Free The Weimar Triangle by Eric Koch

Vicky said. “I really had the feeling I was establishing a magical contact with him.” She turned to Erwin. “What do you think, Herr Doktor ?”
    “I don’t find it strange at all,” Erwin replied. “We’re all thrilled when the uncanny stares us in the face. Are you writing about the exhibition for Ullstein?”
    “Oh no,” she replied. “No more journalism for me.”
    “So it is true,” he remarked, “that you were paid a record fee for the rights to your novel.”
    He was referring to Menschen im Hotel , which was now being serialized in the Berliner Illustrirte [ Menschen im Hotel is the novel on which the film Grand Hotel, starring Greta Garbo, was based. It was published in 1929, however, not in 1927.]
    “ Oh yes,” she replied happily. “I have no idea why. It’s no better than the nine other novels I published before. The joke is that nobody noticed I was making fun of the world I was describing. People thought I took it seriously. Even though the subtitle of my book was ‘a dime novel with undercurrents’.”
    “It would make a very good movie,”Erwin observed. “Maybe you thought of that while you were working on it. I liked the novel a lot. You are a born story teller. Each of your case histories is an account of a basic human experience, whether you thought you were making fun of the characters or not. You concocted them most ingeniously out of hackneyed popular fiction and breathed life into them. That is why your readers are taking them straight, and that is all that matters.”
    “Tell me more, Herr Doktor ,” Vicky beamed.
    “Let me try and remember. Your jewel thief: human decency and compassion. Your terminally ill accountant who is actually your hero: wisdom, humility and bravery. Your Russian dancer: loneliness and courage. Your lecherous business tycoon on the verge of despair: recklessness and ruthlessness. Your star-struck stenographer: naïveté and cunning.”
    Yella was beginning to feel a sensation in the lower part of her abdomen that she had not felt since falling in love with Kurt Simonsky three years ago. So it was happening to her again! With Kurt it was his expertise on Max Liebermann and Otto Dix that bowled her over. What was it this time? The civility and empathy he displayed toward Vicky? The great feat of memory — that he could remember so clearly what he had read?
    “By the way, Vicky,” Erwin continued, “I was interested in the way you dealt with the hotel switchboard as the nerve centre, and the concierge — what was his name, Senf? — as your … your Virgil.”
    “My what?”
    Erwin laughed.
    “I knew this would stump you. Your Virgil. Straight out of Dante.”
    “Oh, Virgil . Now I understand. Herr Doktor , I think you’re overdoing it a bit.”
    “Not at all. I admit I have to stretch things a little when I think of your work as a detective story. But it is a detective story, in the sense that it is a gradual revelation of what happened, though there is not one crime, nor is there one detective. In Hamlet, there is one crime and one detective — Hamlet. In Oedipus Rex, there is also one crime and one detective — Oedipus.”
    “You are placing me in very high-class company,” Vicky exclaimed. “Please continue!”
    “I will. I admit there are some minor differences between your work and the two venerable detective stories I have cited. As in Hamlet, you have a violent death. The ghost tells him who did it and the audience believes him but he, the detective, requires confirmation. In your case, too, the reader knows who was responsible, so there is no puzzle to be solved and no confirmation is required. You can concentrate on being human.” Erwin smiled. “By the way,” he continued, “I have discovered that many of the writers of detective stories I have read use the hotel lobby as a central space, but very differently from the way you use it. I am thinking of Conan Doyle, Emile Gaborian, Sven Elvestad, Maurice LeBlanc, Paul