Each time the bewhiskered oldster falls silent and looks wistfully at the youth.

Behind a column, a mulatto leans back in a rattan chair. He is smoking a dense Turkish cigarette and is negotiating with a spiv of an uncertain age who fancies himself a matinee idol. He has a pair of canary-yellow gloves. You can practically hear them cheeping away. He is wearing the right one, the left is lying casually and emptily on the marble table top. Abruptly the spiv bestirs himself, gets to his feet, and gives the mulatto a friendly wave with his empty glove, as though his train were just pulling out. It’s my sense that he’s got one over on the mulatto. Men in canary-yellow gloves should be treated with suspicion.

In the lobby cocaine, sugar, political systems, revolutions and women are on offer. A Russian count ponders the advisability of a move for the naval base of Kronstadt. A carpet dealer discusses terms with an only recently “made” man. A lawyer takes receipt of half a dozen passports from a Russian family. “We’ll get it done,” his eyes seem to blink. He jabs his pince-nez against the bridge of his nose, and with sudden resolve clacks his briefcase shut. As he reverses out of the door he bows three times to the Russian head of household, who waves avuncularly.

At five the band launch into the Peer Gynt Suite. The millionaires turn away from their business and towards their womenfolk. The millionairesses drink mocha and eat ice cream and nibble little cakes and make sure their right pinkie is always extended, as though it were an especially holy thing that mustn’t ever touch the side of a cup.

When I leave the hotel the porter stands beside the revolving door, primed to greet me, like a talking fork. His owner’s monogram decorates him heart and head. A chauffeur asks me whether I would like a ride somewhere.

I would not. I am no longer a millionaire.

Neue Berliner Zeitung—12 Uhr-Blatt, 1 April 1921

4. The Umbrella

It was raining the day before yesterday. The asphalt of the Kurfürstendamm was slippery, and a woman with an open umbrella ran into a moving car, slipped, and was run over. Her umbrella was lying on the pavement. People rushed over, the woman was picked up; she was badly shaken, nothing more—all this had to be established in a nearby café. But before it could be established, and while she was still lying in the road, covered with blood in the imagination of all the passers-by who had witnessed the accident, and possibly with severed limbs, a man had the presence of mind to pick up the lady’s umbrella and walk off with it.

I had never supposed that people’s decency was a match for their self-interest. But that their meanness was even greater than their curiosity, that was brought home to me by this incident, which shows that it isn’t difficult to strip the pillow off someone’s death­bed, and sell the feathers at the next street corner.

The woman who had escaped with her life now wept for the loss of her umbrella and was not at all grateful that her limbs were intact. As evidenced here, people come in two sorts: unscrupulous and plain dim.

Neue Berliner Zeitung—12 Uhr-Blatt, 29 May 1921

 

5. The Emigrants’ Ship

ON BOARD THE PITTSBURGH

The emigrants’ ship is called the Pittsburgh, and it is due to leave Bremerhaven at exactly 2 minutes past 11. The emigrants are people from the East, mainly Jews, lucky to have escaped the Europe of pogroms; also Russian peasants and young Ukrainian women, with colourful headscarves like summer meadows, sprinkled with cheery red and blue flowers. The White Star Line, which owns the Pittsburgh, has finally ended its rather anachronistic policy of “steerage passengers”, by abolishing the ’tween decks, and introducing third-class cabins. The proletarian romance of a chaos of people and suitcases is over.