The Cigarette Girl Read online

  Klaus’s cigarette dropped a tube of ash. “Would you want to hand over half your wages to France and England? Under Hitler, we’d stop paying reparations.”

  “I see,” said Grete. Sister Maria’s warnings about civil unrest came back to her then, and she gasped. “You have to be careful, Klaus. In the streets.”

  “I know. It’s not about punching someone’s face. It’s about changing minds.” He began speaking about the failed Republic. The Social Democrats were weak, he said; they were able neither to tame the radical Socialists nor to learn from the strength of the Nazis. He spoke of blood, good German blood, tainted from the outside and from within. She watched his bird’s profile as he spoke. The tip of his nose dipped with each consonant, pointing toward his mouth on words like Vaterland. With his skin greenish in the moonlight, his body frail from lack of food, and his face marred by the deep circles under his eyes, he looked unhealthy, even bloodless. She ached to give him some of her own blood, transfuse it, let him drink it.

  “Maybe you should think about joining the BDM,” he said finally.

  “What is that?”

  “The Bund Deutscher Mädel. The Hitler Youth for girls. I wonder if maids are eligible.” He offered her the end of his cigarette, half of which she took into her lips, nearly burning them. “Hungry?” he said, amused. “Don’t eat it.”

  The odor reminded her of Berni. She pulled so much smoke out of it that it burned to nothing, and Klaus dropped it through the bars. Grete waited for the sizzling sound when it touched the wet slate, but heard nothing.

  “Are you?” he asked.

  “Am I what?”

  “Hungry.”

  “Of course. What I mean to say is, your family feeds me as well as they can—”

  “I am hungry. What do we have in the pantry?”

  “I’m sorry, Klaus. We have nothing but spices, a jar of salt.”

  “Say that again. Just the last word.”

  She tried to look away, but he pulled her chin up so that they were face to face. “Salz.”

  “Why do you speak that way? Your voice is all in your nose. You didn’t say the end of the word—it’s salz. Salz. You’re missing that –tz.”

  “Salz.”

  “You can’t hear everything, can you?”

  She took a long breath. She had never really spoken about this to anyone except Berni, but when she saw that his face registered only concern, no mockery, that his undivided attention was on her, a sob slipped out of her mouth. “It’s only going to get worse!”

  He tilted his head to the side. “How do you know?”

  “The nurse, at St. Luisa’s.” She sniffed, brushing a tear from under her eye. Her ear whined. “She told me it might be pro—progressive.”

  “She said it might be? Well, that means it might not be.”

  She nodded and took a breath, and then she told him everything: that her right ear buzzed and hummed and rang. That today when she woke, she heard only silence on that side for at least an hour. She explained, words coming faster now, how she monitored the placement of everyone in a room. How she tried to keep his mother, at all times, on her left. How the little sounds escaped her: breaths, rustles, hisses.

  He scratched the fine hairs on his chin. “Perhaps someone hit you very hard when you were young. Had you thought of that?”

  Yes, she’d thought of that.

  “One of the sisters, maybe?” he said.

  The sisters had struck children from time to time, but Grete couldn’t remember anything that would have destroyed her hearing. She couldn’t answer.

  “This won’t do, Grete. If your left ear can hear, there isn’t any reason for you to speak that way, don’t you agree? You can hear me now, nicht? Salz. You’re saying ‘salth.’”

  “Salz.”

  “Let me show you.” Klaus held onto the bars overhead to steady himself, and then let one of his hands go. It seemed to take forever to reach her mouth, for his dry fingertips to land on her lips. With his other hand—he now had to balance his feet on the bars—he grabbed her wrist and placed her hand on his mouth. In between her fingers, she felt his warm, tickling breath. His lips were smooth and wet and soft.

  “Feel how I speak,” he said. Sharp bursts of air escaped his lips as he enunciated. “Say fleisch.”

  “Fleisch,” she said, beneath his touch.

  “No. Let go of this foolishness. Focus on the end.” She focused on his eyes instead, pale and luminous and pointed directly at her. “It’s all in your mind. Fleisch.”

  “Fleisch.”

