“I am not suggesting any such thing at all, dear Count, but rather that in matters of fashion there are no borders. It only requires taste, sense of style, and well, of course, money. Now, let me alert the photographer from my newspaper that a picture must be taken of your wife and I shall get the details of the dress from her myself. It’s silk faille, I believe.”
The count chuckled now. “Oh, that is woman’s business. I wouldn’t know such things. Please go ask her.”
Baba whisked me away as I marveled how she had averted what could have been a real disaster. Her fingers dug into my arm.
“Idiot,” she murmured. “All of them. These Nazis, they worm their way into everything.” She had lowered her voice and was whispering behind the small notebook she carried. “According to my sources, who shall go unnamed, Helldorf is one of the worst. He’s responsible for all sorts of Jew baiting. I’ll bet you anything he was behind those two SA in front of Wertheims.”
Baba stopped as we made our way to a bay in the lobby, where a long table had been set up with several immense silver tea urns and tiered platters of pastries. Several people, including many SA and SS officers, were gathered around the table balancing teacups on saucers with petit fours.
“Look at them all. And to think six months ago when they were banned they didn’t dare wear their uniforms in public. Now they’re a virtual sea of brown and black, and their ladies all decked out, most of them atrociously except the few who crossed the Rhine into France for French couture!”
Countess Helldorf approached us, and Baba put a big smile on her face.
“Ah, Countess Helldorf. This is not Charles Worth but . . .” Baba was scanning the countess up and down with admiring eyes.
“No. House of Lanvin. Whoever said it was Charles Worth?”
“Your darling husband. But what do husbands know?” Baba laughed gaily. “I must get your picture.” Baba turned. “Fritz! Fritzi, over here.” She waved to a man who carried a Leica camera with a coiled wire attached to a folding fan flash.
“Ah, look happy!” Fritzi said to us. “Say Zweibeln.” Zweibeln—onions? But it did make one’s mouth stretch into a smile. So we all laughed and the flash fired and a galaxy of light burst in front of me. For a few seconds there were no Brown Shirts, no black-clad SS. Just white exploding light. It was as if the sky was falling down.
chapter 16
We see men living with their skulls blown open; we see soldiers run with their two feet cut off. . . . We see men without mouths, without jaws, without faces. . . .
-Erich Maria Remarque,
All Quiet on the Western Front
“Is the ‘E’ right side up or upside down?” “Upside down I think.” “All right, now tell me the lowest line on the chart you can read?”
“F-E-L-O-P-Z-D.”
“And now is that sharper or not?”
I was at the ophthalmologist’s office, Dr. Feininger ’s. He was Papa’s eye doctor, too.
“Well, my dear, the good news is that you are not nearly as nearsighted as your papa, but he seems to do pretty well even so with his stargazing. However, you do need to wear spectacles for reading, especially in school for seeing the blackboard. So now you get to do the fun part and pick out a pair of frames. My assistant will help you.”
It wasn’t that much fun, for the selection was very limited. I could have spectacles with no frames, just the glass lenses. Or I could have ones with silver, gold, or black thin wire frames. The shape could be round or rectangular. Rosa had come along to help me decide. She loved my haircut and of course had come up with the perfect fashion touch.
“You must wear scarves around your neck. Scarves will set off the shape of your head with this new hairdo. Very chic!”
I had protested that it was too hot to wear a scarf. But Rosa shut her eyes tightly as if she had delivered this lecture a thousand times. “On occasion one has to suffer for beauty. What’s a little heat?”
All I could think of was the famous dancer Isadora Dun-can, who a few short years back had died when her long flowing scarf was caught in the wheel of an automobile. That was suffering. It was a story that had entranced Ulla, and since I was always captivated by anything my older sister was interested in, I started reading all the news stories about her too. It had all the elements of drama and tragedy that engaged us. But it was a high price to pay for glamour.
