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