  “Better.” The mouth under her fingers thinned into a smile. “You can hear the difference?”

  “Ich kann!”

  In her excitement she’d forgotten to lower her voice, and they heard Gudrun stir. Grete gasped. She and Klaus, strangers yesterday, stood with their hands moistened by each other’s mouths. She’d forgotten to cover her chest; the one swollen bud pulsed like a new heart.

  They dropped their arms at the same time and laughed nervously. Grete tugged the neck of her nightshirt. Klaus pushed aside the bedroom curtain, warned her not to wake Gudrun, and helped her over the sill. He followed her inside, where they climbed into their beds.

  Grete, 1932

  By day, Grete and Klaus remained strangers, particularly when his mother was around. He pretended she didn’t exist, and she shrank in his presence.

  But at night as Gudrun snored, by candlelight in the corner of their little bedroom, they practiced. Klaus had found one of Gudrun’s discarded childhood puzzles, a set of interlocking wooden blocks carved with the alphabet. He and Grete went through them one by one, spending more time on the ones that gave her trouble, K and F and scharfes S. She had never felt such freedom and acceptance. While Berni had always tried to solve Grete’s problems by taking them off her hands, Klaus seemed to believe Grete could be taught to work them out for herself.

  Herr Eisler announced that he’d lost his job at the factory on the first of September. This came as no surprise; his wife had been praying for that very thing not to happen for weeks. Grete stood sniffling over the sink that morning, peeling a potato. What would become of her now? Would Berni take her in? And could she leave Klaus?

  She gave a start when Klaus appeared at her shoulder. He had a bag of newspapers strapped to his back. “Dry those eyes,” he said.

  “But your parents—”

  “They aren’t looking to the future. Our campaign worked last time and will again.” He gestured over his shoulder, to the copies of Der Angriff. “The Party earned thirty-seven percent of the votes in the July election. Two hundred and thirty seats in the Reichstag. Do you understand?”

  “I’m not sure,” she murmured, focusing on a stubborn crust on one of the dishes.

  “Next time it will be even more.” Klaus took a sip of coffee from the white cup in his hand. The window was open before them. Someone had brought a radio into the Hof and was listening to a broadcast in English. Grete watched Klaus’s jaw tighten. He cursed.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “The BBC’s telling the world about our troubles. If I were a fighting man I’d go down and set our neighbors straight.”

  “You can understand English?”

  “At schools, very good English I learn.”

  Grete was impressed. “What did you just say?”

  He took one of the serpentine potato peels sitting inside the sink and dropped it into his mouth. “I said I’m hungry.”

  She blushed, watching him eat the raw peel. They listened to the broadcast a little longer, Klaus muttering, “Brazen.”

  “Grete.” Frau Eisler had burst into the kitchen, her arms and hair splayed like pale tentacles, and Grete and Klaus sprang apart. “We’ll have to pay you double next week. We won’t be able to complete our mortgage payment if we give that much to you this Friday.”

  An uncomfortable moment passed. Frau Eisler and Kl
aus stared at Grete, and she felt even more blood rush to her face. “Of course,” she said. “Do not worry about paying me.”

  Frau Eisler closed her eyes and nodded once. Klaus yawned and peered into the courtyard, finishing his coffee, and Grete went on peeling, her face on fire. She composed a letter to Berni in her head. I must see you. Tell me where and when. It is urgent, sister.

  • • •

  The following Wednesday, without waiting for a reply from Berni, Grete took the U-Bahn to Schöneberg. Aboveground, she watched a pair of painters plaster an advertisement for “Back to Nature” body powder on a Litfaß column. The girl in the ad wore a short skirt and had a wide smile. She held a lily in one hand and a compact in the other. “New Woman!” the copy shouted, “Use your senses!”

  A Negro girl in an advertisement. Whoever thought such a thing would help sell powder? That was what Frau Eisler or Klaus would say. As Grete waited for traffic to clear, she watched the men cover her shiny brown calves and vulgar pink strappy heels with transparent glue. Her legs were quite beautiful and reminded Grete of horses’ limbs.

