Black Roses (13 page)

Rudi took off his cap, screwed up his eyes and pretended to contemplate the question.

‘Here’s an idea, Fräulein. Take everything in the
Beobachter,
and work out what would be the complete opposite. And that’s what you want to go with.’

At the memory of it Lotte grimaced.

‘Fräulein Harker, Berlin is not like your own country. You can’t say everything you think. Don’t give your opinion to anyone you don’t know.’

‘I’m a journalist, Lotte! It’s my job to give my opinion.’

‘I know that. But in the new Germany – how can I say this? – individual opinions are not so important.’ She cast around for inspiration. ‘This is difficult to explain but . . . people here are happy to be part of something larger and stronger than themselves. They feel they have struggled for long enough.’

Mary recognized that. The crowds she saw who flocked beneath Hitler’s balcony at the Chancellery, or who attended the rallies at the Sportpalast, obviously loved to be part of something bigger than themselves. The air was charged with emotion. She could see people thrill to it, and it made her realize there was something in the human soul that longed for drums and flags as much as ordinary things like warm beds and home cooking. Those parades had a way of making Mary, who as a reporter was already apart from it all, feel even more alone. Yet she had never properly considered that other Germans might feel the same way. People like Lotte, who took off her glasses and moved closer, though there was no possibility of being overheard.

‘You may not be afraid to say what you feel, Fräulein Harker, but it’s not the same for us. You don’t know what it’s like. We don’t dare say anything bad, in case we might be denounced or reported to the authorities. My friend went to the post office the other day to complain that the post service had been unreliable and she had to wait two weeks for a parcel. The clerk behind the counter threatened to report her. And then just last week I was queuing in the grocer’s and a woman moaned to me about the price of milk. Right in front of other people! I pretended not to hear and had to go away without buying anything.’

‘It wasn’t you complaining!’

‘I can’t risk it. Every night before I go to bed I think through what’s happened in the day and ask myself if I’ve done or said anything that could put us in danger.’

Mary reached out a hand to her arm. ‘But surely, Lotte, you don’t need to be afraid? You’re not Jewish. You’re not a Communist and, as far as I can see, you’re not an enemy of the state. Why should you?’

Lotte shook her head and drew her coat tighter like a flimsy shield against the dangers she saw around her.

‘It doesn’t matter about me. What I meant to say was, for you, perhaps, there could be risks.’

Lotte was probably right. Perhaps Mary did have a tendency to shoot her mouth off when she felt strongly about something. Was that why Frank Nussbaum felt she couldn’t be trusted to interview the Nazi top brass? In case some comment affected the delicate balancing act between America and the National Socialist regime?

She sighed. It was quiet in the office now, apart from the faint chuntering of the ticker tape machine. She stretched, gathered up her jacket, switched off the lights and locked the office door. As a result of her talk with Frank she had made plans to visit one of the new
Arbeitsdiensts
, the labour camps for young men and women, which were springing up all over the country. It had been Lotte’s idea actually. Her younger sister Gretl had just signed on for a six month stint at a place on the outskirts of Berlin. It was a good idea too. It would make the kind of simple colour piece about ‘ordinary’ German girls that would be sure to please the editor. And no danger of insulting anyone of any consequence. Meanwhile a handsome Brit reporter had asked her out. Perhaps that would be enough to take her mind off it.

Judging by the map, Helga’s apartment was in the east of the city, the other side of Mitte, with all the galleries and state buildings that Frau Lehmann had instructed her to see. Clara took a tram to Alexanderplatz and then walked. This part of the city was a world away from the prosperous, leafy streets of the western outskirts, or the affluence of the Ku’damm. No shiny Mercedes were parked in these streets and no one was painting and primping their houses the way they were in the smarter parts of town. Clara passed pale old men with wizened faces and eyes full of shadow. Children paused in their play to stare at her as she went by. There had been money here once, and gentility, yet now within the flag-stoned inner courtyards the buildings were in a state of severe dilapidation, with paint peeling from rusting balconies, sooty windows and water dripping from broken pipes. Turning a corner, she came to a street of five-storey tenements, dominated at one end by the tall cylinder of a brick water tower, and found the number of the building where Helga lived.

She opened the door and pushed the light, but nothing happened. A notice on the wrought-iron doors of the cage lift said the elevator was out of order so she climbed the staircase to the fifth floor in darkness. Helga flung open the door.

