Fred fortunately was an understanding fellow.
Instead of the usual thimble he brought me a decent wineglass full.
It saved him trotting backwards and forwards all the time and it wouldn't be so obvious how much I drank.
I had to drink else I should never get shot of this stockish prosiness.
"Wouldn't you have another Martini?" I asked the girl.
"What is that you are drinking, then?"
"This? This is rum."
She looked at my glass.
"That is the same as you had just now."
"Yes," said I, "I mostly drink rum."
She shook her head.
"I just can't believe that it can taste good."
"I really don't know what it tastes like any more," said I.
She looked at me.
"Then what do you drink it for?"
"Rum," said I—happy to have found something I could talk about—"rum has very little to do with taste.
It isn't just a simple drink—it is a-friend, more. A friend who makes everything easier.
It changes the world.
And so one drinks it, of course—" I pushed the glass aside. "But shouldn't I order you another Martini?"
"Make it a rum, rather," said she. "I should like to try it, once."
"Good," said I, "but not this time.
It is too heavy to start with.
Bring a Bacardi cocktail," I called across to Fred.
Fred brought the glasses. He brought also a dish with salted almonds and black baked coffee beans.
"Leave me my bottle here, will you?" said I.
Little by little things began to assume a new aspect.
The sense of insecurity vanished, words came of themselves, I was no longer so painfully conscious of everything I said, drank on and felt the great soft wave approach and embrace me; the dark hour began to fill with pictures and stealthily the noiseless procession of dreams appeared again superimposed on the dreary, grey landscape of existence.
The walls of the bar receded and suddenly it was no longer the bar— it was a little corner of the world, a haven of refuge, a dugout around which the eternal battle of chaos was raging and in which we two sat sheltering, mysteriously drifted to one another through the twilight of time.
The girl was sitting curled up in her chair, a stranger, mysterious, as if cast up here from the other side of life.
I heard myself speaking, but it was as if it were no longer myself, as if now some other person were talking, someone. I should like to have been.
The words were not true any more, they took on other meanings, pressed on into other, more brightly coloured regions than were to be found in the little happenings of my life. I knew they were not true too, that they had turned to fancy and lies; but I did not care—the truth was cheerless and drab, and only the sense and the glamour of the dream was life.
In the copper vat on the counter the light was glowing.
Off and on Valentin raised his glass and murmured a date into the empty air.
Outside the muffled roar of the street poured on, punctuated with the vulture cries of motorcars.
They screamed in whenever anyone opened the door.
They screamed like a nagging, jealous old woman.
It was already dark when I brought Patricia Hollmann home.
Slowly I walked back.
I felt myself suddenly alone and empty.
A fine rain was spraying down.
I halted in front of a shop window.
I had had too much to drink, I could feel it now.
Not that I reeled—but I knew it definitely.
I felt hot.
I unbuttoned my coat and pushed back my hat.
It had caught me napping once again.
Blast it all—of all the god-damn things I'd been saying!
They would not bear thinking of.
And I couldn't remember them; that was the worst.
Here, alone in the street roaring with buses, it all looked quite different from the way it had in the semi-darkness of the bar.