The Empire of the Senses (44 page)

What he couldn’t wrap his head around was how Wolf seemed perfectly happy with Carin today, and yet yesterday he was ogling the Czech girl who worked in the university cafeteria dishing out potatoes and schnitzel. Over lunch, he couldn’t stop talking about how he wanted to see her naked, how he would relish her scent of grease and sweat
—the smell of work
, he’d exclaimed. When he took up with a new woman, he
told Franz all the details, almost as if he knew how much it both aroused and tortured him. Franz braced himself for when Wolf would inevitably describe the Czech’s full-bodied figure, her scrubbed rural face, how she’d complied with his every fetish. It sickened him that Wolf debased himself like this, when he had Carin and Franz. Carin, who fluttered on the margins of their conversations like a carefree butterfly, happy to retreat into the background when Wolf wanted to be alone with Franz. She was too concerned with redecorating their future apartment or buying gloves at Wertheim’s or throwing monthly soirees to interfere with the deeper, more serious bond between Franz and Wolf. And now with Greta, they’d reached a healthy equilibrium—he was no longer the pitied third wheel, and Wolf, it seemed, liked him all the more for it.

They pulled over for a rest in the park. Spreading a blanket down on a sunny patch of grass, they lounged in their coats and hats, turning their faces to the sun. Greta pulled out a thermos of hot coffee, and Carin placed tea sandwiches made with mustard and pickles and ham onto individual embroidered napkins. Wolf sat back on his elbows and motioned for Carin to put her head in his lap. She held up a little mug of coffee and asked, “Don’t you want some?” but he only smiled back at her, an intimate knowing smile. Franz tried not to watch them relaxing on the blanket so casually, as lovers are prone to do, and instead stuffed his face with sandwiches. At least Wolf no longer asked about Vicki, which he had found particularly distasteful. Wolf lost interest after Vicki repeatedly ignored his calls. Then he started bringing Carin around, and now proclaimed he was utterly in love.

Greta watched Franz eat, cupping her hands around a mug of coffee and making passing comments about the weather predicted for the cycling races upcoming and what a shame it would be if it rained.

Franz continued to eat, nearly choking on a piece of ham. “Yes, it’s a real shame,” he said, stealing a glance at Wolf, who tickled Carin’s nose with a fallen leaf. As if she could feel his gaze, Carin glanced over at Franz. Their eyes met. She nestled closer into the gabardine folds of Wolf’s trench coat. “No need to turn all gloomy on us, Franz. The sun is shining as we speak.”

Wolf grinned. “I actually see a black cloud hovering over his head.”

Franz nodded, feeling the weight of the food, his throat tightening. Carin lightly kissed Wolf on the lips, and he buried his face into her neck. She laughed loudly, and then Wolf looked up, speaking to no one in particular. “Isn’t she just the bee’s knees?”

Despite feeling bloated and repellent—his fingers were greasy and crumbs had fallen on his trousers—he reached for a slice of marzipan tart. Greta sat as still as a statue, passing Franz long doleful looks. She wanted him to charm her, to make jokes and flirt, but instead, he stolidly ate and drank and didn’t bother to wipe his hands. He was being a perfect barbarian, but what did it matter anyway? Wolf and Carin’s limbs were entangled at this point—her long, slender leg encased in silk twined with his tweed trousers—and Franz felt as if he were witnessing the creation of some mythical Chimera. They cooed and whispered and tickled each other while Franz imagined vomiting over the tartan blanket. That would certainly ruin this little love nest. At night in the bathroom, Franz occasionally stuck a finger down his throat, disgusted by the sheer amount of matter he’d ingested. Afterward, he felt light and pure, his throat tingling and burning from the acidic backwash, a not entirely disagreeable sensation. Perhaps I could do it now behind the bushes, he thought.

A few blackbirds squawked overhead. Carin crinkled up her nose and said she hated blackbirds because they were ugly and made too much noise.

“Then we shall have them all killed,” Wolf replied.

The light was starting to fade, and a chill permeated the air. Greta began rolling up the blanket. Carin packed the mugs back into the wicker basket. As they were leaving, a family arrived. Eastern European Jews, judging from their heavy black clothing and guttural speech. The woman wore a headscarf, and the children stared down at the ground. They spread their blanket nearby and took out a thermos. The husband started to eat without offering his wife and children any food, and they watched him eat. Franz tried not to look at them, so the family amounted to a black blurry grouping on the periphery of his vision. He
could tell the others were doing the same, turning their heads away and moving quickly in an attempt to block out the distasteful scenery.