‘Welcome to my penthouse! The most prestigious address in Prenzlauer Berg!
Klein aber mein
.’

It was a joke, obviously. The apartment consisted of two rooms, one with a stove and sink in the corner, and a narrow bedroom, with an iron bedstead. Marlene Dietrich and Conrad Veidt shared space on the patterned wallpaper. In front of a flickering gas fire a pair of stockings hung. There was no bath, and the pile of damp clothes beside the chipped, enamel basin suggested that Helga did all her washing there. It reminded Clara of the digs she had had in Eastbourne, except, with Berlin’s chill evening air whistling through the cracks at the window edges, it was infinitely colder.

Helga herself was a splendid contrast to her dingy surroundings. She was wearing a leopard-skin coat with only underwear beneath it and crouched in front of a tiny mirror, plucking her eyebrows.

‘Just giving Nature a helping hand. Pluck them all away then shade them in. And never use mascara on the lower lashes. It makes you look tired. Marlene Dietrich told me that.’

Clara plumped herself down.

‘Have you always lived round here?’

‘Not far away. I was born in Wedding actually. Not such a swish area as your Frau Lehmann’s, in fact Kosliner Strasse where we lived was the poorest of the poor. But my darling mother did everything she could for us. She’s a nurse, and the kindest woman alive. I’ll never forget her coming home each evening and scrubbing her apron which was red with blood, then hanging it to dry before checking that we children had finished our lessons and there was bread and milk for the morning. I never met my father, but as my mother used to say, that’s his loss.’

She paused to apply lipstick, rub her lips together and kiss the air.

‘Then a kind uncle – well, not really an uncle but one of my mother’s friends, if you get my meaning – offered to pay for some dance lessons so I went to the Grimm-Reiter school – where I met Leni Riefenstahl, you know? Who made
The Blue Light
last year? Don’t say you haven’t seen it? It was wonderful! Though, my dear, she’s
much
older than me. Anyway, after that I found work as a dancer.’

‘How exciting! What kind of parts?’

‘This and that.’ Helga smiled brightly. ‘You can’t be too choosy. Work’s work, you know? You’ll have to wait. I won’t be ready for ages. Make some coffee. There, on the stove.’

Clara went over to the stove. She held her hands over the gas ring, warming herself, and spooned coffee out of its paper box into green china cups. Through the bedroom door she could see Helga hooking her stockings to the suspenders, and dabbing a touch of scent behind each ear. Clara looked around the room and as she did an oil painting caught her eye.

It looked like a headache in the form of art. The canvas was filled with manic swirls, like an explosion in a firework factory. In the foreground a woman lay, rendered in a harsh, angular light, legs sprawled across a purple sofa, intersecting planes of pallid flesh grotesquely convoluted, her face lasciviously contorted. Around her were men with hideous expressions, a beggar, a priest and a solider missing one leg, waving his crutch. The background was blood red and desolate, and a church with a broken steeple stood on the skyline. Clara had never seen anything like it. It took a few moments to realize that the woman was Helga herself.

‘If that’s your reaction, you can imagine what I thought,’ Helga smiled, emerging from the bedroom. ‘I only put it there to cover the damp. And because the artist is a good friend of mine.’

‘What’s it supposed to be?’

‘It’s a portrait. I did say: Darling, couldn’t it be a little more flattering, couldn’t it at least look like me? But he said something about needing to transcend the tyranny of external forms. I forget now. It seemed to make sense at the time. Anyway, enough of that. What matters is, how do I look right now?’

She was wearing a satin maroon dress which was too tight for her, with cleavage spilling over the low neck line.

‘Beautiful. So where are we going?’

‘Just to a bar. My old friend Frieda works there. I’m going to introduce you.’

‘Is Bauer coming?’

‘Not tonight.’ She fingered her necklace and gave a coy laugh. ‘But next week, you’ll never guess, they’re organising a meeting of film stars at the Lustgarten and he’s invited me! I need to look sensational.’

‘I’m sure you will.’

‘Can you imagine? Just a year ago I was dancing naked in the Tingel Tangel, and now I’m mingling with the new film stars of the Reich!’

She came over, caught Clara’s face and kissed her impulsively. ‘You’ve brought me luck, I’m sure of it.’

