-286-

she welcomed Sam to Germany. Apparently Kurt had telephoned about the Dodsworths; she said that she was glad to have a "great American industrialist" see Germany first hand.

"My poor stricken country needs the co-operation of America. We look to you -- and if you do not give back the glance we shall have to look to Russia,"

She was apparently convinced that Sam had come in a limousine; she asked whether he had sent his chauffeur round back for his tea; and when she learned that Kurt and these visiting dignitaries had actually lunched at a low Volk Lokal and walked into Potsdam, she shook her head, as one not understanding. There were many things the little old princess did not understand in these machine-devoured days, she who as a girl had known the security of an old cow-smelling country manor house in Silesia and a rose-red Tudor mansion in Wiltshire, in a day when counts did not work in tourist agencies and America was a wilderness to which rebellious peasants ran off, quite unaccountably and naughtily. But there was the reality of breeding in her, and she tried to understand this bulky "great American industrialist" who was so silently pleasant, this vivacious American woman with the marvelous rufled blouse peeping from her little blue jacket, the ageless American girl whose gay poise reduced the Count Obersdorf to the position of rattle-headed boy.

Sam perceived the worn elegance of the princess, took pride in Fran's deference, and found restfulness in the drawing-room, which had very bad gilt chairs, an over-ornamented porcelain stove with very bad plaques of bounding shepherdesses, very bad pictures of stag-hunting and moonlight, far too many glass cases with Prince Drachenthal's decorations, far too many faded cabinet photographs of the '80's and '90's and yet, bad in all its details, was suggestive of aristocratic generations.

-287-

A retired German general came in for tea, with a refugee Russian colonel-baron, a Frau von Something who was apparently so distinguished that no one thought of explaining her, and a handsome fervent boy, the Princess's grand-son, who was taking his examinations in law at the University of Bonn and who wanted, he said, to go to America. They were free of Renée de Pénable's pretentiousness, as simple as a group at Tub Pearson's, decided Sam. No, they were simpler, for Tub would have to be humorous for the benefit of the ladies and gentlemen, no matter how it hurt. Kurt von Obersdorf had dropped all of the slight skittishness into which he fell when he pranced for Fran's benefit, and he was discussing Bolshevism with the Russian ex-colonel.

They somehow lured Sam into talking. He discovered himself being eloquent about chrome steel and General Motors stock, while Fran, in a corner, was deferentially lively with Princess Drachenthal.

"Sort of like coming home -- no, it's more like coming home than coming home is, because Fran is satisfied here. Oh Lord, will she be satisfied when Oh, quit fussing! Course she will!" reflected the inner Sam, while the outer Mr. Dodsworth sagely informed them, "--- and in my opinion the greatest fallacy in world-marketing today is a competition between American, German, French, English and Italian cars in South America, instead of all of us combining to educate the South Americans to use more motors and especially to help them to build more through highways that would tap every square mile of the continent ---"

line blank

He wondered why Fran had been uneasy, in Venice, with Edith Cartright, when she was suavely at ease with Princess Drachenthal, far more of a personage.

"Because she was jealous? Because Mrs. Cartright, an American,

-388-

has a position and a flat in a palace and everything? Or because she
felt Mrs. Cartright could catch her easier when she was bluffing? No!
That's unfair! Fran is no bluffer! Look how lovely she is to the old
Princess, and how the Count and the General and everybody fall for her!

line blank

They rode back to Berlin in the train, rather quietly. Sam hinted
that Kurt must have an engagement for the evening, but Kurt protested,
almost childishly, "Oh no! Are you bored with me? You must let me
take you to dinner!"

"Of course, we'd be _enchanted_," said Fran, and Sam, prodded with
a look, achieved, "Mighty nice of you, Count."

"If you really like, I will show you a nice place, and maybe later --
if you are not too tired, Madame -- we could go a little while to some
place to dance. You dance, I know, like an angel."

