Nightmare in Berlin (7 page)

Nor did he have to wait very long for an opportunity. Sitting at their table was a beautiful, blooming young woman, and a terrible flirt — they could have old Piglet Willem any time they wanted, but as long as
she
was in their midst, they were determined to make the most of her. So the vet sat there, ignored by everyone. This time, Doll really did turn his back on him completely. Three times he reached out and touched the wine bottle, and then drew his hand back. The fourth time he grabbed hold of the bottle and poured himself some more wine …

Immediately, Doll's head swivelled round over his shoulder, and this time he said, without any attempt at gentleness: ‘If we're drinking too slowly for you on this table, maybe you'd like to go and sit somewhere else? There are plenty of tables free …' And as the vet looked at him with a hesitant, incredulous, almost beseeching expression, he made his meaning even clearer: ‘Did you not understand? I want you to leave the table, now! I've had enough of your cheek!!'

Slowly, the old man got to his feet. Slowly, he walked across the room to a table in the far corner. (As it was very late, long after closing time, the room was empty except for the regulars around their table.) For a moment he had hesitated, but then he had picked up the glass that had cost him so dear and bore it before him with infinite care, like some holy relic. It was, after all, the last glass of wine that he was likely to drink on this ill-fated evening that had started so well. Behind his back, these fat, well-oiled burghers were mocking him in the cruellest fashion, utterly beside themselves with glee and
schadenfreude
. Doll himself, of course, took no part in this further humiliation of a man who was already down, and perhaps he was even regretting his angry outburst — Wilhelm was an old man, after all. But if he did regret it, his regret didn't last, because the young woman suddenly said: ‘Quite right, Mr. Doll, I've never been able to stand the old sneak either!'

The drinking and the lively talk around the table continued — talk that became increasingly drunken. The old vet was forgotten. But he was still sitting there at his little table, his hand still wrapped around the stem of his wine glass, which had been empty for a long time. He sat, he watched, he listened, he counted. He counted the bottles as they were brought to the table, he counted the glasses that each person drank, and with every glass that was drunk around the table, he thought to himself:
I should have been included in that round!

Dr. Wilhelm waited until they had all finally had enough, and made to pay the bill. Then the vet slipped quietly out of the bar and took up his position on a dark street corner across from the hotel.

He had a long wait before the two of them appeared, both wheeling their bicycles. He saw the woman's white dress; she was wheeling her bike in a perfectly straight line, while the man kept veering off to the side, and frequently had to stop. Then he started off again, bumped into his companion's bicycle, and dropped his own. He broke into drunken laughter, and held onto the woman. Dr. Wilhelm also noted that they did not part company at the street corner where they should have gone their separate ways. Doll accompanied the young woman on her way home, stumbling, falling, cursing, and laughing. Nodding his head, and with his leathery face twisted into a grimace, as if he was eating pure bile, the vet set off for home, walking slowly and sedately, with his feet splayed out to the sides.

Next morning, rumours of the ‘orgy' that had taken place at the town's premier hotel were flying through the streets and alleys, and were soon getting out into the surrounding countryside on the milk carts. Doll was summoned into town by a distraught phone call from the young woman, who told him that the hotelier's extremely straight-laced wife had banned her from the bar permanently ‘because of her immoral behaviour'. The young woman was upset and angry; for the first time in her life, she had come up against small-town prejudice, which condemns the accused without a hearing, and against which there is no appeal or defence.

‘But we've done nothing wrong! Nothing happened, not even a kiss! And this swine of a vet has been telling people I was sitting on your lap the whole evening, and that I took you home with me in the night! When the whole hotel knows full well that you stayed there overnight!'

This was true. When it became clear that Doll was in no condition to walk or ride a bicycle, his companion had brought him back to the hotel, where he had then taken a room.

