wasn’t enjoying it.’
‘No, I just told you to stop pretending that you were enjoying it.’
‘So am I supposed to be enjoying it or not?’ she said.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Well, then.’
‘But not in that way.’
‘If I’m not enjoying it, then I’m going to want you to stop, aren’t I?’
‘But you weren’t enjoying it previously, and you didn’t want me to stop. Well, I mean, I’m sure on some level you did want me to stop, actually, that’s part of my point, but the difference is you didn’t say anything.’
‘You didn’t ask me to say anything.’
The exasperation in her voice was murdering Loeser’s erection. ‘I know, but . . . Look, can we just agree that I’m not giving you hundreds of orgasms, but I’m also not raping you, I’m just a polite stranger offering you a fair wage in exchange for the efficient completion of a specific service within a capitalist system of alienated labour, all right? That’s my shameful fantasy.’
From then on she was as silent and still as a coma patient. Which was by far the worst of the three scenarios. After another few minutes he had to pretend he’d ejaculated just so that he could leave, which was not something he’d ever anticipated he’d have to do with a paid consort, but he knew it was his own fault.
So it was with a rucksack of apprehension that he stepped out of the taxi outside the Zinnowitz Tearooms on Lieblingstrasse. At two in the morning the streets of Strandow were crowded with screeching drunks from the beer halls near by, many now queuing up like a congealed riot to buy boiled meatballs with caper sauce from stalls to eat on the way home. He nodded to the brothel’s bouncer and went inside, where he was greeted straight away by Frau Diski, the dwarfish proprietor. ‘Herr Loeser! What a pleasure. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? Sit down, sit down. What would you like to drink?’
‘I suppose I’ve probably had enough tonight.’ He couldn’t remember what he’d done with the bottle of vodka.
‘Some tea, then.’
‘Fine.’ Around the room sat six or seven other men, alone or in pairs, some of them with girls on their laps. Mercifully there was no one among them he knew. With its floral wallpaper, bentwood chairs, and Blandine Ebinger records playing softly on the gramophone in the corner, the Zinnowitz Tearooms, even after midnight, really did retain the stolid atmosphere of the sort of place your aunt would take you for chocolate cake, which was presumably a calculated psychoanalytic strategy on Frau Diski’s part to stop her customers from getting rowdy: they had all been nice boys once and there were some deep bourgeois instincts that even a barrel of beer couldn’t drown.
‘You seem to be in low spirits, Herr Loeser.’
‘I haven’t had a fantastically good evening.’
Frau Diski sat down beside him. ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’
‘There’s no point.’
‘I want to know.’
‘Well . . . I was after a girl, of course. And I should have got her. But someone else got her instead. And what makes it really intolerable is that it was my fault that he did.’ He meant that he’d handed Adele over to Rackenham, but now he remembered that he’d also been too stubborn to let her believe he was a writer. Would that have made a difference? Did writers really get more sex just because they were writers? Presumably writers hoped and prayed that they might. He’d read somewhere that Balzac only took up writing because he thought it might help him meet women. And it worked, of course: he married one of his fans. But that was after he’d written ninety-two novels, and they were married for just five months before Balzac died of a lung complaint. Even assuming they’d fucked every day since the wedding, that meant Balzac had written about half a book for every wheezy sexual encounter. Not a very efficient rate of return. Still, it was better than nothing, and if Countess Ewelina Hanska was as good
‘No, I just told you to stop pretending that you were enjoying it.’
‘So am I supposed to be enjoying it or not?’ she said.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Well, then.’
‘But not in that way.’
‘If I’m not enjoying it, then I’m going to want you to stop, aren’t I?’
‘But you weren’t enjoying it previously, and you didn’t want me to stop. Well, I mean, I’m sure on some level you did want me to stop, actually, that’s part of my point, but the difference is you didn’t say anything.’
‘You didn’t ask me to say anything.’
The exasperation in her voice was murdering Loeser’s erection. ‘I know, but . . . Look, can we just agree that I’m not giving you hundreds of orgasms, but I’m also not raping you, I’m just a polite stranger offering you a fair wage in exchange for the efficient completion of a specific service within a capitalist system of alienated labour, all right? That’s my shameful fantasy.’
From then on she was as silent and still as a coma patient. Which was by far the worst of the three scenarios. After another few minutes he had to pretend he’d ejaculated just so that he could leave, which was not something he’d ever anticipated he’d have to do with a paid consort, but he knew it was his own fault.
So it was with a rucksack of apprehension that he stepped out of the taxi outside the Zinnowitz Tearooms on Lieblingstrasse. At two in the morning the streets of Strandow were crowded with screeching drunks from the beer halls near by, many now queuing up like a congealed riot to buy boiled meatballs with caper sauce from stalls to eat on the way home. He nodded to the brothel’s bouncer and went inside, where he was greeted straight away by Frau Diski, the dwarfish proprietor. ‘Herr Loeser! What a pleasure. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? Sit down, sit down. What would you like to drink?’
‘I suppose I’ve probably had enough tonight.’ He couldn’t remember what he’d done with the bottle of vodka.
‘Some tea, then.’
‘Fine.’ Around the room sat six or seven other men, alone or in pairs, some of them with girls on their laps. Mercifully there was no one among them he knew. With its floral wallpaper, bentwood chairs, and Blandine Ebinger records playing softly on the gramophone in the corner, the Zinnowitz Tearooms, even after midnight, really did retain the stolid atmosphere of the sort of place your aunt would take you for chocolate cake, which was presumably a calculated psychoanalytic strategy on Frau Diski’s part to stop her customers from getting rowdy: they had all been nice boys once and there were some deep bourgeois instincts that even a barrel of beer couldn’t drown.
‘You seem to be in low spirits, Herr Loeser.’
‘I haven’t had a fantastically good evening.’
Frau Diski sat down beside him. ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’
‘There’s no point.’
‘I want to know.’
‘Well . . . I was after a girl, of course. And I should have got her. But someone else got her instead. And what makes it really intolerable is that it was my fault that he did.’ He meant that he’d handed Adele over to Rackenham, but now he remembered that he’d also been too stubborn to let her believe he was a writer. Would that have made a difference? Did writers really get more sex just because they were writers? Presumably writers hoped and prayed that they might. He’d read somewhere that Balzac only took up writing because he thought it might help him meet women. And it worked, of course: he married one of his fans. But that was after he’d written ninety-two novels, and they were married for just five months before Balzac died of a lung complaint. Even assuming they’d fucked every day since the wedding, that meant Balzac had written about half a book for every wheezy sexual encounter. Not a very efficient rate of return. Still, it was better than nothing, and if Countess Ewelina Hanska was as good
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