Prater Violet Read Online Free Page A

friend!”
    â€œWell?” I asked, as we shook hands. “How do you like it here?”
    â€œTerrible!” Bergmann twinkled at me comically from under his black bush of eyebrow. “It’s an inferno! You have made the as -cent to hell.”
    This morning, he was no longer an emperor but an old clown, shock-headed, in his gaudy silk dressing gown. Tragicomic, like all clowns, when you see them resting backstage after the show.
    He laid his hand on my arm. “First, tell me one thing, please. Is your whole city as horrible as this?”
    â€œHorrible? Why, this is the best part of it! Wait till you see our slums, and the suburbs.”
    Bergmann grinned. “You console me enormously.”
    He led the way into the flat. The small living room was tropically hot, under a heavy cloud of cigarette smoke. It reeked of fresh paint. The whole place was littered with clothes, papers and books, in explosive disorder, like the debris around a volcano.
    Bergmann called, “Mademoiselle!” and a girl came out of the inner room. She had fair smooth hair, brushed plainly back from her temples, and a quiet oval face, which would have looked pretty, if her chin hadn’t been too pointed. She wore rimless glasses and the wrong shade of lipstick. She was dressed in the neat jacket and skirt of a stenographer.
    â€œDorothy, I introduce you to Mr. Isherwood. Dorothy is my secretary, the most beautiful of all the gifts given me by the munificent Mr. Chatsworth. You see, Dorothy, Mr. Isherwood is the good Virgil who has come to guide me through this Anglo-Saxon comedy.”
    Dorothy smiled the smile of a new secretary—a bit bewildered still, but prepared for anything in the way of lunatic employers.
    â€œAnd please suppress that fire,” Bergmann added. “It definitely kills me.”
    Dorothy knelt down and turned off the gas fire, which had been roaring away in a corner. “Do you want me now,” she asked, very businesslike, “or shall I be getting on with the letters?”
    â€œWe always want you, my darling. Without you, we could not exist for one moment. You are our Beatrice. But first, Mr. Virgil and I have to become acquainted. Or rather, he must become acquainted with me. For, you see,” Bergmann continued, as Dorothy left the room, “I know everything about you already.”
    â€œYou do?”
    â€œCertainly. Everything that is important. Wait. I shall show you something.”
    Raising his forefinger, smilingly, to indicate that I must be patient, he began to rummage among the clothes and scattered papers. I watched with growing curiosity, as Bergmann’s search became increasingly furious. Now and then, he would discover some object, evidently not the right one, hold it up before him for a moment, like a nasty-smelling dead rat, and toss it aside again with a snort of disgust or some exclamation such as “Abominable!” “Scheusslich!” “Too silly for words!” I watched him unearth, in this way, a fat black notebook, a shaving mirror, a bottle of hair tonic and an abdominal belt. Finally, under a pile of shirts, he found a copy of Mein Kampf which he kissed, before throwing it into the wastepaper basket. “I love him!” he told me, making a wry, comical face.
    The search spread into the bedroom. I could hear him plunging about, snorting and breathing hard, as I stood by the mantelpiece, looking at the photographs of a large, blonde, humorous woman and a thin, dark, rather frightened girl. Next, the bathroom was explored. A couple of wet towels were flung out into the passage. Then Bergmann uttered a triumphant “Aha!” He strode back into the living room, waving a book above his head. It was my novel, The Memorial.
    â€œSo! Here we are! You see? I read it at midnight. And again this morning, in my bath.”
    I was absurdly pleased and flattered. “Well,” I tried to sound casual, “how did you like