To Room Nineteen: Collected Stories Volume One. Doris Lessing

beg your pardon?’

      ‘When was it? What year?’

      ‘What year? Does it matter? She told me she had arranged this little holiday on grounds of her bad health, so that she might come by herself to find the man she wanted as the father of her child. She had chosen me. I was her choice. And now she thanked me and was returning to her husband.’ Herr Scholtz stopped, in triumph, and looked at Rosa. Rosa did not move. She could not possibly have failed to hear every word. Then he looked at the Captain. But the Captain’s face was scarlet, and very agitated.

      ‘What was her name?’ barked the Captain.

      ‘Her name?’ Herr Scholtz paused. ‘Well, she would clearly have used a false name?’ he inquired. As the Captain did not respond, he said firmly: ‘That is surely obvious, my friend. And I did not know her address.’ Herr Scholtz took a slow sip of his wine, then another. He regarded the Captain for a moment thoughtfully, as if wondering whether he could be trusted to behave according to the rules, and then continued: ‘I ran to the hotel manager – no, there was no information. The lady had left unexpectedly, early that morning. No address. I was frantic. You can imagine. I wanted to rush after her, find her, kill her husband, marry her!’ Herr Scholtz laughed in amused, regretful indulgence at the follies of youth.

      ‘You must remember the year,’ urged the Captain.

      ‘But my friend …’ began Herr Scholtz after a pause, very annoyed. ‘What can it matter, after all?’

      Captain Forster glanced stiffly at Rosa and spoke in English, ‘As it happened, the same thing happened to me.’

      ‘Here?’ inquired Herr Scholtz politely.

      ‘Here.’

      ‘In this valley?’

      ‘In this hotel.’

      ‘Well,’ shrugged Herr Scholtz, raising his voice even more, ‘well, women – women you know. At eighteen, of course – and perhaps even at twenty-five –’ Here he nodded indulgently towards his opponent – ‘Even at twenty-five perhaps one takes such things as miracles that happen only to oneself. But at our age …?’

      He paused, as if hoping against hope that the Captain might recover his composure.

      But the Captain was speechless.

      ‘I tell you, my friend,’ continued Herr Scholtz, good-humouredly relishing the tale, ‘I tell you, I was crazy; I thought I would go mad. I wanted to shoot myself; I rushed around the streets of every city I happened to be in, looking into every face. I looked at photographs in the papers – actresses, society women; I used to follow a woman I had glimpsed in the street, thinking that perhaps this was she at last. But no,’ said Herr Scholtz dramatically, bringing down his hand on the table, so that his ring clicked again, ‘no, never, never was I successful!’

      ‘What did she look like?’ asked the Captain agitatedly in English, his anxious eyes searching the by now very irritated eyes of Herr Scholtz.

      Herr Scholtz moved his chair back slightly, looked towards Rosa, and said loudly in German: ‘Well, she was beautiful, as I have told you.’ He paused, for thought. ‘And she was an aristocrat.’

      ‘Yes, yes,’ said the Captain impatiently.

      ‘She was tall, very slim, with a beautiful body – beautiful! She had that black hair, you know, black, black! And black eyes, and beautiful teeth.’ He added loudly and spitefully towards Rosa: ‘She was not the country bumpkin type, not at all. One has some taste.’

      With extreme discomfort the Captain glanced towards the plump village Rosa. He said, pointedly using English even at this late stage, ‘Mine was fair. Tall and fair. A lovely girl. Lovely!’ he insisted with a glare. ‘Might have been an English girl.’

      ‘Which was entirely to her credit,’ suggested Herr Scholtz, with a smile.

      ‘That was in 1913,’ said the Captain insistently, and then: ‘You say she had black hair?’

      ‘Certainly, black hair. On that occasion – but that was not the last time it happened to me.’ He laughed. ‘I had three children by my wife, a fine woman – she is now dead, unfortunately.’ Again, there was no doubt tears filled his eyes. At the sight, the Captain’s indignation soared. But Herr Scholtz had recovered and was speaking: ‘But I ask myself, how many children in addition to the three? Sometimes I look at a young man in the streets who has a certain resemblance, and I ask myself: Perhaps he is my son? Yes, yes, my friend, this is a question that every man must ask himself, sometimes, is it not?’ He put back his head and laughed wholeheartedly, though with an undertone of rich regret.

      The Captain did not speak for a moment. Then he said in English, ‘It’s all very well, but it did happen to me – it did.’ He sounded like a defiant schoolboy, and Herr Scholtz shrugged.

      ‘It happened to me, here. In this hotel.’

      Herr Scholtz controlled his irritation, glanced at Rosa, and, for the first time since the beginning of this regrettable incident, he lowered his voice to a reasonable tone and spoke English. ‘Well,’ he said, in frank irony, smiling gently, with a quiet shrug, ‘well, perhaps if we are honest we must say that this is a thing that has happened to every man? Or rather, if it did not exist, it was necessary to invent it?’

      And now – said his look towards the Captain – and now, for heaven’s sake! For the sake of decency, masculine solidarity, for the sake of our dignity in the eyes of that girl over there, who has so wounded us both – pull yourself together, my friend, and consider what you are saying!

      But the Captain was oblivious in memories. ‘No,’ he insisted. ‘No. Speak for yourself. It did happen. Here.’ He paused, and then brought out, with difficulty, ‘I never married.’

      Herr Scholtz shrugged, at last, and was silent. Then he called out, ‘Fräulein, Fräulein – may I pay?’ It was time to put an end to it.

      Rosa did not immediately turn around. She patted her hair at the back. She straightened her apron. She took her napkin from one forearm and arranged it prettily on the other. Then she turned and came, smiling, towards them. It could at once be seen that she intended her smile to be noticed.

      ‘You wish to pay?’ she asked Herr Scholtz. She spoke calmly and deliberately in English, and the Captain started and looked extremely uncomfortable. But Herr Scholtz immediately adjusted himself and said in English, ‘Yes, I am paying.’

      She took the note he held out and counted out the change from the small satchel under her apron. Having laid the last necessary coin on the table, she stood squarely in front of them, smiling down equally at both, her hands folded in front of her. At last, when they had had the full benefit of her amused, maternal smile, she suggested in English: ‘Perhaps the lady changed the colour of her hair to suit what you both like best?’ Then she laughed. She put back her head and laughed a full, wholehearted laugh.

      Herr Scholtz, accepting the defeat with equanimity, smiled a rueful, appreciative smile.

      The Captain sat stiffly in his chair, regarding them both with hot hostility, clinging tight to his own, authentic, memories.

      But Rosa laughed at him, until with a final swish of her dress she clicked past them both and away off the terrace.

       Through the Tunnel

      Going to the shore on the first morning of the holiday, the young English boy stopped at a turning of the path and looked down at a wild and rocky bay, and then over to the crowded beach he knew so well from other years. His mother walked on in front of him, carrying a bright striped bag in one hand. Her other arm, swinging loose, was very white in the sun. The boy watched that white, naked arm, and turned his eyes, which had a frown behind them, towards the bay and back again to his mother. When she