City of Endless Night by Milo Hastings (best book reader txt) 📖

eager for this life, to which they have long been trained. Were you not trained for it also?"

"Yes," she admitted, "they tried to train me for it, but they could not kill my artist's soul, for I was not like these others, born of a strain wherein women can only be mothers, or, if rejected for that, come here. I was born to be a musician, a group where women may be something more than mere females."

"Then why are you here?" I asked.

"Because," she faltered, "my voice was imperfect. I have, you see, the soul of an artist but lack the physical means to give that soul expression. And so they transferred me to the school for free women, where I have been courted by the young men of the Royal House. But of course you understand all that."

"Yes," I said, "I know something of it; but my work has always so absorbed me that I have not had time to think of these matters. In fact, I come to the Free Level much less than most men."

For a moment, it seemed, her eyes hardened in cunning suspicion, but as I returned her intent gaze I could fathom only the doubts and fears of childish innocence.

"Please let us sit down," I said; "it is so beautiful here; and then tell me all about yourself, how you have lived your childhood, and what your problems are. It may be that I can help you."

"There is not much to tell," she sighed, as she seated herself beside me. "I was only eight years old when the musical examiners condemned my voice and so I do not remember much about the music school. In the other school where they train girls for the life on the Free Level, they taught us dancing, and how to be beautiful, and always they told us that we must learn these things so that the men would love us. But the only men we ever saw were the doctors. They were always old and serious and I could not understand how I could ever love men. But our teachers would tell us that the other men would be different. They would be handsome and young and would dance with us and bring us fine presents. If we were pleasing in their sight they would take us away, and we should each have an apartment of our own, and many dresses with beautiful colours, and there would be a whole level full of wonderful things and we could go about as we pleased, and dance and feast and all life would be love and joy and laughter.

"Then, on the 'Great Day,' when we had our first individual dresses--for before we had always worn uniforms--the men came. They were young military officers and members of the Royal House who are permitted to select girls for their own exclusive love. We were all very shy at first, but many of the girls made friends with the men and some of them went away that first day. And after that the men came as often as they liked and I learned to dance with them, and they made love to me and told me I was very beautiful. Yet somehow I did not want to go with them. We had been told that we would love the men who loved us. I don't know why, but I didn't love any of them. And so the two years passed and they told me I must come here alone. And so here I am."

"And now that you are here," I said, "have you not, among all these men found one that you could love?"

"No," she said, with a tremor in her voice, "but they say I must."

"And how," I asked, "do they enforce that rule? Does any one require you--to accept the men?"

"Yes," she replied. "I must do that--or starve."

"And how do you live now?" I asked.

"They gave me money when I came here, a hundred marks. And they make me pay to eat and when my money is gone I cannot eat unless I get more. And the men have all the money, and they pay. They have offered to pay me, but I refused to take their checks, and they think me stupid."

The child-like explanation of her lot touched the strings of my heart. "And how long," I asked, "is this money that is given you when you come here supposed to last?"

"Not more than twenty days," she answered.

"But you," I said, "have been here thirty days!"

She looked at me and smiled proudly. "But I," she said, "only eat one meal a day. Do you not see how thin I am?"

The realization that any one in this scientifically fed city could be hungry was to me appalling. Yet here was a girl living amidst luxurious beauty, upon whom society was using the old argument of hunger to force her acceptance of the love of man.

I rose and held out my hand. "You shall eat again today," I said.

"I would rather not," she demurred. "I have not yet accepted favours from any man."

"But you must. You are hungry," I protested. "The problem of your existence here cannot be put off much longer. We will go eat and then we will try and find some solution."

Without further objection she walked with me. We found a secluded booth in a dining hall. I ordered the best dinner that Berlin had to offer.

During the intervals of silence in our rather halting dinner conversation, I wrestled with the situation. I had desired to gain insight into the lives of these girls. Yet now that the opportunity was presented I did not altogether relish the rôle in which it placed me. The apparent innocence of the confiding girl seemed to open an easy way for a personal conquest--and yet, perhaps because it was so obvious and easy, I rebelled at the unfairness of it. To rescue her, to aid her to escape--in a free world one might have considered these more obvious moves, but here there was no place for her to escape to, no higher social justice to which appeal could be made. Either I must accept her as a personal responsibility, with what that might involve, or desert her to her fate. Both seemed cowardly--yet such were the horns of the dilemma and a choice must be made. Here at least was an opportunity to make use of the funds that lay in the bank to the credit of the name I bore, and for which I had found so little use. So I decided to offer her money, and to insist that it was not offered as the purchase price of love.