"Next to Carrie Nation and Susan B. Anthony," said Fran gravely,
"I am probably the best dancer in America."

"They are famous dancers?" said Kurt.

"Yes, they're so good they're known in America as the Gold Duct twins," explained Sam.

"Really? And you dance like them, Madame? I shall have to be
very good!" said Kurt.

line blank

While Fran dressed for dinner, Sam and Kurt had side-car cocktails
in the Adlon Bar. Sam liked the scarlet Chinese Chippendale walls, with
little Burmese figures; the somewhat obese Bacchanalians in the paint-
ing over the bar; the corners with settees comforting to a drinking
man; and the fact that here was one place in Europe where no foreign
language -- i.e. any language save American, with traces of English --
was ever heard.

At the bar were always half a dozen of the American business men

-289-

stationed in Berlin -- shipping-men, bankers, representatives of the movies, and for the American journalists it was a club, where they exchanged tips on Russia and Roumania, Breitscheid's coming speech and the Zentrum party's capture of the schools.

"I like this; I see myself sneaking in here pretty often," Sam promised himself.

He forgot the bar in attention to Kurt's confidences. He had never known an American so frankly emotional about his friends as Kurt, nor one so eager to be liked.

"Shall I be rude if I talk about Mrs. Dodsworth?" urged Kurt. "She is so lovely! A kind of Arctic beauty, shining like ice. And yet so very warm-hearted and gracious and fun-ny. And such gallantry -- an explorer -- but very elegant -- like in a roman, with many bearers and dressing for dinner in the jungle. One feels she could do anything she wanted to enough. Forever young. She is -- perhaps thirty-five? -- one would say she was twenty-eight. Our European women are very gemütlich, they are easy to be with, they wait on us, but not many among them have a sword-like quality like Mrs. Dodsworth and such high spirits -- Oh, I hope I am not rude! She is lucky to be accompany with a great red Indian like you -- a chief, sagt man? -- who can guide and protect her!"

Sam made the most awkward sound -- something between "Thanks" and "Like hell!"

"As I said once, I admire America very much, and it is so kind of you two to come and bummel with me! And meet my friends."

"Kindness all yours, Count. Good Lord! Mighty nice of you to let us meet such nice people as the Princess, Count, and -- -- --"

"Oh, don't call me 'Count.' I am not a count -- there aren't any more counts -- the republic has come to stay -- I am just a clerk

-290-

for the I.T.A.I If I am only something with a title, then I would better be nothing! I shall be glad if you call me 'Kurt.' We Austrians are almost like you Americans in our fondness to call by the first name among people we like. Yes."

"Well, that's might nice of you -----"

Sam wished that he could warm up. But he was conscious of waiting for Fran -- of Kurt's waiting. He was annoyed at the prospect of again being admitted as Fran's patient escort, as he had been in Madame de Pénable's gang. Yet he felt that Kurt was honest in professing admiration for both of them, and he forced himself to sound amiable:

"I guess one of the things we Americans fool ourselves about is claiming that we're the only really hospitable race in the world. Don't believe any stranger in America ever was received in a more friendly way than Mrs. Dodsworth and -- than Fran and I have been here and in England. Mighty nice!"

Then Fran was upon them, in amethyst velvet, and with velvet she had put on a patronizing grandeur. The simple-hearted Kurt was confused; it took him ten minutes to understand that she was not showing displeasure in dropping her jollity, but merely playing a different role. Entreated to join them in a cocktail, she condescended. "It would be ever so amusing to have an aperitif in the bar, but do you really think one could?"

"Oh yess, it is quite proper.....almost!" Kurt begged.

Sam said nothing. He had seen Fran enjoying too many drinks in too many bars, and not calling them "aperitifs," either.

