Erik Dorn Part 32

"Dear child," he whispered, "you can always cry in my arms and I will understand. It is the way the world sometimes cries in my heart. I understand.... Yes ... yes...."

CHAPTER IV

A kaleidoscope of cities. A new garrulity. Words like busy little brooms sweeping up after a war. A world of foreigners. Europe was running about with empty pockets and a cracked head. England had had a nose-bleed, France a temporary castration, and the president of the United States was walking around in Paris in an immaculate frock-coat and a high silk hat. The President was closeted in a peace conference mumbling valorously amid lifted eyebrows, amused shoulder shruggings, ironic sighings. A long-faced virgin trapped in a bawdy house and calling in valiant tones for a gla.s.s of lemonade.

Erik Dorn drifted through a haze of weeks. This was London. This, Paris.

This, Rotterdam. And this, after a long, cold ride standing up in a windowless coach, Berlin. But all curiously alike. People in all of them who said, "We are strangers to you."

There was nothing to see. No impressions to receive. More cities, more people, more words and a detachment. The detachment was Europe. In his own country there was no detachment. He was a part of crowds, newspapers, buildings. Here he was outside. Familiar things looked strange. The eyes busied themselves trying to forget things before them, scurrying after details and worried by an unrelation in architecture, faces, gestures.

It was mid-December when he sat in a hotel room in Berlin one night and ate blue-colored fish, boiled potatoes, and black, soggy bread. He had been wandering for days through snow-covered streets. Now there was shooting in the streets.

"Germany is starving," said an acquaintance. "Our children are dying off by the thousands, thanks to the inhuman blockade."

But despite even the shooting in the streets Dorn noticed the Germans had lost interest in the war. The idea of the war had collapsed. In England and France the idea was still vaguely alive. People kept it alive by discussing it. But even there it had become something unnatural.

One thing there was in common. Only a few people seemed to have been killed. London was jammed. Even though the newspapers summed it up now and then with "a generation has been killed." Paris, too, was jammed.

And Berlin now, jammed also. The war had been fought by people who were dead. And the people who were alive were living away its memory.

In Berlin a week, and he thought, "A circus has pulled down its tent, carted off its gaudy wagons, its naphtha lights, and its boxes of sawdust. And a new show is staking out the lot."

The new show was coming to Berlin. Fences and building walls were plastered with its lithographs ... "The Spirit of Bolshevism Marches ... Beware the Wrecker of Mankind...." Posters of gorillas chewing on b.l.o.o.d.y knives, of fiends with stringy hair setting the torch to orphanages and other n.o.bly drawn edifices labeled "Kultur, Civilization, Humanitat...." The spielers were already on the job. Machine-guns barked in the snow-covered streets. A man named Noske was a _Bluthund_. A man named Liebknecht was a _Schweinhund_.

In his hotel room Dorn, eating blue-colored fish, spoke to an acquaintance--an erudite young German who wore a monocle, whose eyes twinkled with an odd humor, and who under the influence of a bottle of Sekt was vociferating pa.s.sionately in behalf of a thing he called _Welt_ Revolution.

"I don't understand it yet, von Stinnes," Dorn smiled. "I will later. So far I've managed to do nothing more than enjoy myself. Profundity is diverting in New York, but a bore in Berlin. There's too much of it.

Good G.o.d, man, there are times when I feel that even the buildings of the city are wrapped in thought."

Von Stinnes gestured with an almost English awkwardness. His English contained a slight French accent. His words, amused, careless, carried decision. He spoke knowingly, notwithstanding the Sekt and the smile with which he seemed to be belying his remarks. Thus, the Majority Socialists were traitors. Scheidemann had sold the revolution for a kiss from Graf Rantzau. The ma.s.ses.... "Ah, m'sieur, they are arming. There will be an overthrow." And then, Ludendorff had framed the revolution--actually manufactured it. All the old officers were back.

Noske was allowing them to reorganize the military. The thing was a farce. Social Democracy had failed. The country was already in flames.

There would be things happening. "You wait and see. Yes, the Spartikusten will do something ..."

Dorn nodded appreciatively. He felt instinctively that he had stumbled upon a man of value and service. But he listened carelessly. As yet the scene was more absorbing than its details. The local politik boiling beneath the collapse of the empire had not yet struck his imagination.

There were large lines to look at first, and absorb.

Snow in unfamiliar streets, night soldier patrols firing at shadows, eager-eyed women in the hotel lobbies, marines carousing in the Kaiser's Schloss--a nation in collapse. Teutonia on her rump, helmet tilted over an eye, hair down, comely and unmilitary legs thrust out, showing her drawers and laughing. Yes, the Germans were laughing. Where was there gayety like the Palais de Danse, the Fox Trot Klubs, Pauligs; gayety like the drunken soldiers patrolling Wilhelmstra.s.se where a paunchy harness-maker sat in Bismarck's chair?

Gayety with a rumble and a darkness underneath. But such things were only wilder accents to laughter. If the detachment would leave him, if he could familiarize himself, he could lay hands on something; dance away in a macabre mardi-gras.

Two bottles of Sekt had been emptied. A polite Ober responded with a third. Von Stinnes grew eloquent.

