“Was, denn? Was meint Chorge? Wie sagt man das? Ist das nicht richtig englisch?”
Else looked pointedly away as though she had not heard him and wished to have nothing more to do with him. Heilig’s only answer was to continue looking at him coldly and suspiciously. Lewald, however, was not in the least put out by the unappreciativeness of his audience. He turned back to George with a comical shrug, as if the whole thing were quite beyond him, and then slipped into George’s pocket a small flask of German brandy, saying that it was the gift his “hosband” had sent. Next he took out a thin and beautifully bound little volume which one of his authors had written and illustrated. He held it in his hand and fingered through it lovingly.
It was a comic memoir of Lewald’s life, from the cradle to maturity, done in that vein of grotesque brutality which hardly escapes the macabre, but which nevertheless does have a power of savage caricature and terrible humour such as no other race can equal. One of the illustrations showed the infant Lewald as the infant Hercules strangling two formidable-looking snakes, which bore the heads of his foremost publishing rivals. Another showed the adolescent Lewald as Gargantua, drowning out his native town of Kolberg in Pomerania. Still another pictured Lewald as the young publisher, seated at a table in Aenna Maentz café and biting large chunks out of a drinking-glass and eating them—an operation which he had actually performed on various occasions in the past, in order, as he said, “to make propaganda for meinself and mein business.”
Lewald had inscribed and autographed this curious little book for George, and underneath the inscription had written the familiar and obscene lines of the song: “Lecke du, lecke du, lecke du die Katze am Arsch.” Now he closed the book and thrust it into George’s pocket.
And even as he did so there was a flurry of excitement in the crowd. A light flashed, the porters moved along the platform. George looked up the tracks. The train was coming. It bore down swiftly, sweeping in round the edges of the Zoologic Garden. The huge snout of the locomotive, its fenders touched with trimmings of bright red, advanced bluntly, steamed hotly past, and came to a stop. The dull line of the coaches was broken vividly in the middle with the glittering red of the Mitropa dining-car.
Everybody swung into action. George’s porter, heaving up his heavy baggage, clambered quickly up the steps and found a compartment for him. There was a blur of voices all round, an excited tumult of farewell.
Lewald caught George by the hand, and with his other arm around George’s shoulder half-pounded and half-hugged him, saying: “My old Chorge, auf wiedersehen!”
Heilig shook hands hard and fast, his small and bitter face contorted as if he were weeping, while he said in a curiously vibrant, deep, and tragic voice: “Good-bye, good-bye, dear Chorge, auf wiedersehen.”
The two men turned away, and Else put her arms round him. He felt her shoulders shake. She was weeping, and he heard her say: “Be good man. Be great one that I know. Be religious man.” And as her embrace tightened, she half-gasped, half-whispered: “Promise.” He nodded. Then they came together: her thighs widened, dosed about his leg, her voluptuous figure yielded, grew into him, their mouths clung fiercely, and for the last time they were united in the embrace of love.
Then he climbed into the train. The guard slammed the door. Even as he made his way down the narrow corridor towards his compartment, the train started. These forms, these faces, and these lives all began to slide away.
Heilig kept walking forward, waving his hat, his face still contorted with the grimace of his sorrow. Behind him, Else walked along beside the train, her face stern and lonely, her arm lifted in farewell. Lewald whipped off his hat and waved it, his fair hair in disarray above his flushed and vinous face. The last thing George heard was his exuberant voice raised in a shout of farewell. “Old Chorge, auf wiedersehen!” And then he cupped his hands round his mouth and yelled: “Lecke du----!” George saw his shoulders heave with laughter.
Then the train swept out around the curve. And they were lost.
41. Five Passengers for Paris