Rosa and I looked at the spectacles in the case. “There would be more of a selection,” I whispered, “if I were missing an eye.” The case next to the one with the spectacles contained a huge variety of glass eyes. It was well known that Dr. Feininger carried the best glass eyes in the city. After the Great War it was said that nearly one-fifth of the returning soldiers were amputees or had lost some body part: arms, legs, and eyes. Yes, many had lost eyes. One saw these maimed veterans of the war in the streets all the time. In Dr. Feininger’s window he still had a sign, now almost fifteen years after the war ended, that announced that he provided reduced rates and easy, no-interest payment plans for war veterans.
The assistant came out and I began trying on different frames. It was a lot easier than choosing my two new dresses. I settled on black wire frames with round lenses.
“You don’t think I look too owlish?” I asked Rosa.
“No. Not at all. Intelligent but not birdlike. Très chic.”
The spectacles would be ready by the time school started. We had just walked out the door when Rosa screamed, “Watch it!”
A splatter of red paint accidentally hit her legs. Two thuggish looking young boys were crouched by the curb. They laughed and took their paint can and started running. On the wall of the building they had painted a swastika.
We knew about the painting squads, gangs of rough-necks who went out at night defacing Jewish businesses and public buildings with swastikas and signs that screamed WE WANT HITLER or HEIL HITLER. But I had never heard of them doing this in the day.
“In broad daylight!” I exclaimed. “I can’t believe it.”
“Why not?” said a woman walking by with her schnauzer on a leash. “He’s a Jew doctor.”
Rosa and I turned and looked at each other in dismay. The boys were thugs, but this lady was well dressed. She wore a hat with a veil and white gloves. She could have been my mother or Rosa’s, out to meet a friend for lunch at Ciro’s. It seemed like she should know better, but beneath those nice clothes I felt she was as thuggish as the boys. Once again I thought of Hertha rolling out that pie crust so calmly while the radio blared the news about the destruction of the synagogue. How many Herthas are out there, and how many well-dressed ladies who would never think of leaving their houses without their gloves and veiled hats, but who think that with Hitler there might be a chance? Or, as Hessie said, how many are tired of being losers, feeling shamed by the Treaty of Versailles, and desperately need someone to blame—Jews! How easy.
On the way back to Rosa’s apartment we stopped at mine so I could pick up some books Mama wanted me to bring to Caputh. I told Rosa I would find some turpentine to get the paint off her leg.
As we approached our building I suddenly remembered that I would have to see our concierge, Herr Himmel—“Mr. Hell.”
I had hardly reached the front stoop of our building when he slithered out. “Ah Fräulein Gabrielle—back from summer holiday so soon.”
“No, Herr Himmel, I’m just here to pick something up. I am going right back to Caputh.” I didn’t feel he merited the details of my staying with Rosa. But of course, how could I not have anticipated he would want to share some gossipy details with me?
“Well, I guess you’re too young to keep an eye on that sister of yours. Not that it would do any good.”
One eyebrow hitched up, and his eyes slid down and to one side in a suspicious glance. The left eye seemed to crowd even closer to that vertical ridge of his anvil face. But there was something different about his appearance.
“Ah!” His eyes were suddenly merry. “You noticed!” He touch
ed the bristly smudge under his nose, the toothbrush-shaped mustache just like Hitler ’s. And just like those men at the tea Baba had taken me to.
“Noticed what?” I said, and rushed through the door.
“I don’t think your sister has spent an hour here all summer.” Rosa stood in the middle of the living room and looked about. There was indeed a strangeness as we entered the apartment. Even though Ulla was living there, Mama had covered much of the furniture in the parlor and the music room with summer drapery cloths to protect it from dust and sun. It was as if the air itself had not stirred since the day we all left.
