 
constantly. 
It will not be long before there is a direct hit. Half Rosenstrasse bears the' 
marks of Krupp 
now. There is noise and music from •the salon. No soldiers guard the door. I am 
out into 
the icold, into the darkness, shivering and suddenly very cowardly. I think to 
turn back, but 
it would be impossible. I move falteringly between the heaps of filthy snow, 
through the 
passage and into Papensgasse. There will be no military patrols tonight, I am 
sure, to 
enforce the curfew. I look at my watch. It is eleven-forty-five. I will not have 
long to wait. 
Soon Alice will be mine alone. Married. I shall be secure with her. She would 
not dare to 
betray me. But this will not stop us sharing further adventures - and in Paris! 
The very 
prospect warms me and makes me forget how cold I am. Firelight dances on the far 
river 
bank. Men are shouting. There is not much terror in their voices now. They are 
too weary. 
The guns fire. The guns reply. Love will come back to me. Alice is late. She 
will be having 
trouble getting away from Diana. We shall roll again in fresh linen, with great 
cups of newly-
made coffee in the mornings, with delicate lunches in the restaurants of the 
Champs 
Elysees, with drives to Versailles, and in the summer we shall go south to 
Venice, and I will 
show her North Africa and bring joy to her exotic heart. But it is twelve-
thirty. I hear voices 
whispering in Rosenstrasse. Has she been caught? Eventually I risk peering round 
into the 
street; it is too dark to see anything. Then, at last, someone emerges from the 
archway and 
I grin to myself, full of the prospect of escape and further adventure. The 
woman wears a 
cloak with a cowl covering her head. I know immediately that it is Clara and I 
am filled with 
hatred for her. She has guessed! She has interfered. She lifts a hand to silence 
me. 'They 
went hours ago,' she says. 'I thought this might be what you were doing. They 
left before 
dark, Ricky.' I fall back against the wall, not fully understanding; not wishing 
to understand. 
'What?'
      'Diana and our Alice have gone together,' she says quietly. She takes my 
hand. 
'You're very cold. You'd better come back.'
      'No!' I think it is a trick. I pull free of her. 'There was an agreement, 
Clara. You 
should not be doing this. Where are they?'
      'I don't know. You'll freeze to death, if a bullet doesn't kill you.'
      'Where are they?'
      'They were as secretive with me as with anyone. They could have joined 
Count 
Stefanik. It's my only guess.'
      'Stefanik? His balloon?'
      'A guess.'
      'Where is his balloon?'
      'I have no idea where he kept it. It's probably destroyed. It was a 
guess.'
      I begin to run up Papensgasse and through the Botanical Gardens. There are 
fires 
everywhere. The soldiers ignore me. I get to Pushkinstrasse and I cannot 
recognise 
anything. There are no more buildings. I look up into the blazing night sky in 
the hope of 
seeing the airship. The Indian Quarter has vanished. The Customs House is a 
guttering 
cinder. Within an hour I am standing in the ruins of her church. The Yanokovski 
Promenade has become a mass of black rubble. I can see St-Maria-and-St-Maria on 
the 
hill, twin chimneys of light. Flames course through the cathedral, glowing from 
every 
window. She is roaring as if in pain and anger. And the shells continue. 
Holzhammer must 
surely have come to relish the destruction for its own sake. We are at his 
mercy. And he is 
not merciful. Little Bohemia and the Synagogue are one hellish pyre. I reach 
down to pick 
up a piece of masonry. It is a small stone head, part of the motif above the 
left-hand 
column framing the central door: the face of a woman. It seems to me that she 
stares past 
my shoulder at a memory. The expression on her face is resigned. Has that 
expression 
always been there? For the three hundred years of her existence has she always 
known 
this would be her fate? There is no snow. The Theatre is an insubstantial 
outline of dancing 
red and orange. Everything is melting in the heat. Later I will hear that Prince 
Badehoff-
Krasny had ordered the remains of the city to be fired. ('This is my Moscow'). 
Nobody will 
ever come to understand how Mirenburg fell, any more than they will really know 
how 
Magdeburg was destroyed or what led to the extinction of Troy. Man's greatest 
monuments, his architecture, never outlast his acts of aggression. At dawn I 
wade through 
fields of ash. I cannot find her. Thin sunlight attacks the drifting smoke. 
