The Hiding Game

by Naomi Wood

  In the corner of my eye I watched as Charlotte picked out scraps of newspaper from the inkwell of my desk. I thought that maybe she was looking for a crumb or two of the leftover coke, but instead she laid the newspaper scraps out flat. She looked at them, puzzled, thinking them over. Then she began fitting them together again, reassembling the torn-up pieces. Once done, she withdrew her hand, as if scalded, and held it to her mouth.

  ‘Charlotte?’

  She looked over, her eyes glassed up.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Oh, Paul,’ she said, but didn’t elaborate. ‘Oh goodness, no!’ She took the scraps of the newspaper and held them in her fist.

  I didn’t know what on earth she meant by this, and moments later, I can only say that she fled. Upstairs, I heard Walter’s door clicking, and a rumbling on the ceiling above. I was too tired to work out what she was doing – that she must, in hindsight, have pulled out Mr Steiner’s padlocked crate, swivelled the numbers to 1919, and gone through each and every notebook until she had found what she knew was there. Instead, I let her get on with whatever new escalation had gripped her, and, as I was falling asleep, I thought for some reason of the paper lantern she had made years ago, how I had loved to watch it sway above my bed in Weimar, and I wondered where it had gone, or whether I had jettisoned it, as I had other things, in yet another fit of heartbroken pique for my still beloved Charlotte.

  33

  Dessau

  There is a photograph of us from the Metal Ball which I have pinned above my desk. It must have been from early in the evening, because we look happier than we did for the rest of the night. We are on the stage, our joy lit in the magnesium flare of the camera flash, our wheels still on our heads, Charlotte’s torch still plumed with orange feathers. The reflection from our costumes means there is too much light in the picture, but you can still see our faces: Charlotte and Jenö, and me and Walter, two birds who’d met their death along the way. In early books on the Bauhaus it is subtitled Four Bauhäuslers, identity unknown, before I rose unexpectedly to fame. (Now, they always use my German name; never Brickman, as if they know something about me of which they think I am ashamed.)

  Walter and I staged our entrance at the Metal Ball so that we arrived on the metal slides at exactly the same time and we were twin birds hurtling toward our deaths. As well as the two massive slides, the theatre department had made huge skyscrapers and moons which hung from the cafeteria ceiling. Marianne’s overhead lamps were draped in foil, and there were cobwebs made from silks and threads. Everything shone.

  Every time someone new arrived the trumpeter from the Bauhaus band played a toot! and everyone laughed to see the Director, Klee and Kandinsky land on their rear ends. The staff were dressed in tin hats and steel glasses; their wives’ hair arranged with picture-rail wire, and iron wool around their shoulders like wings. But it was the students who’d really gone to town. Automata, tin men, automobiles, and most of New York City shot down the slides and then began to dance.

  By the time Charlotte arrived at the party, I’d already had several goes at Ernst’s coke. She overshot the slide and landed sharply. In that moment I caught her expression unguarded: she looked around the room jealously. Jenö, big child, slid down with both legs thrust forward looking like a tin soldier in a spooned jacket. But she did not wait for him. He had to amble after her, and his boxy costume slowed him down. As the Statue of Liberty she had wrapped a green sheet around her and pinned it with a brooch. She had a torch in one hand, in the other her statute book. Her eyes were terribly unblinking, and her pupils were big. I wondered how much coke she’d already had. I don’t know why she was in such a vicious mood, but, admittedly, she could get like that sometimes.

  Walter, dreamy bird, was also quite gone. He was everywhere that night, dancing with me, big Franz (who had evidently been forgiven), even Jenö, and when Walter wasn’t dancing, he was stroking his chicken feathers as if he were his own gentle pet, and the blue letters – the Lotti-line – marked his arms.

  That night, I resolved not to have much to do with Charlotte. I danced instead, yanking people around the dance floor: darling Viktoria, shy Michiko. I didn’t really care. I was that kind of drunk that convinces you of your own inalienable goodwill toward others, and an astonishment that you have ever in your life bothered being unhappy. I even played on someone’s trumpet, though many people tried to make me stop. I insisted, thinking I was really good, until Walter drew me away for another line on the steps with the school sign looming over us and we shouted the word as loudly as we could: ‘BAUHAUS BAUHAUS BAUHAUS!’

