Käsebier Takes Berlin

by Gabriele Tergit

  “ ’Scuse me, what did you just say?”

  “Me? I just said that naturally, you have to accept our general conditions.”

  “On my honor, Mr. Schulz.”

  The heating folks came. The light installers came. Schulz didn’t like big companies; they were somewhat more flexible, but he preferred working with the handymen themselves. He called up Nierstein and Hammerschlag, two electricians with a small business.

  “No one’s picking up,” said Miss Fleissig, the secretary.

  “We have their home number.”

  Miss Fleissig dialed it.

  “Nierstein.”

  “Otto Mitte & Co. We have a job for you, please come by to provide a quote estimate.”

  “I don’t exist anymore,” said Nierstein. “I thought you knew that.”

  “No,” said Miss Fleissig.

  “Mr. Hammerschlag’s bumbling around on his own now.”

  “Well, well. Many thanks . . .”

  “They folded,” Miss Fleissig said to Schulz.

  “That’s the way it is, if you don’t hear from folks for three months, they’ve gone bust. Send the forms out to the others as usual.”

  The heating men were already waiting in the vestibule. Sanitary facilities and plumbing. The oil company representative for the fuel facilities in the garage. The staircase company representative. Outside sat old Böker, a locksmith and master craftsman with twenty employees. There sat Mr. Feinschmidt himself, from Feinschmidt & Rohhals, joinery and woodworking. He had come because of the doors and the parquets. Duchow, Duchow the carpenter was there, for the theater seats. Duchow walked in.

  “We’re not ready yet, Mr. Duchow,” said Schulz.

  “I just wanted to come in and say that I won’t be passed over, Mr. Schulz.”

  “Nah, nah. Come on, you think Karlweiss’s already drawn something up? Nah. Mr. Duchow, we’ve known each other for almost thirty years, you know, I’ve never worked on a project as nuts as this one. You should hear Dipfinger, our foreman over there. When he starts up in Bavarian, it’s something else.”

  “There’s nothing doing anymore, Mr. Schulz, d’you think people still want good work? No one cares anymore. It’s no fun anymore, either. I work for Bollmann now. Bollmann raises my prices twofold. But d’you think he notices what I deliver? Couldn’t care less. And then people think they’re getting a deal. Slap some nice veneer on wherever you can, and use different wood to make the piece. No one notices. Who still double glues anything? Not a damn soul, right? I haven’t done dry veneer in five years, but I’m still glad for Bollmann. He pays—badly—but he pays. Recently, a private client put me out two thousand marks. That’s something for old Duchow, two thousand marks. Nah, Mr. Schulz, things aren’t right anymore.”

  “It’s the same everywhere. No matter who you listen to. I have to wear made-to-measure shoes, and recently my cobbler told me folks don’t notice whether you give ’em cardboard insoles or decent leather, they don’t notice nothing. They don’t care if they get blisters on their feet or crippled toes, long as it looks nice and doesn’t cost much.”

  “You know, Mr. Schulz, I recently repaired an old monster, a real old monster, about three hundred years old, southern German with intarsia work, a fine piece of furniture. You’ll still be able to put your linens in that wardrobe in two hundred years. And no one wants it anymore. No one understands that kind of work anymore. You know, I made a modern desk recently, what a thing, it has flat legs, real flat legs, seems a bit shady. What a thing.

  “You know, Koller the upholsterer, old Koller, also said that people buy chaise longues for 39.50 at Bollmann. They haven’t got a clue. Every evening, they sweep the workshop, and when they’ve swept up the spare wool and dirt, they stick it right in the filling. You know, Mr. Schulz, people are so dumb, especially the women. They bounce on it a few times, look at the fabric and say, ‘Gee, what a bargain.’ They don’t know nothing about the insides.”

  “Yeah, Mr. Duchow, it’s not a pretty picture. And no one’s learning anything anymore. What’re the young kids learning these days? I learned how to lay bricks with Schmalz and his courthouse. We had to get in and lay those bricks exactly, down to the millimeter to make those vaults . . . now they put iron trusses in everything. Everything’s lazy.”

  “Sure, there’s nothing decent anymore. D’you remember old Nagel, Mr. Schulz?”