She was full of high life amid the upholstery and expensive food of Horcher's, and she generously commended the Rhein lachs. But somehow she came out of it -- somehow, sometime, Kurt began calling

-291-

her "Fran," and she admitted him with "Kurt"; she laughed without ad
ing her own laughter, and an entr'acte being permitted during her person-
al drama of The Sophisticated American Lady Abroad, they were human
and cheerful again. Kurt talked less flamboyantly now, more natur-
ally, and Sam realized that however Kurt might insist that he was no
nobleman now but only a tourist-agency clerk, Kurt belonged to the once
powerful of the earth and, but for the war, would be magnificence in
a castle. His father had been gentleman in waiting and friend to the
Emperor, his great-uncle, the field-marchal, had organized the war
against Prussia, and he himself, as a boy, had played with the Archduke
now a pauper wanderer.

Sam wondered whether, however genuine his family, Kurt was one
of these fictional adventurers who would be likely to borrow money, and
to introduce swindlers to a rustic from the Middle West. He rejected
it. No. If he knew anything about people, this man was honest, un-
selfishly fond of entertaining people. And the Biedners vouched for
him, and to Fran's father, the canny old brewer, a Biedner was almost
as beautiful and dependable and generally Biblical as stock in a nat-
ional bank.

Obviously Fran had no doubts whatever about Kurt von Obersdorf.
In the glow of his stories about the frivolous days of old Vienna, she
forgot her own charms. She consented when Kurt proposed that they go
to the Königin and dance; she consented when he proposed that they
leave that decorative but packed haunt of the more sporting Junkers
and venture to the vulgar Cabaret von Vetter Kaspar.

The wit there was devoted chiefly to the water-closet, and Sam
was astonished to hear Fran shamelessly joining in Kurt's whooping
laughter. Of course he had laughed himself; but
still --- Well, that fellow Obersdorf, he enjoyed things himself so

-293-

bracelets and heavy symbolic rings. And there was a girl in lavender chiffon -- only from the set of her shoulders Sam was sure that she was a man.

As they entered, the bar-tender, and a very pretty and pink-cheeked bar-tender he was, waved his towel at them and said something in a shrill playful German which Sam took to signify that Kurt was a charming person worthy of closer acquaintance, that he himself was a tower of steel and a glory upon the mountains.

It was new to Sam.

He stood gaping. His fists half clenched. The thick, reddish hair on the back of his hands bristled. But it was not belligerence he felt -- it was fear of something unholy. He saw that Fran was equally aghast; proudly he saw that she drew nearer his stalwartness.

Kurt looked at the jocund bar-tender; quickly he looked at Fran and Sam; and he murmured, "This is a silly place. Come! Come! We go some place else!"

Already the manager was upon them, smirking, inviting them in two languages to give up their wraps. Kurt said something to him in a rapid, hissing German -- something that made the manager sneer and back off -- something so hateful and contemptuous that Sam reflected, "This Kurt is quite a fellow, after all. Wouldn't be such a bad guy to have with you in a scrap!"

As Kurt lifted the heavy brocade curtain before the street door to usher them out, the bartender, in a cat-call voice, shouted something final. Kurt's jaw tightened. It was a good jaw-line. But he did not turn and, out on the pavement, his face was full of an apology that was almost suffering as he begged of Fran:

"I am so sorry. I had never been there. I had just heard of it. I did not think they would be so dreadful. Oh, you will never for-

-294-

give me!

"But I didn't mind them!" Fran protested. "I think it would have been amusing to watch them, for a little while."

Kurt insisted, "Oh, no, no, no! Of course you were shocked! Come! There is another place I do know, over the street. You will show me you forgive me by coming ----"

They went, and danced till three, at which hour every one in the café was sleepy except Kurt. The orchestra went home and, to the cheers of the grimly merry groups who were left slumbering over their champagne, Kurt trotted forward and played the piano like a vaudeville performer, and they all obediently waked for the last dregs of joyfulness. A monocled officer-like German begged Fran to dance, and Sam was able to snatch three minutes of secret sleep.

