Prater Violet Read Free

so interesting. Suppose you dream of sausages—that’s a quarrel. Unless you’re eating them. Then it’s love, or good health, the same as sneezing and mushrooms. The other night, I dreamed I was taking off my stockings and, sure enough, the very next morning, my brother sent me a postal order for five and six. Of course, they don’t always come true like that. Not at once…”
    Here I managed to interrupt, and ask her if she knew where Bergmann had gone.
    He had wanted some magazine or other, she told me. So she’d sent him over to Mitchell’s. It was down at the other end of the street. I couldn’t miss it.
    â€œAnd you’d better take him his cigarettes,” she added. “He left them lying here on the counter.”
    Mitchell’s, also, remembered the foreign gentleman, but less favorably than the girl at the tobacconist’s. There seemed to have been a bit of an argument. Bergmann had asked for The New World-Stage, and had become quite indignant when the boy naturally supposed it was a theatrical magazine, and had offered him The Stage or The Era instead. “Hopeless. Nothing to do,” I could imagine him groaning. At length, he had condescended to explain that The New World-Stage was about politics, and in German. The boy had advised him to try the bookstall inside the station.
    It was at this point that I lost my head. The whole business was degenerating into a man-hunt, and I could only run, like a bloodhound, from clue to clue. It wasn’t until I had arrived, gasping, in front of the bookstall that I realized how silly I’d been. The bookstall attendants were much too busy to have noticed anybody with a foreign accent; there had probably been several, anyway, within the past half hour. I glanced wildly around, accosted two likely looking strangers, who regarded me with insulted suspicion, and then hurried back to the hotel.
    Again, the porter was waiting for me.
    â€œBad luck, sir.” His manner was that of a sympathetic spectator toward the last man in an obstacle race.
    â€œWhat do you mean? Isn’t he here yet?”
    â€œCome and gone again. Wasn’t a minute after you left. ‘Where is he?’ he asks, same as you. Then the phone rings. It was a gentleman from the studio. We’d been trying to get him all morning. Wanted the Doctor to come out there, right away, as quick as he could. I said you’d be back, but he wouldn’t wait. He’s like that, sir—all impatience. So I put him in a taxi.”
    â€œDidn’t he leave any message?”
    â€œYes, sir. You was to meet them for lunch, at the Café Royal. One o’clock sharp.”
    â€œWell, I’m damned.”
    I went into the lobby, sat down in a chair and wiped my forehead. That settled it. Who in hell did they think they were? Well, this would be a lesson to me. One thing was certain: they wouldn’t hear from me again. Not if they came to the house and sat on the doorstep all day long.
    *   *   *
    I FOUND THEM in the Grill Room.
    I was ten minutes late, a little concession to my injured vanity. The headwaiter knew Mr. Chatsworth and pointed him out to me. I paused to get a first impression before approaching their table.
    A gray bushy head, with its back to me, confronted a big pink moon-face, thin, sleek, fair hair, heavy tortoise-shell glasses. The gray head was thrust forward intently. The pink face lolled back, wide open to all the world.
    â€œBetween you and me,” it was saying, “there’s just one thing the matter with them. They’ve got no savoir vivre. ”
    The pale round eyes, magnified by their lenses, moved largely over the room, included me without surprise: “It’s Mr. Isherwood, isn’t it? Very glad you could come. I don’t think you two know each other?”
    He didn’t rise. But Bergmann jerked to his feet with startling suddenness, like Punch in a show.