City of Endless Night
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Milo Hastings >> City of Endless Night
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"Yes," she replied. "I must do that--or starve."
"And how do you live now?" I asked.
"They gave me money when I came here, a hundred marks. And they make me
pay to eat and when my money is gone I cannot eat unless I get more. And
the men have all the money, and they pay. They have offered to pay me,
but I refused to take their checks, and they think me stupid."
The child-like explanation of her lot touched the strings of my heart.
"And how long," I asked, "is this money that is given you when you come
here supposed to last?"
"Not more than twenty days," she answered.
"But you," I said, "have been here thirty days!"
She looked at me and smiled proudly. "But I," she said, "only eat one
meal a day. Do you not see how thin I am?"
The realization that any one in this scientifically fed city could be
hungry was to me appalling. Yet here was a girl living amidst luxurious
beauty, upon whom society was using the old argument of hunger to force
her acceptance of the love of man.
I rose and held out my hand. "You shall eat again today," I said.
"I would rather not," she demurred. "I have not yet accepted favours
from any man."
"But you must. You are hungry," I protested. "The problem of your
existence here cannot be put off much longer. We will go eat and then we
will try and find some solution."
Without further objection she walked with me. We found a secluded booth
in a dining hall. I ordered the best dinner that Berlin had to offer.
During the intervals of silence in our rather halting dinner
conversation, I wrestled with the situation. I had desired to gain
insight into the lives of these girls. Yet now that the opportunity was
presented I did not altogether relish the role in which it placed me.
The apparent innocence of the confiding girl seemed to open an easy way
for a personal conquest--and yet, perhaps because it was so obvious and
easy, I rebelled at the unfairness of it. To rescue her, to aid her to
escape--in a free world one might have considered these more obvious
moves, but here there was no place for her to escape to, no higher
social justice to which appeal could be made. Either I must accept her
as a personal responsibility, with what that might involve, or desert
her to her fate. Both seemed cowardly--yet such were the horns of the
dilemma and a choice must be made. Here at least was an opportunity to
make use of the funds that lay in the bank to the credit of the name I
bore, and for which I had found so little use. So I decided to offer her
money, and to insist that it was not offered as the purchase price
of love.
"You must let me help you," I said, "you must let me give you money."
"But I do not want your money," she replied. "It would only postpone my
troubles. Even if I do accept your money, I would have to accept money
from other men also, for you cannot pay for the whole of a
woman's living."
"Why not," I asked, "does any rule forbid it?"
"No rule, but can so young a man as you afford it?"
"How much does it take for you to live here?"
"About five marks a day."
I glanced rather proudly at my insignia as a research chemist of the
first rank. "Do you know," I asked, "how much income that
insignia carries?"
"Well, no," she admitted, "I know the income of military officers, but
there are so many of the professional ranks and classes that I get all
mixed up."
"That means," I said, "ten thousand marks a year."
"So much as that!" she exclaimed in astonishment. "And I can live here
on two hundred a month, but no, I did not mean that--you wouldn't,--I
couldn't--let you give me so much."
"Much!" I exclaimed; "you may have five hundred if you need it."
"You make love very nicely," she replied with aloofness.
"But I am not making love," I protested.
"Then why do you say these things? Do you prefer some one else? If so
why waste your funds on me?"
"No, no!" I cried, "it is not that; but you see I want to tell you
things; many things that you do not know. I want to see you often and
talk to you. I want to bring you books to read. And as for money, that
is so you will not starve while you read my books and listen to me talk.
But you are to remain mistress of your own heart and your own person.
You see, I believe there are ways to win a woman's love far better than
buying her cheap when she is starved into selling in this
brutal fashion."
She looked at me dubiously. "You are either very queer," she said, "or
else a very great liar."
"But I am neither," I protested, piqued that the girl in her innocence
should yet brand me either mentally deficient or deceitful. "It is
impossible to make you understand me," I went on, "and yet you must
trust me. These other men, they approve the system under which you live,
but I do not. I offer you money, I insist on your taking it because
there is no other way, but it is not to force you to accept me but only
to make it unnecessary for you to accept some one else. You have been
very brave, to stand out so long. You must accept my money now, but you
need never accept me at all--unless you really want me. If I am to make
love to you I want to make love to a woman who is really free; a woman
free to accept or reject love, not starved into accepting it in this
so-called freedom."
