By this time he had poured out, and I had drunk most of, the whisky. A peculiar thing happened: whilst it was I who drank the whisky, it was he who became genial—more than genial: almost friendly.
“What,” he inquired, “does your friend wish to do in Berlin?”
“Play the piano and make a little money.”
He grunted sympathetically, if a man may ever be said to grunt sympathetically.
“Money is difficult to make in Berlin,” he said, looking at me keenly, “but I will do my best for him. Six recitals, you say?”
“Six. And at this, our first interview, I wished to have just a rough estimate of what those six recitals are likely to cost.”
“Why, it all depends.... Another whisky?... No?... It all depends. Depends on all kinds of things. What hall do you want? I ought, perhaps, to tell you, first of all, what hall you can have: you see, you come rather late, very late, in the day. It is now November, and your friend wishes to play in January. All the halls are usually booked months in advance.”
[222]
]We went into particulars of halls, dates, etc. And then he began to scribble figures on a sheet of paper.
“Press?” he queried.
“I beg your pardon?”