Ross Thomas - The Eighth Dwarf

The Golden Rose was located only a few blocks from the Hauptbahnhof in the old Kneipen district of Frankfurt, which, before the war, had consisted mostly of drinking dives and after-hours joints. Now it was largely rubble — all kinds of rubble: some waist high, some shoulder high, and some two stories high. In several blocks, paths had been cleared that were wide enough for two men to walk abreast. In others, the paths were more like one-way streets, just wide enough for a single automobile. But in many side streets there were no paths at all, and those who, for whatever their reasons, wanted to traverse these streets had to climb up and over the rubble.

The Golden Rose was the only building in its block that had been spared — partially spared, anyway. It once had been a three-story building, but now the top story was completely gone. The second story was gone too, except for a bathroom, although its walls had also vanished, leaving the tub and toilet exposed. They both looked curiously naked.

Bodden entered the Golden Rose, pushing his way through the inevitable heavy curtain. Inside, several candles had been stuck here and there to help out the weak single electric bulb that hung by a long cord from the ceiling. Under it, perhaps to catch what little heat it afforded, real or imaginary, was the proprietor, leaning on the counter that served as a bar. The proprietor was a thin man with a fire-scarred face and bitter eyes. He looked up at Bodden; muttered “Guté MOR-je” in the Frankfurt accent, despite the fact that it was long past noon; and went back to the newspaper he had been reading. The paper was the American-controlled Frankfurter Rundschau. The bitter-eyed man didn’t seem to like what it said.

Bodden said good morning back to the man and then waited for his eyes to adjust themselves to the gloom. There were several persons, mostly men, sitting alone at tables with glasses of thin beer before them. All still wore their hats, overcoats — and gloves, if they had them. The Golden Rose had no heat.

The young woman in the fur coat sat at a table by herself. There was nothing on the table, only her folded hands. Bodden walked back to where she sat, but before he could sit down she said, “Have you eaten?”

“Not since yesterday.”

She rose. “Come,” she said.

Bodden followed her past the proprietor and back to a curtained-off passageway. Beyond the passageway was a flight of stairs that led down to the cellar. It seemed to grow warmer as Bodden and the woman descended the stairs. Bodden also thought he could smell food. Pork, by God.

He and the woman pushed through yet another heavy curtain and entered a whitewashed room lit by two bulbs, this time, and a number of candles. A middle-aged woman stood before a large coal cookstove stirring a pot of something that bubbled. She looked around at the young woman in the fur coat; nodded in recognition, if not in welcome; and gestured with the spoon toward one of the six tables.

All the tables were empty except for one. At it sat a heavy, well-dressed man with pink jowls. Before him was a plate filled with boiled potatoes and a thick slab of pork. The man was cramming a forkful of potatoes into his mouth. He seemed to find no pleasure in his food. That one is just feeding the furnace, Bodden thought, and realized that his own mouth was watering.

The young woman chose the table that was the farthest away from the eating man.

“We will eat first,” she said.

“A fine idea, but I cannot pay.”

The woman shrugged slightly and brought a hand out of the pocket of her coat. In it were two packages of Camel cigarettes.

“One packet of these will pay for the meal,” she said, and slid them across the table to Bodden. “And a drink too, if you wish.”

“I wish very much,” Bodden said, eyeing the cigarettes.

“Smoke them, if you like,” the woman said. “There are more.”

He lit one just as the middle-aged woman approached. Her eyes were as bitter as the man’s upstairs, and Bodden tried to guess whether she and the man were husband and wife or brother and sister. He decided on husband and wife. They sometimes grow to look alike, he thought, if they live together long enough and discover that they hate it

“Yes,” the middle-aged woman said, and sniffed noisily, as though she had a bad cold.

“Pay her first,” the young woman told Bodden. He handed over the unopened cigarette package.

“We’ll have two plates of what the big one back there is stuffing himself with,” the young woman ordered crisply. “And buttered bread, too.”

“No butter, just bread,” the middle-aged woman said, and sniffed again.

The young woman shrugged. “Very well, then two Schnapps. Two large ones.”

The woman sniffed noisily for the third time, swallowed what she had sniffed, and went away. The Schnapps that she brought back turned out to be potato gin. Bodden took a big swallow of his, felt it burn its way down and spread warmly through his stomach.

“A drink, a cigarette, a meal on the way, and a pretty companion,” he said. “One would almost think that we were living in a civilized world.”

“If that’s your idea of civilization,” the young woman said, shrugging out of her fur coat and letting it drape itself over the back of her chair.

“My needs, like my tastes, have been reduced to the basics,” Bodden said, and allowed his gaze to rest for a moment on the woman’s breast, which thrust at the gray material of her dress. This one, he told himself, has been eating better than I thought.

“You can’t afford me, printer,” she said, but there was no asperity in her tone.

“Ah, you know my trade.”

“But not your name.”

“Bodden.”

“Bodden,” she said. “Well, Herr Bodden, welcome to Frankfurt, or what’s left of it. I am Eva. I don’t think we need to shake hands. It would only draw attention.”

Bodden smiled. “You are very careful.”

“That is how I have survived; by being very careful. You were in a camp, weren’t you?”

“Does it show?”

She studied him with frank curiosity. “In the eyes. They look as though they still ached. What landed you in a camp, printer — your politics?”

“My big mouth.”

“You advertised your politics, then.”

“Sometimes. And you?”

“I’m a Jew. Or rather, a half-Jew. A Mischling. I had friends during the war who kept both me and my politics hidden away out of sight. I would not have lasted in a camp. Tell me something; how did you?”

Bodden shrugged. “I played politics, the practical kind. I was a Social Democrat, but after they locked me up I saw that the Communists ate better than the Social Democrats and lived better, so I became a Communist.”

“Your reasons,” she said after a moment. “I like them.”

“Why?”

“They are better than mine.”

The woman brought the food then, two large platters of pork and potatoes. They both ate hungrily in silence. When he was finished, Bodden sighed, leaned back in his chair, and permitted himself the luxury of another American cigarette. He smoked and watched the young woman finish her meal. She eats like the fat one over there with the pink face, he thought. Without joy.

The woman who said her name was Eva finished her meal and arranged her knife and fork carefully on her plate. There were no napkins, so she took a small lace handkerchief from her purse and patted her lips with it.

“Now,” she said, “we will have a nice cup of coffee and a cigarette and talk about Kurt Oppenheimer.”

The middle-aged woman with the sniffles apparently had been waiting for Eva to finish her meal, for she brought two cups of coffee just as Bodden lit the young woman’s cigarette.