Dark Star by Alan Furst Read Free Book Online Page B

ministry”: quote from Benes, quote from General Vlasy, something vicious from Henlein, and the slant—since the country had been created a parliamentary democracy in 1918 and showed no sign of yearning to become a socialist republic—would have to serve Soviet diplomatic interests by fervid anti-Hitlerism. No problem there. He could file on ministries with one eye shut and the pencil in his ear, and it would mean just about that much. Politicians were like talking dogs in a circus: the fact that they existed was uncommonly interesting, but no sane person would actually believe what they said.
Then, as always happened after he wrote something he liked, the room began to shrink. He stuffed some money in his pocket, pulled up his tie, threw on his jacket, and made his escape. He tried walking, but the wind blowing down from Poland was fierce and the air had the smell of winter, so he waved down a taxi and gave the address of the Luxuria, a nachtlokal where the cabaret was foul and the audience worse, thus exactly where he belonged in his present frame of mind.
    Nor was he disappointed. Sitting alone at a tiny table, a glass of flat champagne at his elbow, he smoked steadily and lost himself inthe mindless fog of the place, content beneath the soiled cutout of yellow paper pinned to a velvet curtain that served as the Luxu-ria's moon—a thin slice, a weary old moon for nights when nothing mattered.
    Momo Tsipler and his Wienerwald Companions.
    Five of them, including the oldest cellist in captivity, a death-eyed drummer called Rex, and Momo himself, one of those dark celebrities nourished by the shadows east of the Rhine, a Viennese Hungarian in a green tuxedo with a voice full of tears that neither he nor anyone else had ever cried.
    “Noch einmal als Abschied dein Händchen mir gib,” sang Momo as the cello sobbed. “Just once again give me your hand to press”— the interior Szara was overjoyed, this horrid syrup was delicious, a wicked joke on itself, an anthem to Viennese love gone wrong. The title of the song was perfect: “There Are Things We Must All Forget.” The violinist had fluffy white hair that stood out in wings and he smiled like Satan himself as he played.
    The Companions of the Wienerwald then took up a kind of “drunken elephant” theme for the evening's main attraction; the enormous Mottel Motkevich, who staggered into the spotlight to a series of rimshots from the drummer and began his famous one-word routine. At first, his body told the story: I just woke up in the maid's bed with the world's worst hangover and someone pushed me out onto the stage of a nightclub in Prague. What am I doing here? What are you doing here?
    His flabby face sweated in the purple lights—for twenty years he'd looked like he was going to die next week. Then he shaded his eyes and peered around the room. Slowly, recognition took hold. He knew what sort of swine had come out to the nachtlokal tonight, ah yes, he knew them all too well. “Ja,” he said, confirming the very worst, his thick lips pressed together with grim disapproval.
    He began to nod, confirming his observation: drunkards and perverts, dissolution and depravity. He put his hands on his broad hips and stared out at a Yugoslav colonel accompanied by a well-rouged girl in a shiny feather hat that hugged her head tightly. “Ja!” said Mottel Motkevich. There's no doubt about you two. Likewiseto a pair of pretty English boys in plus fours, then to a Captain of Industry caught in the act of schnozzling a sort of teenage dairymaid by his side.
    Suddenly, a voice from the shadows in the back of the room: “But Mottel, why not?” Quickly the audience began to shout back at the comedian in a stew of European languages: “Is it bad?” “Why shouldn't we?” “What can be so wrong?”
    The fat man recoiled, grasped the velvet curtain with one hand, eyes and mouth widening with new understanding. “Ja?” You mean it's really all right after all? To do