The Cigarette Girl Read online

  “I don’t know how you do it,” Berni said after a while. “Carrying on with Trommler, and with Gerrit. Doesn’t Gerrit become jealous?”

  Sonje made a face. “Gerrit is a Socialist. He thinks it’s grand I’m taking advantage of a rich bastard like Trommler,” she said, though Berni found this less than convincing. “Look, we women have made strides, but we still have far to go. We can vote, yet we still hold only a small minority of seats in the Reichstag. More of us live independently, yet we’re limited to clerical jobs.” She took a few large sips, and half her beer was gone. “The sexes aren’t treated equally, so it’s not unwise to get a bit in return from your affairs with men. You offer them your bed, they offer you something too.”

  “Do you even believe in love?” Berni asked. “Or is the term out of fashion?”

  “I believe in love.” Berni waited for Sonje to say that she loved Gerrit, but she didn’t. “I was engaged to be married once. Before the war. I think that’s why my father left me the flat, you know. If my parents had any idea I wasn’t to start a family, they would have sold it.”

  “What happened to your fiancé?”

  “What do you think? He was gunned down at the Marne.” Sonje mashed a sardine into a piece of toast from the basket on the table. “He was the only one for whom I enjoyed playing cello. Usually it felt like performance. With Jakob it was communication. I’d play, the cello between my legs, he’d lie on his back and listen . . .”

  From across the patio, Berni made eye contact with the pinscher and had the distinct feeling neither of them wanted to be there at the moment. Sonje would interpret her silence as pining for some boy who’d gotten away from her, but she was thinking of Grete. They hadn’t needed words to communicate, either: a certain scowl, a little chirp, one lowered eyelid could convey a world of meaning. The doubts that visited Berni daily, like a commuters’ train rolling faithfully into the terminal, came into her mind now: what if Grete wasn’t safer working in someone’s home than living with her, Sonje, and Anita? Or worse—what if she was learning to communicate without words with somebody else?

  Berni shook her head and saw the dog mimic her gesture. Grete’s situation would be temporary. Berni had already saved a couple hundred marks. A few hundred more and she’d be able to pay the first few months’ rent on a new apartment. She’d been careful not to mention any of this to Sonje and Anita. It would be impossible to explain without insulting them.

  “Look at me,” Sonje said finally. “A mess! Best to keep your lovers a bit distant, see?” She downed the remainder of her beer and lifted a finger in the waiter’s direction. “Speaking of, Berni, are there any men—or women, I never know for certain with you—in your life?”

  “A few here and there,” Berni said, toying with her napkin. In fact, there was one, but he was too poor; Sonje would never approve. Berni tried changing the subject. “We’re near the library,” she said, taking a sip of beer and looking eastward. The statue of Frederick the Great on his horse looked small enough for her to pinch between her fingers. “We should check out some books when we’re done eating.”

  “Jawohl,” said Sonje. A break came in the clouds, and weak sunlight poured over their table as the food arrived: pork schnitzel fried golden brown, piled with mushroom sauce, haricots verts in vinegar, carrots and potatoes, green salad. The meat sizzled against Berni’s tongue. When she swallowed, the food caught in her throat, as though Trommler’s coins lodged there.

  • • •

  For much of the afternoon, Berni forgot the election. At the library she checked out Erika Mann’s travel memoir and a book of erotica. She came home to find Anita in a silly mood, dancing to jazz, wearing a bluish drawn-on mole on her cheek. (“It’s my day off,” she said by way of explanation.)

  Berni allowed Anita to experiment with the shape of her eyebrows as she read aloud, lingering on sensual scenes to draw massive sighs from Anita. Meanwhile, summer rain pummeled the drainpipe outside her window. She heard Sonje get changed and leave the apartment, but she didn’t bother to ask where she was headed. When finally Berni went to the looking glass she had to laugh; Anita had drawn a look of perpetual surprise on her face, the left brow subdued, the right raised in question.

  It was still light outside when news of the election came over the radio. Berni and Anita were stretched out on the parlor rug, arguing over the movie star cards that came in their cigarette tins.

  “You want Elissa Landi, Conrad Veidt, and two Rena Mandels—for one Marlene Dietrich?” Berni cried. “This is what they call robbery.”

