“But, you see, Herr Kommissar, he wasn’t a perfect stranger. He was my fiancé.”
That made both of them sit up with a jerk. The younger one even made a small blot in the middle of his virgin page the only blot, perhaps, to be found in all the spotless dossiers of the Polizeipräsidium.
“You mean to tell me, Frl. Bowles”but in spite of his gruffness, there was already a gleam in the elder one’s eye
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“You mean to tell me that you became engaged to this man when you’d only known him a single afternoon?”
“Certainly.”
“Isn’t that, wellrather unusual?”
“I suppose it is,” Sally seriously agreed. “But nowadays, you know, a girl can’t afford to keep a man waiting. If he asks her once and she refuses him, he may try somebody else. It’s all these surplus women–—”
At this, the elder official frankly exploded. Pushing back his chair, he laughed himself quite purple in the face. It was nearly a minute before he could speak at all. The young one was much more decorous; he produced a large handkerchief and pretended to blow his nose. But the nose-blowing developed into a kind of sneeze which became a guffaw; and soon he too had abandoned all attempt to take Sally seriously. The rest of the interview was conducted with comic-opera informality, accompanied by ponderous essays in gallantry. The elder official, particularly, became quite daring; I think they were both sorry that I was present. They wanted her to themselves.
“Now don’t you worry, Frl. Bowles,” they told her, patting her hand at parting, “we’ll find him for you, if we have to turn Berlin inside out to do it!”
“Well!” I exclaimed admiringly, as soon as we were out of earshot, “you do know how to handle them, I must say!”
Sally smiled dreamily: she was feeling very pleased with herself: “How do you mean, exactly, darling?”
“You know as well as I dogetting them to laugh like that: telling them he was your fiancé! It was really inspired!”
But Sally didn’t laugh. Instead, she coloured a little, looking down at her feet. A comically guilty, childish expression came over her face:
“You see, Chris, it happened to be quite true–—”
“True!”
“Yes, darling.” Now, for the first time, Sally was really
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embarrassed: she began speaking very fast: “I simply couldn’t tell you this morning: after everything that’s happened, it would have sounded too idiotic for words… . He asked me to marry him while we were at the restaurant, and I said Yes… . You see, I thought that, being in films, he was probably quite used to quick engagements, like that: after all, in Hollywood, it’s quite the usual thing… . And, as he was an American, I thought we could get divorced again easily, any time we wanted to. … And it would have been a good thing for my careerI mean, if he’d been genuine wouldn’t it? … We were to have got married to-day, if it could have been managed. … It seems funny to think of, now–—”
“But Sally!” I stood still. I gaped at her. I had to laugh: “Well really … You know, you’re the most extraordinary creature I ever met in my life!”
Sally giggled a little, like a naughty child which has unintentionally succeeded in amusing the grown-ups:
“I always told you I was a bit mad, didn’t I? Now perhaps you’ll believe it–—”
It was more than a week before the police could give us any news. Then, one morning, two detectives called to see me. A young man answering to our description had been traced and was under observation. The police knew his address, but wanted me to identify him before making the arrest. Would I come round with them at once to a snackbar in the Kleiststrasse? He was to be seen there, about this time, almost every day. I should be able to point him out to them in the crowd and leave again at once, without any fuss or unpleasantness.
I didn’t like the idea much, but there was no getting out of it now. The snackbar, when we arrived, was crowded, for this was the lunch-hour. I caught sight of the young man almost immediately: he was standing at the counter, by the tea-urn, cup in hand. Seen thus, alone and off his guard, he
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seemed rather pathetic: he looked shabbier and far younger a mere boy. I very nearly said: “He isn’t here.” But what would have been the use? They’d have got him, anyway. “Yes, that’s him.” I told the detectives. “Over there.” They nodded. I turned and hurried away down the street, feeling guilty and telling myself: I’ll never help the police again.
A few days later, Sally came round to tell me the rest of the story: “I had to see him, of course. … I felt an awful brute; he looked so wretched. All he said was: ‘I thought you were my friend.’ I’d have told him he could keep the money, but he’d spent it all, anyway… . The police said he really had been to the States, but he isn’t American; he’s a Pole. … He won’t be prosecuted, that’s one comfort. The doctor’s seen him and he’s going to be sent to a home. I hope they treat him decently there… .”
“So he was a loony, after all?”
“I suppose so. A sort of mild one… .” Sally smiled. “Not very flattering to me, is it? Oh, and Chris, do you know how old he was? You’d never guess!”
“Round about twenty, I should think.”
“Sixteen!”
“Oh, rot!”
“Yes, honestly… . The case would have to have been tried in the Children’s Court!”
We both laughed. “You know, Sally,” I said, “what I really like about you is that you’re so awfully easy to take in. People who never get taken in are so dreary.”
“So you still like me, Chris darling?”
“Yes, Sally. I still like you.”
“I was afraid you’d be angry with meabout the other day.”
“I was. Very.”
“But you’re not, now?”
“No… I don’t think so.”
‘It’s no good my trying to apologize, or explain, or any—
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thing. … I get like that, sometimes. … I expect you understand, don’t you, Chris?” “Yes,” I said. “I expect I do.”
I have never seen her since. About a fortnight later, just when I was thinking I ought really to ring her up, I got a postcard from Paris: “Arrived here last night. Will write properly tomorrow. Heaps of love.” No letter followed. A month after this, another postcard arrived from Rome, giving no address: “Am writing in a day or two,” it said. That was six years ago.
So now I am writing to her.
When you read this, Sallyif you ever doplease accept it as a tribute, the sincerest I can pay, to yourself and to our friendship.
And send me another postcard.
ON RUECEN ISLAND
(Summer 1931)
I wake early and go out to sit on the verandah in my pyjamas. The wood casts long shadows over the fields. Birds call with sudden uncanny violence, like alarm-clocks going off. The birch-trees hang down laden over the rutted, sandy earth of the country road. A soft bar of cloud is moving up from the line of trees along the lake. A man with a bicycle is watching his horse graze on a patch of grass by the path; he wants to disentangle the horse’s hoof from its tether-rope.
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He pushes the horse with both hands, but it won’t budge. And now an old woman in a shawl comes walking with a little boy. The boy wears a dark sailor suit; he is very pale and his neck is bandaged. They soon turn back. A man passes on a bicycle and shouts something to the man with the horse. His voice rings out, quite clear yet unintelligible, in the morning, stillness. A cock crows. The creak of the bicycle, going past. The dew on the white table and chairs in the garden arbour, and dripping from the heavy lilac. Another cock crows, much louder and nearer. And I think I can hear the sea, or very distant bells.
The village is hidden in the woods, away up to the left. It consists almost entirely of boarding-houses, in various styles of seaside architecturesham Moorish, old Bavarian, Taj Mahal, and the rococo doll’s house, with white fretwork balconies. Behind the woods is the sea. You can reach it without going through the village, by a zig-zag path, which brings you out abruptly to the edge of some sandy cliffs, with the beach below you, and the tepid shallow Baltic lying almost at your feet. This end of the bay is quite deserted; the official bathing-beach is round the corner of the headland. The white onion-domes of the Strand Restaurant at Baabe wobble in the distance, behind fluid waves of heat, a kilometre away.