  “Still alive?”

  “Well sure, he’s been making window frames for Feinschmidt and Rohhals on Skalitzer Strasse for about fifty years now. Mr. Feinschmidt sits outside, goes out to deliver quotes himself sometimes, Mr. Feinschmidt does. So I said to Nagel, Nagel, are you still making window frames? He says, sure. I say, has anything changed in fifty years? He says, nah, it’s always the same, in the past I made two a week, now I’m making twenty. I say, well, that’s the difference. He didn’t think so. Nah, it’s no fun anymore. But I’m running my mouth during business hours. You have work to do, Mr. Schulz.”

  “I’m always happy to see you, Mr. Duchow. And I’ll keep you in mind. Oh, I meant to ask, do you still have your summer house in Hessenwinkel?”

  “Oh, you know, it got much too expensive. The likes of me can’t afford it. I shouldn’t have bought it.”

  “What about your son? Is he in the workshop now?”

  “The one is, Albert, but it wasn’t good enough for Oscar. He worked at the bank and now he has a radio business, he’s doing pretty well.”

  “Well, Mr. Duchow, that’s the way it is with kids. Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Schulz.”

  Meanwhile, the building grew.

  Dipfinger was angry with Karlweiss.

  “ ’Scuse me, councilor, but I haven’t gotten anything decent out of Mr. Karlweiss. He gave me all of his drawings at 1:100, as if I was a building inspector; I said, Councilor, surely one should be able to ask an architect for 1:50, but I can’t get nothing out of him, no details, we’ve got huge problems. It’s a total cock-up, a pile of shit!”

  “You’re right, I’ll write Karlweiss a letter.”

  In the meantime, the frost arrived; by the end of January, the dispensation request from the building inspectors; on February 10, the permits from police headquarters. The carpenters were already installing large beams, the roofers were already up on the scaffolding, hammering at the roof gutters, and the gutter spouts were being delivered. The gas and water lines had been almost completely laid. The radiators had already been installed, though they hadn’t all been hooked up yet. They hadn’t started with the electrical wiring; the electricians were on strike. The stairs were being built, and the locksmiths were already beginning to install the windows. But there was still no detailed drawing of the theater. The stuccowork hadn’t yet been contracted, the furniture hadn’t yet been designed, nor the fabrics or the lamps—all that was still up in the air.

  It was already March, it was already April. Miss Götzel was already rolling out nouveautés for the coming fall.

  No one cared about Käsebier anymore, new things had to be invented, you couldn’t have the same thing two years in a row, so she designed a dust cloth Mickey Mouse. She had great hopes for Christmas sales, and indeed, she was not disappointed. In general, everything had turned to Mickey Mouse. Rubber Mickey Mouses and swim toys had become major products during the swim season. Mickey Mouses made of cloth, Mickey Mouse brooches. The sales representatives made offers to the shoppers.

  “Well, and nothing new in Käsebier?”

  “No one has Käsebier anymore,” said Käte Herzfeld. “He’ll be completely over come winter.”

  The premiere of the Käsebier talkie was a complete flop.

  25

  The housing turnaround

  IN THE spring of 1930, something strange happened. No apartments had been available since 1917, for thirteen unfortunate years. The dramatic transformation of the population had not been outwardly visible. It had been impossible to change apartments. Back in 1918, people crawled into ever
y last corner, became renters by necessity. Barracks were built and called emergency apartments. Apartments were divided up, shared bathrooms and shared kitchens became the norm. Young couples scraped by in furnished rooms; no one knew what the next day would bring. The war speculators and inflation speculators were subletters, or had stayed in their old apartments. People with nothing yesterday and everything today couldn’t enjoy their good fortune; they had no rooms to fill with the luxury they had once dreamed of and now attained. Some of them built villas. Others sat around in two-room apartments in old Moabit, or three on Zossener Strasse, even though they could have long afforded to live on Kantstrasse by now. The formerly wealthy clung to their apartments as their only possession. A Serbian woman slept in the black music room; a student in the Renaissance study; a Hungarian had moved into the Romanesque dining room; and a Russian family lived in the rear. The landlady had retreated to a small room next to the toilet or had rented out the entire apartment, asking only to be fed in return. Young couples from 1916, 1918, and 1919 with two children were stuck in the same three-room courtyard apartment that had seemed a godsend when they married, although it was nothing more than the rear section of a ten-room apartment arranged along a long, dark corridor, with no balcony, and a kitchen that was a former bedroom with a gas stove. In 1924, when they could see straight again, it transpired that this disaster of an apartment cost two hundred and fifty marks a month while their parents paid the same amount for their six-room apartment, which was furnished with every convenience.

