“Oh, of course we’ll come!” rippled Fran; and, though Sam grumbled to himself, “Life’ll be a damn sight shorter if I don’t get some sleep once in a while!” he looked agreeable as they heaved themselves into a taxicab.
Their new venture in restaurants was called “Die Neuste Ehe”—“The Latest Style in Marriage”—and after two minutes’ view of it, Sam concluded that he preferred the old style. There in a city in which, according to the sentiment of the American comic weeklies, all males were thick as pancakes and stolid as plow-horses, was a mass of delicate young men with the voices of chorus girls, dancing together and whispering in corners, young men with scarves of violet and rose, wearing bracelets and heavy symbolic rings. And there was a girl in lavender chiffon—only from the set of her shoulders Sam was sure that she was a man.
As they entered, the bartender, and a very pretty and pink-cheeked bartender he was, waved his towel at them and said something in a shrill playful German which Sam took to signify that Kurt was a charming person worthy of closer acquaintance, that he himself was a tower of steel and a glory upon the mountains.
It was new to Sam.
He stood gaping. His fists half clenched. The thick, reddish hair on the back of his hands bristled. But it was not belligerence he felt—it was fear of something unholy. He saw that Fran was equally aghast; proudly he saw that she drew nearer his stalwartness.
Kurt looked at the jocund bartender; quickly he looked at Fran and Sam; and he murmured, “This is a silly place. Come! Come! We go some place else!”
Already the manager was upon them, smirking, inviting them in two languages to give up their wraps. Kurt said something to him in a rapid, hissing German—something that made the manager sneer and back off—something so hateful and contemptuous that Sam reflected, “This Kurt is quite a fellow, after all. Wouldn’t be such a bad guy to have with you in a scrap!”
As Kurt lifted the heavy brocade curtain before the street door to usher them out, the bartender, in a catcall voice, shouted something final. Kurt’s jaw tightened. It was a good jaw-line. But he did not turn and, out on the pavement, his face was full of an apology that was almost suffering as he begged of Fran:
“I am so sorry. I had never been there. I had just heard of it. I did not think they would be so dreadful. Oh, you will never forgive me!”
“But I didn’t mind them!” Fran protested. “I think it would have been amusing to watch them, for a little while.”
Kurt insisted, “Oh no, no, no! Of course you were shocked! Come! There is another place I do know, over the street. You will show me you forgive me by coming—”
They danced till three, at which hour everyone in the café was sleepy except Kurt. The orchestra went home and, to the cheers of the grimly merry groups who were left slumbering over their champagne, Kurt trotted forward and played the piano like a vaudeville performer, and they all obediently awakened for the last dregs of joviality. A monocled officer-like German begged Fran to dance, and Sam was able to snatch three minutes of secret sleep.
He was gratified when, after he had grumbled, “Now we’ve got to go home,” Fran and Kurt took him seriously enough to consent.
It was raining, and the street was like the inside of a polished steel cylinder. A late taxicab cruised up, but the doorman and his faithful big umbrella had gone home. Kurt whipped off his coat, wrapped it about Fran and, in shirtsleeves, stood waiting till Sam was inside the cab. … And he would sit on the little folding seat and he wouldn’t let them take him home, but escorted them to the Adlon, babbling, “It was fun, wasn’t it! You do forgive me for the Neuste Ehe, don’t you! It was a von‑derful day, wasn’t it! And you will come by me Wednesday evening for a little dinner to meet some friends? Oh, you must!”
Yes, they would, thank you very much—
In the extreme drowsiness of their room, Fran hinted, “You enjoyed it, didn’t you, darling?”
“Yes, everything except the last hour or so. Got pretty sleepy.”
“Kurt is a darling, don’t you think?”
“Yes, he’s a nice fellow. Mighty kind.”
“But Heavens, what a bossy person he is! He simply demanded that I be shocked at that Den of Vice, and I had to do my best to please him—and you too, you pure-minded males! Well, he’s a nice boy, and so are you, and I’m going to sleep till noon I like Berlin!”
XXIII
Three days of museums, of art galleries, of palaces, of the Zoo. They went to Sans Souci, where Fran talked of Voltaire (she really had read Candide) and Sam thought in a homesick way of the Sans Souci Gardens development in Zenith and snapped at himself that it was time to clinch with Fran, to make her come home and begin a new life of “making things.”
They saw nothing of Kurt von Obersdorf—he merely telephoned to them eight or ten times and made them go out and see things. He so insisted that they see Molnar’s Spiel im Schloss that they sulkily went, though by now Sam had convinced himself that he was right in thinking he didn’t care greatly for plays in a language he didn’t understand, and though Fran, exhausted by the florid endearments which had been poured upon her at a women’s tea given by Frau Dr. Biedner, for once in her life wanted to go to bed.
She said that she understood every word of Spiel im Schloss.
Sam said that he guessed it was pretty fine acting all right, and he thought he’d just slip downstairs and have a nightcap in the bar.
He