Little groups of 
people wander here and there, each with a bundle, none with any hope. They look 
at me, 
some of them, as I pass, but most trudge on with their heads bowed. There are 
fewer 
shells, now. They fall on ruins and pulverise them. As I pass it, the Casino 
collapses in on 
itself. There is hardly anything left for them to destroy. I cannot find her. 
Periodically, I 
inspect the sky. There is no ship there. I would like to think it has borne her 
up. In my 
mind's eye I can see the bright reds and golds of the balloon's canopy in 
contrast to the 
grey, misty luminousness of the morning. Dressed in his Chinese silk shirt and 
riding 
breeches, with a gaily-dressed woman on either side of him, the young Bohemian 
aviator 
lifts a strong arm to his valves. I can see the balloon rising higher and higher 
above the 
flattened wastes of our murdered city, as if Mirenburg's spirit goes free. I can 
see her 
smiling carelessly, merely enjoying the sensation of flight, forgetful of me and 
of everyone. 
She kisses the bearded cheek of Stefanik not from any particular affection but 
from simple, 
passing gratitude to the person who has given her this, her most recent, 
pleasure.
One should never attempt to possess a beautiful whore, or hold on to the soul of 
a child, 
nor assault an idea as fragile as Mirenburg. Alice. I shall never fully 
understand why you 
fled from me. I wish you had been able to tell me the truth. But, if I were ever 
to confront 
you, you would reply: 'You must have known.' and dismiss all responsibility for 
your 
deception. 'You must have known.' But when you deny my suspicions that is a 
deeper lie 
still. 'You must have known, that I deceived you. It is your fault for not 
admitting it.' Yet did I 
really ever guess? Was I not always too afraid of the true answer? They will 
build a new 
city along the fresh course of the river. It will be called Svitenburg as a sop 
to the 
nationalists who are soon, of course, to become Austrian subjects in all but 
name. It is still 
little more than an industrial village. Its most impressive buildings are its 
warehouses. Did 
Alexandra live to marry a well-to-do Swiss and give him little babies in Geneva? 
She could 
banish all the old shadows, the memories of a 'wicked past', and have forgotten 
a lifetime 
in a matter of hours. And Waldenstein will become Svitavia again, a province of 
Bohemia, 
then a department of Czecho-Slovakia; forty years later that is what she 
remains, looking to 
Prague, such a poor imitation of Mirenburg, for her directions. Here in the 
yellow heat and 
ease I have spent the past eighteen years peering out at the world I came to 
fear. The 
Germans rise again and recover their wealth through patriotism, mysticism and a 
fascination with steel, as they will always do; the French continue to squabble 
and refer to 
past glories as solutions for the future; the English see their society 
collapsing all around 
them and find a panacea in American jazz; the Russians stir and dream again of 
Empire, 
having revived the methods and ambitions of Ivan the Terrible. And the Italians 
have 
conquered poverty, although they had to go to Abyssinia to do it. Waldenstein, 
settled in 
the arms of her new Slavic mother, is left, at least, in peace. When I return to 
Rosenstrasse, Captain Kolovrat has galloped off about some other importance. The 
brothel 
is now almost the only whole building in the street. Captain Mencken commands 
the two or 
three soldiers left. He has no orders and he is drunk. The smoked glasses fall 
down on his 
nose as he looks at me and offers a bottle. I shake my head. Therese and Renee, 
all lace 
and dark stockings, sit together on a couch singing a little song together. 
'Your wife,' he 
says, 'is upstairs I believe.' He is perfectly grave. 'Do you speak,' he drinks 
again, 
'Bulgarian by any chance?' He laughs. He appears to have fled into that 
familiar, self-
protective dramatisation which is only one step away from hysteria. I am in no 
hurry to see 
Clara. I accept the offer of his bottle. 'We can abandon ourselves to War quite 
as readily as 
we can abandon ourselves to lust,' says Mencken, making an effort to hand up the 
bottle to 
me. 'And War's so much easier and less mystifying than sex, is it not?' He grins 
at me. 'I'm 
serious.' I do not doubt it. He lets his eye drift towards the ladies who are as 
drunk as he is 
and are giggling together. 'War doesn't whisper. It doesn't have shades of 
meaning. It 
demands courage, of course, and decisive action. It offers glory and threatens 
death. But 
lust offers pain and threatens us with life, eh?' He is pleased with this turn 
of phrase.
