"Who is this guy, an English diplomat?" she whispers to Robinson. He whispers back that I am a man of considerable importance in the diplomatic service. I smile benevolently and they become more interested.
I am treating her rather paternally and am feeling philosophical. I ask about her life. What is she doing with it? What ambitions? She is a great reader, she tells me, and likes Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. But she shrugs her shoulders in an indifferent and tragic manner and says, "What does it matter about life?"
"You make it what it is," she says. "In your brain alone it exists and effort is only necessary for physical comfort." We are becoming closer friends as she tells me this.
But she must have some objective, there must be some dreams of the future still alive within her. I am very anxious to know what she really thinks.
I ask her about the defeat of Germany. She becomes discreet at once. Blames it on the Kaiser. She hates war and militarism. That's all I can get out of her, and it is getting late and we must leave. Her future intrigues me, but does not seem to worry her.
On the way home we step in at Kaufman's apartment and have quite a chat about pictures and things back in Los Angeles. Los Angeles seems very far away.
I am invited to a formal dinner party for the next evening at the home of Herr Werthauer, one of the most prominent lawyers in all Europe and a chief of the Kaiser during the war. The occasion for the dinner was to celebrate the announcement of Werthauer's engagement to his third wife.
His is a wonderful home in the finest section of Berlin. At the party there are a number of his personal friends, Pola Negri, Al Kaufman, Mrs. Kaufman, Robinson, and myself.
There is a Russian band playing native music all through the dinner and jazz music is also being dispensed by two orchestras made up of American doughboys who have been discharged, but have stayed on in Germany.
For no reason at all, I think of the story of Rasputin. This seems the sort of house for elaborate murders. Perhaps it is the Russian music that is having this effect on me. There is a huge marble staircase whose cold austereness suggests all sorts of things designed to send chills up the spine. The servants are so impressive and the meal such a ceremony that I feel that I am in a palace. The Russian folk-songs that are being dreamily whined from the strings of their peculiar instruments have a very weird effect and I find food and dining the least interesting things here.