Read The Third Reich for Free Online

lamp that I’d placed on the table, next to the game. This afternoon I hardly worked. In town, Ingeborg bought a necklace of yellowish stones that they call filipino , which the kids here wear on the beach and at the clubs. We had dinner with Hanna and Charly at a Chinese restaurant in the tourist district. When Charly started to get drunk, we left. Really, a pointless evening. The restaurant, of course, was jam-packed and it was hot; the waiter was sweating; the food was good but nothing out of this world; the conversation centered on Hanna’s and Charly’s favorite subjects, in other words love and sex, respectively. Hanna is a woman made forlove, as she puts it, although when she talks about love one gets the strange feeling that she’s talking about security, or even specific brands of cars and appliances. Charly, meanwhile, talked about legs, asses, breasts, pubic hair, necks, navels, sphincters, etc., to the great delight of Hanna and Ingeborg, who constantly burst out laughing. Frankly, I can’t see what they find so funny. Maybe it’s nervous laughter. As for me, I can say that I ate in silence, with my mind elsewhere.
    When we got back to the hotel we spotted Frau Else. She was in the dining room, at the end that becomes a dance floor at night, next to the stage, talking to two men dressed in white. Ingeborg felt slightly unwell, maybe it was the Chinese food, so we ordered a chamomile tea at the bar. That was when we saw Frau Else. She was gesticulating like a Spaniard and shaking her head. The men in white stood as still as statues. It’s the musicians, said Ingeborg, she’s scolding them. I didn’t care who they were, although I knew they weren’t the musicians, whom I’d happened to see the night before, and who were younger. When we left, Frau Else was still there: a perfect figure in a green skirt and black blouse. The men in white, impassive, had only bowed their heads.

AUGUST 23
    A relatively uneventful day. In the morning, after breakfast, Ingeborg left for the beach and I went up to the room ready to start work in earnest. A little while later, it was so hot that I put on my bathing suit and went out onto the balcony, where there were a couple of comfortable lounge chairs. Though it was early, the beach was already crowded. When I came back inside I found the bed freshly made, and sounds from the bathroom informed me that the maid was still here. It was the same girl from whom I’d requested the table. This time I didn’t think she looked so young. Her face shone with exhaustion, and her sleepy eyes were like those of an animal unaccustomed to the light of day. Evidently she didn’t expect to see me. For a moment she seemed about to run away. Before she did I asked what her name was. She said it was Clarita and she smiled in a way that was disturbing, to say the least. I think it was the first time I’d seen anyone smile like that.
    Perhaps too brusquely, I ordered her to wait, then I found a thousand-peseta note and put it in her hand. The poor girl gazed at me, perplexed, not knowing whether she should accept the money or what in the world I was giving it to her for. It’s a tip, I said. Then came the most astonishing part: first she bit her lower lip, like a nervous schoolgirl, and then she gave a little curtsy, surely copied from some Three Musketeers movie. I didn’t know what to do, how to interpret her gesture; I thanked her and said she could go, thoughin German, not in Spanish, which I’d been speaking before. The girl obeyed immediately. She left as silently as she’d come.
    The rest of the morning I spent writing in what Conrad calls my Campaign Notebook, outlining a draft of my variant.
    At noon I joined Ingeborg on the beach. I was, I must admit, in a state of exaltation after having spent a productive morning with the game board, and I did something I don’t usually do: I gave a detailed account of my opening strategy, until Ingeborg interrupted me, saying that people were