"You must let me help you," I said, "you must let me give you money."

"But I do not want your money," she replied. "It would only postpone my troubles. Even if I do accept your money, I would have to accept money from other men also, for you cannot pay for the whole of a woman's living."

"Why not," I asked, "does any rule forbid it?"

"No rule, but can so young a man as you afford it?"

"How much does it take for you to live here?"

"About five marks a day."

I glanced rather proudly at my insignia as a research chemist of the first rank. "Do you know," I asked, "how much income that insignia carries?"

"Well, no," she admitted, "I know the income of military officers, but there are so many of the professional ranks and classes that I get all mixed up."

"That means," I said, "ten thousand marks a year."

"So much as that!" she exclaimed in astonishment. "And I can live here on two hundred a month, but no, I did not mean that--you wouldn't,--I couldn't--let you give me so much."

"Much!" I exclaimed; "you may have five hundred if you need it."

"You make love very nicely," she replied with aloofness.

"But I am not making love," I protested.

"Then why do you say these things? Do you prefer some one else? If so why waste your funds on me?"

"No, no!" I cried, "it is not that; but you see I want to tell you things; many things that you do not know. I want to see you often and talk to you. I want to bring you books to read. And as for money, that is so you will not starve while you read my books and listen to me talk. But you are to remain mistress of your own heart and your own person. You see, I believe there are ways to win a woman's love far better than buying her cheap when she is starved into selling in this brutal fashion."

She looked at me dubiously. "You are either very queer," she said, "or else a very great liar."

"But I am neither," I protested, piqued that the girl in her innocence should yet brand me either mentally deficient or deceitful. "It is impossible to make you understand me," I went on, "and yet you must trust me. These other men, they approve the system under which you live, but I do not. I offer you money, I insist on your taking it because there is no other way, but it is not to force you to accept me but only to make it unnecessary for you to accept some one else. You have been very brave, to stand out so long. You must accept my money now, but you need never accept me at all--unless you really want me. If I am to make love to you I want to make love to a woman who is really free; a woman free to accept or reject love, not starved into accepting it in this so-called freedom."

"It is all very wonderful," she repeated; "a minute ago I thought you deceitful, and now I want to believe you. I can not stand out much longer and what would be the use for just a few more days?"

"There will be no need," I said gently, "your courage has done its work well--it has saved you for yourself. And now," I continued, "we will bind this bargain before you again decide me crazy."

Taking out my check book I filled in a check for two hundred marks payable to--"To whom shall I make it payable?" I asked.

"To Bertha, 34 R 6," she said, and thus I wrote it, cursing the prostituted science and the devils of autocracy that should give an innocent girl a number like a convict in a jail or a mare in a breeder's herd book.

And so I bought a German girl with a German check--bought her because I saw no other way to save her from being lashed by starvation to the slave block and sold piecemeal to men in whom honour had not even died, but had been strangled before it was born.

With my check neatly tucked in her bosom, Bertha walked out of the café clinging to my arm, and so, passing unheeding through the throng of indifferent revellers, we came to her apartment.

At the door I said, "Tomorrow night I come again. Shall it be at the café or here?"

"Here," she whispered, "away from them all."

I stooped and kissed her hand and then fled into the multitude.

~3~

I had promised Bertha that I would bring her books, but the narrow range of technical books permitted me were obviously unsuitable, nor did I feel that the unspeakably morbid novels available on the Level of Free Women would serve my purpose of awakening the girl to more wholesome aspirations. In this emergency I decided to appeal to my friend, Zimmern.

Leaving the laboratory early, I made my way toward his apartment, puzzling my brain as to what kind of a book I could ask for that would be at once suitable to Bertha's child-like mind and also be a volume which I could logically appear to wish to read myself. As I walked along the answer flashed into my mind--I would ask for a geography of the outer world.

Happily I found Zimmern in. "I have come to ask," I said, "if you could loan me a book of description of the outer world, one with maps, one that tells all that is known of the land and seas and people."

"Oh, yes," smiled Zimmern, "you mean a geography. Your request," he continued, "does me great honour. Books telling the truth about the world without are very carefully guarded. I shall be pleased to get the geography for you at once. In fact I had already decided that when you came again I would take you with me to our little secret library. Germany is facing a great crisis, and I know no better way I can serve her than doing my part to help prepare as many as possible of