She drained her glass, stood up and handed it back to me. 'Pour me some more of that love potion of yours while I powder my nose.'
While she was in the bathroom I refilled the glasses with hands that were none too steady. I didn't particularly like the woman, but I had nothing against her body: it was just fine. I had an idea that my head was going to object to this little skylark when my libido had released the controls, but at that particular moment I could do nothing more than sit back and enjoy the flight. Even so, I was unprepared for what happened next.
I heard her open the bathroom door and say something ordinary about the perfume she was wearing, but when I turned round with the drinks I saw that the perfume was all that she was wearing. Actually she had kept her shoes on, but it took my eyes a little while to work their way down past her breasts and her pubic equilateral. Except for those high-heels, Lotte Hartmann was as naked as an assassin's blade, and probably just as treacherous.
She stood in the doorway of my bedroom, her hands hanging by her bare thighs, glowing with delight as my tongue licked my lips rather too obviously for me to have contemplated using it on anything but her. Maybe I could have given her a pompous little lecture at that. I'd seen enough naked women in my time, some of them in fair shape too. I ought to have tossed her back like a fish, but the sweat starting out on my palms, the flare of my nostrils, the lump in my throat and the dull, insistent ache in my groin told me that the machina had other ideas as to the next course of action than the deus which called it home.
Delighted with the effect she was having on me, Lotte smiled happily and took the glass from my hand.
'I hope you don't mind me undressing,' she said, 'only the gown is an expensive one and I had the strangest feeling that you were about to tear it off my back.'
'Why should I mind? It's not as if I haven't finished reading the evening paper.
Anyway, I like having a naked woman about the place.' I watched the slight wobble of her behind as she walked lazily to the other side of the sitting-room where she swallowed her drink and dropped the empty glass on to the sofa.
Suddenly I wanted to see her bottom shaking like a jelly against the rut of my abdomen. She seemed to sense this and, bending forwards, took hold of the radiator like a wrestler pulling against the ring ropes in his corner. Then she stood with her feet a short way apart and stood quietly with her backside towards me, as if waiting for a thoroughly unnecessary body-search. She glanced back over her shoulder, flexed her buttocks and then faced the wall again.
I'd had more eloquent invitations, but with the blood buzzing in my ears and battering those few brain cells not yet affected by alcohol or adrenalin, I really couldn't remember when. Probably I didn't even care. I tore off my pyjamas and stalked after her.
I'm no longer young enough, nor quite thin enough, to share a single bed with anything other than a hangover or a cigarette. So it was perhaps a sense of surprise that woke me from an unexpectedly comfortable sleep at around six o'clock. Lotte, who might otherwise have caused me a restless night, was no longer lying in the crook of my arm and for a brief, happy moment I supposed that she must have gone home. It was then that I heard a small, stifled sob coming from the sitting-room. Reluctantly I slipped out from under the covers and into my overcoat, and went to see what was wrong.
Still naked, Lotte had made a little ball of herself on the floor by the radiator where it was warm. I squatted down beside her and asked why she was crying. A fat tear rolled down a stained cheek and hung on her top lip like a translucent wart. She licked it away and sniffed as I handed her my handkerchief.
'What do you care?' she said bitterly. 'Now that you've had your fun.'
She had a point, but I went ahead and protested, enough to be polite. Lotte heard me out and when her vanity was satisfied she tried a crippled sort of smile that reminded me of the way an unhappy child will cheer up when you hand over 50 pfennigs or a penny-chew.
'You're very sweet,' she allowed finally, and wiped her red eyes. 'I'll be all right now, thank you.
'Do you want to tell me about it?'
Lotte glanced at me out of the corner of one eye. 'In this town? Better tell me your rates first, doctor.' She blew her nose and then uttered a short, hollow laugh. 'You might make a good screw doctor.'
'You seem quite sane to me,' I said, helping her to an armchair.
'I wouldn't bet on it.'
'Is that your professional advice?' I lit a couple of cigarettes and handed her one. She smoked it desperately, and without much apparent pleasure.
'That's my advice as a woman who's mad enough to have been having an affair with a man who just slapped her round like a circus clown.'
'K/nig? I never saw him as the violent type.'
'If he seems urbane that's only the morphine he uses.'
'He's an addict?'
'I don't know if he's an addict exactly. But whatever it was he did while he was in the SS, he needed morphine to get through the war.'
'So why did he paste you?'
She bit her lip fiercely. 'Well, it wasn't because he thought I could use a little colour.'
I laughed. I had to hand it to her, she was a tough one. I said, 'Not with that tan anyway.' I picked up the astrakhan jacket from the floor where she had dropped it and draped it around her shoulders. Lotte drew it close to her throat and smiled bitterly.
'Nobody puts his hand on my jaw,' she said, 'not if he ever wants to put his hand any place else. Tonight was the first and last time that he'll give me a pair of slaps, so help me.' She blew smoke from her nostrils as fiercely as a dragon. 'That's what you get when you try to help someone, I guess.'
'Help who?'
'K/nig came into the Oriental at around ten last night,' she explained. 'He was in a foul mood and when I asked him why, he wanted to know if I remembered a dentist who used to come into the club and gamble a bit.' She shrugged. 'Well, I did remember him. A bad player but certainly not half as bad as you like to pretend you are.' Her eyes flicked at me uncertainly.
I nodded, urgently. 'Go on.'
'Helmut wanted to know if Dr Heim, the dentist, had been in the place during the last couple of days. I told him I didn't think he had. Then he wanted me to ask some of the girls if they remembered him being there. Well, there was one particular girl I said he should be sure to speak to. A bit of a hard-luck case, but pretty with it. The doctors always went for her. I guess it was because she always looked that little bit more vulnerable, and there are some men who quite like that sort of thing. It so happened she was sitting at the bar, so I pointed her out to him.
I felt my stomach turning to quicksand. 'What was this girl's name?' I asked.
'Veronika something,' she said, and noticing my concern, added, 'Why? Do you know her?'
'A little,' I said. 'What happened then?'
'Helmut and one of his friends took Veronika next door.'
'To the hat shop?'
'Yes.' Her voice was soft now and just a little ashamed. 'Helmut's temper ' she flinched at the memory of it ' I was worried. Veronika's a nice girl. A doofy, but nice, you know. She's had a bit of a hard life but she's got plenty of guts.
Perhaps too many for her own good. I thought with Helmut the way he was, the mood he was in, it would be better for her to tell him if she knew anything or not, and to tell him quickly. He's not a very patient man. Just in case he turned nasty.' She grimaced. 'Not much of a corner to turn, when you know Helmut.'
'So I went after them. Veronika was crying when I found them. They'd already slapped her around quite hard. She'd had enough, and I told them to stop it.
That was when he slapped me. Twice.' She held her cheeks as if the pain lingered with the memory. 'Then he shoved me out into the corridor and told me to mind my own business and stay out of his.'
'What happened after that?'
I went to the Ladies, a couple of bars and came here, in that order.'
'Did you see what happened to Veronika?'
'They left with her, Helmut and the other man.'
