Филип Керр - Metropolis

I opened the newspaper and turned the pages almost mindlessly since it was mostly filled with advertisements. A full-page ad for a clearance sale of ladies’ fur coats at Meine in East Berlin did little to persuade me I was wrong about this; buying a fur coat on one of the hottest days of the year looked every bit as crazy as staking yourself out like a goat for a man-eating tiger.

Still cursing the news vendor, I tried to figure out where I was going to move to; the next nearest station was at the Stock Exchange, which was at least half a kilometre to the east. A fifteen-minute stroll when you were on legs, but something else when you were confined to a klutz wagon. That was clearly out of the question. But perhaps I might find a spot on Georgenstrasse, close to the all-important overhead railway line, and after a while I had marked out a place in my mind’s eye that was in front of the Trianon Theater, less than two hundred metres away. I waited a while, smoked another roll-up, and then set off.

On my third day outside the Trianon I caught a glimpse of Käthe Haack, the actress, stepping out of a shiny Maybach limousine and going up to the stage door. She signed a few autographs, smiled her famous ingénue smile, and went inside, but not before putting a silver fifty-pfennig piece in my hat, which was the most I’d had since I’d started to beg and for which I blessed her, several times, and resolved not to think badly of her or her terrible fims ever again. A little later, Haack’s much older husband, Heinrich Schroth, turned up — and gave me nothing except a look of withering contempt before going in through the same stage door. He was always playing Prussian aristocrats in films and I think he almost believed he was one. He wore his broad-brimmed hat Bohemian-style and his coat hung on his shoulders like a cape; for a while I entertained myself with the idea that he might have been Winnetou because, at a stretch, he fit the description given by Fritz Pabst.

The Trianon had five entrances: the main one on Georgenstrasse, and the other four on Prinz-Louis-Ferdinand-Strasse and on Prinz-Franz-Karl-Strasse. The back of the theatre was a warren of alleys and small courtyards and gave onto the headquarters of the Green police, which was what the political police were called because it was their job to cover all outdoor political demonstrations, but it certainly didn’t stop them from interfering with the normal day-to-day policing of the city that was handled by the regular cops, the Schupo. From time to time, a Greenie would harass one of the many prostitutes who, at all hours of the day, brought their clients to the back alleys of the Trianon from the various bars, theatres, casinos and revues that were located in the famous Admiralspalast on Friedrichstrasse. But the sheer number of pricks that were sucked around the back of the Trianon was only exceeded by the number of pricks inside the theatre, although Schroth was by no means the biggest of these; Mathias Wieman and Gerhard Dammann were usually in and out of the Trianon, and so was the biggest prick of them all, the stage actor Gustaf Gründgens, who couldn’t have looked more pleased with himself if he’d been the devil incarnate. He wore a supercilious smile that persisted even after he’d flicked a half-smoked cigarette at my head. I wasn’t sure if he meant to hit me or if he intended me to smoke it, but since beggars can’t be choosers — and certainly shouldn’t look as if they can be — I picked it up and saluted him as if he’d done me a favour.

‘Thank you, sir. You’re very kind. Very kind, indeed.’ I puffed the cigarette and found it was excellent Turkish tobacco. Nothing but the best for Gustaf Gründgens.

‘What’s this? Sarcasm? From a beggar?’

‘No, sir. Never. Not me. Although it seems to me that even a great actor might learn something with a beggar for a teacher.’

‘True.’

Gründgens fixed a monocle to his eye and regarded me as he might a strange species of beetle.

‘You know who I am then.’

‘Oh yes, sir. I expect everyone knows who you are. You’re the greatest actor in Germany, sir. At least that’s what educated people say. You’re the great Emil Jannings.’

Gründgens’ smile became a rictus and without another word he went on his way. It only takes a small triumph to make your day.

Actors were not the only artistes I saw at the Trianon. On my fourth day playing the tethered goat I realized that a man was sketching me. He was about forty, tall, handsome, with a good head, a rather boyish haircut, and a thoughtful knot between his gloomy, grey eyes. He wore a lightweight brown suit with plus four trousers, a rose-coloured shirt with a collar pin, and a stiff pink bow tie. He didn’t look like he wanted to shoot me, just to draw me. Irritated I turned my head away, hoping he might leave. Being closely observed was bad for my purpose; Dr Gnadenschuss was hardly likely to strike while I was having my portrait done. My turning-away prompted the artist to come over, first to apologize and then to offer me fifty pfennigs to resume my previous pose. He also told me his name was Otto.

‘All right,’ I said without much grace.

‘Where were you wounded?’

‘In the legs,’ I said bitterly.

‘No, I meant — well, I was wounded myself, as a matter of fact. In the neck. Although not as you’d notice. August 1918. Actually the wound in my neck — it saved my neck. They sent me on a flying course after that and by the time I’d completed it, the war was over.’

I grunted. ‘What’s the idea, anyway?’ I asked, playing the surly bastard, and playing it well, too. Brigitte would have been proud. ‘Drawing someone like me. It doesn’t make any sense. After all, I’m no oil painting.’

‘I disagree. There’s a certain beauty in the way you are. And I can assure you, you’re not the first injured war veteran I’ve sketched in this city.’

‘You want to go around the back of the theatre. You’ll see many more interesting subjects than a klutz on a cart.’

‘Oh, you mean the whores.’

‘I do mean the whores. And their clients.’

‘No, I see enough of that when I go to a whorehouse. As a matter of fact, you and other unfortunate men like you are one of my favourite subjects. It’s more or less unique to Berlin.’

‘Are you taking the piss?’

‘No. Not at all. Look, everyone thinks they know what art should be—’

‘A nice picture. Of something nice. That’s what art should be. Something you can hang on your wall that doesn’t make you feel like throwing up. That’s what art should be. Everyone knows that.’

‘You might think so. But very few people have the wherewithal to experience painting as the sense of sight, to see colours and form as living reality.’

I shrugged. ‘I’ll tell you about living reality. You’re looking at it. And it’s shit. There’s not a day that passes that I don’t wish I was dead.’

‘That’s exactly what I’m driving at. Germans are already beginning to forget what horrible suffering the war brought. I want to remind them of that. Drawing you, it’s an expression of what’s in my soul, that’s all. Sketching you is just drawing my own most innermost thoughts.’

I laughed. ‘Well, then, go ahead. But don’t expect to sell any pictures. People don’t want to be reminded of how crappy life is. They want to forget it. And there’s nobody who wants to remember how terrible the war was. Me least of all.’

He stopped spouting claptrap and went back to sketching me, which suited us both. After another half hour, he thanked me and then left on a bicycle, heading towards the university. I closed my eyes and told myself that if all artists were like Otto, if drawing a cripple on a klutz wagon really was what was in his soul, then Germany was in a lot more trouble than I could ever have imagined. And noting that an obsession with art depicting injured war veterans begging on the streets of Berlin was remarkable to say the least — almost as remarkable as George Grosz, who liked to draw the corpses of women — I mentally added him to the thin suspect file.