Berlin Noir

14

According to all the guidebooks, the Viennese love dancing almost as passionately as they love music. But then the books were all written before the war, and I didn’t think that their authors could ever have spent a whole evening at the Casanova Club in Dorotheergasse. There the band was led in a way that put you in mind of the most ignominious retreat, and the shit-kicking that passed for something approximately terpsichorean looked as if it might have been performed more in imitation of a polar bear kept in a very small cage. For passion you had to look to the sight of the ice yielding noisily to the spirit in your glass.

After an hour in the Casanova I was feeling as sour as a eunuch in a bathful of virgins. Counselling myself to be patient, I leaned back into my red velvet-and-satin booth and stared unhappily at the tent-like drapes on the ceiling: the last thing to do, unless I wanted to end up like Becker’s two friends (whatever he said, I hadn’t much doubt that they were dead), was to bounce around the place asking the regulars if they knew Helmut Konig, or maybe his girlfriend Lotte.

On its ridiculously plush surface, the Casanova didn’t look like the kind of place which a fearful angel might have preferred to avoid. There were no extra-large tuxedoes at the door, nor anyone about who looked as if he could be carrying anything more lethal than a silver toothpick, and the waiters were all commendably obsequious. If Konig no longer frequented the Casanova it wasn’t because he was afraid of having his pocket fingered.

‘Has it started turning yet?’

She was a tall, striking girl with the sort of exaggeratedly made body that might have adorned a sixteenth- century Italian fresco: all breasts, belly and backside.

‘The ceiling,’ she explained, jerking her cigarette-holder vertically.

‘Not yet, anyway.’

‘Then you can buy me a drink,’ she said, and sat down beside me.

‘I was starting to worry you wouldn’t show up.’

‘I know, I’m the kind of girl you’ve been dreaming about. Well, here I am now.’

I waved to the waiter and let her order herself a whisky and soda.

‘I’m not one for dreaming much,’ I told her.

‘Well, that’s a pity, isn’t it?’

She shrugged.

‘What do you dream about?’

‘Listen,’ she said, shaking her head of long, shiny brown hair, ‘this is Vienna. It doesn’t do to describe your dreams to anyone here. You never know, you might just be told what they really mean, and then where would you be?’

‘That sounds almost as if you have something to hide.’

‘I don’t see you wearing sandwich boards. Most people have something to hide. Especially these days. What’s in their heads most of all.’

‘Well, a name ought to be easy enough. Mine’s Bernie.’

‘Short for Bernhard? Like the dog that rescues mountaineers?’

‘More or less. Whether or not I do any rescuing depends on how much brandy I’m carrying. I’m not as loyal when I’m loaded.’

‘I never met a man who was.’ She jerked her head down at my cigarette. ‘Can you spare me one of those?’

I handed her a pack and watched as she screwed one into her holder. ‘You didn’t tell me your name,’ I said, thumb-nailing a match alight for her.

‘Veronika, Veronika Zartl. Pleased to meet you, I’m sure. I don’t think I’ve ever seen your face in here. Where are you from? You sound like a pifke.’

‘Berlin.’

‘I thought so.’

‘Anything wrong with that?’

‘Not if you like pifkes. Most Austrians don’t, as it happens.’ She spoke in the slow, almost yokelish drawl that seemed typical of the modern Viennese. ‘But I don’t mind them. I get mistaken for a pifke myself sometimes. That’s because I won’t speak like the rest of them.’ She chuckled. ‘It’s so funny when you hear some lawyer or dentist speaking like he was a tram-driver or a miner just so as he doesn’t get mistaken for a German. Mostly they only do it in shops, to make sure that they get the good service that all Austrians think that they are entitled to. You want to try it yourself, Bernie, and see the difference it makes to the way you’re treated. Viennese is quite easy, you know. Just speak like you’re chewing something and add ’ish‘ onto the end of everything you say. Cleverish, eh?’

The waiter returned with her drink which she regarded with some disapproval. ‘No ice,’ she muttered as I tossed a banknote on to the silver tray and left the change under Veronika’s questioning eyebrow.

‘With a tip like that you must be planning on coming back here.’

‘You don’t miss much, do you?’

‘Are you? Planning on coming back here, I mean.’

‘It could be that I am. But is it always like this? The trade here’s about as busy as an empty fireplace.’

‘Just wait until it gets crowded, and then you’ll wish it was like this again.’ She sipped her drink and leaned back on the red-velvet-and-gilt chair, stroking the buttonback satin upholstery that covered the wall of our booth with the palm of her outstretched hand.

‘You should be grateful for the quiet,’ she told me. ‘It gives us a chance to get to know each other. Just like those two.’ She waved her holder meaningfully at a couple of girls who were dancing with each other. With their gaudy outfits, tight buns and flashing paste necklaces they looked like a pair of circus horses. Catching Veronika’s eye they smiled and then whinnied a little confidence to each other at a coiffure’s distance.

I watched them turn in elegant little circles. ‘Friends of yours?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Are they – together?’

She shrugged. ‘Only if you made it worth their while.’ She laughed some smoke out of her pert little nose. ‘They’re just giving their high-heels some exercise, that’s all.’

‘Who’s the taller one?’

‘Ibolya. That’s Hungarian for a violet.’

‘And the blonde?’

‘That’s Mitzi.’ Veronika was bristling a little as she named the other girl. ‘Maybe you’d prefer to talk to them.’ She took out her powder-compact and scrutinized her lipstick in the tiny mirror. ‘I’m expected soon anyway. My mother will be getting worried.’

‘There’s no need to play the Little Red Riding Hood with me,’ I told her. ‘We both know that your mother doesn’t mind if you leave the path and walk through the woods. And as for those two sparklers over there, a man can look in the window, can’t he?’

‘Sure, but there’s no need to press your nose up against it. Not when you’re with me, anyway.’

‘It seems to me, Veronika,’ I said, ‘that you wouldn’t have to try very hard to sound like someone’s wife. Frankly, it’s the sort of sound that drives a man to a place like this in the first place.’ I smiled just to let her know I was still friendly. ‘And then along you come with the rolling-pin in your voice. Well, it could put a man right back to where he was when he walked through the door.’

She smiled back at me. ‘I guess you’re right at that,’ she said.

‘You know, it strikes me that you’re new at this chocolady thing.’

‘Christ,’ she said, her smile turning bitter, ‘isn’t everyone?’

But for the fact that I was tired I might have stayed longer at the Casanova, might even have gone home with Veronika. Instead I gave her a packet of cigarettes for her company and told her that I would be back the following evening.

On the town, late at night, was not the best time to compare Vienna to any metropolis, with the possible exception of the lost city of Atlantis. I had seen a moth-eaten umbrella stay open for longer than Vienna. Veronika had explained, over several more drinks, that Austrians preferred to spend their evenings at home, but that when