  Otti danced with me for a time and I wondered at how beautiful she was: with her perfectly round face and dark eyes and that Slavic complexion the other girls were jealous of. Yes, I thought, as we danced: I was in love with Otti Berger – a beautiful weaver whose work streamed with colour.

  Later the theatre department performed a dance. All flashing knives and forks and sexy spoons, champagne bottles exploding, kettles boiling, and one woman with an elaborate candelabra on her head with lit candles, which was surely very dangerous, and Masha with metal wheels painted on her uncovered breasts. I drank more while I watched and I distinctly remember thinking – I should stop – and then thinking – ah, fuck it, let’s carry on.

  Soon, the party started to bust out of itself. Things were falling apart, coming off the ceiling; the foiled decorations were torn and shredded; the atmosphere, too, was souring – women crying flumes of mascara, men getting aggressive with other men, or disappearing off with the wrong woman. I had no idea of the time. Hairpieces had come undone; skyscrapers had bent in two. A new punch was on the go and more cocaine was passed around. People lay about in disrepair, one unconscious woman’s breast bared to the world like a cream bun.

  But to all the world, I felt unthwartable.

  At some time in the morning someone started to play an accordion quite badly, though the song was sweet. Walter had a long glass of clear liquid, suspiciously neat. Most of his feathers had gone and he’d lost the wheel. Only the bicycle chain was left as he leant into a young Bauhäusler. Really, in the past month, he’d almost become a cad.

  It was then that I saw Charlotte, in her green bedsheet and without a coat, walking in the snow toward the Georgium Park. I went through the last of the ruined city and took the steps two by two. Behind me I heard Walter call my name, but I didn’t stop.

  Outside, the sun was nearly up. I was too drunk to feel the frozen air. Charlotte was ahead at the crossroads, and I shouted to her but she didn’t stop. I heard someone come up behind me: it was Walter, still holding his drink. ‘Where’s she going?’

  ‘No idea.’

  She moved quickly, and kept on appearing and disappearing, like something supernatural. We hurried into the park, the trees so black the bark seemed burnt. We went past the mausoleum and the Ducal House, and though we kept on shouting her name, Charlotte didn’t answer. We passed armless Flora fleeing a stag, and several leering statues. Walter said at one point it felt as if we were walking into a trap, but I think he was just enjoying the melodrama.

  ‘Charlotte!’ I shouted, hearing my voice ring out amongst the frozen trees. We went further in, trying to find her where she was hiding from us. ‘Come on! This isn’t a game!’

  My voice spooked the birds from the branches. With the trees crowding in and each part of the park looking identical to the last, we had to admit we were lost – or, more precisely, that we had lost Charlotte. Impossibly, Flora appeared again. I knew the Georgium like the back of my hand; we both must have been incredibly drunk, because I couldn’t for the life of me work out where she’d gone.

  It was then I noticed Walter’s pink freezing feet. ‘Walter! Where are your shoes?’

  He looked at his bare feet, perplexed. ‘Oh, I must have lost them.’ He laughed. ‘I can’t really feel my feet.’

  ‘She’s going to freeze to death without a coat. And you’re going to get frostbite!’


  We turned back to the mausoleum; stone bears growling, thorny-crowned Christ beckoning. At last at the river we saw a shape up on the bridge: Charlotte’s Liberty robes falling over the railings. She looked as if she was about to do something stupid, or that the river would catch the fabric and drag her down by the brooch at her neck.

  ‘Charlotte!’

  We both ran toward the bridge, but she made no movement to acknowledge we were there. She kept her eyes on the quick dark river below, the dirty snow collecting at its banks. ‘Charlotte!’ Closer to, her skin was lavender. Her mouth was grim; her eyes, dead. ‘You’re going to freeze! Let’s get back.’