Helga ran her fingers down her dress with pleasure. There was something flighty and exotic about her, Clara thought, like some tropical bird which has fluttered down into a cold grey clime and decided to stay for the winter.

‘In fact, I have a teeny favour to ask.’ Helga pursed her lips. ‘For next week. I’m wearing a cocktail dress – a girl at the studios is going to lend it to me – and I wondered if those shoes you wore the other night, the ones with the rhinestone buckle . . .’

‘You can borrow them if you like.’ Clara looked at Helga’s own shoes which were scuffed and worn, the leather beginning to fray at the edges. ‘We’re obviously the same size.’

‘Could I? Really?’ Clara smiled. Helga’s excitement was rejuvenating. The tiredness in her eyes had vanished and she looked like a little girl who has been promised a treat.

‘Of course.’

‘I’ll take great care of them. I promise. It’s for a special occasion.’

‘I’ll bring them when I next see you. Keep them as long as you like.’

‘But,’ Helga paused, struck with a sudden thought, ‘what about you? Won’t you need your best clothes for evenings with Doktor Müller?’

‘I doubt it. I’m not planning on seeing him again.’

Helga stared at her, flabbergasted. ‘Why not?’

‘I realized he’s not my type.’

‘Whatever gave you that idea? You’ve only just met!’

‘The idea occurred to me when he started talking about wanting to see Communists lying dead in the street.’

Helga raised her eyebrows at this absurdity. ‘They all say that. That’s just men.’

‘Not the men I know.’

‘But can’t you simply, you know, pretend?’

‘Why should I?’

‘You’re an actress. You need to stay in work, don’t you?’

‘Not if Doktor Müller’s the price. Besides, I’ve already been offered an audition. For a Gerhard Lamprecht film.’

‘Oh, that’s wonderful!’ Clara noted the flash of envy in her eyes. ‘You should have told me. All the more reason for us to celebrate tonight.’

‘What’s more,’ Clara added quickly, ‘Albert says there will be plenty of roles for you too.’

‘Don’t worry. I know.’ Helga relaxed. ‘Bauer will see to that. But still,’ she added coaxingly, ‘there’s no need to be nasty to Müller. He’s awfully handsome. Not even married, from what I hear. And Bauer was telling me they’re all interested in you.’

‘Me? I can’t imagine why.’

‘You fascinate them. They’re used to putting women in two camps – wives and actresses. They sleep with the wives but they make love to the actresses. Actresses are for sex, but they get no respect. You’re a respectable girl, and an actress, so they can’t make you out. They don’t know what kind of bird you are.’

‘I don’t care. I’m not interested.’

‘Please, Clara.’ She came over to Clara, knelt theatrically and took her hands. ‘I need this. Bauer is useful to me. He could be the best thing that’s ever happened to my career. But if you offend Müller, then Bauer might be obliged to drop me too.’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t offend him. I’ll just keep away.’

‘That’s the same thing.’

‘I’ll be otherwise engaged.’

‘Please,’ she wheedled, ‘just think about it.’

She went across to collect her cigarettes and as she did Clara picked up a photograph from the mantelpiece. It was a little boy, perhaps six years old judging by the gap in his cheeky smile, holding a banner. Helga came over and snatched it away from her.

‘That’s private.’

Startled at her tone, Clara apologized. ‘I’m sorry. I was only looking. Who is it?’

For a moment, as she replaced the picture and straightened it, Helga looked as though she was not going to answer. Her previously pert expression had clouded, her features drooped.

‘It’s Erich.’

‘Who’s Erich?’

‘My son.’

‘You have a son?’

‘He lives with my mother.’

‘You never mentioned him.’

‘You never asked. Besides, what business is it of yours?’ She hesitated. ‘I was very young. Only sixteen. I was so innocent I hardly knew what I was doing and this big bruiser came on to me. I was too young to know any better and too scared to get myself out of the fix. So I had my son. I’ve made a couple of mistakes since then but I’ve dealt with them.’

‘You mean . . .?’

Helga smiled briskly. ‘There’s a woman in the west end who works in a maternity hospital and does a little private business on the side. Lots of the actresses have used her. It hurts like hell and it costs a hundred marks a time, but it’s better than the alternative. Only now it’s been outlawed she doesn’t dare perform operations any more so God knows what I’ll do if another mistake comes along.’