“Didn’t she ever open a shade or a curtain?” I whispered. The entire apartment was swallowed in a dim half light. The whole reason Mama had put on the covers was so Ulla would be able to open the shades. I didn’t understand. I went into the music room. Ulla’s violin case was on a table covered with a thick layer of dust. I ran a finger over it, making a trail across the top. She couldn’t have opened it or practiced once all summer. So much for Vienna, I thought. Her audition for the conservatory would be coming up in the fall. If she didn’t practice, I didn’t know how she would get accepted.
Corners and bookshelves dissolved into murky shadows. The only signs of life were in Ulla’s bedroom. Clothes were tossed about carelessly. If Ulla was living here at all it must have been mostly in the bedroom, I thought. I went into the bathroom. Rosa came in a minute later.
“What are you staring at?” she asked
I looked around at her slowly. “He’s spitting in our basin.”
“What are you talking about?” Rosa said, confusion swimming in her eyes.
I nodded toward a toothbrush I had never seen before. “That’s his.”
“Whose? Karl’s?” she asked.
“Yes, who else’s?” I snapped. It was as if all the anger that had been pent up in me about Karl and Ulla suddenly sprang up.
I hadn’t told Rosa yet about the beer garden. I was ashamed. At first I had wanted to tell her, but then I realized I didn’t want anyone to know how I felt about what I saw, not even Rosa. It was one thing talking about them having sex, but the beer garden was something else. What if she didn’t think it was so wrong that Karl joined in the singing? It was, in a way, a perfectly innocent song about a nation that had lost a war to its perpetual enemy, France, decades ago, merely vowing to keep a watchful eye on the Rhine. It was not a song of hatred. And yet just as the perfectly good word Volk had been transformed and begun to acquire a loaded meaning, so had the song “The Watch on the Rhine.” There were undercurrents of vengeance, a veiled threat of domination. Ulla had sung the song, too. But Ulla hadn’t been standing on a bench like me. She had been too low to see the swastika on the young singer’s sleeve. Maybe she hadn’t really noticed that sparkle in Karl’s eyes. And if she had, maybe she hadn’t thought anything of it. But I had.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
“Gaby, what is it?” Rosa asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
I went into the music room and got the books that Mama wanted. We left before I could even look for the turpentine.
We didn’t talk all the way back to Rosa’s apartment building. Then I began to feel a little guilty about my mood and how short I had been with her.
“Look,” I said, “why don’t we go to the movies tonight.”
“Helmut doesn’t work at the theater anymore.”
“Oh no! Too bad.” I noticed a funny look cross her face. “What is it?”
“I was going to tell you earlier but it seemed like you didn’t want to talk about your sister.”
“What? Tell me.”
“He’s working at that cabaret where she is the bookkeeper—the Chameleon.”
“You’re kidding!”
“No! And he can get us in.”
“Into a cabaret?”
Rosa nodded.
“Oooh!”
“Want to go tonight? He said we can sit way in the back and watch the show. It’s supposed to be very funny. We can go out late. Mama’s staying over with grandma two floors above us. She will never know. They always are in bed sound asleep by ten.”
“I absolutely want to go! What’ll we wear?” I knew that my beautiful new dresses were not right for a cabaret.
“Leave it to me, your fashion consultant. I’ll figure out something.”
chapter 17
Do you know the land where cannons are in bloom?
You don’t? You’re going to!
- Erich Kästner,
“Do You Know the Land Where Cannons Are in Bloom”
“Look at her! Look at that skirt, it’s so short. You can see her bottom,” Rosa said. It was Ulla’s bottom!
“Nothing compared to what you’re going to see onstage,” Helmut said. He was the maître d’. He wore a cutaway jacket much fancier than his usher outfit at the movie theater, and his job mainly was to seat people and direct a waiter to take their drink orders.