‘Mr. Doll, you've got to talk to the landlord! The ban on me must be lifted, and someone needs to put a stop to these vile rumours! You've got to help me, Doll. I'm very upset! How horrid it all is! People round here hate a woman just because she's good-looking and laughs a lot. For two pins, I'd sell our weekend house right now and never come back!'

Tears welled up in the young woman's eyes, and Doll promised to do everything she asked. He would have done it anyway without the tears, for he too was full of anger and hatred. But he was soon to find that rumours of this kind are easier to start than they are to stop. The hotelier, whose straight-laced wife had him completely under her thumb, twisted and wriggled like a worm; in the end, when the argument grew more heated, he slipped quietly out of the room and was not seen again for the rest of the day. The circuit judge, called in as a witness for the defence, and obviously madly jealous of the younger, more successful Doll, gave an inconclusive account of events: in the bar itself he had not observed any lewd behaviour, but as to what happened in the night out on the street, well, he simply couldn't say. And he really preferred not to get involved in this sort of thing …!

Doll responded furiously: ‘What could possibly have happened out on the street? Everyone in the hotel knows that I spent the night here!'

The hotelier's wife bowed her head and quietly pointed out that between the time the two of them left together and the time that he, Mr. Doll, returned to the hotel, more than an hour had elapsed.

‘That's a wild exaggeration!' cried Doll. ‘A quarter of an hour, maybe — it can't have been more than half an hour at the absolute outside!'

The hotelier's wife and the circuit judge smiled, and then Mrs. Holier-than-thou opined that even half an hour was quite a long time, and a lot could happen in half an hour …

At this point the circuit judge, too, edged his way out of the room, and he only heard Doll's angry response — where did she get the nerve to insinuate, without a shred of evidence, that two persons of blameless character could not spend half an hour together without getting up to something? — as he was retreating down the passageway. He didn't wait to hear more. It was already looking as if this might end up in court, and he had no desire to be called as a witness in a case of this sort.

After that, Doll began to run out of steam in this battle against a sanctimonious woman who responded to all his arguments and challenges with a weak smile and evasive, equivocal replies. She wouldn't even give a clear ‘Yes' or ‘No' answer when he asked her directly if she planned to enforce the ban on the young woman.

Then Doll abruptly broke into laughter and walked out on the hotelier's wife. What was he fighting against here? Arguing with this woman, who for certain had voted every time for her adored Führer, was about as pointless as Don Quixote tilting at windmills. No: if he was going to get anywhere in this matter, he had to tackle the man who had started all these rumours — that old gossip and scandalmonger in trousers, the freeloading, free-drinking vet. He'd soon give him what for! And so, swept along on a fresh wave of anger, he set out to find Dr. Wilhelm. But it was a fool's errand, because the vet wasn't to be found anywhere — not at home, not in the town, not in any saloon bar. It was as if the old man, suspecting what was in store for him, had gone into hiding — and perhaps he had done exactly that.

So Doll had no option but to go to a lawyer and have him write formal letters to the vet and the hotelier's wife. Doll learned from the lawyer that private actions for defamation could not be brought, now that there was a war on. But the others didn't need to know this, and so letters threatening them with such an action were duly despatched. Maybe they had lawyers, too, or else they knew the score; at all events, they didn't respond. The rumours continued.

All this only made him more bitter, just as the departure of the young woman only served to increase his anger. She had been forced to flee in the face of the jealous, rancorous talk of these small-town bigots. He felt like someone trying to fight his way through a wall of feathers and cotton wool: he could hit it as hard as he liked, but it made no difference. In his present state of mind, the letters written by his lawyer seemed to him far too mild and diplomatic, so he sat down and wrote a letter of his own to Dr. Wilhelm, in which he announced his intention of publicly slapping him in the face as a slanderer the next time their paths crossed …

Having sent the letter, he was overcome with regret. This was unworthy of him; he had sunk to the level of his enemies, instead of just quietly despising them, which had been his stance up until now. But the time would come when he would regret this letter even more. One morning, he walked into the waiting room at the station — and there was Piglet Willem, sitting on the sofa, with a bottle of wine in front of him!

