detailed to watch over her in case anyone wanted to show the girl his appreciation. When after forty-five minutes she came to the end of her act, her curtsy was a mockery of those of us who had watched it.
I waved to a waiter and transferred my attention to the club itself. 'The wonderful Egyptian Night Cabaret' was how the Oriental described itself on the book of matches I had collected from the brass ashtray, and it was certainly greasy enough to have passed for something Middle Eastern, at least in the clichTd eye of some set- designer from Sievering Studios. A long, curving stairway led down into the Moorish-style interior with its gilt pillars, cupola'd ceiling and many Persian tapestries on the mock-mosaic walls. The dank, basement smell, cheap Turkish tobacco-smoke and number of prostitutes only added to the authentic Oriental atmosphere. I half expected to see the thief of Baghdad sit down at the wooden marquetry table I had taken. Instead I got a Viennese garter-handler. 'You looking for a nice girl?' he asked.
'If I were I wouldn't have come here.'
The pimp read this the wrong way up, and pointed out a big redhead who was seated at the anachronistic American bar. 'I can get you nice and cosy with that one there.'
'No thanks. I can smell her pants from here.'
'Listen, pifke, that little chocolady is so clean you could eat your supper off her crotch.'
'I'm not that hungry.'
'Perhaps something else, then. If it's drip you're worried about, I know where I can find some nice fresh snow, with no footprints. Know what I mean?' He leaned forwards across the table. 'A girl who hasn't even finished school yet. How does a splash like that sound to you?'
'Disappear, swing, before I shut your flap.'
He leaned back suddenly. 'Slow your blood down, pifke,' he sneered. 'I was only trying to ' He yelped with pain as he found himself drawn to his feet by one sideburn held between Belinsky's forefinger and thumb.
'You heard my friend,' he said with quiet menace, and pushing the man away he sat down opposite me. 'God, I hate pimps,' he muttered, shaking his head.
'I'd never have guessed,' I said, and waved again at the waiter, who seeing the pimp's manner of departure approached the table with more obsequiousness than an Egyptian houseboy. 'What'll you have?' I asked the American.
'A beer,' he said.
'Two Gossers,' I told the waiter.
'Immediately, gentlemen,' he said, and scuttled away.
'Well that's certainly made him more attentive,' I observed.
'Yeah, well, you don't come to the Casino Oriental for ritzy service. You come to lose money on the tables or in a bed.'
'What about the floor-show? You forgot the show.'
'The hell I did.' He laughed obscenely and proceeded to explain that he usually tried to catch the show at the Oriental at least once a week.
When I told him about the girl with the tattoos on her breasts he shook his head with worldly indifference, and for a while I was obliged to listen to him tell me about the strippers and exotic dancers he'd seen in the Far East, where a girl with a tattoo was considered nothing to write home about. This kind of conversation was of little interest to me, and when after several minutes Belinsky ran out of unholy anecdote, I was glad to be able to change the subject.
'I found K/nig's girlfriend, FrSulein Hartmann,' I announced.
'Yes? Where?'
'In the next room. Dealing cards.'
'The croupier? The blonde piece with the tan and the icicle up her ass?'
I nodded.
'I tried to buy her a drink,' he said, 'only I might as well have been selling brushes. If you're going to ingratiate yourself with that one you've got your work cut out, kraut. She's so cold her perfume makes your nostrils ache. Perhaps if you were to kidnap her you might stand some chance.'
'I was thinking along similar lines. Seriously, how low is your credit with the MPs here in Vienna?'
Belinsky shrugged. 'It's a real snake's ass. But say what you've got in mind and I'll tell you for sure.'
'How's this then? The International Patrol comes in here one night and arrests me and the girl on some pretext. Then they take us down to KSrtnerstrasse where I start talking tough about how a mistake has been made. Maybe some money even changes hands to make it look really convincing. After all, people like to believe that all police are corrupt, don't they? So she and K/nig might appreciate that little bit of fine detail. Anyway, when the police let us go I make out to Lotte Hartmann that the reason I helped her was because I find her attractive. Well naturally she's grateful and would like me to know it, only she's got this gentleman friend. Maybe he can repay me somehow or other. Put some business my way, that kind of thing.' I paused and lit a cigarette. 'Well, what do you think?'
'In the first place,' Belinsky said thoughtfully, 'the IP isn't allowed in this joint. There's a big sign at the front door to that effect. Your ten-schilling entrance buys a night's membership to what is, after all, a private club, which means the IP just can't come marching in here dirtying the carpet and scaring the flower-lady.'
'All right then,' I said, 'they wait outside and work a spot-check on people as they leave the club. Surely there's nothing to stop them doing that? They pull Lotte and me in on suspicion: her of being a chocolady, and me of working some racket.'
The waiter arrived with our beers. Meanwhile the second show was starting.
Belinsky swallowed a mouthful of his drink and sat back in his seat to watch.
'I like this one,' he growled, lighting his pipe. 'She's got an ass like the west coast of Africa. Just you wait until you see it.' Puffing contentedly, his pipe fixed between his grinning teeth, Belinsky kept his eyes on the girl peeling off her brassiere.
'It might just work at that,' he said eventually. 'Only forget trying to bribe one of the Americans. No, if it's grease you're trying to simulate then it really has to be an Ivan or a Frenchy. As it happens the CIC has turned a Russian captain in the IP. Apparently he's trying to work his passage to the United States, so he's good for service manuals, identity-papers, tip-offs, the usual kind of thing. A fake arrest ought to be within his abilities. And by a happy coincidence the Russians are in the chair this month, so it should be easy enough to arrange a night when he's on duty.'
Belinsky's grin widened as the dancing girl eased her pants over her substantial backside to reveal a tiny G- string.
'Oh, will you look at that?' he chuckled, with schoolboyish glee. Put a nice frame around her ass and I could hang it on my wall.' He tossed back his beer and winked lasciviously at me. 'I'll say one thing for you krauts. You build your women every bit as well as you build your automobiles.'
Chapter 20
My clothes actually seemed to fit me better. My trousers had stopped hanging loose around my waist like a clown's pantaloons. Slipping into my jacket was no longer reminiscent of a schoolboy optimistically trying on his dead father's suits. And my shirt-collar was as snug about my neck as the bandage on a coward's arm. There was no doubt that a couple of months in Vienna had put some weight on me, so that I now looked more like the man who had gone to a Soviet POW camp and less like the man who had returned from one. But while this pleased me, I saw it as no excuse to get out of condition, and I had resolved to spend less time sitting in the сafe Schwarzenberg, and to take more exercise.
It was the time of year when winter's denuded trees were starting to bud, and when the decision to wear an overcoat was no longer automatic. With only a chalk-mark of cloud on an otherwise uniformly blue board of sky, I decided to take a walk around the Ring and expose my pigments to the warm spring sunshine.
Like a chandelier that is too big for the room in which it hangs, so the official buildings on the Ringstrasse, built at a time of overbearing Imperial optimism, were somehow too grand, too opulent for the geographical realities of the new Austria. A country of six million people, Austria was little more than the butt-end of a very large cigar. It wasn't a Ring I went walking on so much as a wreath.
The American sentry outside the US-requisitioned Bristol Hotel had his pink face lifted up to catch the rays of the morning sun. His Russian counterpart guarding the similarly requisitioned Grand Hotel next door looked as if he
