by Naomi Wood
He kissed me on both cheeks. ‘Artificial light treatment. Otherwise I look as if I’m made from paper.’
By his side was a tall woman with a big smile in not much of a dress. ‘It’s Berlin. It’s December. That’s how everyone looks,’ she said. She had a strong Russian accent, but then there were so many Russians in Berlin it almost went without remark.
‘Dacia, this is Paul Beckermann, an old friend of mine from the Bauhaus.’
‘How do you do?’ she said, looking elsewhere.
He leant toward me. ‘I’m going to marry this one, Paul. I know it.’ The warm air in the room made Kaspar’s face pulse brighter.
Vaguely I looked to see if I could find Charlotte, but couldn’t. Irmi had assembled a Christmas tree from rolled-up newspapers, and I remembered Itten’s class, and Walter’s failure, that day. I tried hard these days not to think of Waldemar König. It only made me unhappy; the whole business of the Survey was still a bitterness, and I knew it upset Charlotte to think of what might have happened to so many people because of what he had done that summer.
‘Everyone said the Nazis would have a majority by Christmas,’ said Kaspar. ‘And yet here we are!’
‘Where are we?’
‘Hitler’s a postmaster. Berlin will never do it.’
‘Berlin doesn’t matter. It’s the rest of the country that’s the problem.’
‘Von Schleicher will resist.’
‘He’ll roll over.’
‘Well. I don’t know. Perhaps you’re right,’ Kaspar said, muttering something to himself which I didn’t quite catch.
I didn’t want to talk politics; it was all anyone ever talked about. A new record scratched before it settled. Near the ancient gasolier a couple shared some coke; the lines so thin we would have had them for breakfast in Dessau. I wondered what to do; where in the party to go; I couldn’t see where Charlotte had ended up.
I watched as someone put an angel, folded from a champagne label, on the top of the tree. I thought again of Walter: whether he was still at his glades and waterways. Though I didn’t care to admit it, it was also true that I thought of him often. Sharp-tongued, honeyed in his own selfishness and servant to his own crazy notions of Jenö’s love for him; Walter had been my best friend for so many years, and, yes, I missed him.
‘Do you ever hear from Walter König?’ I asked Kaspar, who had started dancing with Dacia before my question brought him back.
‘Walter König? Oh, Walter was never interested in keeping in touch with me. He dropped me as soon as you all moved to Dessau. Last I heard he was fucking some fat Nazi.’
‘A Nazi?’
‘That’s what Hannah said, anyway.’
Dacia pulled him away again. No surprise that Ernst – if it were still Ernst, and not someone else Walter had picked up along the way – should be a Nazi. Maybe Walter might even be one too. He’d look good in a uniform, I’d give him that.
I pushed my way through the crowd. I could hear Irmi’s laughter above everyone else’s, and I was cornered into the paper tree as the floor cleared for an expert couple who knew the latest dance. I saw Irmi with a handsome man who was so tall he had to stoop to talk to her.
A thudding came from the ceiling below; a broom banging.
Irmi stamped on the floor in reply. ‘I don’t know why she’s complaining. Her brats keep me up all night.’
Someone else changed the record; it was Jewish klezmer, to vex the neighbour even more. ‘Quit that noise!’
Irmi put her head outside the window. ‘Oh shut it, you old crone!’
And everyone laughed.
Finally, with most of my drink spilled, I found the kitchen. I looked for a cloth to clean myself, but just then I heard a voice from the past. I knew it to be Jenö without even looking. I turned, and there he was: a blond block, leaning against the counter, his grey eyes observing the room, sadder than they had been. I froze. I didn’t know what to do.
‘Paul.’ He smiled, and there were new wrinkles near his eyes.
‘Jenö.’
We shook hands. Neither of us knew what to say. A woman in a lively hat pushed past us with a fresh bottle of champagne.
‘How long’s it been?’
‘Years. I didn’t know you were in Berlin.’
‘They shut us down in Dessau. The Director’s set us up in a telephone factory.’
‘Oh. Right. Where?’