Doll wished he could have turned around in the doorway and left, and it would certainly have been better for his peace of mind if he had. But as well as many strangers, there were also quite a few locals in the room, who were now looking back and forth expectantly from him to the vet. Doll knew that Wilhelm, like all old gossips, had shown the letter to the bar-room regulars and half the town, and his enemy's threat — to slap him in the face when he saw him — was common knowledge. If Doll retreated now, the vet would have won, and the whole rumour mill would start up again.

So Doll entered the room and sat down opposite the other man. The landlord, normally so talkative, said nothing as he brought him the bottle he had ordered. All the locals were waiting for the strangers to leave the waiting room — their train was due to depart in a quarter of an hour. Meanwhile Doll sat clutching the stem of his wine glass, battling inwardly with himself.
He's not worth it
, a little voice said inside him.
He's just an old man, a gossip, and a scandalmonger. What's he got to do with your honour?
And with a quick glance at the other man, who was sitting there in silence, like him, clutching his wine glass:
But they'll think me a coward, all of them, and him especially, if I do nothing. I've got to show these people that I won't just take this lying down! I can't back out now!

The strangers filed out of the waiting room, and only five or six locals were left. The room was completely silent. Then the landlord Kurz, who was polishing his glasses behind the counter and watching like a hawk, began to pass the time of day with a painter and decorator. ‘They're in for another bad day in Berlin', Doll heard him say, as the drone of enemy bomber formations passing overhead came to their ears …

Now he got to his feet directly in front of his own enemy. Leaning on the edge of the table with both hands, he thrust his face into the odious, yellow, liverish visage of the other man, and asked in a whisper: ‘So are you going to take back your vicious lies right now, in front of these people?'

The landlord was at his side now, and said in a tone that was half-plea, half-reprimand: ‘Don't do that, Dr. Doll! I won't have any fighting in my establishment! Go outside, if you want to …'

Doll carried on regardless, speaking softly as before: ‘Or do you want me to slap you in the face, right here in public? Punish you like a child who has been telling lies?'

The elderly, heavily built man had stayed sitting still in his seat on the sofa. Under Doll's menacing gaze, the yellowish colour of his face changed slowly to an ashen grey, while his fishy eye stared at his oppressor without blinking and without visible expression. When Doll finished speaking, it was as if he wanted to say something in reply: his lips moved, and the tip of his tongue came out as if to moisten them, but no sound emerged.

‘Look, I think you should leave, Dr. Doll!' said the landlord with urgent insistence. ‘You can see that Dr. Wilhelm is sorry …'

At this point, the old vet suddenly began to shake his head with a weirdly mechanical persistence, like some nodding Buddha.

‘Pssst! Pssst!' said the landlord, as if he was shooing some hens away. ‘Don't do it, Willem!'

For a moment Doll had stared fixedly at this Buddha-like figure shaking his head, but now he raised his hand and slapped the slanderer lightly in the face with his open palm.

At this, the witnesses to this scene vented their collective relief with a long-suppressed ‘Ah!'

‘That's it!' said the landlord, plainly relieved that the slap had not been harder — and that Wilhelm had not hit back.

For a moment Doll had gazed into the face of his enemy, with a look that was both menacing and relieved. The violent urges that fought within him had calmed down; he was finally free again, free from hatred and free from anger. But then something awful happened, something utterly unexpected: two large, clear tears welled up from the expressionless eyes of the old man. For a moment, they hung on the edge of his eyelids, then rolled slowly down his cheeks. More tears followed, more and more, until they were streaming down his leathery nutcracker face, making it all shiny. His throat began to heave and sob: ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!' sobbed the old vet. ‘Oh, my God, he hit me, he hit me in the face with his hand! What am I to do?! Oh! Oh! Oh! I can't look anyone in the face any more, I shall have to kill myself! Oh! Oh! Oh!'