Rosa and I were tucked into a tiny table in the farthest corner of the Chameleon. We were both wearing dark berets, black stockings that Rosa had borrowed from her mother’s bureau, and dark skirts of her mother’s that, with the help of belts and pins Rosa had refashioned to make shorter and a bit tighter. Over this we wore long, loose, jacket-style sweaters that buttoned down the front. We didn’t look exactly fashionable but we didn’t look like schoolgirls, either. We dissolved into the shadows, and Helmut promised us that Ulla would not see us. But we certainly saw Ulla. She was dressed in a very short skirt with black net stockings. She wore a sparkling sequin halter top. Her hair was piled up high and had a white plumy feather sticking out. She wore absolutely tons of makeup.
“I wonder how she keeps the books in that getup!” I muttered. She, of course, was not keeping books at all. She was the cigarette girl, passing through the tables with a tray that was filled with packs of cigarettes to sell to the customers.
“She actually does do the bookkeeping in the morning.” Helmut seemed at pains to somehow show us that Ulla was more than a scantily clad purveyor of cigarettes.
I shrugged. “Makes no difference to me,” I said, trying to appear detached. But it was a little disturbing thinking about how she had lied to all of us. I mean, even if she really was keeping books, it was still a lie of omission. She conveniently left out the scanty costume part.
“And as I said, you’ll soon see that there are many girls with less clothing,” Helmut said, perhaps trying to make me feel better about my half-naked sister.
I shrugged again but said nothing.
The lights dimmed now, and there was a metallic smear of cymbals crashing. A spotlight struck the center of the curtain. The master of ceremonies, Max Weltmann, peeked out from behind the curtain, almost shyly.
“This is his style,” Helmut leaned over and whispered to us. “He always delivers his opening monologue partially hidden. But he is very funny, quick . . . he has a sly wit.”
“Ladies and gentlemen—a poem, if you please, about the glories and glitter of lost wars, but triumphs none the less. This poem, set to music, is by Erich Kästner.”
“Erich Kästner?” I gasped. “The same?”
“Yes, the author of Emil and the Detectives!” Helmut replied.
This is going to be fun!I thought. A clarinet began to play, and Max Weltmann’s voice looped out into the smoke-curled darkness of the cabaret.
“Do you know the land where cannons are in bloom? You don’t? You’re going to!”
The song went on to describe business executives in their fine suits, but beneath, they wore soldiers’ armor. To me, it all seemed to be a sly reference to the growing belligerence and military spirit in Germany.
When he finished singing the crowd roared its approval. But I was astonished. I looked at Helmut.
“You’re right. He is sly. That was . . .”
“Subversive? Is that the word you’re looking for?”
“I guess so.” For th
e whole poem that Max Weltmann had sung was a parody of one of the most famous poems in the German language that everyone knew, a song sung by Goethe’s Mignon. To use these almost sacred lines as a humorous ditty sung in a cabaret was truly subversive!
I thought back on my last three days in Berlin: There were the two SA men at the department store, then the “empress” at the countess’s reception who was said to contribute money to the Nazi Party, followed by Count Helldorf at the tea, and finally the thugs painting the swastika outside Dr. Feininger’s office. I glanced over at Ulla. She was on the other side of the room. Suddenly her risqué costume didn’t bother me in the least, nor the fact that she had lied about parts of her job. In fact, it seemed rather courageous of her to be working in this subversive club.
“Do SA officers come here?” I asked Helmut.
“Not very often. And if they do, half the time they don’t get what Max is saying.”
“Oh good lord, look at that!” Rosa nudged me. The curtain had risen to reveal a dazzling human replica of the Brandenburg Gate, Germany’s patriotic symbol, which was located just west of Berlin’s center and one block south of the Reichstag, at the beginning of the avenue Unter den Linden. The gate seethed triumph and was the embodiment of all that was glorious in German history. On its top was the quadriga, the four-horse chariot that was raced in the ancient Olympic Games, with the goddess of victory driving it.
The replica also had a quadriga, but there was one difference: The goddess driving it was completely naked, as were her attendants, except for a few strategically placed leaves below their waists. Helmut had been right. Ulla in comparison was as well clad as an Eskimo on a dogsled run.