"It is all very wonderful," she repeated; "a minute ago I thought you
deceitful, and now I want to believe you. I can not stand out much
longer and what would be the use for just a few more days?"
"There will be no need," I said gently, "your courage has done its work
well--it has saved you for yourself. And now," I continued, "we will
bind this bargain before you again decide me crazy."
Taking out my check book I filled in a check for two hundred marks
payable to--"To whom shall I make it payable?" I asked.
"To Bertha, 34 R 6," she said, and thus I wrote it, cursing the
prostituted science and the devils of autocracy that should give an
innocent girl a number like a convict in a jail or a mare in a breeder's
herd book.
And so I bought a German girl with a German check--bought her because I
saw no other way to save her from being lashed by starvation to the
slave block and sold piecemeal to men in whom honour had not even died,
but had been strangled before it was born.
With my check neatly tucked in her bosom, Bertha walked out of the cafe
clinging to my arm, and so, passing unheeding through the throng of
indifferent revellers, we came to her apartment.
At the door I said, "Tomorrow night I come again. Shall it be at the
cafe or here?"
"Here," she whispered, "away from them all."
I stooped and kissed her hand and then fled into the multitude.
~3~
I had promised Bertha that I would bring her books, but the narrow range
of technical books permitted me were obviously unsuitable, nor did I
feel that the unspeakably morbid novels available on the Level of Free
Women would serve my purpose of awakening the girl to more wholesome
aspirations. In this emergency I decided to appeal to my
friend, Zimmern.
Leaving the laboratory early, I made my way toward his apartment,
puzzling my brain as to what kind of a book I could ask for that would
be at once suitable to Bertha's child-like mind and also be a volume
which I could logically appear to wish to read myself. As I walked
along the answer flashed into my mind--I would ask for a geography
of the outer world.
Happily I found Zimmern in. "I have come to ask," I said, "if you could
loan me a book of description of the outer world, one with maps, one
that tells all that is known of the land and seas and people."
"Oh, yes," smiled Zimmern, "you mean a geography. Your request," he
continued, "does me great honour. Books telling the truth about the
world without are very carefully guarded. I shall be pleased to get the
geography for you at once. In fact I had already decided that when you
came again I would take you with me to our little secret library.
Germany is facing a great crisis, and I know no better way I can serve
her than doing my part to help prepare as many as possible of our
scientists to cope with the impending problems. Unless you chemists
avert it, we shall all live to see this outer world, or die that
others may."
Dr. Zimmern led the way to the elevator. We alighted on the Level of Free
Women. Instead of turning towards the halls of revelry we took our
course in the opposite direction along the quiet streets among the
apartments of the women. We turned into a narrow passage-way and Dr.
Zimmern rang the bell at an apartment door. But after waiting a moment
for an answer he took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door.
"I am sorry Marguerite is out," he said, as he conducted me into a
reception room. The walls were hung with seal-brown draperies. There
were richly upholstered chairs and a divan piled high with fluffy
pillows. In one corner stood a bookcase of burnished metal filigree.
Zimmern waved his hand at the case with an expression of disdain. "Only
the conventional literature of the level, to keep up appearances," he
said; "our serious books are in here"; and he thrust open the door of a
room which was evidently a young lady's boudoir.
Conscious of a profane intrusion, I followed Dr. Zimmern into the dainty
dressing chamber. Stepping across the room he pushed open a spacious
wardrobe, and thrusting aside a cleverly arranged shield of feminine
apparel he revealed, upon some improvised shelves, a library of perhaps
a hundred volumes. He ran his hand fondly along the bindings. "No other
man of your age in Berlin," he said, "has ever had access to such a
complete fund of knowledge as is in this library."
I hope the old doctor took for appreciation the smile that played upon
my face as I contrasted his pitiful offering with the endless miles of
book stacks in the libraries of the outer world where I had spent so
many of my earlier days.
"Our books are safer here," said Zimmern, "for no one would suspect a
girl on this level of being interested in serious reading. If perchance
some inspector did think to perform his neglected duties we trust to him
being content to glance over the few novels in the case outside and not
to pry into her wardrobe closet. There is still some risk, but that we
must take, since there is no absolute privacy anywhere. We must trust to
chance to hide them in the place least likely to be searched."