  When she rang the bell at the boarding house, she heard a shout inside, and finally someone ran down the stairs. The door opened. Fräulein Schmidt stood there drying her hands on a towel. “Oh, hello, Grete. Can I help you?”

  Grete swallowed. Why did she care that Fräulein Schmidt remembered her name? This was the woman who’d taken Berni away. Grete should have reviled her, but she had to admit she was lovely. Her curls were such an unusual shade of strawberry blond. Grete cast her eyes at her tiny feet and mumbled, “May I please see Bernadette?”

  “Berni? Oh, I imagine she’s out somewhere. I’ve wondered about you, dear thing. Would you like to come in for tea? A slice of strudel?”

  That was the warm-apple scent emerging from the house. Grete thought of the strudel and cream she’d seen the sisters eat on Easter. “No, thank you. Do you know where I can find her?”

  Fräulein Schmidt’s forehead wrinkled. “Have a warm dessert and tea and wait for her here. English-style tea, mind you. I serve English-style tea.”

  Grete hesitated, her mouth watering. Fräulein Schmidt’s full lips pursed in satisfaction, and in that gesture she reminded Grete of someone, she looked like someone else—Rachel. Fräulein Schmidt, she realized with fear, was Jewish. “Tell me where Berni is, please.”

  Fräulein Schmidt looked her up and down. “All right. I believe she’s at a restaurant.” She told Grete to look for Berni at the Silver Star Club, in Mitte, just outside Potsdamer Platz.

  On her way, Grete tried not to think what Berni might be doing in something called the Silver Star Club at midday, midweek. She passed the line of taxis and piles of luggage outside Anhalter Bahnhof, then walked through Potsdamer Platz, where music lured daytime shoppers toward leather goods and cologne. Rich, childless women, Frau Eisler said, who were too self-centered to save their money. Finally Grete found the club next door to a jeweler. In the window, a pair of gold handcuffs inlaid with rubies and emeralds lay on a red velvet cloth. Her reflection in the glass, by contrast, was the same gray as the city. Behind her, a smudge of brown, red, and gray. The SA were marching past, singing.

  Blood must flow, blood must flow! Blood must flow as cudgels fall, thick as hail!

  Some pedestrians stopped, and a good number of them booed. One of the marching boys dropped his flag so that the pointed end was like a bayonet and lunged at a man and two women. Grete flinched. What had she heard Klaus say about the SA—that they were brutes, but necessary? Their ranks had grown to four times the size of the emasculated army, enough for the country to defend itself if necessary. Defense wasn’t pretty, according to Klaus.

  The doorman at the Silver Star hardly looked at Grete, his eyes on the departing boots. She was glad to get inside the velvet curtains, and then she took a breath and the heavy cigar smoke hit her. She felt trumpet blasts in her gut. The music was terrible, lawless, no better than the horn blasts and backfiring cars she’d left outside. She would have fallen to her knees had someone not run up and grabbed her upper arms. Berni’s breath was hot in her ear.

  “Sister, what are you doing here?” Berni took her wrist and yanked her through the bar, which passed in a blur. Women stood on tables twirling pistols and rope lassos, their buttocks half-exposed by blue bloomers. A band of black men gyrated onstage.

  “Ouch—Berni, ouch! Let go!”

  Berni flung her at a chair between the stage and the kitchen doors, then got down close to her face. “I’m working and I don’t have time for this. Here.” She reached into the pocket of her black half-apron. She wore a maroon silk bodysuit similar to a bathing costume with white pumps that reminded Grete of little ducks. Her shoulder strap had been torn and tied in a knot. Berni pried Grete’s fingers open and stuffed some cash inside. “Buy yourself a U-Bahn ticket and lunch. Get lunch before you go home, and eat it all yourself. Do you hear me?”

  Grete thrust out her jaw. She opened her hand and counted five marks.

  “Sit outside, under . . .” Berni said something that was lost to the music. “Listen! Have a beer like a big girl, and forget everyone but yourself for an hour. Then go home before dark.”

  Grete felt faint. The band began a mocking, unpatriotic version of a traditional German song. Their legs flew this way and that as though they were made of rubber. There were foreign men making a ruckus at the bar. The coat girl in the corner had a bruise blooming around one eye. “Berni,” Grete said, “what are you doing here?”

