Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

The Wintergarten, turned out to be a glassed-in cast iron structure that had become the
rage after the Paris World Exposition. Small groups of people sat at single tables eating dinner
or just drinking champagne or wine. Potted palms and banana trees gave the whole a tropical
ambiance. To one side opened a stage. An orchestra played popular music.
The hall, brightly lit by numerous electric chandeliers, was filled by a noisy crowd,
rousing cheers, the clinking of glasses, the occasional pop! of a champagne cork. Long-legged,
skimpily dressed waitresses moved between the tables. A maître d’, whom Konrad slipped a
sizable tip, escorted them to a table close to the stage. Konrad shrugged. "Otherwise we would
be sitting way in the back."
Konrad had barely placed his order when the lights dimmed and a hush quieted the
crowd. The orchestra went silent and an old man pushed a Leierkasten, a barrel-organ on
wheels, onto the stage grinding out a sentimental popular tune. The audience applauded. The
filles de corps de ballet in gaudy dresses sailed on stage and danced around the organ grinder.
A fanfare. Down a passage between the dancers, caught in a bright blue spotlight,
undulated a slender, no longer young lady in a tight, glittering lamé costume. Thunderous
applause greeted her. In a low, husky voice she began to sing:
"Ich hab’ noch einen Koffer in Berlin."
Renewed applause, shouts, and whistles. The lady smiled, threw hand-kisses to the
audience, and sang the next stanza:
"Berlin, Berlin meine Sehnsucht ist dahin."
Konrad’s eyes glazed over. After all, thought Alexandra, he still does have a suitcase of
sentimental memories somewhere in Berlin.
Alexandra smiled bemused and uncertain, the voice of the singer drove a shiver down
her spine.
To fend off this wave of alien sentimentality Alexandra let her eyes wander over the
crowd. She found the shiny faces of the well-fed, middle–aged bourgeois gentlemen in their
uniforms or starched shirtfronts repulsive. Their eyes were glued to the singer with stupefied
attention. This was a different crowd from the aristocrats and the intelligentsia that attended
similar, popular entertainment in St. Petersburg. Was this the "republican" public of the future?
She was not sure that she would like to live among these people.
The waitress, dressed in a fancy, push-up dance costume, silk stockings covering her
exposed legs, brought two glasses, a bottle of French champagne, caviar on ice, and two large
plates of belegte Brote, slices of bread covered with various cold cuts.
"The Russians call this butterbrot," exclaimed Alexandra. "Mein Gott, I am lost between
three cultures none of which I could honestly swear allegiance to."
Cardboard trees, a few symbolic bushes, and a park bench floated on stage followed by
three monuments and a mock-up of the Siegessäule in the Tierpark.
Two characters wandered through the park, one in an Austrian uniform with a lorgnette
on a golden chain, the other a Berliner Bürger, slovenly dressed in civilian clothes.
"Ah," cried the burgher doffing his hat at the uniformed character, "Gutentag, Graf
Bobby, I am so glad I met you."
Graf Bobby put the lorgnette in his eye and delightedly exclaimed with a heavy Austrian
accent. "Grüß’ Gott, Ferdinand, it’s my pleasure!"
"Graf Bobby," said Ferdinand, "I am bewildered, every week our government puts up
another monument, you are a studierter Mann, who is that over there?"
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