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 ftьhtary 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