  The young couples moved out. In 1926, those married in 1918 had the right to their own apartment. But the older people stayed put in the large apartments. They were still renting them out. Rent money had replaced pensions. Rental income had turned into earnings. Around 1927, something like a housing market finally emerged—but only for apartments larger than four rooms. The command economy relaxed. Apartment agencies blossomed. All the same, obtaining an apartment was a difficult and tediously acquired secret science, a business similar to obtaining foodstuffs during the war: there was the white certificate, the certificate of eligibility, the certificate of priority, one had to pay moving fees and a construction fee subsidy for the apartment. People paid between twenty-five hundred and ten thousand marks for an apartment. Then there were renovation costs. Muschler and Mitte couldn’t imagine that things would ever change. No one could.

  The turnaround came suddenly, at the end of 1929. It began on Kurfürstendamm and on Hardenbergstrasse for apartments larger than twelve rooms. A handful of signs could be spotted, the signs every Berlin child is familiar with: the top eighth red, the rest black, APARTMENT TO LET.

  It was late February when Muschler saw a sign like this as he was driving from the office to Grunewald, over Kurfürstendamm to Fontanestrasse.

  “Niedergesäss, stop for a moment.” Muschler got out. Looked at the sign. “Well,” he thought, “it’s fourteen rooms, who needs that these days? Oh well.”

  “Niedergesäss, let’s go home.”

  But more appeared in a flash. This wasn’t an isolated incident anymore, and it hadn’t taken hold of just the top tier. It was as if large apartments had cholera. Their inhabitants were fleeing. The pandemic raged. Fourteen-room apartments had been under siege yesterday; ten-room apartments had their turn today; tomorrow, the eight-room would have its day, and the day after tomorrow, six rooms over two thousand marks. Two thousand marks seemed to be the cutoff. At two thousand, the water pipes weren’t contaminated. Come April, people who had paid moving and renovation fees in January and February and given their broker a few extra hundred shook their heads in disbelief and called themselves asses.

  A product that had cost six thousand marks in February could suddenly be obtained for free. A big apartment was no longer a source of rental income, a big apartment was no longer interest-bearing capital: big apartments were big problems.

  Muschler looked at Kurfürstendamm. Signs on house after house. A dead city—cholera had passed through. Or was it like an American gold mining town where the gold had run out? To let, to let, to let, house after house? All the shops were closed. House after house. The liberal, laissez-faire, laissez-passer, suddenly cried for the state.

  “Mr. Mitte, one can’t simply let buildings go to ruin,” Muschler said on the phone. “The state should take responsibility! And what’s Kaliski doing anyway, do you know? —Just five percent of the apartments have been rented? Well, he’s not advertising at all! My wife said that his wife wants to divorce him. It’ll be completely over if the Waldschmidt fortune is pulled out of his business. Then he won’t be able to advertise at all anymore and we’ll sit here looking like fools with our contract.”

  “Well, we can still manage to get out of the contract. Let me take care of that. But Kurfürstendamm isn’t a residential neighborhood anymore.”

  “And the Sachows next door?”

  “Different economy. We missed the boom, that’s the way the cookie crumbles. I’ll see it through, Mr. Muschler.”

  “Me too, Mr. Mitte.”

  “Well, there’s no risk in it for you, just for me.”

  26

  Kaliski gets the boot

  WALDSCHMIDT’S daughter was never involved with the right men. Waldschmidt was fond of saying, “It’s already hard enough to hire the right men, and there are none at all to marry.”

  Miss Ella Waldschmidt had had a dismal love affair in 1924. Dr. Kaliski courted her the same year. He was invited to the Waldschmidts’ house. He was particularly handsome, had a doctorate in economics, and his origins were unplaceable. He said clever things, was just a bit too brash at times.