He was gratified when he grumbled, "Now we've got to go home!" and Fran and Kurt took him seriously enough to consent.

It was raining, and the street was like the inside of a polished steel cylinder. A late taxicab cruised up, but the doorman and his faithful big umbrella had gone home. Kurt whipped off his coat, wrapped it about Fran and, in shirt-sleeves, stood waiting till Sam was inside the cab....And he would sit on the little folding seat and he wouldn't let them take him home, but escorted them to the Adlon, babbling, "It was fun, wasn't it! You do forgive me for the Neuste Ehe, don't you! It was a von-derful day, wasn't it! And you will come by me Wednesday evening for a little dinner to meet some friends? Oh, you must!"

Yes, they would, thank you very much ---

line blank

In the extreme drowsiness of their room, Fran hinted, "You enjoyed it, didn't you, darling?"

-295-

"Yes, everything except the last hour or so. Got pretty sleepy."

"Kurt is a darling, don't you think?"

"Yes, he's a nice fellow. Mighty kind."

"But heavens, what a bossy person he is! He simply demanded that I be shocked, at that Den of Vice, and I had to do my best to please him -- and you too, you pure-minded males! Well, he's a nice boy, and so are you, and I'm by heavens going to sleep till noon I like Berlin!"

punctuation
O. K.

-296-

CHAPTER 23

Three days of museums, of art galleries, of palaces, of the Zoo.
They went to Sans Souci, where Fran talked of Voltaire (she really
had read "Candide") and Sam thought in a homesick way of the Sans
Souci Gardens development in Zenith and snapped at himself that it
was time to clinch with Fran, to make her come home and begin a new
life of "making things."

They saw nothing of Kurt von Obersdorf -- he merely telephoned
to them eight or ten times and made them go out and see things. He
so insisted that they see Molnar's "Spiel im Schloss" that they sulk-
ily went, though by now Sam had convinced himself that he was right
in thinking he didn't care greatly for plays in a language he didn't
understand, and though Fran, exhausted by the florid endearments which
had been poured upon her at a women's tea given by Frau Dr. Biedner,
for once in her life wanted to go to bed.

She said that she understood every word of "Spiel im Schloss."

Sam said that he guessed it was pretty fine acting all right, and
he thought he'd just slip down-stairs and have a nightcap in the bar.

He fell to talking with an American journalist who knew Ross

-297-

Ireland; he had several nightcaps; and in general he enjoyed himself. When he slipped into their room, Fran was asleep, so, as he put it, he had got away with it, and he felt as exultant as a boy who has played hookey and discovers afterward that teacher has been sick all day.

line blank

The four great mysteries of life in post-war Berlin, not to be explained by the most diligent searching of history and economics and Lutheran theology, are all connected with apartment-houses, and they are these: Why can no visitor get into an apartment-house after eight in the evening without protocols? Why are the automatic elevators kept locked, so that no visitor can use them? Why does no Berlin landlord provide modern locks, but always compel his tenants to carry a bunch of keys comparable in size to those used in the Middle Ages for closing cathedrals? Why does a landlord who has spent a hundred thousand marks on a marble staircase (with neat gilt edgings and mosaic inserts) refuse to spend a mark a day to provide lights in the hallways? They are dark. They are very dark. A light may be had by pressing a button, which provides illumination for a time, but in all the history of Berlin that time of illumination has never been known to last while a visitor climbed from the ground floor to the top.

On the top floor of an apartment house on the Brücken Allee lived Kurt von Obersdorf, and on the vertiginous way up to it, Sam pointed out these four mysteries, and was pleased to have Fran agree with him.

They were received by Kurt's maid, She was an ancient thing, rusty and feeble and in some difficulty as to what to do with Sam's hat and stick, and while she puttered, Sam looked about. The apartment had a narrow, barren corridor, the drab plaster rather flaked, and adorned with a yellow-stained engraving of St. Stefan's Dom in Vienna. But over a doorway were two crossed swords.