  “I told you. I’m a cigarette girl.” Berni reached into her pocket and produced a little tin, on its face a blond goddess in a toga holding a torch. She glanced up when someone said something Grete couldn’t hear, and a look of unmitigated fear passed over Berni’s face.

  At first the figure in front of Grete’s unfocused eyes seemed beautiful, a woman of movie-star stature, dressed in the same uniform as Berni, but her hair, hat, fingernails, and shoes were all the same shade of tomato. She moved so much that Grete couldn’t get a good look at her—she dipped her red beret over her eye and winked at Berni, then looked over her shoulder at Grete and sniffed with her big nose. Something in the gesture seemed familiar, and Grete’s stomach growled uneasily.

  “Come over here, Berni’s sister. We have grapefruit.”

  Grete looked helplessly to Berni, who nodded after a moment, indicating that they should follow. Who is that?, Grete mouthed, and Berni responded only, “Anita.”

  They followed Anita’s hard haunches to a little table with a bowl of pale-yellow fruit in the middle, the linen littered with shoe prints. A telephone marked with an enormous number 16 sat beside the bowl. Anita smiled at Grete and tossed a grapefruit from one hand to the other. “Nice to see you, Margarete.” She began to giggle, hiding her face from Grete so that she could look at Berni and whisper something.

  Berni rolled her eyes. “And now we’re all friends. Grete-bird, we have work to do, and I’m sure you do as well. I’ll show you out.”

  “What kind of hostess are you?” Anita said. Grete watched her pierce the grapefruit rind with one curved scarlet nail, releasing a fragrant spray. There was something obscene in the way she split the pale skin. She gnashed the fruit with her crowded yellow teeth, and Grete remembered. Fiedler’s. Libations of Illyria. Horrified, she turned toward Berni, who glared at the tabletop as if she knew she was a traitor.

  “Have some.” Anita gestured toward the bowl. She spit a fat grapefruit seed onto the table, where it lay like a slug. “You look like you need it, kid.”

  “Grete,” Berni said, taking her hand. “How is everything at the Eislers’? Truly.”

  “Why must you keep asking me this? All is well.” No way would Grete give Anita the satisfaction of hearing how the Eislers suffered. “I am very fortunate to work for such a man.”

  Anita laughed toward Berni again, and Grete felt panicked to miss part of what she said. “. . . sweet how . . . loves
Herr Papa, isn’t it, Berni?”

  Berni stood. “All right. I believe it is time for you to go, Grete. Say farewell.” Grete couldn’t resist glancing at Anita one last time, who narrowed her eyes, before Berni rushed her toward the back, past waiters in tired tuxedos. They barreled through a door with a circular window into the dark, clean kitchen. One chef sat on a stool, asleep sitting up. Berni crossed the tiled floor as though she knew exactly where she was going and found a door. They emerged in an alley between the bar and the jewelry store.

  “Why did you do that?” Grete asked, rubbing her upper arm. The dim sunlight and cool air, she had to admit, felt very good.

  “Did you really want to sit there with Anita?”

  “No. How can you befriend her, Berni?”

  Berni rolled her eyes. She unhitched a velvet purse from under her skirt and opened its clasp. “I’ll give you some more money, to tide you over until next time.”

  Relief overtook Grete. “I do not want you to think I came for money.” But of course she had; she’d planned to ask for a little, just this once, just to give Klaus what he needed. And why shouldn’t she ask Berni for it? She lifted her chin. Berni owed it to her, the prodigal Berni who had enjoyed herself while Grete suffered.

  “I don’t think you came just for money. But I can see you need it.” Berni looked very tired and defeated. “I wish it had gone better with the Eislers.”

  “All is well with the Eislers.” How dare Berni act so superior, she of the champagne and cigarettes? How sinful, how indulgent she was. How sloppy in choosing her friends. She and Anita partied while Klaus and his family, and much of Berlin, suffered.

  Now that they were outside, the noise contained in the club, Grete could think better, could speak better. “Why have you turned your back on goodness? You’ve become what they say—do you know what people say?”