The Empire of the Senses (25 page)

She gazed up at him as if he was a stone monument suddenly come to life.

Franz talked continuously about what they had done at school to help the soldiers, what kinds of weapons different regiments used, the types of uniforms and medals. “You’ll tell me all your stories?” he asked.

“Yes,” Lev said, catching Josephine’s eye.

“All of them? Even the bloodiest and scariest ones?”

“Even those,” Lev said, feeling the weight of his body in his bones, in the small of his back, in his shoulders.

“We’ll see,” Josephine said, ushering them into the sitting room.

The coffee Marthe had given him helped, but his stomach felt raw and tight—the last meal had been two days ago, blood sausage on a kaiser roll. He also had to urinate. He could not think of much else, though here he was, sitting on the velvet couch, his children at his feet, and Josephine fussing with a pillow, saying something about how it needed mending. The body always wins, he thought, trying to lean back into the soft cushions, but it felt unnatural. Outside he heard the whimpering of a small dog and the owner commanding him to keep walking. Through the half-drawn curtains, he could see the sun breaking through the clouds, casting the room in a yellow glow.

Franz reverently touched the tip of his boot.

Vicky nestled herself against his calf, hugging his leg.

His children, yes: that’s why he came back. He rested his hand on Vicki’s small shapely head. Her soft brown hair, the clean white part. She looked up at him in adoration. He smiled down at her and felt tears prick his eyes. Mitau—Leah—that old life was receding, as if new skin was already growing over a wound.

Lev let his head fall back onto the velvet couch. Was it this easy to surrender the past? Vicki squeezed his leg and murmured, “Papa. Papa,” in the same insistent way she used to chant when she could only utter a few words, when she was a year old.

Josephine settled into the couch, assuming her most fetching pose. It reminded him of when he used to court her, when she was barely nineteen, and she would sit in the most unnatural way with her back slightly arched and head tilted to the side, her shoulders pressed down
to accentuate her long neck. She would carry on long conversations with him seated in that pose.

She smiled brightly. “Don’t you think—”

He interrupted her. “I’m sorry.” He got up and rushed to the bathroom, enclosing himself in the small white marble chamber. He jerked the brass faucet handle to the left. Icy water rushed out, and he splashed his face before he let down his pants and urinated into the pristine toilet bowl. His head fell back, and he observed the mosaic on the ceiling of a faun peeking out from behind a tree, watching a woman with a lyre. His eyes swam, and he blinked hard, revisiting the apple orchards and Leah’s body under the branches, his hands touching the earth as he balanced himself above her. The lean white birches swaying in the wind, the calm sound of leaves as he fell asleep, his cheek on her chest.

“Darling?” Josephine called from outside the door.

He jerked on the chain next to the toilet. The swish of water drowned out her voice.

She lightly tapped on the door.

He leaned over the sink, both hands pressing down on the marble countertop. Water still gushed from the faucet. If he could prolong the moment and not open the door—a moment more before the morning unfurled and rolled into more days and mornings.

Josephine sighed. “Lev?”

“Yes, darling—I’m coming,” he said, cupping his hand under the running water and swallowing it down. He ran his mouth along his sleeve. Then he rushed out, closing the door behind him.

Part Two

14

Berlin, June 1927

Vicki leaned into the gilded vanity mirror, purring words into the glass. She liked the way her mouth looked when she said:
sex, flirt, five’o clock, cocktail, kiss, cigarette
. Her breath left little circles of condensation on the mirror, magical words remaining there until evaporating away. She repeated:
flirt, cocktail, sex
, attempting to catch the American cadence, mimicking what she heard on the radio, the endless stream of exotic sounds flowing out of the wireless on late golden afternoons when no one else was around. On those afternoons, she knelt on the plush carpet, her head against the velvet couch cushions, and closed her eyes, willing the American jazz, with the intermittent bursts of lively conversation, to transform the cloistered and heavily draped living room into New York City’s roaring streets. If she waited long enough, and kept her eyes closed, she would suddenly be floating down Madison Avenue in a light cotton shift, the gleaming store windows reflecting her figure, appearing more boyish and lithe than she really was.