  I heard Walter’s laboured breath behind me. When she saw us, she looked only at Walter. She still held her Liberty tablet. She brandished it at him, and I saw at once it was one of his navy ledgers.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I said.

  ‘You tell him!’

  ‘Where did you find this?’ he said, very pale.

  ‘How could you?’ she said, and it was almost a wail. ‘Oh, how could you!’

  ‘Please, can someone tell me what’s going on?’

  But Walter was dumbstruck and would not speak. All the dreamy melodrama had gone.

  Charlotte’s skin was goose-fleshed, her lips tinged blue. ‘Why don’t I explain? Here!’ She flicked to the back of the notebook and thrust it at me. There was a table, with numbers on one side, names in the middle column, and nationalities on the right. I saw her name, Charlotte Feldekova, and her nationality, Czechoslovak, to the right. The list continued: other foreigners’ names, and Jewish names in there, and probably some Communists too. I saw Masha’s name, and Stefan’s.

  It was Walter’s handwriting. Slowly I realised what was happening; what it was that she was showing me. That September, in 1923, he had given all these names to the newspaper. It had published the story based on Walter’s information. He’d betrayed her.

  He’d betrayed the whole school.

  Charlotte’s eyes were hard on him. ‘I saw what Ernst Steiner wraps your coke in. The Republik. That was the paper, wasn’t it? All this time I’ve wondered who sold our names to them. Who sold our numbers. Because it had to have been someone inside, didn’t it? And to think all this time I thought you’d disappeared that month because of some Jewish bloodline! I thought that’s what you were hiding. Not that you’d shopped us in!’

  She pushed Walter into the railing. One could see in her tense small body that, high as she was, she had a preternatural strength. I realised it wasn’t Charlotte who might go into the freezing water, but Walter.

  ‘Why would you do this to me?’

  Tears pricked in his eyes. ‘You got Jenö.’

  ‘So you gave my name to the papers!’ Her face was close to his; her mouth a snarl. ‘You gave all our names to the papers! They could have arrested us! Deported us! All because you loved a man who didn’t love you back. If I pushed you off here at least I’d never have to deal with you ever again!’

  The black river moved fast. How easily he might fall into the undefended water below; how easily the current would sweep him away. ‘Charlotte,’ I said, calmly but with warning: ‘Walter can’t swim.’

  ‘So much the better!’ Her body swayed. She moved the spit off her lips with her hand. ‘I could skin you alive, Walter König!’

  I felt suddenly very sober and unwell. ‘Charlotte, please. Let him go.’

  ‘How long did it take you? To get all the names and count the numbers. A week? A month? Did you do it while you were picnicking with us in the woods? You know, I begged Jenö not to bring you along with us. I told him, please! Not snivelling Walter, not fawning Walter. But he insisted. I have no idea why, seeing as he never loved you. Never even liked you!’

  ‘It was Ernst’s idea. Don’t think I haven’t regretted it ever since. That summer with you both, it was unbearable.’

  ‘Oh. Ernst persuaded you to do it.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have done it. Please believe me. Not a day goes by without me regretting what I did.’

  She picked up his arm, tattooed with blue letters. ‘Get this dirty writing off your arm. Do you hear me? It is my name! It is not yours! It is my name!’ Charlotte gave Walter a final shove but her energy was gone. ‘You’ve ruined everything, Walter. It’s done! It’s done! Everything’s gone!’

  34

  Dessau

  The day after the Ball the cafeteria was a battlefield of limbs and skyscrapers. There was an awful drilling noise, made worse by its intermittence, as the theatre department dismantled the slides that had brought everyone inside so fast. Inside the mood was apocalyptic, and disintegrating.

  Walter wasn’t here; neither was Jenö. Charlotte was in dungarees and a shirt. Though she looked exhausted, I also knew she wasn’t high. No more the rampant sparkle in her eyes. No more the tranquillity to meet any situation. In fact, she looked anguished.

  We hadn’t spoken yet. Not about what had happened at the bridge. Not about what had happened in Weimar. Not about Walter’s betrayal. I didn’t know how to broach it with her; nor whether she wanted consoling, or to be left alone.