      The sunlight begins to shine through the shattered boards and glass. I put 
the bottle 
back into his hands and with a sigh climb up to Clara and a reckoning. 
Holzhammer will 
become Governor Regent of Waldenstein under the Austrians and will be blown to 
pieces 
by an Anarchist bomb in 1904. Clara is asleep. There is no confrontation. I feel 
vague 
disappointment. I leave her and return to my room, hoping to find a clue. My 
anger with 
Lady Cromach is growing. She has deceived me treacherously. And yet my actions 
were 
no less treacherous. It is different, I tell myself, but I know it is not. I 
cannot feel the same 
anger towards Alice. The room is strewn with all her abandoned finery, with 
half-packed 
trunks and bags. I pick up a pair of pale blue silk drawers. They still stink of 
her. There are 
no notes. But in a cupboard I find some crumpled sheets of violet notepaper with 
scraps of 
Alice's handwriting on them and little pictures of the sort a schoolgirl might 
draw when 
bored. I spread them on top of the Chinese dresser. There is a quotation from 
something: 
It's a fine day. Let's go fishing said the
worm to the man. And another scrap: He is not what I imagined him to be. I am 
beginning 
to shake. 'You are a fool!' I say. 'Foryou could have become what I imagined you 
to be. 
You have ruined any possibility of that now. What a woman you might have been.' 
It is my 
failure. I feel it as a painter might experience a failure of creativity. It is 
as if half my own 
flesh has been torn from me, half my mind stolen. The guns batter my past into 
the dust 
and my future has run away into the ruins. I am so horribly betrayed. And it is 
my own 
doing. My anger comes on me suddenly and I begin to rip at her dresses, her 
underwear, 
her aigrettes, stamping on her little shoes, flinging silk and lace and feathers 
into the air 
until my tiredness causes me to collapse, sucking at a hand I have somehow cut, 
in the 
middle of the debris. I have tried to destroy everything which reminds me of 
her, which 
hurts me. I poured so much of myself into that valueless vessel. As I squat 
there, weeping 
and shaking, Clara enters the room. She is wearing a patterned tea-gown over her 
nightclothes. She moves here and there, replacing ornaments, clearing up broken 
china 
and glass. 'She's taken every piece of jewellery,' she says. I moan at her to go 
away. She 
stands looking down on me. 'Have you hurt yourself badly?'
      'No.'
      She closes the door behind her.
      When, at length, I return to Clara's room she is asleep again with the 
sheets drawn 
over her head. I take off my jacket and my waistcoat and go to sit in the 
armchair near the 
window. I cannot sleep. Every time I close my eyes I am filled with bitter 
images, with a 
yearning for the recent past and all the happiness I have lost. Mirenburg is 
gone. 
Papadakis grumbles at me as he brings back the clean chamber pot. 'You've pissed 
in the 
bed again,' he says. 'I know it. I can smell it.'
      He has made me stand, leaning on the table and trembling, while he gathers 
up the 
soiled linen. 'I'm going to bring the doctor in the morning.' Now the bed is 
clean. Through 
the open window comes the smell of hyacinths and the sea. Mirenburg no longer 
lives; she 
is a grey memory. She has been biding her time, hiding in a neurasthenic slumber 
while 
she waited for the best which would be offered to her: a kind of hibernation 
because she 
did not want to accept my offer but was afraid to refuse it, afraid to take any 
action. What 
had Diana promised? I doubt if it was anything than a more glamorous, if less 
realistic, plan 
of escape. Stefanik's balloon? I get out of the chair. My legs are weak. Clara 
turns, casting 
off her covering to hold out tolerant arms. Her face is full of controlled 
sympathy. How can 
she forgive me? Why do women do this to us? I begin to weep again. 'We are going 
away 
this evening,' she says. 'It is all arranged with Frau Schmetterling. We will 
take Elvira. Wilke 
will be with us. How did you plan to escape from the city?' Still snivelling, I 
tell her about the 
underground river and the sewers.' She pats my shoulder. 'Not bad. It could 
work.' 
