The Hustler: The Story of a Nameless Love From Friedrichstrasse (31 page)

5

He waited. His waiting appeared to him more hopeless each day.

But one evening in the fourth week Pipel came all excited to meet him as he entered and drew him for the first time again toward the back.

“There is someone,” he whispered. “From Neuenhagen. I heard it from a john who knows him. He blabbed it to me. I also know where he is. I must go there now. I’m just leaving. Wait here until I come back.” And he added: “I’ll make an appointment with him for tomorrow. We’ll go together. Give me some money for the fare.”

Graff would have preferred to go with him directly, but Pipel absolutely did not want that.

“Why not?”

“Because I have to see first if he’s really here and where. And because I don’t know at all if it’s alright with him. He does have to stay hidden.” He was a decent boy, and the gentleman from whom he, Pipel, knew all this was his former steady. And he only told Pipel because he knew him and they had been together.

Therefore, he was to wait here, even if it should become late. He would definitely return. Definitely!

And he was gone, out through the door.

Graff remained sitting in his corner.

He was to hear something! This evening—indirectly at first, but tomorrow from a person who had seen him and who knew where he was and how it was going with him!

His heart began to beat again for the first time in weeks.

Of course he would wait here for Pipel. He would not leave until he was here again.

So he sat there, gave Justav an order, made an impatient wave of his hand when someone came too close to him, and brooded.

Tomorrow—how long yet until tomorrow! But tomorrow he was to hear about him. Finally! Finally!

When he looked up, the lights had already been lit in the large room. The first guests had appeared, almost no table was still unoccupied. Never before had he stayed so long. He had always gone when it came alive here. Now it was already in swing around him.

He looked around. Through the pink paper shades of the gas chandelier the light glittered onto the free space in the middle of the oblong hall, where there was soon to be dancing, while the tables on the sides and in the corners remained more in darkness.

The first tones were already struck on the old piano and a violin was tuned to them.

He sat squeezed into his corner (moreover, the most preferred in the pub). No one was concerned about him.

The boys had enough to do, greeting the arriving guests, coming on to them, and sitting at their tables. They were all as if transformed—those who sat around lazy and cross in the afternoon were suddenly all life and action.

Tall Willy cried to him as he passed by: “Stay! Stay! This evening will be super!”

And Father, on his way to the kitchen, stopped by him and kindly remarked:

“It’s only right that you also stay for an evening.”

Justav brought him his meal. He had to eat something. Who could know when Pipel would return?

The evening
did
become super, and indeed very soon.

A half hour later no table was empty. At his, not a chair had been empty for a long time.

The music played—the piano player with his artist’s hair and his accompanist, the queer August, on the violin—and there was dancing so that the floor shook. Gentlemen danced with the boys, the boys danced among themselves, and above all two aunties in women’s clothing, with wigs and gigantic feather hats, danced like crazy. The melodies were sung along—it was all a confusion of laughter and shrieks.

Always new guests arrived: young and old. Boys from other lounges and from the street who usually never came here in the afternoon; gentlemen, old and young, from all walks of life and all occupations, simply dressed, well dressed, conspicuously dressed. Couples—always an older man and a younger boy, who sat closely together, looking deeply into one another’s eyes, concerned only about themselves. Many were acquainted among themselves, greeted one another, called to one another, and shook hands in passing.

All were sitting pressed close together. Here a boy was lying with his head on the breast of a prosperous looking gentleman; there two had discovered one another in a kiss that never wanted to quit. People became acquainted in a second; suited one another; matched up again another time. No one disturbed anyone. That is what they were here for.

Here was—”atmosphere.” The tumult rose and rose, and appeared far from having reached its peak.

Justav (otherwise not disinclined himself, but now, of course, all business) ran from table to table carrying trays with coffee and pastry, beer and liquors—ran and ran.

The smoke of countless cigarettes rose in layers over their heads.

At the table where Hermann Graff sat, now completely wedged in at the farthest corner, things were likewise loud enough. Without greeting him or even looking at him, two gentlemen had sat down, one tall and strong, with a full beard, and the other somewhat younger, with a pale and haggard face. Old comrades, obviously, on their nightly round through these places, but definitely not a relationship.

He had never before seen the two boys with them. One, with a round, healthy face and lively brown eyes, was sitting opposite the older of the two gentlemen. He had laid his arms over the table and was saying nonstop to the man, staring at his coat pocket in which a thick billfold might be concealed, always the same words:

“Oh how I’m horny! How I’m horny—for your fat dough!”

Over and over, with a sly wink at his coat pocket:

“How horny I am—for your dough!”

At first it was funny, then it became boring.

At first he was angrily told to keep quiet. Then no one listened any more. When he finally realized that he was having no success with his silliness, a mean gleam came into his eyes. With a quick grasp he took the beer glass of the older man opposite, emptied it in one swallow, and disappeared with an infinitely vulgar word. The two gentlemen only laughed.

Graff did not laugh with them. He sat in his corner, with his calm and serious face, looking at the goings-on around him, which did not concern him or touch him. He was not astonished. For weeks he had not been astonished over anything.

At most a bit over the so much changed conduct of the boys, whom he knew from the afternoons as entirely different.