  No one had had much more than a few hours’ sleep. Everyone looked exhausted and a little sheepish at the night’s excesses. I guess we were all wondering how much trouble we were in, and it was safest to be seen industriously cleaning; it was rumoured the Director was on the warpath. I hoped both Walter and Jenö were hidden away in their bedrooms.

  As I packed away skyscrapers and cars, every time I thought of what Walter had done I was newly shocked. He had betrayed not just his friends, but the whole school. Whether or not it had been Ernst’s poison dripped into his ear, Walter had still seen fit to do it: gather the numbers, gather the names, then pass them on to the Republik.

  I wondered whether Ernst Steiner knew that that notebook was included in the shipped crate. Maybe he’d hoped one of Walter’s friends would find it. Probably, it had just been a mistake. Everything tipped into a box, and the courier had turned up in the middle of the night, and the padlock had been slipped to the old numbers.

  Now I wondered whether Walter’s future at the Bauhaus was viable. How would he exist in this school with our knowledge of him plain? All summer he had written me those polite letters while his own morality had been crude and slippery. Love had set him so sour. Though I had thought of it – how I should like to push my knife against Jenö’s face – I knew I would never execute my revenge. And if it did get around the school, via Charlotte, Jenö or me, then surely it would leave Walter ostracised for ever. Not to mention if the Director himself heard of it, or any other member of staff.

  I was too shocked, and too hungover, to feel much grief that my friend had been a traitor. I hadn’t yet worked out the consequences for me as well as Charlotte: that this, too, would be the end for us. I thought of Walter last night in the snowy park and his ridiculous feet, bright as boiled ham. There was something disgusting and revelatory about those pink naked feet.

  As I heaped metal scrap into sacks I began to feel the bitterness that had so gripped Charlotte last night. What a foul thing this school was! How absurd was everything we did here, how hotel-like our existence! Irmi was right; we had overstayed ourselves. Walter’s treachery was only part of how rank it had all become: the groping after one another, the shallow performances, these costumes of useless junk. It all had to go.

  On a ladder Josef began to pull down the metal moons. He looked better than the rest of us, his hair scraped back, his white shirt clean against his slacks. Anni didn’t look like she was suffering too badly either; they’d probably had twice as much sleep as the rest of us.

  ‘What happened last night?’ she said, a miniature skyscraper in her hands. ‘Josef met Charlotte near the showers. He said she was raving about Walter betraying her.’

  ‘It’s some old Weimar business,’ I said blandly. ‘When things went wrong.’

  Anni was pulling the skyscraper apart. ‘He said she was fr
eezing cold, like ice. He took her to Jenö’s room.’ Anni looked at Charlotte, who had the illusionless expression of someone newly sober. ‘But Jenö wouldn’t have her. In so many words, he told her to go away.’

  We watched as Charlotte put on her coat and left by the main steps, just as she had done early this morning. Anni wasn’t a gossip, but she also knew that her friend’s reserve would make it impossible to talk to her directly. ‘Are they still together?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know.’

  Anni had finished flaking the building down to nothing. Michiko pulled the foil ribbons, and Otti stood waiting to collect them. As I followed Charlotte for the second time that day, Otti touched my arm. ‘Is Charlotte all right?’

  How carefree our dancing last night had been, when for a second I had believed I was in love with Otti Berger. I wished I still was. ‘Not really.’

  ‘You’ll tell me if she wants to talk?’

  I told Otti I would, and went outside, pulling the sack with me. There had been a fresh snowfall this morning: the trees were bright with it, and the brightness made my eyes sting.

  A scrap man was loading his horse-drawn cart. ‘What were you doing in there?’ he said. ‘Building an aeroplane?’

  ‘Right,’ I said, sickness rising in me, ‘exactly.’

  A raised voice came from around the side of the building.

  ‘You lot!’ the scrap-man said. ‘Drama after drama.’

  There was another person in the front of the cab; even in profile I could see that it was Oskar. ‘Good party?’ he said, looking at the cafeteria. They were similar enough – Oskar and the scrap man – that they might have been father and son.