"And how," I asked, "are these books accumulated?"
"It is the result of years of effort," explained Zimmern. "There are
only a few of us who are in this secret group but all have contributed
to the collection, and we come here to secure the books that the others
bring. We prefer to read them here, and so avoid the chance of being
detected carrying forbidden books. There is no restriction on the
callers a girl may have at her apartment; the authorities of the level
are content to keep records only of her monetary transactions, and that
fact we take advantage of. Should a man's apartment on another level be
so frequently visited by a group of men an inquiry would be made."
All this was interesting, but I inferred that I would again have
opportunity to visit the library and now I was impatient to keep my
appointment with Bertha. Making an excuse for haste, I asked Zimmern to
get the geography for me. The stiff back of the book had been removed,
and Zimmern helped me adjust the limp volume beneath my waistcoat.
"I am sorry you cannot remain and meet Marguerite tonight," he said as I
stepped toward the door. "But tomorrow evening I will arrange for you to
meet Colonel Hellar of the Information Staff, and Marguerite can be with
us then. You may go directly to my booth in the cafe where you last
dined with me."
~4~
After a brief walk I came to Bertha's apartment, and nervously pressed
the bell. She opened the door stealthily and peered out, then
recognizing me, she flung it wide.
"I have brought you a book," I said as I entered; and, not knowing what
else to do, I went through the ridiculous operation of removing the
geography from beneath my waistcoat.
"What a big book," exclaimed Bertha in amazement. However, she did not
open the geography but laid it on the table, and stood staring at me
with her child-like blue eyes.
"Do you know," she said, "that you are the first visitor I ever had in
my apartment? May I show you about?"
As I followed her through the cosy rooms, I chafed to see the dainty
luxury in which she was permitted to live while being left to starve.
The place was as well adapted to love-making as any other product
of German science is adapted to its end. The walls were adorned
with sensual prints; but happily I recalled that Bertha, having
no education in the matter, was immune to the insult.
Anticipating my coming she had ordered dinner, and this was presently
delivered by a deaf-and-dumb mechanical servant, and we set it forth on
the dainty dining table. Since the world was young, I mused, woman and
man had eaten a first meal together with all the world shut out, and so
we dined amid shy love and laughter in a tiny apartment in the heart of
a city where millions of men never saw the face of woman--and where
millions of babies were born out of love by the cold degree of science.
And this same science, bartering with licentious iniquity, had provided
this refuge and permitted us to bar the door, and so we accepted our
refuge and sanctified it with the purity that was within our own
hearts--such at least was my feeling at the time.
And so we dined and cleared away, and talked joyfully of nothing. As the
evening wore on Bertha, beside me upon the divan, snuggled contentedly
against my shoulder. The nearness and warmth of her, and the innocence
of her eyes thrilled yet maddened me.
With fast beating heart, I realized that I as well as Bertha was in the
grip of circumstances against which rebellion was as futile as were
thoughts of escape. There was no one to aid and no one to forbid or
criticize. Whatever I might do to save her from the fate ordained for
her would of necessity be worked out between us, unaided and unhampered
by the ethics of civilization as I had known it in a freer, saner world.
In offering Bertha money and coming to her apartment I had thrust myself
between her and the crass venality of the men of her race, but I had now
to wrestle with the problem that such action had involved. If, I
reasoned, I could only reveal to her my true identity the situation
would be easier, for I could then tell her of the rules of the game of
love in the world I had known. Until she knew of that world and its
ideals, how could I expect her to understand my motives? How else could
I strengthen her in the battle against our own impulses?
And yet, did I dare to confess to her that I was not a German? Would not
deep-seated ideals of patriotism drilled into the mind of a child place
me in danger of betrayal at her hands? Such a move might place my own
life in jeopardy and also destroy my opportunity of being of service to
the world, could I contrive the means of escape from Berlin with the
knowledge I had gained. Small though the possibilities of such escape
might be, it was too great a hope for me to risk for sentimental
reasons. And could she be expected to believe so strange a tale?
