The Girl Behind The Curtain (Hidden Women) (6 page)

Chapter 6

Berlin, last September

After the languid mystery of Venice and the haughty chic of Paris, Berlin felt much more like London and perhaps, if I cared to admit it, that’s why it felt much more like it could be home.

My first few days there were blessed by brilliant late-summer sunshine. It was wonderfully warm: the sort of weather that makes you feel as though you’re on holiday the moment you step out of the office.

I’d reported to my new boss and met my new colleagues but the university term had yet to begin. I had no students as yet, so, when I wasn’t taking catch-up German lessons myself, I spent some time exploring the city. I’d visited before, on a school language-exchange trip and again to interview for the post I had just taken up, but I’d never done more than dash round the major monuments that were the top on any tourist’s ‘must do’ list. I’d climbed to the top of the impressive glass dome of the Reichstag building and had my photograph taken by the Brandenburg Gate. I’d even posed with a fake soldier at Checkpoint Charlie. I hadn’t been much more adventurous than that.

I was looking forward to getting to know Berlin a great deal better. It helped that I had some friends in the city already and they were eager to show me their favourite places. There was Clare, of course, my friend since our undergraduate days. And then there was Harry. I met Harry when we worked together at Selfridges during one Christmas break. Extravagantly camp, he was a real Marmite person in that you either loved him or you hated him. Fortunately, I loved him from the moment we were set to work side by side, keeping control of the queue for Santa’s grotto in Selfridges’ toy department. He could always make me laugh.

Clare and Harry both loved the city and shared their enthusiasm at once. It certainly felt like a place with a great deal going for it. Compared to Paris, the population seemed much younger and less uptight. Compared to Venice, everyone seemed to have more energy and drive. The Venetians were content to rest on achievements past. I suppose it made sense that Berlin seemed to be looking more to the future, given what a complicated past Germany had.

The first weekend I was in town, I met Clare and Harry for a tour of the real Berlin. We met at the sombre and moving Berlin Wall monument on the Bernauer Strasse. I’d always thought of the Wall as just that: a wall. Seeing a preserved section of the wide strip of no-man’s-land that had actually flanked the rather insignificant-looking Wall itself was surprising and chilling. There was a thick layer of sand, designed to make it impossible for an escapee to cross at speed or to do so without leaving a trace. There would have been dogs too and acres of barbed wire.

We walked from the Wall monument to the Mauerpark flea market, which was like a slightly more orderly version of Camden. There, Harry insisted on introducing me to the delights of various heavy German sausages. Suffice to say, we needed several beers to wash them down.

As we sat in a busy beer garden near the Kollwitzplatz, I told Clare and Harry about my upcoming research project. They both felt sure they could help me find interesting subjects for interview. I told them about my travels too.

‘You’ve been all over the place this year,’ said Clare with a hint of wistful envy. ‘What was Paris like? What was Venice like?’

I gave her the official line. They were both great cities and I’d had a great time. I’d got plenty of work done. She didn’t need to know any more than that. I didn’t mention Marco.

‘Any man in your life?’ Clare asked. ‘I was surprised when you broke up with Steven. I always thought you guys were perfectly matched.’

‘On the surface perhaps. You can never tell what’s going on beneath.’

‘A bit like Berlin,’ said Harry. ‘On the surface, everything’s organised and orderly. Underneath, there’s a raging heart. I tell you, Sarah. You are going to love being here. This city is totally crazy.’

At the end of the afternoon, we made plans to meet again later in the week, for a proper night out when Clare would take me to her favourite club. Harry made similar promises.

I went back to my new apartment alone. Passing Herr Schmidt’s door, I heard the sound of a Chopin prelude drifting out to greet me. I’d seen the piano in Herr Schmidt’s living room while we shared the cake but I’d had no idea he was such an accomplished player. The beautiful sound made my heart sting just a little. I hurried up the stairs before a wave of sadness could catch me.

I made myself a cup of tea and sat on the windowsill of my new bedroom, which had the best view of all the rooms I now lived in. I watched the wind in the tall trees of the Volkspark but my mind was elsewhere again.

What was Marco doing right now? Was life for him continuing as it had done for so long? A silent existence in a hidden room. Seeing only Silvio from day to day. Controlling his business interests from afar. Controlling himself, allowing no emotion to seep through and ruffle the calm of his orderly existence. Definitely no untidy love.

How had I fallen so deeply for someone I knew only at a distance? In real life, we had touched just once, when I reached out to take his hand as we sat in his study and he told me, at length and with more passion than I had imagined he had in his body, exactly why we could not and should not be together. Yet I felt as though we had been indulging in a wild, physical affair. When I thought about him, I could feel his hands all over me. I could almost smell him.

Alone in my room in Berlin, I fantasised about how it might have been, if Marco had not been so determined to hold me at arm’s length.

From the brief episodes of cybersex we’d shared, I’d got the impression that he liked to be in command. He liked to tell me what to do. There was a huge part of me that responded to that commanding aspect of him. I wanted to hand over the control of my fulfilment to him. I found responding to his instructions so exciting.

‘What are you wearing?’ was how it began that day in the library. But as my thoughts drifted, I remembered the Dior dress that he had given me to wear to the Martedì Grasso ball. It was so tasteful and elegant. If I had ever imagined myself as a princess, it would have been in a dress like that, beautiful yet understated. He had chosen so well. Not only had he got my measurements right, he had tuned in to my most girlish fantasies when he picked out the dress of my dreams with its skirt like a waterfall of feathers. The dress now hung in Bea’s wardrobe. She had offered to return it to me whenever I wanted but I was sure that I would never wear it if she did. Would it ever see the light of day – or evening – again?

