Robert Wilson: A Small Death in Lisbon

'Am I seeing you tonight?'

'If they let me go,' he said, shifting in his seat, his erection troubling him.

'Didn't they ask how come a Swabian farmboy speaks so many languages?'

'Yes, they did, as a matter of fact.'

'And you had to give them a guided tour of all your lovers.'

'Something like that.'

'French from Michelle.'

'That was French was it?'

'Portuguese from that Brazilian girl. What was her name?'

'Susana. Susana Lopes,' he said. 'What happened to her?'

'She had friends. They got her out to Portugal. She wouldn't have lasted long in Berlin with that dark skin,' said Eva. 'And Sally Parker. Sally taught you English, didn't she?'

'And poker and how to swing.'

'Who was the Russian?' asked Eva.

'I don't speak Russian.'

'Olga?'

'We only got as far as da.'

'Yes,' said Eva, ' niet wasn't in her vocabulary.'

They laughed. Eva leaned over him and tilted the lampshade back up.

'I've been too successful,' said Felsen, failing to look sorry for himself, trickling more brandy into his cup.

'With women?'

'No, no. Drawing attention to myself… all this entertaining I do.'

'We've had some good times,' said Eva.

Felsen stared into the carpet.

'What did you say?' he asked suddenly, looking up at her, surprised.

'Nothing,' she said, leaning over him to stub her cigarette out. He breathed her in. She stepped back. 'What are you playing tonight?'

'Sally Parker's game. Poker.'

'Where are you taking me with your winnings?'

'I've been advised to lose.'

'To show your gratitude.'

'For a job I don't want.'

Outside a car drifted through the slush down Kurfürstenstrasse.

'There is one possibility,' she said.

Felsen looked up, sun perhaps breaking through the cloud.

'You could clean them out.'

'I've thought of it,' he said, laughing.

'It could be dangerous but…' she shrugged.

'They wouldn't stick me in a KZ, not with what I'm doing for them.'

'They stick anybody in a KZ these days… believe me,' she said. 'These are the people who cut down the lime trees on Unter den Linden so that when we go to the Café Kranzler all we have are those eagles on pillars looking down on us. Unter den Augen they should call it. If they can do that they can stick Klaus Felsen, Eva Brücke and Prince Otto von Bismarck in a KZ.'

'If he was still alive.'

'What do they care?'

He stood and faced her, only a few inches taller but nearly three times wider. She put a slim white arm, the wrist a terminus of blue veins, across the door.

'Take the advice you've been given,' she said. 'I was only joking.'

He grabbed at her, his fingers slipping into the crack of her bottom which she did not like. He went to kiss her. She twisted and yanked his hand away from behind her. They manoeuvred around each other so that he could get himself out of the door.

'I'll be back,' he said, without meaning it to sound a threat.

'I'll come to your apartment when I've closed the club.'

'It'll be late. You know what poker's like.'

'Wake me if I'm sleeping.'

He opened the door to the apartment and looked back down the corridor at her. Her dressing gown had been rucked open. Her knees, below the hem of her slip, looked tired. She seemed older than her thirty-five years. He closed the door, trotted down the stairs. At the bottom he rested his hand on the curl of the bannister and, in the weak light of the stairwell, had the sense of moorings being loosed.

At a little after six o'clock Felsen was standing in his darkened flat looking out into the matt black of the Nürnbergerstrasse, smoking a cigarette behind his hand, listening to the wind and the sleet rattling the windowpane. A slit-eyed car came down the road, churning slush from its wheel-arches, but it wasn't a staff car and it continued past him into the Hohenzollerndamm.

He smoked intensely thinking about Eva, how awkward that had been, how she'd needled him bringing up all his old girlfriends, the ones before the war who'd taught him how not to be a farmboy. Eva had introduced him to all of them and then, after the British declared war, moved in herself. He couldn't remember how that had happened. All he could think of was how Eva had taught him nothing, tried to teach him the mystery of nothing, the intricacies of space between words and lines. She was a great withholder.

He pieced their affair back to a moment where, in a fit of frustration at her remoteness, he'd accused her of acting the 'mysterious woman', when all she did was front a brothel as a nightclub. She'd iced over and said she didn't play at being anything. They'd split for a week and he'd gone whoring with nameless girls from the Friedrichstrasse, knowing she'd hear about it. She ignored his reappearance at the club and then wouldn't have him back in her bed until she was sure that he was clean, but… she had let him back.

Another car came down Nürnbergerstrasse, the sleet diagonal through the cracks of light. Felsen checked the two blocks of Reichsmarks in his inside pockets, left the window and went down to join it.

SS-Brigadeführers Hanke, Fischer and Wolff and one of the other candidates, Hans Koch, were sitting in the mess taking drinks served by a waiter with a steel tray. Felsen ordered a brandy and sat amongst them. They were all commenting on the quality of the mess cognac since they'd occupied France.

And Dutch cigars,' said Felsen, handing round a handful to all the players. 'You realize how they used to keep the best for themselves.'

'A very Jewish trait,' said Brigadeführer Hanke, 'don't you think?'

Koch, still as pink-faced as he had been at fourteen, nodded keenly through the smoke of his cigar which Hanke was lighting for him.

'I didn't know the Jews were involved in the Dutch tobacco industry,' said Felsen.

'The Jews are everywhere,' said Koch.

'You don't smoke your own cigars?' asked Brigadeführer Fischer.

'After dinner,' said Felsen. 'Only cigarettes before. Turkish. Would you like to try one?'

'I don't smoke cigarettes.'

Koch looked at his lit cigar and felt foolish. He saw Felsen's cigarette case on the table.

'May I?' he said, picking it up and opening it. The shop's name was stamped on the inside. 'Samuel Stern, you see, the Jews are everywhere.'

'The Jews have been with us for centuries,' said Felsen.

'So was Samuel Stern until Kristallnacht,' said Koch, sitting back satisfied, synchronizing a nod with Hanke. 'They weaken us every hour they remain in the Reich.'

'Weaken us?' said Felsen, thinking this sounded like something verbatim from Julius Streicher's rag, Der Stürmer. 'They don't weaken me. "

'What are you implying, Herr Felsen?' said Koch, cheeks reddening.

'I'm not implying anything, Herr Koch. I was merely saying that I have not experienced any weakening of my position, my business, or my social life as a result of the Jews.'

'It is quite possible you have been…'

'And as for the Reich, we have overrun most of Europe lately which hardly…'

'…possible you have been unaware,' finished Koch shouting him down.

The double doors to the mess thumped open and a tall, heavy man took three strides into the room. Koch shot off his chair. The Brigadeführers all stood up. SS-Gruppenführer Lehrer flicked his wrist at waist height.

'Heil Hitler ,' he said. 'Bring me a brandy. Vintage.'

The Brigadeführers and Koch responded with full salutes. Felsen eased himself slowly out of his chair. The mess waiter whispered something to the dark, lowered head of the Gruppenführer.

'Well, bring me a brandy in the dining room then,' he shouted.

They went straight into dinner, Lehrer fuming because he'd wanted to stand in front of the fire, warming his arse, with a brandy or two.