Turning the further pages of my atlas I came upon an elaborately
illustrated directory of the uniforms and insignia of the various
military and civil ranks and classes. As I had already anticipated, I
found that any citizen in Berlin could immediately be placed in his
proper group and rank by his clothing, which was prescribed with
military exactness.
Various fabrics and shades indicated the occupational grouping while
trimmings and insignia distinguished the ranks within the groups. In all
there were many hundreds of distinct uniforms. Two groups alone proved
exceptions to this iron clad rule; Royalty and free women were permitted
to dress as they chose and were restricted only in that they were
forbidden to imitate the particular uniforms of other groups.
I next investigated the contents of Armstadt's desk. My most interesting
find was a checkbook, with receipts and expenditures carefully recorded
on the stubs. From this I learned that, as Armstadt, I was in receipt of
an income of five thousand marks, paid by the Government. I did not know
how much purchasing value that would amount to, but from the account
book I saw that the expenses had not equalled a third of it, which
explained why there was a bank balance of some twenty thousand marks.
Clearly I would need to master the signature of Karl Armstadt so I
searched among the papers until I found a bundle of returned decks. Many
of the larger checks had been made out to "Katrina," others to the
"Master of Games,"--evidently to cover gambling losses. The smaller
checks, I found by reference to the stubs, were for ornaments or
entertainment that might please a woman. The lack of the more ordinary
items of expenditure was presently made clear by the discovery of a
number of punch marked cards. For intermittent though necessary
expenses, such as tonsorial service, clothing and books. For the more
constant necessities of life, such as rent, food, laundry and
transportation, there was no record whatever; and I correctly assumed
that these were supplied without compensation and were therefore not a
matter of personal choice or permissible variation. Of money in its
ancient form of metal coins and paper, I found no evidence.
~3~
In my mail the next morning I found a card signed by Lieut. Forrester of
the hospital staff. It read:
"The bearer, Karl Armstadt, has recently suffered from gas poisoning
while defending the mines beneath enemy territory. This has affected his
memory. If he is therefore found disobeying any ruling or straying
beyond his permitted bounds, return him to his apartment and call the
Hospital for Complex Gas Cases."
It was evidently a very kindly effort to protect a man whose loss of
memory might lead him into infractions of the numerous rulings of German
life. With this help I became ambitious to try the streets of Berlin
alone. The notice from the tailor afforded an excuse.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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