‘Steglitz. It’s not quite Dessau. But it’ll do for now.’
Steglitz! Steglitz was no more than half an hour from here. Immediately I thought how little I wanted him close. I wondered if there had been a postmark on the envelope; whether I should have known he was in Berlin. ‘Well. How are things?’
‘It’s been a little rough,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘My father lost his farm after the Crash.’
‘I heard. I’m sorry. My father too. The whole shoe factory. Gone in a puff of smoke. Well, a puff of American loans.’
He nodded. There were so many stories like ours. ‘When I got back everyone was gone’ – he clicked his fingers – ‘Walter; you; Charlotte. I did lots of work.’
‘I bet. The Director couldn’t afford to keep us on.’
‘He said.’
It came to me then that though the Director hadn’t been able to afford us, he had been able to afford Jenö. I searched myself for how I felt, wondering if I still hated him, or whether that was over, now that I had, in some ways, won. ‘Are you still working with Marianne?’
‘A little. But mostly I’m doing my own work.’
‘Good for you. And Anni, Josef, Otti?’
He smiled at the list of names. ‘The Albers are still at the Bauhaus. Otti’s set up a textile company, an adjunct to the school. You should see her. She’s the same.’
‘An expert on everything and nothing?’
‘Exactly. Did you hear about the Weimar Bauhaus? Schultze-Naumburg’s whitewashed the murals.’
‘The townspeople will be happy,’ I said.
‘Oh, I wonder if they don’t miss us. Baptising babies in the Frauenplan. Getting up to no good in the woods.’
We stood in the narrow kitchen as both of us thought of what else to say. I wished Irmi had told me she’d invited him. She hadn’t mentioned he’d be coming, though she’d talked of nothing but the party for weeks on our morning walks.
‘How’ve you been? The painting’s going well?’
‘Yes,’ I said, not quite committing, and when I asked the same of him, he simply said the same thing too. ‘Are you teaching the Metal Workshop?’ I asked.
‘No. They don’t have one. Can’t afford it. I’m teaching the preliminary course with Josef.’
Now I really had run out of things to say. ‘Have you seen Charlotte?’
‘Briefly. She said she was going home,’ he said, slightly fumbling his delivery. ‘She said she had a headache?’
I didn’t say another word. I pushed past women dancing with their eyes closed, maybe even asleep; men shuffling their feet along; the couple with the cocaine on their knees having more. I imagined Charlotte’s lip bleeding; her body beaten in a gutter. I grabbed my coat. As I ran down the steps I heard a drunken rendition of ‘Silent Night’ begin as Irmi shouted down the staircase: ‘What about Teddy? I wanted to introduce you! Paul! Paul! At least say goodbye!’
40
Berlin
Neither of us was in the mood to work the day after the party. Usually this meant a trip to the zoo, or the Tiergarten, or maybe a walk to the Pergamon for the busts. Instead, that morning Charlotte became without warning furiously domestic. She did all the laundry then hung the sheets from the unbarred windows, though the day was so frigid they would freeze. She fetched the coal, wound the clock in the living room (a present from my mother) and then, most implausibly, she began to darn our socks, the holes in them so large it would have been better to throw them out. With the window open to the courtyard, radios blared Berlin’s bad news.
I asked if I could
help but she shooed me away.
I tried to push Jenö from my mind but he kept on returning unbidden. The Bauhaus was in Steglitz. A train ride away; not much. In bed this morning I had asked Charlotte why she had left the party so abruptly. She’d said, as Jenö had said, that she’d been gripped by a sudden headache. While she was in the kitchen I scanned the letter for any subtext I had missed, then found the Steglitz postmark on the envelope. I should have checked. I should have known he was in Berlin.
‘Come on,’ I said, in the afternoon, when thoughts of Jenö were circulating worse than ever. ‘Let’s go out.’