And so the temptation to confess that I was not Karl Armstadt passed,
and with its passing, I recalled the geography that I had gone to so
much trouble to secure, and which still lay unopened upon the table.
Here at least was something to get us away from the tumultuous
consciousness of ourselves and I reached for the volume and spread it
open upon my knees.
"What a funny book!" exclaimed Bertha, as she gazed at the round maps of
the two hemispheres. "Of what is that a picture?"
"The world," I answered.
She stared at me blankly. "The Royal World?" she asked.
"No, no," I replied. "The world outside the walls of Berlin."
"The world in the sun," exclaimed Bertha, "on the roof where they fight
the airplanes? A roof-guard officer" she paused and bit her lip--
"The world of the inferior races," I suggested, trying to find some
common footing with her pitifully scant knowledge.
"The world underground," she said, "where the soldiers fight in the
mines?"
Baffled in my efforts to define this world to her, I began turning the
pages of the geography, while Bertha looked at the pictures in
child-like wonder, and I tried as best I could to find simple
explanations.
Between the lines of my teaching, I scanned, as it were, the true state
of German ignorance. Despite the evident intended authoritativeness of
the book--for it was marked "Permitted to military staff officers"--I
found it amusingly full of erroneous conceptions of the true state of
affairs in the outer world.
This teaching of a child-like mind the rudiments of knowledge was an
amusing recreation, and so an hour passed pleasantly. Yet I realized
that this was an occupation of which I would soon tire, for it was not
the amusement of teaching a child that I craved, but the companionship
of a woman of intelligence.
As we turned the last page I arose to take my departure. "If I leave the
book with you," I said, "will you read it all, very carefully? And then
when I come again I will explain those things you can not understand."
"But it is so big, I couldn't read it in a day," replied Bertha, as she
looked at me appealingly.
I steeled myself against that appeal. I wanted very much to get my mind
back on my chemistry, and I wanted also to give her time to read and
ponder over the wonders of the great unknown world. Moreover, I no
longer felt so grievously concerned, for the calamity which had
overshadowed her had been for the while removed. And I had, too, my own
struggle to cherish her innocence, and that without the usual help
extended by conventional society. So I made brave resolutions and
explained the urgency of my work and insisted that I could not see her
for five days.
Hungrily she pleaded for a quicker return; and I stubbornly resisted the
temptation. "No," I insisted, "not tomorrow, nor the next day, but I
will come back in three days at the same hour that I came tonight."
Then taking her in my arms, I kissed her in feverish haste and tore
myself from the enthralling lure of her presence.
~5~
When I reached the cafe the following evening to keep my appointment
with Zimmern, the waiter directed me to one of the small enclosed
booths. As I entered, closing the door after me, I found myself
confronting a young woman.
"Are you Col. Armstadt?" she asked with a clear, vibrant voice. She
smiled cordially as she gave me her hand. "I am Marguerite. Dr. Zimmern
has gone to bring Col. Hellar, and he asked me to entertain you until
his return."
The friendly candour of this greeting swept away the grey walls of
Berlin, and I seemed again face to face with a woman of my own people.
She was a young woman of distinctive personality. Her features, though
delicately moulded, bespoke intelligence and strength of character that
I had not hitherto seen in the women of Berlin. Framing her face was a
luxuriant mass of wavy brown hair, which fell loosely about her
shoulders. Her slender figure was draped in a cape of deep blue
cellulose velvet.
"Dr. Zimmern tells me," I said as I seated myself across the table from
her, "that you are a dear friend of his."
A swift light gleamed in her deep brown eyes. "A very dear friend," she
said feelingly, and then a shadow flitted across her face as she added,
"Without him life for me would be unbearable here."
"And how long, if I may ask, have you been here?"
"About four years. Four years and six days, to be exact. I can keep
count you know," and she smiled whimsically, "for I came on the day of
my birth, the day I was sixteen."
"That is the same for all, is it not?"
"No one can come here before she is sixteen," replied Marguerite, "and
all must come before they are eighteen."
"But why did you come at the first opportunity?" I asked, as I mentally
compared her confession with that of Bertha who had so courageously
postponed as long as she could the day of surrender to this life of
shamefully commercialized love.
"And why should I not come?" returned Marguerite. "I had a chance to
come, and I accepted it. Do you think life in the school for girls of
forbidden birth is an enjoyable one?"