Eventually I go to sleep. I am awakened by an explosion. From somewhere within 
the 
house I hear voices shouting and the crash of falling plaster. It is dark in the 
room. I lie on 
the bed and wait for the next shell. Instead the door opens and Clara stands 
there, an oil-
lamp raised in her hand. Frau Schmetterling is with her. The madam holds 
something in 
her hands. It is a bloody, palpitating chow-dog. 'They have killed Pouf-Pouf,' 
she says flatly. 
'And this poor little one is dying, too.'
      Clara is already in her outdoor clothes: a black and grey tailor-made. 
Over this she 
draws a plain cloak of the sort peasant women wear. She points to a bundle at 
her feet. 
'Here are some of 'Mister's' clothes. They should fit you. You'll have to leave 
your wardrobe 
behind, my dear.'
      I have become pliable and obedient. The dog begins to groan. Frau 
Schmetterling 
whispers something to Clara and then returns downstairs. I receive a strange 
feeling of 
satisfaction as I pull on the rough garments; it is almost as if I shall wear 
sackcloth in 
mourning for Mirenburg and my slain imagination. 'I want reality so badly,' I 
tell Clara. 'She 
was won over by nothing more than a fantastic promise.'
      'Very likely.' Clara helps me button the coat. 'Do you still have the 
map?'
I give it to her. 'We'll put Wilke in charge, I think,' she says. 'At least for 
the moment. Are 
you feeling any better?'
      'I want reality,' I tell her.
      'This is reality enough for anyone.' She is humorous. 'But I'm sure you'll 
find a way 
out of it. I trust your instincts for that. Lead the way, your lordship.'
We leave, the four of us, in the night. In Rosenstrasse we have to pass two 
soldiers who 
are still alive, though their bodies are dreadfully mutilated. They call out to 
us for help. 'I'll 
deal with them,' says Frau Schmetterling, hurrying us forward.
      Wilke and I raise the cover of the manhole. He goes first, swinging the 
lamp we 
have brought with us. Our shadows slide this way and that on the moist stones of 
the shaft. 
The metal ladder leads us down into the old watercourse. Elvira is too small to 
keep her 
head above the water, so I raise her on my shoulders. Throughout this journey I 
will find a 
kind of delicate consolation in being allowed to tend to the child's needs and 
will catch 
myself occasionally using the same kind of words and gestures used by 'Mister' 
in his 
conversation with her. We wade through shit and corpses to some sort of liberty, 
emerging 
on the fringes of the Moravian inferno and joining lines of refugees stumbling 
towards the 
cleaner air of a countryside stripped of all its wealth. We walk steadily for 
two more days 
until we cross the Bohemian border and are able, with the gold Frau 
Schmetterling has 
given us, to get a train to Prague where we separate. Wilke will take Elvira to 
England. I 
still have no volition and allow Clara to make every decision. We go first by 
train to Berlin 
and the hospitality of my brother Wolfgang, who congratulates me on the charm 
and the 
breeding of my English fiancee. Within days, of course, we are taken up by 
Society. 
Everyone must hear of our experiences. I recover myself sufficiently to present 
at least an 
acceptable facade and I speak with authority of the suffering and destruction I 
have 
witnessed. I am asked to write the articles which become that silly book The 100 
Day 
Siege: A Personal Record of the Last Months of Mirenburg. I mention nothing of 
any real 
importance to me, but for a while I become a hero.
      Holzhammer's villainy is the subject of a thousand editorials. He is 
called the 
Butcher of Mirenburg and the perfidy of Austria-Hungary has shocked, we read, 
the entire 
civilised world. But Holzhammer rules and Badehoff-Krasny is exiled and the 
diplomats 
gradually do their seedy work so that the Peace of Europe is maintained for a 
few more 
years. And Mirenburg is gone. I hear many rumours, but there is no news of 
Alice. I will talk 
to anyone who has a grain of gossip. It is still hard for me to accept that so 
much beauty 
has vanished as a result of trivial political decisions. There will never be a 
brothel like Frau 
Schmetterling's in Rosenstrasse, for there will never be another Mirenburg, with 
its history 
and its charm. And psycho-analysis has made us too self-conscious. This is an 
age of 
great remedies; they seem to believe there is a cure for human greed. There is 
not. But 
neither should the greedy be condemned. They should merely be guarded against. 
