The Hustler: The Story of a Nameless Love From Friedrichstrasse (29 page)

The boy did not like the constant stare that remained fixed on his face.

An odd john!

And now he spoke not another word, nor did he ask any more questions.

It often happened that a boy was inquired about here. But this man seemed to be unacquainted with such things, otherwise he would probably not have asked where Chick was now. It couldn’t be the Count, could it? A Count must surely look different. He observed the man furtively.

Then he saw how the odd guest drank up his beer with one draft, shivered as if it had been poison, and looked around absently in the now more brightly lit, empty room.

“Can one not drink something warm here?” he heard him ask.

But of course. A hot rum grog? Might he also drink one with him?

“Justav, two grogs!” was cried to the front.

They came. They were again alone. The little one drank, looked at the man sitting beside him, considered, and drew up closer.

Of course he was a john. Only johns came here. Only johns were interested in boys. Gunther was unfortunately under arrest now and would not come back so soon. Then the man would just have to look for another. How would it be if he tried to replace him? A quite nice man. He seemed to have money, else he would not have let him order so quickly whatever he wanted. Things were going so badly for him, too. The johns never took after him. At most once it was late in the evening, when all the others were already taken. Because he was so small. And so ugly—he knew it too. He wanted at least to try.

He drew himself up quite close, so that their arms touched. He laid his hand on the knee beside him. He lightly moved his hand higher.

The other apparently noticed nothing. He appeared to see, to hear, to feel nothing. He constantly stared straight ahead. Like Leo always did when he was on cocaine (but this was no cocaine addict).

Now the man looked at him and shoved the groping hand under the table away. Completely indifferently. Absently. But not angrily.

The little boy understood. Nothing doing here. Not for today anyway. Nothing, dear heart!

It seemed as if the guest wished to get up and leave. But he sat right back down again in the chair and remained seated.

He seemed only now to comprehend what he had heard.

He looked again into the small, precocious face.

It was ugly, lean, and strewn with freckles. But his eyes looked out slyly, and he was obviously older than he appeared. Experienced. What he said, too, was quite reasonable. He had moved away again somewhat and was stirring the steaming glass. Their arms no longer touched.

No one was concerned about them. It was as quiet up front as here in back—as if everyone were sleeping.

Graff pulled himself together. He had to negotiate. He must learn whatever there was yet to learn. But then—

The little chap was ready to give any further information he could. Even if nothing would probably develop between them, something would surely come of it for him. (And, God knows, he had to take whatever came!)

At first he asked whether he might drink something else and received the impatient answer: “But just order whatever you want!”

That was a super answer and was deemed worthy of a new call for Justav and a generous order.

But things still did not move on. The man made not a sound. So he had to start.

“Please don’t continue to say ‘Sie’ to me. We all say ‘Du’ to one another here, even to the gentlemen who come here. And they call me Pipel. Because I’m so little. But I’m already eighteen.”

“He’s eighteen . . . and he’s called Pipel,” thought Graff.

They sat together still longer, over an hour here in their corner.

Pipel conducted himself very decently from now on. He had understood.

Questions and answers came and went, all about only one thing. Pipel answered to the best of his ability (and entirely honestly).

After Justav was paid and had received more than the usual tip, Pipel was asked if might not be given something, too. He might! When three marks were pressed into his hand he was certain:

A Count he isn’t, but a real gentleman. He wanted to keep the man well-disposed toward him!

Between them, this was now agreed on:

That they were to meet here every day from now on (Pipel had to swear that each and every day he would be here at this hour); that he would do all he could to learn where they had taken Chick; that all the boys who escaped from institutions would came here at some time (even if only for a moment and only at times when there was nothing to fear from the cops); that among them, there would surely be one, sometime, who knew about Gunther, perhaps who even came from the same institution; and that he, Pipel, would then question him and would make an appointment, where they would meet, so that he himself could hear what he had to say. And that Pipel and the other one were then each to receive immediately twenty marks each for good and reliable news. Also that he—what was his name?—Hermann?—would come here every day, about five-thirty or six, to hear if anything had happened.

All this was agreed to. Graff left for today, to return again tomorrow.

Pipel was elated: every day food and drink and respectable table money (even if, of course, not three marks every day). Plus, he could look forward to a further twenty!

*

“Now don’t forget to come!” was his last word.

Forget to come! thought Gaff.

What else did he have to do from today on except one thing: find him again! Find him again, so as to rescue him!

Alone with the other boys Pipel was stormed with questions as never before. But he answered little. He wanted to earn the twenty marks for himself alone. He was firm about that. Always.

*

Hours afterward, late in the evening, after walking around a long time in strange streets, Hermann Graff stood at the window of his room and looked over at the bare wall. His lips were pressed together, his teeth clinched.

In his brain there was room for only
one
thought and it did not leave for a moment—it ruled so that no other feeling, not that of pain, not that of longing, not that of despair, not that of fear, could contend with it.

This one: I will and I must have him again, now, when he is mine—mine as never before!

I will not rest until I have him again! I alone have a right to him—I alone!

You shall not succeed in taking him from me again! You shall not succeed! And if I must perish over it, if we both perish—I will have him again. Living or dead!

3

Every day God allowed, every day when he came from work—usually directly, sometimes after going home quickly first—Hermann Graff went to the Adonis Lounge.