Wolf sped through the park. Greta and Carin clutched the brims of their hats. When they reached the Siegesallee, lined with white marble statues, Wolf slowed. They passed by Albert the Bear, his arm frozen in salutation.

Carin yawned into the wind and said they’d left in the nick of time. “It’s disagreeable really, to encounter such types.”

Greta nodded. “They should be barred from public places. It saps the enjoyment of others.”

Franz saw Frederick the Great, sword at his side, followed by a string of lesser Fredericks. Even though most people mocked the overdone statues, Franz secretly loved them.

Carin checked her lipstick in a rhinestone-encrusted compact. He remembered when Wolf had bought it for her a few months ago. “And there are always so many of them clumped together like that.”

Wolf sighed. “They multiply faster than fruit flies.”

“It’s a real problem,” Franz said, his stomach knotting.

They exited the park and pulled onto the main boulevard, clogged with slow-moving traffic. Wolf said that after winning the war, gaining control over Russia, England, and Palestine, and then trying to seize Germany as well and meeting their first real defeat, the Jews had gone completely mad and were suffusing the world—especially easy America—with anti-German propaganda. He lit a cigarette, passing it over to Carin who smoked and pouted.

“All I know is the first apartment we saw—the one I fell in love with on Bellevuestrasse, right next to the Esplanade—is owned by a Jew—Bella Fromm—and she wouldn’t sell it to us because we aren’t Jews. Imagine, Wolf almost said his first name was Samuel or Daniel or something like that to get us an interview, but the moment she took one look at me, she hated me.”

Carin passed the cigarette to Greta, who took a puff and passed it back. “You wouldn’t have wanted to live there anyway,” Greta said.

Carin sighed, covering her eyes from the lowering sun. “But the windows, the way they curved around the corner of the building—it was spectacular.”

“If you like living in a fishbowl,” Wolf said, pressing on his horn. The sound startled Franz, and he jumped in his seat.

Wolf’s eyes flickered in the rearview mirror. “The thing about Jews is they’re so damn jumpy. Their nerves are shot. They dart and dash from here to there as if the streets are about to open up and swallow them whole.”

“It’s how you can pick them out of a crowd,” Franz offered, his heart racing.

Wolf held Franz’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “Unless you’re a quick study.”

Greta described a friend of hers, Sabina, who was so elegant and refined, you would never guess her father was a Jewish tailor, and Carin added that of course there were exceptions to any race, but overall Jews were physically less attractive than Aryans. She flicked the butt of her cigarette into oncoming traffic.

Franz reached into his satchel and waved around the pamphlets that Lutz had instructed them to distribute. The moment he started speaking, the words fell flat. “If you read these pamphlets, you’ll never be fooled again!”

No one said anything. After a few minutes, Greta asked what the pamphlets said, but Franz ignored her, annoyed by her insipid attempt to soften the silence. Carin looked bored and tired, not bothering to cover her mouth when she yawned.

Franz sat there, his stomach bloated and hard, full of marzipan raspberry tart and coffee and mustard sandwiches. He felt he should say something more, but he couldn’t think of what. Instead, he stared at the passing cars.

They were dropping off Greta, then Carin. Wolf and Franz planned to drink and play cards at the Josty afterward. He imagined how he would let Wolf win at cards and how after a few beers, Wolf would inevitably
soften toward him, and by the end of the night, all this unpleasantness would be forgotten.

But it wasn’t. When Wolf pulled over to drop off Carin, the motor running in front of her family’s town house, complete with turrets and diamond-shaped stained-glass windows, she leaned her head on his shoulder. “Won’t you come in and say hello to Mother?”

Wolf whispered into her ear.

Franz stared down the long empty street.

“She always asks after you.” Carin then motioned to Franz. “But I suppose you have to play cards with him.”

Wolf twisted around, grinning in the moonlight. “You don’t mind finding your own way home, do you?”

“That’s all right,” Franz managed, his heart sinking.

Carin gathered up her things. “Mother will be so pleased.”

“Take these pamphlets as well?” Wolf slung a satchel of pamphlets into Franz’s chest. “I don’t have time to distribute mine, and I can’t just dump them.”

Carin watched for his reaction, her eyes glittering like a cat in the night.

“Yes, of course,” Franz muttered.

They all got out of the car.

