Page 19 of The Banned Books of Berlin
Berlin, December 1932
Winter had come, and the city streets glittered with frost. Another Christmas was approaching but nobody felt like celebrating, the country gripped by fear as insidious and penetrating as the bitter cold. None of the parties in the Reichstag could agree and President von Hindenburg, old and frail, constantly resorted to invoking Article 48 of the Weimar constitution, which allowed him to rule by decree. He’d appointed von Schleicher as Chancellor, but the general couldn’t rally enough support and the government lurched from one crisis to the next.
‘Von Schleicher wants to get back into bed with Hitler,’ Gunther said. ‘Offered to form a government with our Adolf as Chancellor, as long as he could keep control of the military. Hitler said no, of course. He’ll never let anyone else get their hands on his beloved brownshirts and he’s managing just fine on his own, thank you very much.’
He stood back to let a girl in a silk kimono edge past him to the sink, where she seized one of the dirty glasses waiting to be washed and filled it with wine. They were crammed into the tiny kitchen of Maus and Elke’s apartment, along with half the artistic population of Berlin.
‘And do you still maintain Hitler’s nothing more than a puppet of the ruling class?’ Violet asked, her eyes sharp.
‘Hard to tell,’ Gunther admitted, lighting a cigarette and holding it aloft to avoid setting anyone on fire. ‘But they won’t smash the Communists without him, that’s for sure. Look, he might become Chancellor but if you ask me, he’ll be no more able to hang on to power than the rest of them.’
‘And then what will happen?’ Freya asked.
Gunther shrugged. ‘That’s anyone’s guess.’
‘Elke, darling,’ Violet cried, catching sight of her in the doorway. ‘Come and cheer us up. Gunther’s talking politics.’
‘But I’m too sad to be leaving for any sort of cheerfulness,’ Elke said, drawing Freya and Violet into a drunken embrace. ‘How will we survive without you, my darlings?’
She’d been given a last-minute place at the Paris Opéra Ballet School as someone had dropped out; she and Maus were moving there for Christmas. Maus had an introduction to the French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and was hoping to pick up work in a studio to keep her going.
‘You’re going to be such a success that you won’t have time to miss us,’ Freya replied, disentangling herself. She and Violet had reached an uneasy truce as time had gone by, but being in such close proximity was still awkward. A few weeks before, Maus had been commissioned to take some publicity shots at the Zaubergarten and had asked the two of them to pose together; Freya had flinched at Violet’s careless arm slung around her shoulder.
‘And we’ll be sure to visit,’ Violet added. ‘You know my sister lives there? You’ll be sick of the sight of us eventually.’
‘You must follow us to Paris,’ Maus said, joining them. ‘Seriously. Violet, you could live anywhere, and Freya, you’re independent now. What’s stopping you?’
Freya had spent a couple of nights sleeping on the floor in Maus and Elke’s apartment after she’d left home, plucking up the courage to ask Frau Brodsky whether she might be able to stay at the Zaubergarten, as long as Herr Goldstein agreed. Now that only four dancers were left, there was enough space to move the work table out into the girls’ dressing room and turn the workroom into a bedroom by adding a mattress on the floor and a camping stove. She would offer to pay a reasonable rent and keep an eye on the place overnight.
‘You can always ask,’ Frau Brodsky had replied. ‘I don’t mind one way or the other.’
Freya had been surprised she should be so amenable, but Frau Brodsky had become increasingly detached from her work at the club. Her husband was poorly and she seemed preoccupied by worries she didn’t want to share. She handed over a little more responsibility to Freya every day, keeping an eye on things in the background and offering advice when it was asked for.
