[...] contempt was written into her face [...]

I was at the Oriental that evening, just in time for the first show at 8.15. The girl dancing naked on the pagoda-like dance floor, to the accompaniment of a six-piece orchestra, had eyes that were as cold and hard as the blackest piece of Pichler’s porphyry. Contempt was written into her face as indelibly as the birds tattooed on her small, girlish breasts. A couple of times she had to stifle a yawn, and once she grimaced at the gorilla who was detailed to watch over her in case anyone wanted to show the girl his appreciation. When after forty-five minutes she came to the end of her act, her curtsy was a mockery of those of us who had watched it.

[...]

‘Oh, will you look at that?’ he chuckled, with schoolboyish glee. Put a nice frame around her ass and I could hang it on my wall.‘ He tossed back his beer and winked lasciviously at me. ’I’ll say one thing for you krauts. You build your women every bit as well as you build your automobiles.‘

Philip Kerr, Berlin Noir III: A German Requiem





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