As it was, I had worn the dress for just a few minutes. I’d put it on in my office at the university in Venice because Bea insisted that I should. When I looked at myself in the mirror that day, I did not know that Marco had been watching me for all those weeks. Did he imagine me as I saw myself then?

What if I had done everything differently? What if I had worn the dress as Marco planned and waited for him in the silent library, while the rest of his guests partied raucously in the courtyard? What might have happened?

He would have come to me. I was sure of that. I would have been wearing the
servetta muta
, the mask designed to keep its wearer quiet. He would have shown himself to me and the nature of my mask would have bought me time to take in his appearance without revealing my shock at the damaged living mask of frail flesh and paper-thin skin that was his face. Perhaps he would have taken my hand. The sound of his voice would have anchored me in the moment. It would not have taken long for me to see past the façade and greet him with the happiness I always felt at the thought of him and the written intimacy we had already shared.

He was ready for me that night. He must have been confident that against the romantic backdrop of the party, our first meeting would be a suitable beginning for a lifelong romance. Exactly how had he imagined it? Had he imagined me finally taking my mask away from my face and meeting him eye to eye? Stepping into his arms and breathing in the warm scent of expensive aftershave I now knew from the time I pressed his jacket to my face in his secret room? How would our first kiss have been?

And after we kissed? What then? Would he have locked the door to the library, so that we could make love on the desk at which I had spent so many hours?

I pictured him lifting me in his strong arms and carrying me there. I conjured a thought of him sitting me on the desktop and kissing me still as he unlaced the bodice of the perfect Dior gown. I imagined him loosening my breasts and caressing each of them in turn, burying his face in my cleavage, breathing me in.

Perhaps he wouldn’t have stripped me naked that day. Instead, he might have pulled down the bodice to let my bosom free, then pushed up my skirt to reveal my soft white legs. I remembered how he’d once told me that to see a woman half-undressed could be just as erotic as seeing her entirely bared to the world.

I wanted to see him naked. I would have undone his trousers so that his penis sprang free, already hard for me and eager to be inside. I would have fallen to my knees in front of him and taken him into my mouth, delighting in the flavour of his strengthening flesh. I would have sucked him until he begged me to stop.

At last we would have lain down together on the rug by the fire, with the Dior dress beneath me to cushion me from the hard floor. On our glorious bed of silk, we would have joined our bodies together in the ultimate way. We would have locked eyes as he entered me, reminding ourselves that this was not just a physical act. It was not just our bodies we were joining.

As he slipped inside me, how complete I might have felt.

I would have wrapped my legs around him, holding him close to me. I would have grabbed his firm square buttocks and tried to speed up his thrusting, driving him deeper and deeper inside. I would have felt his orgasm building inside him. I would have heard the telltale change in his breathing and felt the urgency in his pace. At the same time, my own ecstasy would have been gathering in intensity. We would have come together, of course. Losing control like two swimmers caught up in a tremendous crashing wave, tumbling helplessly until we were swept back to shore, to find each other once again as we lay side by side in the shallows.

While I thought about all this – what might have been – my fingers strayed to the warm wet place between my legs. My heart rate quickened at the thought of Marco’s hands on my body. My breath grew shallow and ragged. Ultimately, however, my orgasm arrived only in my imagination. In reality, it slipped away from me at the last moment. I could not let go of my sadness for long enough to come.

That first meeting in the library had not happened as it should have done because I didn’t trust him. I didn’t believe that Marco really wanted me. I thought he would be distracted by any girl in an amazing dress. So, rather than meet him myself, I sent Bea to test him and inadvertently I put him in a situation where he found himself humiliated. No wonder he had hardened his heart to me and decided not to make our love real.

The Hufelandstrasse grew dark as I sat on my windowsill. The house was silent. Outside, a car passed by and its halogen lights briefly illuminated my bedroom. The whole scene felt quite sad. That afternoon I had been full of optimism. Berlin offered a fresh start and new opportunities. But it’s true what they say: you can’t run away from the past. It just comes along in your suitcase. I may have been thousands of miles away from Venice but in my heart I was still very much there. It didn’t matter that I had erased his emails and thrown away his letters. I still couldn’t escape Marco Donato.

Chapter 7

Berlin,

Saturday 18th June 1932

Dear Diary,

I have been at the Boom Boom Club for just over a week now and I think I am finally getting the hang of things. On my first night, I dropped seven plates between the kitchen and the tables. On my second night, I dropped six. Last night I didn’t drop a single one. Thank heavens. Herr Schluter had given me a warning, saying I was costing him more than an evening’s takings in crockery each night and much as he liked my accent, if the situation carried on, he would have to let me go.

Herr Schluter is very kind. He told me last night that I remind him of his niece in Vienna. That revelation was not, thank goodness, delivered as an excuse to sneak a hand onto my knee, as seems to happen whenever Daddy’s friends get sentimental back in the gin-soaked salons of Surrey. No, Herr Schluter is a very upright man, which is odd when you consider his profession: running one of the most notorious cross-dressing clubs in Berlin. Marlene explained to me, however, that the underworld has its own codes of conduct and they are far more rigid than anything you might encounter in that which we call ‘polite society’. For Herr Schluter to cross the line with me would be utterly beyond the pale. As inappropriate as it would have been were we both working in a tax office.

The scantily clad girl I saw leaving Schluter’s office on the day I came for my interview was not, as I’d assumed, Schluter’s much younger lover, but a hooker he has been helping to give up cocaine. Herr Schluter is like a father to many of the girls on the street. He is insistent that nobody at the Boom Boom takes drugs. Nobody even smokes. Far too dangerous in changing rooms full of papier mâché and feathers. Marlene assured me that I am utterly safe within the Boom Boom’s velvet-flocked walls. Both physically and morally.