"Not before March, Mr. Dorn. It will come only then. This that you hear now, pouf! Hungry men looking for crumbs with hand-grenades. The revolution is only picking its teeth. But wait. It will overturn, when it comes. And even if it does not overturn, if it fails, it will not end, but pause. You hear it whispering now in the streets. Hungry men with hand-grenades. Ah, m'sieur, if you wish we will work together. I am a man of many acquaintances. I am von Stinnes, Baron von Stinnes of a very old, a very dissolute, a very worthless family. I am the last von Stinnes. The dear G.o.d Himself glows at the thought. I will work for you as secretary. How much do you offer for a scion of the n.o.bility?"

"Three hundred marks."

"A month?"

"No, weekly," laughed Dorn, "and you buy half the liquor."

Von Stinnes bowed.

"An insult, Mr. Dorn. But I overlook it. One becomes adept in the matter of overlooking insults. You will need me. I am known everywhere. I was with Liebknecht in the Schloss when he slept in the Kaiser's bed. Ho! it was a symbol for you to see him crawl between the sheets. Alas! he slept but poorly, with the marines standing guard and frowning at the bed as if it were capable of something. For me, I would have preferred beds with more pleasant a.s.sociations. And when Bode tried to be dictator in his father's chamber in the Reichstag--yes," von Stinnes closed his eyes and laughed softly, "he seized the Reichstag with a company of marines. And he sat for two days and two nights signing warrants, confiscation orders. Until a soldier brought him a doc.u.ment issued by Eichorn the mysterious policeman who was dictating from the Stadt House.

And poor Bode signed it. He was sleepy. He could not read with sleep. It was his own death warrant. It was I who saved him by taking him to the house of Milly. He slept four days with Milly, in itself a feat."

Von Stinnes swallowed another gla.s.s of wine. His eyes seemed to belie his unsteady, careless voice. His eyes remained intent and mocking upon Dorn.

"You have come a few weeks too late. There were scenes, dear G.o.d, to make one laugh. In the Schloss. Yes, we bombarded the Schloss--but after we had captured it. The Liebknecht ordered. Everything was done in symbols. Therefore the symbol of the bombardment of the Schloss. So we rushed out one night and opened fire, and when we had knocked off the balcony and peeled the plaster from the walls, we rushed in again and sang the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_. What wine, m'sieur! Ho, you have come a few weeks too late. But there will be other comedies. And I will be of service. I belong to three officers' clubs. One of them is respectable.

Women are admitted. The other two ... women are barred. And look...." He slapped a wallet on the table and extracted a red card, "'member of the Communist Partei--Karl Stinnes,'" he read. "Listen, there are 75,000 rifles in Alexander Platz, waiting for the day."

"Where did you learn your English, von Stinnes?"

"Oxford. Italian in Padua. French, m'sieur, in Paris. During the war."

The baron laughed. "Ah, _pendant la guerre, m'sieur, en Paris_."

"And now," Dorn mused, "you are a Spartikust."

The baron was on his feet, a wine gla.s.s raised in his hand.

"_Es lebe die Welt Revolution_," he cried, "_es lebe das Rate Republik!_"

"What did you do in Paris, von Stinnes?"

"Pigeons, my friend. I played with pigeons and with vital statistics and made love to little French girls whose sweethearts were dying in the trenches. And in London. But I talk too much. Yes, my tongue slips, you say. But I am lonely and talk is easy.... I drink your health ...

_hein!_ it was a day when we met...."

Dorn raised his gla.s.s.

"To the confusion of the seven deadly virtues!" he laughed.

"I drink," the baron cried. "We will make a tour. We will amuse ourselves. I see that you understand Germany. Because you understand there is something bigger than Germany; that the world is the head of a pin spinning round in a gla.s.s of wine. I have been with the other correspondents. Pigs and donkeys. The souls of shopkeepers under the vests."

The baron seated himself carefully and pretended an abrupt seriousness.

"I have made up my mind to die behind the red barricades. Perhaps in March. Perhaps later. Another gla.s.s, m'sieur. Thanks. I shall die fighting for the overthrow of the tyranny of the bourgeoisie ... Noske and his _parvenu_ Huns. Ho! Dorn, we will amuse ourselves in a crazy world, eh, what? The tyranny of the bourgeoisie!"

The baron laughed as he rolled over the phrase.

"There will be great deal to enjoy," Dorn smiled. The wine was making him silent.

"Yes, to enjoy. To laugh," the baron interrupted. "I cannot explain now.

But you seem to understand. Or am I drunk? _Ein galgen gelachter, nicht wahr?_ I will take quarters at the hotel. I know the management well. I saved the place from being looted in the November excitement. Have you seen the Kaiser Salle? His Majesty dined there once. A witless popinjay.

Liebknecht is a man. Flames in his heart. But a poor orator. He will be killed. They must kill him. A little Jew, Haase, has brains. You will meet him. And the Dadaists--they know how to laugh. The cult of the absurd. Perhaps the next emperor of Germany will be a Dada. An Ober Dada--who knows? Once the world learns to laugh we may expect radical changes. And in Munchen I know a dancer, Mizzi. Dear G.o.d, what legs! You must come there to see legs. Faces in the Rhineland. Ankles in Vienna.

But legs, dear G.o.d, in Munchen! It is the Spanish influence. Let us drink to Mizzi...."