Росс Макдональд: The Dark Tunnel

After the strange triumvirate marched a little group of generals whom I did not recognize, and then a troop of SS guards like a mechanical black snake made of men. A brown caterpillar of storm troopers crawled behind them with breeches and leather leggings on its hundred legs. Then came a company of goose-stepping soldiers in army uniform, kicking out stiffly in unison as if they were all angry at the same thing and to the same degree. I had a grotesque vision of radio-controlled robots in field grey, marching across a battlefield towards smoking guns on pointed toes like ballet dancers and bleeding black oil when they fell down dead.

The girl beside me touched my arm and said in a low voice, “Let’s get out of here.”

I turned to her and she seemed smaller. Her mouth looked soft and defenseless, and was pale where she had bitten it. Her face was as white as a pearl and her black lashes shadowed her eyes. She looked very tired.

The circus was over and the crowd began to break up. We moved away with it, she leaning lightly on my arm.

“What’s your name?” I asked. “Mine is Robert Branch.”

“Ruth Esch.”

“Will you have tea with me? You look as if you could do with some tea.”

“I’ve never learned to like tea,” she said, “even when I was in England.”

“Have you been in England? I just came from there.”

“Did you? I have been there often with my mother. She had friends in England.”

“You speak English almost like an Englishwoman.”

“Thank you,” she said and smiled, more to herself than to me.

“If you won’t have tea, will you have coffee with me?”

She hesitated. “Well, I really have an engagement with Thomas, you know. He’ll be expecting me. On the other hand, he’s not likely to go away.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you had an engagement. Don’t stand anybody up for me.” I wondered who Thomas was and felt jealous of him already.

“Stand anybody up?” she said gravely like a child repeating a lesson, but there was laughter in her eyes.

“Break a date, call off an engagement,” I said. “Americanese.”

“Oh, Thomas wouldn’t really care so much. Even when you stand him up, his arms still reach to the floor.”

“What?”

She laughed at my surprise. “He lives in a cage at the Zoological Gardens. He’s a chimpanzee and I go to see him nearly every day.”

“Are you interested in animals?”

“I like Thomas,” she said. “He’s so very human. The Nazis haven’t thought it worthwhile to indoctrinate him.”

“Are you an anti-Nazi?” I asked. “You look like one.”

“Dankeschön. We won’t speak of it, if you please. By the way, are you a scholar?”

“A sort of one. Why?”

“Are you quite poor? Most scholars are.”

“Not particularly,” I said. “I’ve got a pretty good scholarship. In fact, I seem to be quite rich in German money.”

“Then you may give me coffee over here.” She pointed to the plate-glass front of a restaurant across the street.

I said, “Thank you very much,” and meant it. She spoke and moved with the independence and dignity of a woman who could not be easily picked up. I felt that my one-guinea pipe had been broken in a good cause.

We crossed the street and entered the restaurant. The air inside had a hothouse warmth and was laden with the scent of expensive perfumes and expensive cigars. The men and women at the tables looked well fed and well dressed. Most of the women wore Paris dresses and had the slightly unreal, glazed look of the too perfectly groomed, the look of orchids and rich men’s wives and daughters and top-flight politicians’ mistresses. The rich men were there in clothes cut in Savile Row and Bond Street, and the officers in black SS uniforms and brown shirts were the top-flight politicians. At the far end of the room, a string orchestra in Hungarian peasant costume whined and throbbed and lamented. A faint sweet odor of dead and rotting Babylons came up through the cracks in the wainscoting, but the expensive cigar-smoke covered it over.

A waiter led us to a table and we had thick Turkish coffee in tiny cups.

“Oriental splendor,” I said. “Are you by any chance a beautiful Armenian slave-girl?” Without her coat, Ruth Esch was more beautiful than before. She wore a high-necked, long-sleeved tunic of black wool above which her skin shone starkly. Her shoulders were wide for a woman but slender and delicately curved. Her bright hair burned steadily around her head like downward flames.

She said with a little laugh, “I’m not Armenian exactly. I’m a Troyan.”

“Troyan? Do you mean Trojan?”

“Shakespeare says Troyan. I’m playing Cressida this week.”

“Shakespeare’s Cressida? Really? Are you an actress?”

“A sort of one.” She was mimicking me. “The leading lady at the Repertory Theatre is under the weather this week, and they’ve given me her part. I was to play Cassandra.”

“I can’t see you as Cressida,” I said, and recognized the blunder as soon as I said it.

“Oh. Warum denn nicht ?” She was enjoying my confusion.

I blundered on: “She’s a wanton, a light, giddy weathercock of a girl. You’re not, that’s all.”

“Must an actress commit murder to play Lady Macbeth? Anyway I’m much giddier than you think.”

“It was a silly thing to say. I take it back.”

“It was silly,” she said, “since a boy played Cressida in Shakespeare’s day. You might at least reserve your comment until you see me act.”

“Is there a performance to-night?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll come and see you to-night.”

I had never seen Troilus and Cressida acted on any stage. It is one of the least popular of Shakespeare’s plays because it handles love and honor with gloves off, and calls a spade a dung-fork. Achilles is a treacherous and perverted boar, Troilus a love-sick fool, Helen of Troy an international courtesan, Cressida a two-bit floozie. But Ruth played Cressida with an understanding that gave the play a quality I did not know it had. Her Cressida was a brainless, warm-blooded girl who could not resist the flattery of a handsome lover. She didn’t try to gloss over Cressida’s weakness with tragic effects, but gave her a certain pathos as a victim of environment and her own character. Moving about the stage in her tight bodice and flowing skirts, she was the image of feminine grace without dignity, and affection without consistency or restraint.

The image depressed me: with a girl who could act like that, you’d never know where you were at. But my depression didn’t prevent me from going to her dressing-room after the final curtain to ask her to have supper with me. I wasn’t the only one who went. The small bare room was full of people laughing and talking in German, and there were masses of flowers on both sides of the dressing-table where Ruth was wiping off her grease-paint.

I was a stranger and a foreigner and I felt like a fish out of water. But she greeted me gaily and familiarly as if I was an old friend, smiling at me in the mirror.

“Was I giddy enough, Mr. Branch?”

“You were wonderful,” I said. “You still are.”

“Even with grease on my face? Incredible.”

“You’re incredible, too. Will you have supper with me?”

“But I’ve just dined with you.”

“Will you?”

“Please go away, everybody,” she said in German. “I must change my clothes. Mr. Branch, you may wait for me in the hall if you wish.”

I waited in the dim hall outside her door and in ten minutes she came out dressed for the street.

She looked happy and excited, with bright color in her cheeks and flashing eyes. Though the play as a whole had not been liked and the theatre had not been full, her performance had been well received. Especially by me.