Greed 
is not evil. What is evil is the manipulation of others in order to satisfy it; 
the quest for 
power. That is the crime. Do you hear me, Papadakis? He is still shuffling about 
in the 
shadows.
      Will you read this, Alice, in your Geneva home? Or did you die with the 
others in 
Mirenburg? I could not find you. In London and Dublin we thought to discover 
news of Lady 
Cromach, but she had not returned. Someone said she had changed her name 
'because of 
certain scandals' and might be living in Paris. But she was not in Paris. And as 
for Princess 
Poliakoff, all we heard of her was that she could have gone to India. They said 
that on 
Sunday, 19th December 1897, when Holzhammer's troops arrived at Rosenstrasse, 
Poliakoff had sat in her old lover's carriage and directed the mercenaries into 
the brothel. I 
can imagine with what pleasure the Bulgarians took our ladies ('All they found 
later was a 
pile of bloody lace'). Baby is crying, Lady Cromach used to say. Baby is angry. 
Rakanaspya was killed, probably by the Austrians. Count Belozerski was wounded 
but 
managed to return to Kiev where I believe he still lives, writing about 
factories. Baby is 
crying. We are lost. Deserted. That which comforts us grows old and dies. We 
long to 
recapture it; the security of childhood, the attention of others. Clara was 
familiar with Lady 
Cromach's remarks. But she was not so tolerant of Baby. 'Sooner or later,' she 
said to 
me,'that baby's crying becomes an irritant to our adult ears. It is then we have 
the right to 
turn upon the weak and with all due ruthlessness squeeze the life from a silly, 
mindless 
creature. If we are to survive, Baby must be destroyed.'
      I was not to meet Frau Schmetterling for a long time, after Clara had 
despaired of 
my sniffing after Alice's non-existent trail and had returned to Germany alone. 
Clara said, 
as she waited on the platform for her train: 'I shall always love you, Ricky, 
for what you are, 
as well as what you could have become. But I know you are in love with an 
illusion, and it 
is a lost illusion at that. What would happen if you found her, if Mirenburg had 
not been 
destroyed? What would have happened if she had stayed with you? You have told me 
yourself. You know, but you refuse to act on your knowledge. And that is 
madness.' Now 
my honest Clara is gone and I am alone with an obsession which has taken up my 
life and 
drained from me what was not already drained by the treacherous Alice, who 
refused to be 
what I needed her to be. She was myself. The city is gone. She would be fifty-
seven years 
old now. Frau Schmetterling was in Dresden, the proprietress of an ordinary 
boarding 
house catering to single middle-class gentlemen. I reminded her gently of our 
ordeal in 
Mirenburg. 'Yes,' she said, 'it was ghastly. Hardly a saucer remained of all 
that crockery I 
had collected over twenty years.'
      I asked if she had heard anything of my Alice. 'No,' she said. 'Not unless 
she was 
the one who married the Swiss. I think she was killed, wasn't she? I hope those 
bastards 
didn't rape her.' Frau Schmetterling had attempted to protect her girls from the 
troops but 
she had eventually left Mirenburg with Renee and Trudi and joined Wilke in 
Brighton. They 
had gone to America for a little while, but had not been able to stay. Most of 
her girls had 
had no means of travelling so the house had rapidly become a common bordello 
used by 
the occupying army. The Bulgarians had been brutes. Everything of value had been 
stolen 
during the looting. 'I heard,' the old madam told me,'that at least one of the 
girls was killed. 
Remember Dolly? Natalia told me. I met Natalia outside the theatre one evening, 
in 
Cologne. She was selling flowers. She dropped the whole basket to hug me!' Frau 
Schmetterling had laughed before she became serious again. 'She was the one who 
told 
me about Dolly. Those Bulgars destroyed everything that was delicate. They 
ruined 
everything beautiful. They didn't understand the rocking-horse room, so they 
simply ripped 
it apart. They killed the acrobat. That friend of 'Mister's'. Laches! He 
insulted an officer, 
apparently.'
Natalia had stayed on, she had told Frau Schmetterling, in the hope of filling 
the madam's 
place when things calmed down. Several of the whores had had the same idea. But 
Holzhammer had given the order to destroy every building left standing. 'They 
were lucky, 
in the end, to escape with the clothes still on their backs. Natalia left with a 
returning 
Bulgarian officer. He knocked her about. She got away from him in Buda-Pesht, 
she told 
me, while they were changing trains. She was married. She wasn't on hard times. 