Charlotte put aside her darning. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’
We took the streetcar to the Spree and watched the steamboats on the river. The water was a set of moving tiles, all slates and greens and boat oil rainbowing its surface. I held her close as we walked in the bright day. We looked out to the coffee houses and theatres on the other side of the riverbank, then we walked to Friedrichstrasse Station. At the War Academy there were still glass cases nailed to the walls so that the names of the dead wouldn’t blur in the rain. We’d had the same building in Dresden: I remember watching women gather every Friday when there was a list of new men dead. In Dresden, there’d been no escape: the schools, the library, the hospital, the assembly halls: all of the city had been turned into barracks. At night you could hear the gun drills and in the mornings you could hear the men marching, and I was convinced as a boy that I was on my way to join them, that very soon I’d be minced into French fields, and that I’d return as a name to be pinned in the glass case, then found by my mother, her eyes already dampened in the long walk over.
I had saved up twenty marks to buy Charlotte a gift for Christmas, and Rosenberg’s windows were done extravagantly. Mannequins were dressed in silks; the men in evening suits of black velvet. In another display there were several bits of Biedermeier furniture, and a string of cut mirrors reflecting the better off, saved from the wind by mufflers and fur. All that was needed was one of Steiner’s oil paintings to finish off the scene.
But it was easy to see that Rosenberg’s situated its most expensive things up front. Inside, the stock was discounted, and labels were cut two or three times the original price. We went up a floor to men’s outfitting. Charlotte at the best of times could pass as a boy; especially today, in her ulster and wool trousers. It was her slim neck and hands that most often gave her away.
There were several smart businessmen in the men’s section, some being measured up for a new suit, others buying items off the peg. Seeing them there, looking as old-fashioned as the Kaiser, gave me a bounce in my step to know we were so different. I had that feeling, as one gets near a precipice, of baseless joy; that the world – or at least Rosenberg’s department store – was ours for the taking. A hangover sometimes lent me a bigger sense of bounty than the situation gave.
We walked over to the scarves; there was a silk one I’d had my eye on. Charlotte wasn’t interested, though, and decided on a shirt with an Oriental collar instead. ‘Are you sure you can afford it?’
A few shoppers looked at us as I brought her closer: we were two men embracing. ‘Of course.’
The shop boy coloured scarlet as he tried to work out who it was he should be serving. ‘Me,’ said Charlotte, ‘I want to try it on, please.’
I sat in a chair meant for waiting wives. The boy changed to a yawning salesman, but the looks from the other customers continued, and I briefly wondered if we were in some kind of trouble. But I put that thought away. Together, we were storm-proof; I knew it.
Maybe it was the curtain, closing her off, that afforded me the confidence to speak. ‘Irmi said the Bauhaus has moved to Berlin. Jenö didn’t mention that in his letter.’
‘I heard,’ she said. Her hands shot above the rail, pulling down the shirt. ‘Bizarre that the Director thought Berlin safe.’
‘There’s probably nowhere in Germany that wants the Bauhaus right now.’ A pause. I would say it: name what was between us. ‘Jenö was at Irmi’s. Did you see him?’
The curtain stopped moving. ‘Yes.’
‘He looks well.’
I wondered what she was doing, whether she was staring at her reflection in the hot lights. Whether she’d be saying to herself, just tell him the truth. Tell him you’re in love with Jenö. That you knew this fact as soon as you saw him again last night. She came out and began tucking the shirt into her trousers. ‘How do I look?’
I wanted to say: stupid. You look ridiculous.
She must have seen my face. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’m fine,’ I said, though in my heart there was a darkness, building into something big; sepulchral.
‘Paul?’ She put her cool hands on my cheeks. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
(Nothing! nothing! All you ever do is nothing!)
Wisely, the salesman slipped away, and Charlotte disappeared again behind the curtain. ‘Irmi should have told us he’d be there,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t nice to spring him upon us. I was as shocked as you. It doesn’t mean anything; that he’s in Berlin.’
‘Then why did you leave so quickly?’
The curtain snapped open. Her regard was cool. ‘I had a headache, I told you. Look, I didn’t want to talk to everyone there. I didn’t want to be there with all those people. They’re your friends, Paul. Not mine.’
‘I don’t understand who your friends are if it’s not them. Kaspar. And Irmi, and the rest.’