  Anita fanned herself with the red-and-gold card in question. “But it’s not just any Marlene, darling, it’s Marlene in her white tuxedo. Think how gorgeous she’ll look tucked in the top corner of your mirror.”

  Berni studied Rena Mandel, whose face was everywhere lately because of Vampyr. Finally she sighed and handed the cards over. “I don’t plan to keep Marlene,” she said. “I’m sending her to Grete.”

  Anita dropped her head to one shoulder, an inquisitive bird. “To Grete. She hasn’t even answered you, nicht?”

  “She will,” Berni replied, wishing once again she hadn’t told Anita about the letter. “She is preoccupied. Once she settles into her new position, she’ll have time to reply.”

  Anita shook her head. “Your sister is all you talk about, your sister, your sister, and yet you never bring her here and let her work as the Eislers’ maid. Like Frau Pelzer!”

  “Keep your voice down,” Berni snapped, glancing toward the kitchen. She could hear water being poured into a pan. “Frau Pelzer can hear you.”

  Anita rolled her big eyes and handed Marlene over, holding on for a second longer than was necessary, making Berni tug. They listened to the radio drone for a moment, neither of them, it seemed, paying attention to the words. After a while Anita looked up and bit her rouged lower lip. She still had the false mole decorating her cheekbone. “Have you told Grete about me?”

  Instead of responding, Berni ran her finger over Marlene’s blond hair, her wide-brimmed white hat and black bowtie. She pictured Grete pinning it to the wall of her austere bedroom. “Of course I have,” she said, but of course she hadn’t.

  They heard footsteps in the hallway, clicking rapidly toward the apartment, and in a burst of humidity Sonje barreled in. She went straight to the radio, which had been droning without their notice, and turned it almost all the way up. She shimmied out of her rain jacket and left it on the rug, where it began darkening the weave, and when she noticed Anita stick her fingers in her ears, she yanked them out.

  “Listen,” she hissed.

  “. . . most surprising result is the National Socialist Party’s gains in the Reichstag. The Nazis have added one hundred and twenty-three seats, bringing their total highest of any party. Still, they do not hold a majority. The leaders of the pro-Republic parties, now pressed from both sides by the NSDAP and KPD, have insisted they will not cooperate . . .”

  “It was those fools in the countryside,” Sonje declared.

  “. . . Nazis received thirty-seven percent of the popular vote . . .”

  “Illiterate hicks,” Anita added.

  Berni said nothing. Of course Sonje wouldn’t want to think anyone in her beloved Berlin had voted for Hitler, but Berni had seen flags in people’s windows, demonstrators in the parks. She studied Sonje’s discarded umbrella, leaking dirty water onto the floor, thinking of Grete. Grete wouldn’t know what any of this meant; Berni would have to write and explain.

  “Oh, no. Oh, no.”

  They all turned to see Frau Pelzer standing in the doorway to the kitchen, clutching a damp dishtowel to her mouth. Her lips had turned bluish-white. “Oh, this is not how I thought it would go,” she cried, wringing the towel.

  Sonje stepped toward her and took her arm. “Let’s not worry yet,” she said, though she, too, looked pale. Her hair, usually curled in perfect waves, lay damp on her shoulders, and she had runs in her sto
ckings. “Let’s see if they manage to get anything accomplished.”

  “Who did you vote for, Pelzer?” Anita asked, her chin in her hand, the trading cards still spread in front of her on the floor. They looked silly now, a child’s game.

  Frau Pelzer blanched further at the question, and for a moment Berni wondered if she’d faint. “I—I leave the voting to my husband, I’m afraid . . .”

  Sonje had been patting Frau Pelzer’s arm, gazing at the floor; Berni noticed her wrist stiffen, her eyes sharpen. Frau Pelzer’s nostrils quivered, and Berni felt a stab of sympathy for her. Clearly Frau Pelzer didn’t want a Nazi government. Besides, Sonje herself had just been lamenting the amount of power German men still held over their women . . .

  Anita began to say something, but before she could, Berni leapt to her feet. She made her voice loud enough to drown out everyone else. “I think we should all go to a nightclub.”

  “Before they shut them down,” Anita grumbled.