Herr Goldstein was delighted with Freya’s idea and accepted immediately, though he was a little concerned to think of her alone in the club overnight. Without wishing to cause alarm, he showed her a way of slipping outside via an exit she hadn’t known existed; if any brownshirts caused trouble at the front of the building, she could leave via the rear. Adjoining the workroom was a smaller room – more of a large cupboard, really – where costumes and props were stored. A narrow door to one side, usually concealed by a stack of boxes, opened on to a staircase leading up to the ground floor. According to Herr Goldstein, this escape route had been constructed thirty years before by the premise’s previous owner, who’d run an illegal distillery in this basement and was frequently raided by the police.
Strangely, Freya didn’t feel frightened in the Zaubergarten once everyone had left. This was her domain, every inch of the territory familiar and private. Here she could breathe. It was blissful to walk around without any chance of bumping into Herr Grube or seeing Adolf Hitler glaring down at her from the wall. She began retyping her stories and discovered she knew all of them pretty much by heart – and now she was liberated to go into greater depth. When she’d finally finished the story about Gerda the dancer and her attempt on Hitler’s life, she told Wolfgang a summary of the plot and asked whether he would read it. By tacit agreement, they no longer mentioned what had happened at the Kaiserhof; she’d given up trying to persuade him not to pull a stunt like that again. She wasn’t sure how he’d react to her request but he only smiled and said, ‘An interesting premise. Everything’s grist to the mill, I suppose.’
She would have liked to join forces with him and talk about other ways they might resist the Fascists, but Wolfgang was a lone wolf and too unpredictable to be a useful ally. The Zaubergarten dancers were too absorbed in their rackety, precarious lives for politics and she couldn’t risk confiding in any of her old friends – whom she hardly ever saw now, anyway – in case they turned out to be Nazi sympathisers. Unexpectedly, she found herself becoming increasingly friendly with Franz Schwartz, who had given up trying to be an emcee and was now running the bar. Herr Goldstein had appointed an assistant, Werner, to collect each night’s takings and keep an eye on things, while he spent less and less time at the Zaubergarten. Rumour had it he was trying to sell the place.
‘Franz, what would you do if you lost your job here?’ Freya asked him one day as she was locking up. It was a question that had been keeping her awake at night.
‘I’m considering the movie business,’ he replied airily, buttoning his coat. ‘I have a contact at the Babelsberg film studios and the other night I met an American screenwriter at the Eldorado. He’s called Grant and looks like a cowboy. Can you imagine? And he says there’s plenty of work in Hollywood.’ He shivered as a blast of icy air swirled through the open front door. ‘Sunshine and oranges – sounds good to me. I’m on the waiting list for a visa at the US embassy.’
‘Well, just be careful,’ she warned. ‘Remember what happened last time.’ Schwartz was always being seduced by men who promised him the earth and inevitably failed to deliver. He’d recently fallen for someone who claimed to own a restaurant in Paris and was looking for a ma?tre d’. The restaurant couldn’t have been very successful, because its alleged owner disappeared in the middle of the night with Franz’s wallet and his best suit.
‘So young but so crushingly sensible,’ he said, winding a scarf around his neck and stepping out into the night. ‘Can there really be no romance in your soul?’
Freya smiled to herself as she slid the heavy bolts into place behind him. There was something endearing about Franz’s optimism, his refusal to lose hope no matter how many times he was disappointed. He made her laugh, although he took himself extremely seriously; she would miss him if by any strange chance the movie business snapped him up. Brick by brick, the foundations of her world were crumbling.
That Christmas Eve, Freya walked through the snow to the family apartment with a batch of Lebkuchen biscuits baked in the Zaubergarten kitchens, and the bottle of champagne Herr Goldstein had given her. Ernst had refused an invitation to tea at her room in the Zaubergarten and asked her to come there for supper instead. Herr Grube would be away, thankfully, but she would have to see Otto, and she wasn’t looking forward to that.