I wanted to press home the point of my argument, to proclaim my pride in
Bertha's more heroic struggle with the system, for this girl with whom I
now conversed was obviously a woman of superior intelligence, and it
angered me to know that she had so easily surrendered to the life for
which German society had ordained her. But I restrained my speech, for I
realized that in criticizing her way of life I would be criticizing her
obvious relation to Zimmern, and like all men I found myself inclined to
be indulgent with the personal life of a man who was my friend.
Moreover, I perceived the presumptuousness of assuming a superior air
towards an established and accepted institution. Yet, strive as I might
to be tolerant, I felt a growing antagonism towards this attractive and
cultured girl who had surrendered without a struggle to a life that to
me was a career of shame--and who seemed quite content with her
surrender.
"Do you like it here?" I asked, knowing that my question was stupid, but
anxious to avoid a painful gap in what was becoming, for me, a difficult
conversation.
Marguerite looked at me with a queer penetrating gaze. "Do I like it
here?" she repeated. "Why should you ask, and how can I answer? Can I
like it or not like it, when there was no choice for me? Can I push out
the walls of Berlin?"--and she thrust mockingly into the air with a
delicately chiselled hand--"It is a prison. All life is a prison."
"Yes," I said, "it is a prison, but life on this level is more joyful
than on many others."
Her lip curled in delicate scorn. "For you men--of course--and I suppose
it is for these women too--perhaps that is why I hate it so, because
they do enjoy it, they do accept it. They sell their love for food and
raiment, and not one in all these millions seems to mind it."
"In that," I remarked, "perhaps you are mistaken. I have not come here
often as most men do, but I have found one other who, like you, rebels
at the system--who in fact, was starving because she would not sell
her love."
Marguerite flashed on me a look of pitying suspicion as she asked: "Have
you gone to the Place of Records to look up this rebel against the
sale of love?"
A fire of resentment blazed up in me at this question. I did not know
just what she meant by the Place of Records, but I felt that this woman
who spoke cynically of rebellion against the sale of love, and yet who
had obviously sold her love to an old man, was in no position to
discredit a weaker woman's nobler fight.
"What right," I asked coldly, "have you to criticize another whom you do
not know?"
"I am sorry," replied Marguerite, "if I seem to quarrel with you when I
was left here to entertain you, but I could not help it--it angers me to
have you men be so fond of being deceived, such easy prey to this
threadbare story of the girl who claims she never came here until forced
to do so. But men love to believe it. The girls learn to use the story
because it pays."
A surge of conflicting emotion swept through me as I recalled the
child-like innocence of Bertha and compared it with the critical
scepticism of this superior woman. "It only goes to show," I thought,
"what such a system can do to destroy a woman's faith in the very
existence of innocence and virtue."
Marguerite did not speak; her silence seemed to say: "You do not
understand, nor can I explain--I am simply here and so are you, and we
have our secrets which cannot be committed to words."
With idle fingers she drummed lightly on the table. I watched those
slender fingers and the rhythmic play of the delicate muscles of the
bare white arm that protruded from the rich folds of the blue velvet
cape. Then my gaze lifted to her face. Her downcast eyes were shielded
by long curving lashes; high arched silken brows showed dark against a
skin as fresh and free from chemist's pigment as the petal of a rose. In
exultant rapture my heart within me cried that here was something fine
of fibre, a fineness which ran true to the depths of her soul.
In my discovery of Bertha's innocence and in my faith in her purity and
courage I had hoped to find relief from the spiritual loneliness that
had grown upon me during my sojourn in this materialistic city. But that
faith was shaken, as the impression Bertha had made upon my
over-sensitized emotions, now dimmed by a brighter light, flickered pale
on the screen of memory. The mere curiosity and pity I had felt for a
chance victim singled out among thousands by the legend of innocence on
a pretty face could not stand against the force that now drew me to this
woman who seemed to be not of a slavish race--even as Dr. Zimmern seemed
a man apart from the soulless product of the science he directed. But as
I acknowledged this new magnet tugging at the needle of my floundering
heart, I also realized that my friendship for the lovable and courageous
Zimmern reared an unassailable barrier to shut me into outer darkness.
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