  She had first noticed this on an excursion when he shouted at the waiter, “Where’s the food, for God’s sake? Close the curtains, the sun is shining right in our eyes!—Well, now it’s pitch dark. Open the curtains again! Bring out the place settings at least!” He’d gotten on her nerves back then. But she married him anyway. She was thirty years old. Her father, who thought Kaliski was very clever, advised her to marry him, since he was the same age. It turned out that he was from Poznan. He was unrefined. Quite unrefined. He came from a very different background. He brought a Gobelin tapestry into the marriage, a girl making wreaths of roses for the trumpeter of Säckingen. “My mother, God rest her soul, embroidered this tapestry. We have to put it up. She was a real woman!” he said, quietly reproaching Ella.

  He did not think that spending money was a matter of course. He asked, “What did it cost?” about everything. Mrs. Kaliski endured this for four years. Then she found out that he also had a girlfriend. She asked to be shown her. The girlfriend made his tastes clear. The very fat, small, and vulgar girl in a bilious green coat with white fur was the last straw.

  Mrs. Margot Weissman told Ella, “Why don’t you get divorced, after all, what do you want from such an impossible man? Your father is clever enough, he’ll save your fortune. You’ll keep the child. Be sensible.”

  “I feel sorry for him,” said Ella. “Then he’ll have no money at all, what will become of him?”

  “He’ll make it again.”

  What do strangers know? Ella thought. Margot is so energetic and always thinks that what she does is the right thing.

  “Yes, yes, Margot,” she said, bid farewell, and drove over to Aunt Eugénie.

  Aunt Eugénie was sixty now, but what a woman! She still wore flowing feather hats and brocade coats. Her apartment was a museum; her furniture was from the early film era, in which films largely involved furniture toppling over. Étagères with Meissen figurines stood everywhere.

  “How lovely to see you again,” she said, closing and opening her eyes in a manner no woman could still master, “Come here, let me embrace you.” She stepped off the raised platform on which she was sitting and reading, or writing her many, endlessly long letters au courant de la main, a vast correspondence with people of all nations. She spoke the broken German of diplomat’s wives and cabaret singers. She rang for the maid.


  “My dear, my niece has come. Tea on the terrace. Qu’est ce que c’est, mon enfant?”

  Aunt Eugénie knew the world. Who knows who had come through this house on Tiergartenstrasse! Not all of whom Aunt Eugénie spoke, but most of them. She had surely had many relationships in the manner of Prévost, but not even to herself would she have admitted it.

  The maid opened the portiere. “Tea is served.”

  Ella accompanied Aunt Eugénie to the terrace. This was where Berlin ended. These gardens, which led off from their houses’ southern walls, were still the most beautiful in the city. The old white greyhound, that dumb, elegant creature, lay on the long terrace under the red-and-white awning; the tea table was set; and a sweet scent wafted from the roses. Aunt Eugénie wore a silver-gray silk dress decorated with real lace, a heavy pearl necklace, and large diamonds in her ears. Outside on the terrace, she wrapped herself in a large white scarf made of embroidered crêpe de chine. Ella thought, I’ll never look that good, and I’m underdressed again! And her posture, and the tea table!

  “Your tea table is always enchanting,” Ella said. “The porcelain and the roses!”

  “Yes, the Wedgewood is delightful. Just think, yesterday my dear Thérèse broke the last cup of my good Limoges. I was devastated. Help yourself to the brioches, or would you like some jam? I see you’re looking at my boutons, I was at the opera last night and haven’t taken them off yet. You say roses, but the ramblers are not so nice this year, far from it. I should keep a regular gardener, but I can’t afford to anymore. But now to you, ma chérie. What’s on your mind?”

  “I want to leave Reinhold.”

  “But of course, my dear, that’s no matter these days.”

  “But I feel sorry for him.”

  “Well, you’ll have your reasons, or are you still in love with him?”

  “No, but the child.”

  “All the same, mon enfant, I beg you, he’s impossible. When I invited you over for breakfast to celebrate your engagement, he stood in front of my little Van Dyck and said, ‘Must be valuable, a picture like that.’ I thought, how can my brother give his daughter away to such a man?”