Each evening Pipel was the first to meet him, either regretfully shrugging his shoulders, or under the pretense of some insignificant news (but never that longed for), drawing him into the corner jealously, then not budging from his side any more.

Naturally everyone here now knew why he came. The prospect of earning twenty marks excited them extremely (for this, of course, did become known) and the name “Gunther” became a battle cry. Every escaped state ward, everyone who was only suspected of coming from an institution, was stopped and interrogated. But until now no one knew anything of Chick.

When Graff arrived, the lounge had not been open for long and was still quiet. Only the front room was lighted. The boys sat around the tables, bored themselves, and waited for evening when things picked up.

They passed the time playing cards or gossiping with one another, almost always about the same thing. Or they sat dully around the stove and warmed themselves, glad, for today, no longer to need to go out into the cold and wet. (On such days they spoke of the Passage with contempt.)

Guests were seldom here at this time. Only a singular-looking man, who was said to be an author and to write for the newspapers, was often already here, sitting among the boys and chatting with them—nice, intelligent, and interested in them.

One saw from his clever and serious face that he must have gone through a lot.

And at any moment another, a younger, taller man would come in, already half drunk and in the first stage of cocaine intoxication. He would drink, standing, always the same thing—a glass of beer and a large cognac—go out, and return in an hour.

Around this time things were still thoroughly peaceful and decent. When two of them went at one another with loud words, they were hushed again right away.

No one needed to eat anything, and most of them were unable to because their earnings from yesterday were long used up and those for today were still in the uncertain future.

Yes, they all knew why he came and they gave up on him.

At first, he would leave right away if he heard from Pipel that another day had gone by without news.

Then he took to sitting, longer and longer each day.

For where else was he to go? To his empty and barren room, alone with himself and his
one
thought?

*

But now he always sat up front, near the bar. He could not take much of Pipel’s chatter anymore, and the boy finally did not know what to relate, being never questioned and never receiving a real answer. He received his cup of coffee and whatever else he wanted, his cigarettes, and in a quiet handshake on departure, his table money.

Cigarettes—they all wanted them.

They approached his table: “Have you no cigarettes for me, sir?” (Or also: “Got any fer me mister?”)

Or they asked, when they were very hungry, for a sandwich and a few coins: “Have a heart!” They always got what they wanted.

But none of them exploited his always constant willingness, precisely because they knew that they got what they requested.

They probably also thought: it must not be going so good for him either, else he wouldn’t always be so sad and so quiet.

Out of a feeling of gratitude they also sat at his table and told him their stories, to cheer him up, as they said; or also because they liked to hear themselves talk. He appeared to listen but in fact their words went by him as if they were never spoken. He gradually learned all their faces and names. But he would have scarcely recognized any of them again, if he had met one on the street.

They no longer thought of approaching him in any other way. They had given up on him as a john, he was useless. A decent person, but a “miserable john.”

*

It would be wrong to say that these surroundings created in him any kind of disgust or aversion. They did not interest him. They left him indifferent. He, who once would not have been able to endure five minutes here, now sat hour after hour, indifferent but friendly to everyone and everything around him, and only thought about the one thing that he never, not for a moment, was able to forget.

The old proprietor, called Father by everyone, had lost his son in the war. Now his best helper, except for Justav, was his daughter-in-law. She was seldom seen, since she stayed mostly in her shiny-clean kitchen looking out for the welfare of her guests. But whereas Father, with his boundless good nature, was lenient with guests, that was not so with her, say, for guests who didn’t pay. And when, her child in her arm, she appeared up front in disputed cases, she finished with even the worst rowdy in no time and established peace and order again in a jiffy.

The Adonis Lounge was a gold mine. Evenings.

*

Hermann Graff sat in a corner by the bar.

When there was nothing for him to do (and there was little to do in the early hours) Father came shuffling over to his corner, stood at his table, and said a few friendly words about the weather and bad times, which had earlier been so entirely different. Or he came with a tray and two small cognacs, and invited him to drink with him. He was a good, old man, and Graff liked him. But it was always difficult for him to answer. He could not take even friendliness any more.

At the farthest table, in the darkest corner, regularly sat a young man of indeterminate age—he could be eighteen or twenty-five. With trembling hands he shook small doses of a white powder from a paper bag, divided them, folded them into paper strips, and concealed them carefully in his breast. The boys approached him, whispered secretly with him, and implored: “Leo, one for me too.” If their wish was granted (mostly, of course, only for payment), the contents of one paper were shaken onto the back of the hand and sniffed.

There was only one who really brought life into the quiet and hungry company: an unbelievably funny and somewhat effeminate sixteen-year-old lad—rosy, as well-fed as a pig, and as fresh as a dachshund. When he arrived, they all sat around him and he babbled nonstop, relating genuinely funny and mostly quite indecent tales.

One of his stories was that he had been given over by his mother—not entirely without reason, since she was outraged over his conduct and encouraged by the neighbors—to be an apprentice to a baker (for four years, contract and all agreed on). There he had seduced the apprentice on the first day, the journeyman on the second, and the master baker himself on the third, until on the fourth day he had been thrown out by the master’s jealous wife. Everyone in the lounge laughed loudly; even over the face of the quiet guest in the corner, who willy-nilly had to hear it too, there passed a weak smile. For the way the story was told, with all its details, was irresistibly funny.