  “Especially you, Frau Pelzer,” Berni said, louder. “The boys’ll swoon over you.” She knew Frau Pelzer would never accept, but the invitation did the trick; the housekeeper began cooing and hiding her face in her apron, making such an adorable show that Sonje relaxed and joined in teasing her. She had a pair of crocodile pumps Frau Pelzer could borrow; Anita offered lace garters. They’d drink schnapps until the sun came up, Sonje promised. They’d eat roses dipped in ether.

  Anita jumped to take Frau Pelzer’s hands. “Do you know ‘The Lavender Song,’ Pelzer?” She pulled the housekeeper into the middle of the room, kicking Sonje’s coat aside. When Anita danced, she looked like one of the orangutans in the monkey house at the zoo: all arms and skinny legs, her hands and feet enormous. She sang while Frau Pelzer blushed and blushed:

  We’re not afraid to be queer and different

  If that means hell, well, hell, we’ll take the chance.

  They’re all so straight, uptight, upright and rigid

  They march in lock-step, we prefer to dance.

  Frau Pelzer kept one hand to her flaming cheek, bright spots on her décolletage. Berni knew exactly what she was thinking: what would her husband think if he could hear this song, could see her dancing?

  They were all laughing, Anita and Frau Pelzer tangled in a waltz, Sonje draped across the arms of the velvet chair, when Berni realized the news broadcast had ended. The radio had switched to an advertisement for Coca-Cola GmbH. The spell was momentarily lifted, and everyone seemed a bit giddy. Sonje and Frau Pelzer both started pointing to Berni’s face.

  “Berni,” Sonje cried, as though this was the first she’d noticed them. “Your eyebrows!”

  And just to keep them laughing, to keep the subject light, Berni waggled them and did a little jig.

  Grete, 1932

  “Don’t even think about dropping this off with that Jew on Damm Bismarck,” Frau Eisler said one morning as she handed over her husband’s gold watch. “Go to Scholz’s. We have to put the money back into our own economy.”

  Grete didn’t know what she meant by their own economy, but she took Frau Eisler at her word. She had taught Grete there were Jewish goods, shoddily constructed, and then there were German goods, which made better investments. There was Jewish haste and German diligence. Before, Judaism had meant little to Grete. It was simply different, like the Lutherans. She’d had no idea the Jews were driving small German businesses bankrupt. Arzt’s, the Jewish grocer she’d been buying eggs from, and the German one she switched to after Frau Eisler caught her, seemed about the same. But after Frau Eisler’s lecture, Grete never returned to Arzt’s.

  The only Jew she knew lived right across the hall: Rachel, who worked for Frau Schumacher. Frau Eisler sniffed about her and said you couldn’t be too careful about theft, but Grete had heard Frau Schumacher say she’d never employed someone more hardworking.

  A few nights after Berni’s letter arrived, Rachel appeared at the back door to the Eislers’ apartment, the one that led down to the alley, holding a cardboard butcher’s box.

  “Abend, Margarete. Is there anything you can trade for a chicken thigh?”

  “I don’t have anything extra. I’m sorry.”

  “Please, please.” Rachel was perhaps sixteen, with thick brown hair and a full bust that strained against her blouse. Her brow was beaded with sweat. “You know what I need.”

  Grete inhaled. She knew Rachel had an ailing brother, a veteran. Some nights, long after Frau Schumacher and her elderly mother were asleep, Rachel worked the coatroom at Halle der Rosen and gave the extra cash to her family. To keep the old ladies oblivious in their beds, she snuck Fleischmann’s yeast into their after-dinner milk to aid digestion and make them drowsy.

  “You’re making soup tonight, Grete? You can use both the meat and bone.”

  The Eislers hadn’t had meat in five days. “All right. Wait here.”

  “Thank you,” Rachel whispered, too quietly for Grete to hear. Grete felt sorry for her, and for her brother. Rachel had alluded to amputations. But every time Grete traded with her, she knew it should be the last. Frau Eisler would never approve.

  • • •

  Frau Eisler, Klaus, and Gudrun trickled into the dining room at dinnertime. Klaus set Gudrun down on her chair, and Grete came in slowly, holding an iron cauldron. The chicken thigh, baked and shredded with skin and fat on, had made a neat little pile next to its bone, which thickened the stock. But the meat had practically disappeared in the thin soup.

  Klaus sat at the head of the table, his pale eyes lively from hunger, and Grete dished him the fullest bowl of soup, slightly meatier than the ones she handed Frau Eisler and Gudrun. Lastly, she gave herself a tiny helping, went to the pantry, and opened the window. Children in the Hof called out songs. She dipped her spoon into the bowl.

