“Bacon!” she coughed. “Yes, indeed, one slice every two weeks! Enough to grease my tongue, if it needed it.”
A moment later I chanced to mention Holland. She broke off a mumbling account of the horrors of war suffering at home with:
“Holland! Isn’t that where our Kaiser is? Do you think our wicked enemies will do something wrong to his Majesty? Ah me, if only he would come back!”
Like all her class, she was full of apologies for the deposed ruler and longed to bask once more in the blaze of his former glory, however far she was personally removed from it. Nor had her sufferings dimmed her patriotism. An evil-faced fellow at a neighboring table spat a stream of his alleged beer on the floor and shouted above the hubbub of maudlin voices: “Ein Hundeleben ist das in Deutschland! A dog’s life! Mine for a better country as quick as possible.”
“Rats always desert a sinking ship,” snapped the old woman, glaring at the speaker with a display of her two yellow fangs, “no matter how well they have once fared upon it.”
The fifth meal to which the reader is invited was one corresponding to our “business man’s lunch.” The clients were wholesale merchants, brokers, lawyers, and the like. In its furnishings the place was rather sumptuous, but as much cannot be said of its food. My own luncheon consisted of a turnip soup, roast veal (a mere shaving of it, as tasteless as deteriorated rubber), with one potato, a “German beefsteak,” some inedible mystery dubbed “lemon pudding,” and a small bottle of water—beer was no longer served in this establishment. The bill, including the customary forced tip, was nineteen mk. eighty, and the scornful attitude of the waiter proved that it was considerably less than the average. Even here the majority of the dishes were some species of Ersatz, and the meat itself was so undernourished that it had virtually no nourishment to pass on. Of ten pounds of it, according to the wholesale butcher who sat opposite me, at least five disappeared in the cooking. Finish such a meal at one and you were sure to be ragingly hungry by three. Yet there was less evidence of “profiteering” in establishments of this kind in Berlin than I had expected. The ice-cold bottle of mineral water, for instance, cost forty-five pfennigs, a mere four cents to foreigners. The German does not seem to go over his entire stock daily and mark it higher in price irrespective of its cost to him, as in Paris and, I fear, in our own beloved land.
But there was one restaurant in Berlin where a real meal, quite free from Ersatz, could still be had, by those who could pay for it—the famous Borchardt’s in Französischerstrasse. Situated in the heart of the capital, in the very shadow of the government that issues those stern decrees against “underground” traffic in foodstuffs, it was protected by the rich and influential, and by the same government officials whose legal duty it was to suppress it. Admittance was only by personal introduction, as to a gambling club. The only laws this establishment obeyed were in the serving of bread and the use of paper in place of table linen. Meatless days meant nothing to its chefs; many articles specifically forbidden in restaurants were openly served to its fortunate guests. It depended, of course, entirely on Schleichhandel for its supplies. Among the clients, on the evening in question, were generals out of uniform, a noted dealer in munitions, a manufacturer of army cloth, several high government officials, two or three Allied correspondents, and Bernsdorff’s right-hand “man” in several of his American trickeries—in a silky green gown that added to the snaky effect of her serpent-like eyes. It was she who “fixed” so thoroughly the proposed attack on us from Mexico during the early days of 1917.
Four of us dined together, and this is a translation of the bill:
| Cover (tablecloth and napkins, or paper) | 2.50 | Marks |
| Two bottles of Yquem | 90. | |
| Wine tax on same | 18. | |
| Half-bottle Lafanta (ordinary wine) | 13.50 | |
| Tax on same | 2.60 | |
| Hors-d’œuvre (radishes, foie gras, etc.) | 150. | |
| Roast veal (very ordinary) | 80. | |
| Potatoes (cost, 1 mark in the market) | 12.50 | |
| Asparagus (plentiful in Berlin) | 54. | |
| Charlotte (a tasteless dessert) | 20. | |
| Ice | 6. | |
| Bread (one very thin slice each—black) | .60 | |
| Cigars (three horrible cabbages) | 18. | |
| Butter | 4. | |
| 471.20 | ||
| 10 per cent. for service | 47.15 | |
| Total | 518.35 | |
| Thankfully received, May 8, 1919 | ||
| Fritz Reich. | ||
At that day’s rate of exchange this amounted to something over forty dollars; at the pre-war rate, which was still in force so far as the German clients were concerned, it was about one hundred and twenty-five dollars. Small wonder the clientèle was “select” and limited.