While around them, the city of New York was looted. Though whether this proved or disproved Haffner, in his imaginary nostalgic lecture hall, he didn't know.
He carried on looking at the girls. In Italy they had called them segnorini — the girls who went with the Allied soldiers: they mispronounced them, a l'inglese.
When she bent down, you could see the neat fur between her legs.
Behind him, the light of a candle flickered. A girl was standing beside him. She was tall, she had straight black hair, she was what the world would consider the pornographic ideal. Whatever her breasts were made of, Haffner liked it. She told Haffner her name. He could not hear it. She told him again. She thanked him for buying her a drink. He raised an eyebrow. Behind her, Niko raised a glass, gaily.
— You have a drink? she asked Haffner.
Haffner had a drink.
— So, she said, you are good to go.
He couldn't deny it. Like one of Benji's wind-up toys, which could unleash its skittering movements wherever it was placed: on the neat chevrons of blond parquet in a country-house museum or the linoleum of a kitchen floor — with damp stains, starry splashes of coffee, and one irrevocably non-matching square of concrete, where the lino had given out.
The girl who now thought of herself as Haffner's — or who thought of Haffner as her own — led him into what seemed a cave, or tunnel. It ventured into the underground. She told Haffner to sit — on a crate, or possibly an upturned bucket. It was difficult to tell. Haffner only knew that it had some kind of rim. It hurt him.
Haffner had never been into the pornography, nor the pubs to which his City friends used to go: where angry women undressed and despised their spectators. All his pleasure was more traditional. He disliked the obscenity of modern film, the sexual glee of modern literature. There were things which shouldn't be written down, said Haffner. There were certain forms to be observed. Pleasure was all about privacy, he thought: the burden of the boudoir.
And even if I disagreed, I still agreed with Haffner's motive — it wasn't from primness that he thought this, but from a wish to preserve the erotic as a secret which one kept from other people. This didn't seem unreasonable.
But now, in this unstaged intimacy, Haffner could still not discover in himself any obvious erotic surge. He should have done, he knew this. And perhaps, even recently, he would have done — but no longer. Now, Haffner was more in love with love.
This love was partly visible in the way his thoughts were tending to Zinka, in her bubble bath. But it was also visible in the way Haffner kept thinking of Livia. He sat on an upturned crate or bucket and told himself that he should simply do this so that Niko would still admire him. Because Niko was his ally. Niko was the friend who would restore Haffner to his heritage.
In his blackout basement, Haffner conversed urbanely with his girl. Her name, she told him, was Katya. A nice name, Haffner assured her. It was not her real name, she replied. Who needed real names? Not in here. Tonight, she said, she wanted sex, and she wanted vodka. And she had the vodka already, she said — raising the smudged plastic glass to Haffner's worried gaze. So only one thing was missing.
As usual, the god Priapus harried Haffner: with his cloven hooves, his staff entangled in ivy. His entire being a pulsing penis.
An arm was twined around Haffner's neck. He felt his lips being kissed. Then he realised that the small bikini top which Katya had been wearing was now slipping, weightless, on to his arm, then on to the floor — where it rested, invisible, unknown to Haffner, on his foot. She lifted a candle to her torso: her breasts were there, in the magical light. Katya told him that he could touch. If he were gentle.
He belonged to an older world. The older he got, the more he believed in it. Here, in the centre of Europe, in a town which was so nearly modern, and yet had been already so melancholically superseded by other fashions, Haffner believed in romance: the candlelit dinner, the car ride home, the kiss on the cheek. This routine to be repeated, with variations.
He tried to explain to Katya that he really did not want to touch her. If she didn't mind. He wondered if perhaps they should rejoin the others.
But he was in such a rush, said Katya, sadly. Did she not please him?
He tried to look for Niko, and could see nobody. He was alone with her, in this back room. Of course, he replied, she pleased him.
Visually, it was inarguable.
Then he felt her press her breasts against him. Softly they gave against the protrusion of Haffner's nose. The rough nipples rubbed against the harsher roughness of Haffner's cheeks.
But no, it wasn't Haffner's thing. He tried to explain this to her. Really, she had been very kind, but he ought to be going. And to his unsurprised dismay, Katya seemed to feel wronged by his explanations. Angrily, she upbraided him. Never, she said, had she met such a man.
Helpless Haffner bent his head.
Did he think she really wanted him? she asked Haffner. Dumbly, Haffner shook his head. Did he think that this was her idea of love?
— You're nodding when you're not supposed to be nodding, she said.
— Ah yes, said Haffner.
— You're still doing it, she said.
They were everywhere, thought Haffner: the experts in what was real; the people who wanted to begin, or complete, his education.
Look at him! said Katya. The man was dressed in a cagoule. She could not understand how stupid he was.
And Haffner wanted to assure her that he was capable of stupidity so gigantic that she would hardly comprehend it.
Maybe, thought Haffner, he was going off sex. Once, a Texan friend of his had told him a Dallas proverb. Every time you find yourself not thinking about sex, so ran the proverb, then your mind is wandering. And this had been Haffner's philosophy, in so far as the man could have a philosophy.
My squalid Don Quixote: avid for the higher things. The higher things which Haffner looked for in the lower things: in the lust, and the vanity, and the shame.
The point was, said Katya, that she at least needed to be paid.
It was the second time that day, considered Haffner, amazed — emptying the pockets of his cagoule, presenting her with all the notes he found — when he had paid for sexual services he had never wanted. But Haffner was flexible.
He should never forget his favourite item of vocabulary. When he was in Brazil, when they were leaving the theatre, laughing to themselves at the disconcerted policemen, his counterpart in the Rio bank had tried to explain how one survived in these great times. You could do it, sure, by going underground and becoming a hero. But then you died. Or you could do it by offering up your politics to whatever came along. You preserved yourself through sacrificing your ideals. They had a word for this, he said. It was trampolin-ability. And this immediately became Haffner's favourite word. He could trampoline. Yes, this seemed possible.
To trampoline: the only form of maturity which Haffner ever recognised.
Rising back into the air, buoyant against gravity, Haffner made for the exit — where Niko was waiting for him. Was Niko not good to him? asked Niko. Haffner replied that Niko was very very good to him. So what, asked Niko, did Haffner think?
Haffner promised him that yes: why not? If Niko thought he could help. He didn't see why not. And Niko said that this was very good. He had perhaps said this before, but he liked Haffner very much. Now then: the practicals. He knew the snooker club? Of course, said Haffner, he didn't know the snooker club. Well then, said Niko. Well then. They would sort something out. Niko himself would take him there.