Franz stood on the sidewalk, watching Wolf’s arm link through Carin’s. They climbed the steep stone steps, Wolf’s head inclined toward hers. The front door opened, flooding them in warm light.

29

On his way out to Alfred Flechtheim’s soiree, Lev bumped into his son in the foyer. Franz was just coming home, after having missed dinner for the fifth consecutive night, and Lev was surprised and somewhat startled to see him. He held his hat to his chest. “We were thinking of giving up your seat at the dinner table—you don’t mind, do you?” The joking tone did not make much of an impression.

Franz stared at Lev and hoisted his duffel bag over his shoulder.

“What have you got there?” No, I shouldn’t have said that, Lev thought. He hates it when I ask too many questions.

“Nothing.”

“I see.”

Franz pushed past his father, the duffel bag banging into the glass vase perched on the entry table. White roses and water spilled onto the parquet floor.

Lev called for Marthe.

Franz made his way up the stairs.

Lev raised a hand. “Well, good night then.”

“Good night,” Franz called, disappearing at the top of the stairs.

He’d gone quiet over these past months, especially since the summer, as if he were conducting clandestine experiments in his room and could not be bothered to even eat dinner with the family. Lev knew he’d probably joined the Reichswehr, but the young men, from what he could gather, were generally polite in their slim-fitting blue uniforms and mainly concerned with keeping the peace, even if it meant breaking up the occasional Communist rally or whatnot. Lev didn’t approve of such militarism, and he failed to see why Franz scurried to and fro as if
ferrying a grenade under his overcoat. But then again, they’d all been lost in their own thoughts, coming and going through the house as if it were the Friedrichstrasse train station, doors opening, doors closing, people in and people out. When he was young, he couldn’t just come and go as he pleased—but his children preferred to live their own lives, rejecting any semblance of a schedule, and Lev supposed in this way Vicki and Franz exemplified the new generation.

Vicki had started leaving the house directly after dinner, always with an excuse—a lecture, a birthday party, a new jazz club, drinks at Die Tavern, but her fluttery erratic movements, the way she wore a hint of pink lipstick and carefully fixed her hair, suggested she was meeting someone in particular instead of the vague list of acquaintances she rattled off whenever Lev asked precisely whom it was she so rushed to see. The other night, when Vicki checked herself in the foyer mirror one last time, Lev joked, “Is he so important that you must forgo a bit of chocolate pudding and coffee?” She had not heard him cross the living room, immersed as she was with the curl of her hair under her earlobe. Having been caught off guard, she did not have a ready reply.

“Aha!” Lev said. “The answer is written all over your face.”

Her cheeks reddened even more, her eyes bright and glowing. It was the look of infatuation, maybe even of love. Lev knew it well. It was not so different from the way Josephine had been staring up at the chandelier in the living room as if expecting the angels themselves to descend, springing out of the crystal. She always assumed this look after dinner when, biscuit in hand, she stared upward, rapture and mystery shrouding her face. And then she would turn to him, her eyes misted over, and ask, very politely, if he wouldn’t mind leaving the room.

Despite having been here a handful of times, Lev never failed to find Alfred Flechtheim’s apartment disorienting—it was all hard edges, steel and glass and chrome, straight-backed chairs and bright white walls and shiny fixtures everywhere, so that Lev constantly caught his reflection in the silver border of a picture frame, in the mirror made out of glass shards hanging precariously over a doorway, in the domed
lampshade made out of chrome. He guessed the white walls were so intensely white to better display the art Alfred and his wife collected and sold—art people mocked because they said it was ugly. But Lev poured over the Braques and Picassos and Modiglianis, taking in one picture after another as if wandering through a maze, some disturbing, some exhilarating, some incomprehensible. The spacious apartment was composed of various interconnected rooms, and Lev often found himself in an empty corridor, alone with one of Picasso’s weeping women, her eyelid snagged into a sharp triangle of color, her nostrils flared like a disgruntled horse. Before the war, he might have felt the needling ache of regret encountering such paintings as he recalled his former artistic aspirations. But now, years later, a tepid admiration washed over him at the sight of others who possessed more talent, more drive, more desire. And so, as expected, the art of others grew into a pastime—he visited galleries and knew the dealers. He befriended Alfred Flechtheim, the photographer Hugo Erfurth, the painter Max Beckmann and his second wife, Quappi, as well as Beckmann’s devoted patron, Käthe von Porada, a Viennese woman with slender, perfectly shaped hands. Everyone knew she was in love with Beckmann, who accepted her devotion with a gruff, superior air.