She sighed, standing back from the mirror, rubbing the rouged lipstick off her lips with the inside of her wrist. She wasn’t allowed to wear makeup during the day. Only streetwalkers did that. But tonight, Elsa would take her to a special club, where she could wear lipstick and her best dress, the one with the golden spangles. Vicki smiled at her reflection again, shaking her head left and right, relishing her new bob. Her auburn hair skimmed just under her earlobes, accentuating the slender flutes of her oblong lapis lazuli earrings. For the first time, the image
she carried in her head, of what she wanted to look like, coincided with the image before her.

Two days ago, she had gone up to the roof of Elsa’s apartment building, where yellowing grass sprouted up in haphazard patches. The two girls often met here on Thursdays to listen to records and study
Elite
, a fashion magazine, imagining themselves in a zeppelin-printed dress or shimmering evening gown. Vicky had met Elsa in a drawing class where Elsa was the model. Vicki had sketched her long, bracingly white back for more than an hour, impressed by Elsa’s stillness. She’d only moved once, to brush away a lock of hair from her faintly open mouth. By day, Elsa worked as a typist in a large office with other typists. She claimed she could still hear the staccato sound of the keys ringing in her ears, and sometimes, at night in bed, her fingers moved of their own accord, striking at the keys. Which was how she became an insomniac. She went out to clubs and cafés, smoke-filled music halls and cabarets, bars and opium dens, cellars and rented rooms where clandestine entertainment was offered to those who wanted something a little different. She’d been to the Resi and the Josty, which made the best Turkish coffee to treat hangovers, the Femina, the Aleifa, the Eldorado, the Oh La La, and the Mikado Bar, best for transvestites. But bisexuals had the most fun, according to Elsa. She’d said this to shock Vicki, who wasn’t all that shocked, knowing Elsa had an ex-boyfriend who worked at Siemens, building generators for power plants, and that she was still hung up on him. She knew Elsa only ate rice pudding sprinkled with a little sugar and cinnamon for dinner because she worried about her figure, and that she read
Die Rote Fahne
religiously. Even knowing this, Vicki felt pangs of jealousy whenever Elsa described the little lanterns flickering in the Tiergarten, the cigarette lighters illuminating beautiful young faces for a quick instant before velvety night enveloped them again, the warm air throbbing with a sense of expectancy as they discussed Rilke, Picasso, whether or not marriage was compatible with modern life, whether it was wise or foolish to commit suicide, whether sunbathing produced a greater clarity of mind.

Vicki waited for Elsa on the roof, wondering if she would be late again, as Elsa was often late and disheveled, but in a sumptuous, alluring way. Rolling her silk stockings down her legs, Vicki looked out at the brick chimneys sprouting from the tops of the buildings, a staggering line of them as far as she could see, and she noticed how on the next rooftop, stray newspapers and gum wrappers littered the dying grass. Down below in the darkened courtyard, a boy yelled. Vicki glanced over the ledge; a group of children hovered behind an ice wagon, and a boy held up a block of ice while the others tried to touch it. “Get back, get back,” he shouted. “It’s mine.” It was awful, Vicki thought, the need in his voice, as if it could all be taken away from him in an instant. The sun warmed her bare legs. She sighed, wondering about the time, and wondering if the Reds were indeed gaining ground as Papa said, and wondering which record Elsa would bring today. Leaning back on her elbows, Vicki absently studied the fluttering red flag hanging from the next apartment window; on it was the hammer and sickle. She didn’t see this flag much in her neighborhood because, as Papa joked, they were the rich capitalists, and it would be quite unwise to advertise their own destruction.

When Elsa finally arrived, twenty minutes late, she brought a phonograph and planted it between them. Elsa also brought Vicki a handful of blue grapes wrapped in brown paper. “Apologies for my lateness.” She grinned, popping one into her mouth.

The two girls sprawled on the grass, the blades tickling the backs of their knees. The grapes nested between them, and when Vicki reached for a grape, her hand skimmed Elsa’s slim cool fingers, sending a slight rush through her wrist, up her arm.

“Something new today.” Elsa balanced a record between her flat palms.

Vicki turned her head, shielding her eyes from the sun. “What’s that?”

Elsa raised an eyebrow and then put the record on the phonograph. A deep husky voice began to sing in French, about lovely things.

“Her voice is as rich as Sarotti chocolate,” Vicki said, admiring the lines of Elsa’s swanlike neck, which was sporadically splashed with a
spray of rust-colored freckles. She knew Elsa hated her freckles and often used powder to cover them up, but Vicki thought they were pretty little additions.