Suddenly Kurt bounced out on them, slimmer and looser than ever

-297-A-
(Insert on 297)

Line blank

In England Fran had learned to say Lift for Elevator, Zed for Zee, Laboratory for Laboratory, Schenario for Scenario, and Shi for Ski.
And before she had ever left America she had been able to point her Europeanism by keeping her fork in her left hand. But now she added to her accomplishments the ability to make a European 7 by crossing it, and ardently she crossed every 7, particularly in letters to friends in Zenith, who were thus prevented from knowing what figure she was using.

Line blank

(Back to 297)

-299-

ture of a beautiful girl, a crucifix, and nothing much else. That, with
the little dining-room and a mysterious kitchen somewhere and a bathroom
old enough to be historic, seemed to make up the domain of the head of
the house of Obersdorf.

There were cocktails, agitatedly mixed by Kurt in a glass pitcher,
and there was dinner (not very good) and conversation (tremendous).
Under Kurt's hectic captaincy, there was none of the timid burgher de-
corum of dinner at the Biedners'; also there was more to drink, includ-
ing an Assmannshäuser champagne which made Sam determined to explore the
Rhine Valley. Anyone who didn't shout from time to time received Kurt's
worried attention. ~~Kurt~~ was convinced that a person who was silent in his
house had either ceased to like him -- and probably for good reasons,
for some hideous sin he had unconsciously committed against them -- or
else was suffering from some hidden malady which ought to be treated out
of hand.

But between the shouts, most of the conversation was carried on by
Professor Braut.

When he first surveyed that learned man, who left with you the im-
pression that he had whiskers even in his eyes, Sam had decided, "That
bearded beauty may know something about economics in Germany, but I'll
bet he doesn't know anything about the land of the safety-razor!"

Professor Braut turned to him. His accent was much thicker than
Kurt's. "Please," he said, "I vonder if you coult tell me something I
am trying to learn about agrarian movements in America."

"I don't know very much about them," said Sam. "Have you been
in America?"

"Oh, a liddle -- before the war. I was a professor in Harvard for
a year, and in Leland Stanford a year, and I traveled maybe a year, but
of course that is nothing to get any real knowledge of your great country."

-300-

Then, at Kurt's suggestion, Professor Braut gave a minute history of
the Non-Partisan League in North Dakota.

Through it he turned constantly to Sam for confirmation, and Sam --
who knew very little about North Dakota and precisely nothing about the
Non-Partisan League -- nodded blandly. At the end, Sam addressed him-
self strongly:

"He knows more about your own country than you do! Sambo, you know
nothing. Ignorant! I wish I hadn't given up thirty years to motor-cars.
And I haven't really learned much here in Europe. A tiny bit about arch-
itecture and a little less about wine and cooking and a few names of
hotels. And that's all!"

While Kurt chattered of the adventures of Archduke Michael as a chauffeur to a Hungarian Jew, a vision of learning and of learned men, of men who knew things with precision, without emotional prejudice, and who knew things that really affected the broad stream of human life; who considered the purposes of a thousand statesmen, the function of a thousand bacteria, the significance of a thousand Egyptian inscriptions, or perhaps the pathology of a thousand involved and diseased minds, as closely as he had considered the capacities of a hundred or so salesmen and engineers and clerks in the Revelation Company. He saw groups of such learned men, in Berlin, in Rome, in Basle, in both Cambridge, in Paris, in Chicago. They would not be chatterers -- oh, he pondered, probably some of them would be glib and merry enough over a glass of beer, but when it came to their own subjects, they would speak slowly, for to any given question there would be so many answers among which to select. They would not vastly please Fran; they would not all of them be dancers of elegance and perhaps they would fail to choose quite the right waistcoats. They would look insignificant and fuzzy, like Professor Braut, or dry and spindling. And he would be proud to have their