‘It was a shock. All right? I’m allowed to be shocked. I haven’t seen him in years.’
Our man returned. ‘Sir. Other people are waiting.’
‘We’ll go,’ she said. ‘We’ll take it.’ She handed over the shirt. Then she looked at me, her light eyes focused. ‘Paul. I’m warning you not to get carried away with this. Do you hear me?’
But after we had paid the journey home was almost wordless.
41
Berlin
The front page of the newspaper announced that von Schleicher was planning on relocating all of Germany’s unemployed to the ‘thinly populated East’. Irmi frowned at the headline, the newspaper tented on her lap. ‘Where are they going to live? Are there thousands of empty houses waiting for them? What if they don’t want to go?’
‘He just wants to appear decisive. It won’t happen.’
Irmi’s apartment looked bare without people. She had a red blanket drawn around her legs, and a fisherman’s sweater over her slacks; in her hands she nursed a cup of tea, which she drank with the dipping motion of a bird. All wrapped up, she looked contented; all the day’s light alive in her quick grey eyes.
‘You look happy sat there. Are you so in love?’
‘Paul!’
‘What?’
‘Love is for babies.’ Irmi picked off a rotten leaf from one of the house plants. ‘Every time I see Teddy I feel surprised that it’s my turn, that finally I get to do all of this; not you, not Charlotte, not Jenö. It’s rather wonderful.’
‘I’m glad. You’re right: it is your turn.’
‘More tea?’
‘Sure.’
From the kitchenette I heard the gas flame. The door to the galley was open, and I saw Irmi lean against the top, her expression abstracted. Maybe she was wishing it was Teddy who was here rather than me. Weeks ago on New Year’s Eve I had asked her why she hadn’t told me about inviting Jenö to the Christmas party. She’d said she’d forgotten she had even invited him, and Teddy had quickly moved the conversation on.
I went to the window. It had been raining all day and the potholes in the unrepaired road were full of black water. Now the day was brightening the puddles showed the sky and clouds. Kids played football against a wall with a ball many times patched. A few streets away, Charlotte would be setting out. Since New Year she had used her afternoons to walk the city. Several times I had watched her from a window, wishing I could see if she had already met the ventilated air of the station entrance. So
far I had resisted the notion of following her. So far I’d resisted searching for train tickets to Steglitz. When she came home in the evenings she brought the cold in on her coat.
I could not resist, though, the idea of her and Jenö together. Since the Christmas party I had been unable to put away the image of them together in the Steglitz Bauhaus: in a locked workshop room, in a broom cupboard; on a lunch break. How hot would be their embrace; how urgent their need.
These afternoons waiting for her to come home; how long they were.
A streetcar wobbled the puddles. Imagine if the ripples got bigger, I thought, imagine the whole road heaving; underneath the macadam a river surging up and clearing out Berlin; this warehouse, this junk-shop city, and in its wave would be carried all the useless people with nothing to do. I knew from school that Berlin had once been a glaciated plain until its retreat had left meltwater streams and lakes underground. If they ascended, these lakes and sunken rivers, would it be a baptism? Or an apocalypse?
‘Is Charlotte still not painting?’ Irmi said from the kitchen.
I came away from the window. ‘No.’
‘What does she do instead?’
‘I told you. Roams Berlin.’
‘Maybe she’s stuck. She’s been doing the same thing for a while. These monochrome pieces.’
‘Don’t be mean.’
‘I’m just saying she might be looking for a change in direction. Does she seem unhappy?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Preoccupied.’
‘Have you asked her? If she’s unhappy?’
‘She says she’s fine.’
‘Well. You’ll have to take her at her word.’
The kettle shrieked and Irmi flicked off the gas. The metal teapot fogged as it warmed. It was a Bauhaus teapot – simple circles and semicircles – a Brandt design. Irmi had invested her money wisely.
‘Maybe she’s on a binge and doesn’t want to tell you.’
I looked at her, disapprovingly.
‘What? I’m just saying. Maybe that’s the secret with all this walking. Maybe she’s procuring coke in Wittenbergplatz.’