It was strange, being treated as a guest in what had once been her home. She discovered Hedwig the maid had moved into her old room – presumably so she could be on hand to work from morning till night – which was now crammed with clothes and china nick-nacks. The whole apartment seemed cramped and more fusty: crocheted mats on every surface, heavier curtains at the window, a salmon-pink tablecloth with a lace frill drooping to the floor and a sentimental picture of two kittens in a basket on the wall. A Christmas tree stood in the corner, already decorated, and the portrait of Adolf Hitler had been festooned with tinsel so that he glared out beneath an incongruously festive fringe. Surely Ernst hadn’t been behind these developments? He looked much the same in his best tweed trousers and waistcoat, his face giving nothing away as he greeted her casually; she might have been gone for a night, rather than weeks.
‘So this is what you’re drinking now?’ he said, eyeing the bottle of champagne. ‘Living the high life.’
She flushed. ‘Of course not. I brought it as a present.’
Hedwig appeared from the kitchen with glasses, looking lumpen as ever. ‘Ah, there you are,’ Ernst cried, strangely animated at the sight of her. ‘Will you join us for a drink?’
Freya stared at him, flabbergasted.
‘Why not?’ Hedwig replied, simpering. ‘I took the liberty of bringing an extra glass.’ She seized the champagne from Freya’s hands and made a performance out of failing to pop the cork before passing the bottle to Ernst. ‘We need a man for the job,’ she said, turning to Freya with a knowing smile and folding her hefty arms.
Freya watched the scene in growing disbelief: her father preening as he eased out the champagne cork, Hedwig flirting as she poured glasses and handed them out with a proprietorial air. Clearly, a drama was being played out for her benefit. The three of them stood making awkward conversation until Otto arrived, his cheeks pink from the cold. He didn’t seem at all taken aback to find Hedwig included in the family celebrations, and Freya got the impression he was enjoying his sister’s discomfort.
‘And how’s life in Schoneberg?’ he asked, drinking half his champagne in one gulp and not listening to Freya’s answer. What he really wanted was to tell her how smoothly the apartment was running now Hedwig was in charge, and how prosperous their household would become once Herr Hitler was made Chancellor.
‘Walther Grube is destined for great things,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if he ends up in the Reichstag.’
The table had been laid for four, Freya noticed, but she was prepared for anything now. Hedwig brought through a dish of roast carp with boiled potatoes and carrots and sat at the head of the table – Ingrid’s place – to portion it out and pass round the plates. Ernst took the seat opposite, ate with his head down and acted as though nothing were out of the ordinary. Hedwig demolished a mountain of food, then fixed her eyes on a point somewhere in the middle distance with her hands in her lap and an infuriating smile on her face while Otto held forth about what the coming year might mean for Germany. He was hoping for everything that Freya dreaded, and she felt too depressed even to argue with him.
Hedwig refused her offer of help with the plates when they had finished the main course, although she allowed Ernst to carry the rest of the dishes through to the kitchen.
‘How long has this been going on?’ Freya asked Otto quietly, once they were alone and the kitchen door was closed.
‘Since you left, pretty much,’ he replied. ‘She saw her chance and took it. She doesn’t spend many nights in your old room, needless to say.’
Freya winced.
‘Well, what did you expect?’ he said, helping himself to another glass of schnapps. ‘I imagine they’ll get married soon. This is all your fault, so don’t come crying to me when our inheritance is gone.’
Freya laid down her napkin. ‘I have to leave, I’ve a terrible headache. Will you say goodbye to Vati for me? And goodbye, Otto. I hope things fall into place for you.’ She couldn’t bring herself to embrace him and he made no move towards her.
It had been a dispiriting visit. On the way back, she made a detour via the cemetery to sit by her mother’s grave for a while and talk to her, as she did on special occasions such as birthdays and holidays. She didn’t mention Hedwig; instead she confided her feelings about Otto and asked Ingrid’s forgiveness. Her brother might have grown into a different person if he’d stayed friends with Leon instead of letting Hitler and Walther Grube turn his head, but as things stood, she wouldn’t care if she never saw him again. It was a terrible thing to admit, but such a relief to let herself stop trying to like him.