They, who shortly before had been sitting in their corners so morose and dull, were transformed. Either they had already found their johns, old or new, and were sitting with them, or they, who otherwise hardly opened their mouths, now laughed and chatted, often in a tight embrace, lively and excited. Or they went from table to table, sat down—whether asked to or not—with the strangers and were invited to stay or were given the cold shoulder. Once invited, everything else followed as a matter of course.

The merriment grew and grew from hour to hour.

Graff did not budge from his corner. He drank more than usual. His mouth dried out from the dust and dense smoke.

Then suddenly it seemed that he saw
him
here!

Saw him here: going from table to table with his charming smile (how charmingly he really could smile, when he wanted to!), speaking with this one, stopping by that one and sitting down with him.

His back ran hot and cold.

Again, as he so often had lately, he thought:

He frequented here, many long weeks last summer, from evening to evening (as Pipel and the other boys said). Here he spent his idle afternoons, his drunken evenings! From here he started his nights full of drunkenness and lust and . . .”

That fat beast over there—had he, too, been allowed to hold him in his arms, just as he is now holding the slim boy who at first resisted, but then patiently let himself be hugged and kissed? Had he also turned away at first, had he then also given in?

And that other one there, that slender young person with the uncanny eyes and the odd movements of his long hands, whom they were all around, although he ordered nothing, and who appeared so completely at home here—had he also been together with him and still come away alive?

From here the Count—that Count, the only one he knew about—had taken him away to his palace, to violate him there with his looks worse than any other could have done!

Terrible! Terrible!

He could stand it here no longer.

He wanted out of the corner and yet sat wedged into it.

It was late. It must be quite late already.

Why did Pipel still not return?

Here he was finally!

He tried at first to crowd in to him, but with a wave of his hand Graff kept him off, and with a rudeness that was usually foreign to him, he got up and pushed aside the chairs along with the people sitting on them.

He signaled to Pipel and took him out to the street. Inside the room the music sounded; laughter, singing, noise, and shrieks echoed; the couples whirled.

They were standing outside.

“Well?”

“ Tomorrow! I talked with him. At five tomorrow be at Alexanderplatz by the sign of the bear. By his left calf.” (Pipel loved little jokes like that.) “I’ll be there. It’s not far from there. But now I have to go in!”

He got his money and was gone.

Hermann Graff once more threw a short glance at the covered windows of the pub, which he would never again enter after this evening.

Then he walked for hours through the night full of cold and snow.

Morning dawned.

Today!

6

At five he was at the bear sign—by the left calf, as Pipel had said.

Pipel finally arrived at five-thirty.

He wanted to hear nothing about being late. He had been in luck yesterday evening and had only just got out of bed.

“It’s not far. Only a couple of streets.”

They turned into a quiet, crooked street. Then they were in an old, open square with an ugly church in the middle. Most of the houses here were very old and their roofs sagged deeply.

Pipel stopped in front of one of the smallest, which was kept from collapsing only by its neighbors. A couple of steps led to a small pub on the ground floor.

The narrow barroom was pitch-dark. An old woman approached.

She must have already been informed, for she directed the two guests toward the back.

From there, where a light shone, a young man probably twenty years old, strong and broad-shouldered, slowly approached them.

“Mother, make more light in back,” he said to the old woman with a voice that was remarkably deep for his age.

A petroleum lamp over the table in the back room was lit and only now could Graff discern the speaker.

He liked him immediately. He had an open, good-natured face, with blue eyes and a light fuzz over his lips.

He gave him his hand and they sat down.

Then he asked:

“You know Gunther? You know where he is and will tell me how it’s going with him?”

The other did not answer at first.

He looked at Pipel and then said slowly:

“Yes, I know Gunther. But I don’t know him here. I’ve only heard about him. From my friend. I only know that he told Pipel I’m here, and that’s enough. Now, Pipel, when you’ve drunk up”—the old woman had brought three glasses of beer—”you could leave us alone . . . the gentleman here and me.”

Pipel, who was anything but stupid, understood. He drank up.

Only one small detail was still to be taken care of. When he felt the promised twenty-mark bill shoved into his pocket, he immediately got up.

Graff also gave him his hand.

“I thank you, Pipel. You’re a good boy.”

“You’ll still come to the lounge again tomorrow?”

Graff looked for the last time, without answering, at the slim, freckled face before it disappeared through the door.

Then he was alone with the stranger.

But now he could stand it no longer:

“You have seen him? How is he? Where is he?”

As he always did when he was questioned during the next hour, the young man sitting opposite him reflected before he answered.

Then he spoke, calmly and slowly, in a manner unusual for one so young.

“Dear sir,” he said, “I will tell you everything I know. I really wanted to leave early this morning. You can imagine how hot it is for me here. Since I heard yesterday evening how much it means to you and also because my friend—you don’t know him and he doesn’t know you—urged me to, I stayed on and will go to Hamburg tomorrow. He said to me yesterday: ‘Do stay one day here and talk with the man. We must help one another when we can, even when we are not acquainted.’ For you see, he was also fond of me and I know how it is, even if I’ve paid him back badly enough.

“So, Gunther is in Neuenhagen and I saw him just the day before yesterday. How is it there? Well, not like in Lichte, in Lichtenberg. Much stricter. And if someone has already escaped once, they watch him much more sharply.”