Philip Kerr - The Other Side of Silence

“Until then you can be my spy. The next time you go I want detailed descriptions of everything. Especially the house and gardens. Are there naked statues? Who still comes to stay? And find out what his opinions are on writers today. Who he rates. Who he hates. And his friend, of course. Do find out about him. By all accounts, the last one, Gerald, was a complete drunk and a rotter. Tell me, were there lots of boys? Was there an orgy?”

“No. That was disappointing. Maugham’s friend and companion is a man with bad psoriasis named Alan Searle, who’s also his secretary. Not obviously queer, unlike the nephew, who I’m surprised to find that I like. He’s very genial and I think something of a war hero, on the quiet. It was all a very long way from Petronius.” I shook my head. “If it comes to that, I liked the old man, too. Felt sorry for him. He’s got all the money in the world, a beautiful house, famous friends, but he’s not happy. Turns out we have that in common.”

“You’re not happy?”

I laughed. “Next question.”

“Is he writing?”

“Essays.”

“Oh. Nobody’s interested in those. Essays are for schoolchildren. Did you get a look at his writing room?”

“No, but he told me you can see an exact reproduction of it in a television film called Quartet that was filmed in a studio three or four years ago.”

“When are you going back?”

“I don’t know. When they ask me, I suppose. If they ask me.”

“Do you think they will?”

“He’s eighty-two. At that age anything is possible.”

“I’m not sure I agree. Surely-”

“Time is short for someone like that. Chances are, yes, they’ll ask me again.”

It so happened that it was the following night when I received a call at the hotel front desk asking if I might be free that evening; I was.

This time the great man was in a more expansive mood. He talked about meeting the Queen, and the many other famous people who’d been to the villa, including Churchill and H. G. Wells.

“What was Churchill like?” I asked politely.

“Looked like an old china doll. Very pink. Very doddery. Hair like spider’s web. If you think I’m senile you should see him.” He sighed. “It’s very sad, really. Before the war-the first war-we used to play golf together. I made him laugh, you see. Lord, that must have been what-nineteen ten? Christ. Doesn’t time fly?”

I nodded, and then for no reason that I can think of except that I wanted him to know I could, I quoted Goethe, in German.

“‘Let’s plunge ourselves into the roar of time, the whirl of accident; may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will-it’s only action that can make a man.’”

“That’s Goethe, isn’t it?” said Maugham.

“ Faust .” I swallowed with difficulty. “Always chokes me a little.”

Maugham nodded. “You’re still a young-looking man, Walter. With a good twenty years of action ahead of you. But don’t fuck it up, dear boy.”

“No, sir. I’ll try not to.”

“I’ve fucked and fucked up a great deal in my life.” He sighed. “Quite often of course they amount to the same thing. Seriously. I’d have been a knight of the realm by now if I hadn’t fucked quite so egregiously. But then I expect you’re used to that. You must see all kinds of egregious behavior down at the Grand Hotel.”

“Of course. But nothing I can talk about.”

“The rich have time to fuck. But the poor only have time to read about it. They’re too busy trying to make a living to fuck a lot.”

“I expect you’re probably right.”

“And before the war, Robin tells me that you used to be the house detective at the Adlon Hotel in Berlin.”

“That’s right.”

“You must have seen some even worse behavior then. Berlin was the place to be in the twenties. Especially for someone like me. My first play was produced in Berlin. By Max Reinhardt. At the Schall und Rauch cabaret theater. Tiny place.”

“On Kantstrasse. I remember it. Sadly, I seem to remember everything. There’s so much I’d like to forget but try as I might, it just doesn’t happen. It’s like I don’t seem to be able to remember how. It’s not too much to ask in life, is it? To forget the things that cause you pain. Somehow.”

“Bitter and maudlin. I like that, too.” He lit a cigarette from the silver box on the table. We were awaiting dinner and afterward the inevitable game of bridge. “I’ve remembered now. That’s it. ‘Funes the Memorious,’” said Maugham. “It’s a story by Borges on just that very subject. A man who could not forget.”

“What happened to him?” asked Robin.

“I’ve forgotten,” said Maugham, and then laughed uproariously. “Dear old Max. He was one of the lucky ones. Jews, I mean. Got out in thirty-eight, and went to America, where he died, much too soon, in nineteen forty-three. Nearly all of my friends are gone now. Including the wonderful Adlon. My, that was a good hotel. Whatever happened to the couple who owned the place? Louis Adlon and his sweet wife, Hedda.”

“Louis was murdered by the Russians in nineteen forty-five. With his riding boots and waxed mustaches he was mistaken for a German general.” I shrugged dismissively. “Most of the Red Army were just peasants. Hedda? Well, I hate to think what happened to her. The same as the rest of the women in Berlin, I imagine. Raped. And raped again.”

Maugham nodded sadly. “Tell me, Walter, how was it that you became the house detective at the Adlon?”

“Until nineteen thirty-two, I’d been a cop with the Berlin police. My politics meant that I had to leave. I was a Social Democrat. Which for the Nazis was tantamount to being a Communist.”

“Yes, of course. And how long were you a policeman?”

“Ten years.”

“Christ. That’s a lifetime.”

“It certainly seemed that way at the time.”

After dinner and a couple of rubbers, Maugham said, “I want to talk to you in private.”

“All right.”

He took me up a wooden stair to his writing space, which was inside a freestanding structure on top of a flat roof. There was a big refectory table, a fireplace, and no windows with a view that could distract a man from the simple business of writing a novel. A bookshelf held some favorite titles and, on a coffee table, a few copies of Life magazine. Another of Jersey Joe’s Tahitian sparring partners was up on the wall, but what with the beam from the lighthouse at the southwestern end of the Cap, it was a little like being on the deck of a ship of which Maugham was the Ahab-like captain. We sat down at opposite ends of a big sofa and then he came to the point.

“You strike me as an honest man, Walter.”

“As far as it goes.”

“One imagines that you wouldn’t be working as a concierge at the Grand if you weren’t.”

“Perhaps. But good fortune rarely walks you out the door to your car. Not these days.” I shrugged. “What I mean to say is, we’re all trying to make a living, Mr. Maugham. And if we can pull off the pretense that we’re doing it honestly, then so much the better.”

“You’re an even bigger cynic than I am, Walter. I like you more and more.”

“I’m German, Mr. Maugham. I’ve had a lot more practice with cynicism. We all have. It’s the thousand-ton weight of German cynicism that caused the collapse of the Weimar Republic and gave us the thousand-year Reich.”

“I suppose so.”

“What can I do for you, sir? You didn’t bring me up here to help me confess my sins.”

“No, you’re right. I came to tell you about a few of mine. The fact is, Walter, I’m being blackmailed again.”

“Again?”

“I’m a rich old queer. I have more skeletons in my closets than the Roman catacombs. Being blackmailed is not so much an occupational hazard for a man like me as an existential condition. I fuck, therefore I am subject to demands for money, demands with menaces attached.”