Her 
husband had a big flower-business in Cologne. They had two little boys. And 
Caroline 
Vacarescu escaped. I don't know how. She married an American and went to live in 
Ohio, 
though I believe she's now in California. Elvira's at university, you know, in 
Munich. She still 
remembers you carrying her through that sewer.' Frau Schmetterling had winked at 
me 
with a trace of her old good humour. 'You'd like her. She's just your type.' I 
was able to 
laugh and tell her that I had lost interest in females under twenty-five when 
Mirenburg was 
destroyed. 'But what about the balloonist, that Czech?' She thought he had 
probably tried 
to get his airship up and had been shot down by Holzhammer's artillery. Much 
later I heard 
a rumour that, under an assumed name, he had been killed on the Eastern Front in 
1915, 
flying a plane of his own design against the Austrians. Someone else said he had 
died with 
the Czech Legion in Siberia.
      Frau Schmetterling had made me eat a huge dinner and had introduced me to 
her 
new dogs, two pugs. When I had left she had kissed me and said that I should 
look after 
my health. 'It is a shame you'll never make a fool of yourself over a woman 
again. Your 
mistake was in refusing to believe that another woman could be a worthy rival. 
Men will do 
that.' I had shaken my head. 'I respected her insufficiently. And in my efforts 
to obscure my 
motives from her I lost her forever.' But Frau Schmetterling had been impatient 
with this. 
'Interpret it any way you choose, Ricky. The fact was that you seduced a child 
and you paid 
the price for it.' She had shrugged. 'And she would always have been a child, 
probably, 
with men like you to look after her. She's a child now, if she married that 
Swiss. Enjoy 
youth when it's given to you. It's a mistake to try to imprison it, though. It's 
too greedy, 
Ricky. And it never works, my boy.' She is still in Dresden, I believe. We 
exchange 
postcards every couple of years. Prince Badehoff-Krasny lived not twenty miles 
from me, 
up the coast, until his death. Von Landoff replaced Holzhammer as Governor, 
after the 
assassination. Captain Mencken was killed in Papensgasse, firing a carbine at 
the 
Bulgarians as they swept round from the embankment. Had Princess Poliakoff died 
in 
Mirenburg? Frau Schmetterling wrote that she might have done. She could not 
remember if 
Poliakoff had been with Holzhammer when the Bulgarians took over the brothel, 
but she 
remembered the rumour. 'Personally, I think she died in the bombardment.'
      Alice. My Alexandra. My little schoolgirl. Your soft body is no longer 
warm. Your 
perfume is faint. I see you in your red and gold balloon as it drifts up towards 
the silver 
sunshine. I wish it was my cheek you kiss as you lean over the rim of the 
gondola and see 
the spreading ash, the few remaining ruins, saying 'Look, there's the Radota 
Bridge! Isn't it 
terrible! And there's the Cathedral! And there's Rosenstrasse. Wave, Ricky!' It 
is so hard to 
write. The light is very dim for midday. I must tell Papadakis to turn on the 
gas. Clara 
married. She runs a restaurant in Liege and has done well for herself, though 
they say her 
husband is a drunk. She loved me. She told me she would always love me, but she 
had to 
look after herself. I understood. She had given me too much, I said. She had 
shaken her 
head. 'It would not have been too much if you had wanted it.' I spent so many 
cynical years 
in pursuit of my dream, in revenge on those I blamed for destroying it. And I 
never found 
her. She is washed away in that grisly tide. It is ash. She is a ghost. The twin 
spires glitter 
in the early afternoon sun. We look down past them towards the white walls. We 
are having 
a picnic. Falfnersallee and the Restaurant Schmidt. Waiting for her. I sip 
absinthe in the 
sunshine opposite the Radota Bridge. We visit the dress-shops and the jewellers. 
Deep in 
the luxury of the brothel. A riding crop rises and falls. A distant, excited 
scream. Lady 
Cromach's smile betrays the betrayer. Clara loved me. That last soft kiss. 
Alexandra. It was 
a blow to the groin. I can still feel the bruise. My right hand has started to 
tremble. 
Papadakis must bring me some more wine. The sea is too loud. The pain is 
nothing. I can 
return to Mirenburg whenever I wish.