“Josephine Baker,” Elsa replied. “She’s really got it.”

“It?”

“Sex appeal.” Elsa said this with a fatal air, as if it were the most essential thing in the world.

Stories below them, a policeman blew his high-pitched whistle and a woman shouted. Vicki didn’t dare look over the ledge this time. In the working-class district where Elsa lived, there was always commotion and fighting on the streets. And Vicki didn’t want to appear too curious or naive about such a place. Elsa often teased her about her posh upbringing, saying that she was out of touch with the proletariat, that soon there would be a revolution, and didn’t she want to be on the right side of history?

Vicki tugged on the dry yellow grass. She’d been inside Elsa’s flat a few times. She lived in Mietskaserne, a six-story housing block built around a maze of internal courtyards. Out-of-work men leaned against walls, smoking. The toilet was on the second level, and Vicki didn’t like to use it because it was shared. She didn’t want Elsa to know, so last time she waited until she got home, her bladder almost exploding.

“Hey V,” Elsa said, interrupting her thoughts, “I’ve got an idea.” She called her V because, as she explained when they first met, it sounded more modern, more androgynous.

Vicki pulled her knees into her chest. Elsa often had ideas that were not wholly acceptable, ideas that, if her mother knew about them, would cause her to consider Vicki a stranger. Last week, Elsa had convinced her to skinny dip in the murky green waters of the Wannsee, and when they were both underwater, Elsa had twined her legs round Vicki’s waist and the brush of her pubic hair had rubbed up against Vicki’s abdomen. Vicki blushed, thinking about it.

“I think,” Elsa said, on all fours, crawling toward Vicki, “you need to create a change.”

With Elsa’s smiling face inches away from hers, Vicki noticed how
the blue grapes had slightly stained Elsa’s lips and how she smelled of cotton and sweat and cigarettes.

“You don’t like my clothes?” Vicki glanced down at her sundress, muslin yellow with a scalloped hem.

Elsa suppressed a laugh, suddenly brandishing a pair of sewing scissors. “
Bubikopf
—you must.”

Vicki gasped. “You know I can’t.”

Elsa steadied her eyes on Vicki. “Frau von Stressing Perlmutter will understand.”

Her mother, with an equally long weighty braid, would not understand. The way her mother used to dress, like a historical object! Laced in corsets, covered to the neck in pleated cloth, layered in skirts and petticoats that made her every movement and motion artificial, her mother now seemed baffled without the security of all that clothing. She was sheepishly exposed, surprised by how the new silk shifts merely floated over her figure. Sometimes, Vicki would find her mother before the looking glass in a new dress cut to the knee, the fabric diaphanous and light, with an expression similar to the one Mitzi the dog wore after getting a summer shave: bewildered, mystified, self-conscious.

Elsa touched the back of her neck, and Vicki instantly felt deliciously calm and pliant.

She uncoiled Vicki’s braid. As her fingers worked her hair loose, she scolded Vicki. “You’ve been wearing it back like this, pretending it’s short, when all you have to do is cut it.”

“I know,” Vicki said, breathless, the sun suddenly too hot, sweat trickling down the sides of her torso, under her slip. She inhaled sharply. The cool metal scissor blade pressed against her neck as Elsa cut off a chunk of hair.

“See?” Elsa said, shaking a fist full of chestnut strands.

Vicki stared, recalling her mother’s advice about how a woman’s hair was a prized possession.

“Almost done,” Elsa announced, clipping off the last chunk.

Vicki’s hair fell around them, scattered on the grass, gleaming in the sunlight.

She bent back her head, turning her face up to the sun, suppressing the fear of going home. She shook her head left and right. Weightless.

Elsa whispered, “Don’t you like it?”

She faced Elsa, fingering the thick edge of her hair, where it ended now. “I think so.”

“You didn’t do this for me, did you?” Elsa’s eyes narrowed, as if such obedience was worse than refusal.

“Oh, no,” Vicki said, her breath catching in her throat. Although in part, she had.

Elsa smoothed down Vicki’s hair, running her palms along her temples. “Well, you have
it
now.” When she said
it
her chin jutted forward, challenging Vicki to accept this new gift.