Billy Wilder on Assignment by Noah Isenberg (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📕

Herr Wilder knew how to adapt to the fussiest audiences in every way in his capacity as a dancer. He achieved success in his position and always adhered to the interests of the establishment.

Herr Wilder is parting ways with our business at his own request.

THE MANAGEMENT OF THE … HOTEL.

BERLIN W.

So I have it in black and white that I was a dancer, a social dancer, in a word: a dancer for hire, for two months, and one who “knew how to adapt to the fussiest audiences in every way,” at that.

That’s what happened, and here’s how: I was not doing well—

My trousers aren’t ironed, my face is badly shaved, my collar greasy, the cuffs of my shirt folded over. My tongue tastes bitter, my legs are leaden, my stomach is so empty that it’s hurting, and my nerves are shot. Behind every knock on the door the venomous face of the landlady, shrieking, with the bill in her hands. For me the street is made up of gourmet food stores, restaurants, and pastry shops, and I cut my cigarettes in half to make them last longer.

I was not doing well.

Today I’ll be sleeping in the waiting room of the train station.

Sad financial reckoning in front of a cigarette store:

Eleven pfennigs, another five in my vest, that comes to sixteen.

“Four for four!”

That makes it easier to move on. But where to?

Potsdamer Platz. Someone is shouting through the clamor of the traffic, swinging his walking stick, smashing into a baby carriage.

“Hello! Imagine meeting you here! What, you don’t recognize me? No? From the Tabarin in Vienna? Yes, of course—Roberts.”

I sink through the floor in shame.

“Come for a cognac; it’s on me. Got an appetite? Excellent. Caaaar—available? To Kempinski!”

And in the restaurant: “Bring me two orders of fish in mayonnaise, two beef filets, English-style, medium-rare, please, two salads, a bottle of 1917 Liebfraumilch. But first, two large Hennessys.”

That is Roberts, the dancer: his hair is black as ink and shiny as rain-slicked asphalt, his eyes evince the South, his nose and his lips those of the dead Valentino.

He eats a hot lunch and smokes imported cigarettes, coins jingle in his pockets, he pays his rent on time, and doesn’t owe a single pfennig to the washerwoman; yes, the word “inhibitions” has never crossed his mind. Maybe that’s how billionaires live.

Of course, he’s a dancer. Yvette and Roberts. He’s danced in London and in Paris, in Warsaw, in Vienna, in Nice, in Karlsbad, in Brussels and in Rome, in San Sebastian, everywhere.

While we’re eating, he tells me that he’s been hired for the entire winter in Berlin. A giant hotel near the Memorial Church. Every evening, Yvette and Roberts in their dances. People are so nice to him, he adds.

“And you? What are you up to?”

I lower my head so he can’t see my collar. Well—this and that. I tell him I don’t have anything at the moment, no job, for the past three weeks already, but that something will turn up soon. I even have an idea, I say, I always have ideas.

“Can I help you?”

Roberts puts his hand on my arm. I tug on my tie and look away, read the label on the wine bottle.

“You are tall enough.”

What am I—?

“You have suits, a tuxedo?”

Well, sure, well, of course, they’re just in hock right now.

“You have some sense of how to bow in high society, how to kiss a woman’s hand.”

I’m baffled.

“You dance, I know that. Now I’m asking you: don’t you want to capitalize on all that?”

My face goes blank.

“Do you want to earn money?”

I’m now slack-jawed.

“Money, lots of money!”

Not a word.

“You’ll become—a dancer for hire with us. You’ll present yourself tomorrow.”

Then he asks for the check, pulls a hundred-mark bill out of his wallet, thereby revealing another dozen of these bills, and holds it out to the waiter.

—Yes, I’ll present myself tomorrow.

II. The First Day in the Hotel

In the morning Roberts sent me two hundred marks—“to outfit you, for the time being, in a manner befitting your station.” I turned over seventy-five marks to my landlady, à conto, went to the pawnshop, picked up my suitcase full of clean clothing from the washerwoman across the street, spent an hour at the barbershop, lingered just as long in front of the mirror, knotted my tie, again and again, brushed and smoothed.

I’m sitting in a club chair in the hotel lobby, a soft one, and leaning far back, one leg over the other, and am up to my tenth cigarette, at twelve pfennigs a pop. This, then, is the hotel I’m to “work” in. The bellboy at the revolving door, thinking I’m a guest, has tipped his cap gracefully. Now the Persian lamb coat of a lady in narrow, crocodile-leather shoes brushes against my knees, as she walks toward the lift, smiles at the pageboy, disappears. A thin fragrance of Coty lingers in the air, and stirs up my nerves. A valet, laden with luggage, stumbles to the door, a gentleman in a raglan coat with a stiff foot enters his name into the hotel register, while the porter, his back bent over, holds out his palm to an elderly couple, and the bartender balances two Manhattans and a soda.

I say to myself: I’m a fool. Sleepless nights, misgivings, doubts? The revolving door has thrust me into despair, that’s for sure. Outside it is winter, friends from the Romanisches Café, all with colds, are debating sympathy and poverty, and, just like me, yesterday, have no idea where to spend the night. I, however, am a dancer. The big wide world will wrap its arms around me.—In the ballroom slender-legged women sit at small tables sipping mocha coffee. They’re putting their cups down and sizing me up, their crimson lips puckered into a honeyed, peeved smile. The gazes of jealous husbands and spiffy friends are burning on my forehead. Dark red light spills onto the dance floor, the Spaniards on the podium squeeze a