  “Come sit with us, Grete!” Grete could hear the bread in her mistress’s mouth. “Gudrun wants to be in my lap!”

  Grete reentered the dining room shyly, avoiding Klaus’s curious stare. She felt him watching her eat for a little while until he turned, with a bored blink, to his mother.

  “A photographer stopped me on the street,” he said with his mouth full, “and asked if I would model for a pamphlet. The pamphlet will be called ‘Facts and Lies about Hitler,’ and I would be an illustration of our youth. The man said I was a fine specimen of Aryan manhood.”

  “What vanity!” Frau Eisler leaned on her elbow to admire Klaus and spoke loud enough for people outside to hear. “They want you to serve as an example of German beauty! Imagine!”

  Everyone at the table took a moment to study him as he ate. He had pale hair, a high forehead, heavy-lidded gray eyes, and tapered fingers with pink knuckles. His nose pushed proudly out and then hooked down, bringing to mind the Prussian eagle. He turned his hands upward, and Grete noticed a dark mole on his palm. She stared at it, transfixed. It seemed a queer place for a mole, as though it were a mistake.

  “Model of Aryan manhood!” Frau Eisler cried. “Men aren’t supposed to think of such things. I hope you haven’t already done it.”

  Gudrun opened her wet lips and indicated that she wanted more soup. “But Mama, Brother doesn’t look like a Pole, and he doesn’t look like a Jew.”

  “The simple wisdom of a child!” Frau Eisler cleaned the girl’s face with her apron. “No more for you, we must save some soup for your father.”

  Gudrun narrowed her eyes at Grete. “She’s eating. The maid.” Grete coughed on a burnt piece of turnip and looked down. In just a few minutes, she’d drained her shallow bowl.

  “Mother,” Klaus said. “It pays twenty marks.”

  “Klaus, my boy, no! You cannot allow someone to photograph you like a common whore. How do you know this photographer is really working for Hitler? He may want to sell the photographs for unclean purposes and then you’d be no better than”—she tapped her fingernails together—“Grete’s sister.”

  “Pardon?” Klaus burped lig
htly into his napkin, then turned to Grete with, once again, just the slightest spark of interest. “What does she mean?”

  “My sister sells cigarettes,” Grete said, her voice foggy.

  Frau Eisler sputtered, “And surely that’s not all.”

  Grete opened her mouth, but no sound came. She realized now she’d jumped a train in allowing Frau Eisler to think Berni was a whore, and that there would be no stops. Frau Eisler bore holes in her with her stare. To contradict her would have been disastrous.

  “You must tell us more,” said Klaus.

  “She sells champagne and cigarettes—”

  “And?” prompted Frau Eisler.

  “And she’s a whore.” The lie came out easily. The other three looked at her, waiting for her to go on, and she told the first story she could think of. The more fantastical she made it sound, the easier it was to say. “And my sister dances. Onstage. In a show where women wear only feathers. Men in the audience pay her.”

  “To do what?” Klaus implored.

  The ringing had begun in Grete’s ear, loud and sharp.

  “Klaus,” said Frau Eisler, “can’t you see you’re embarrassing our Grete?”

  “That is truly repellent,” said Klaus. “What else do you know about the whore?”

  “Grete’s sister’s a whore,” Gudrun said. Fat, pretty Gudrun. Grete tried not to imagine rolling her down the back stairs into the garbage cans. Under the table she pinched her own hand.

  But Frau Eisler shifted her off her lap and, to Grete’s surprise, told Gudrun to fetch a damp cloth to wipe down the table, normally Grete’s duty. Gudrun stomped away, and Frau Eisler gave Grete an encouraging smile. This was the first time anyone, even Berni, had given her such an audience. The sound in her ear actually seemed to subside. More words came.

  “My sister has made herself permanently sterile,” Grete said. She wasn’t even sure this was possible.

  Klaus laughed. “She did us all a favor.”

  Gudrun, who’d been sullenly wiping under everyone’s forearms, repeated the word again—“Whore!”—and Frau Eisler and Klaus laughed. Grete tried to join in, but her mouth felt cottony. She sensed she was on the right side of the joke this time—wasn’t she?