The Love Machine

by Jacqueline Susann

  Robin stared as if they had suddenly entered another world. Girls accosted them openly. “Amerikaner—Spiel?” One of the bolder ones chased after them. “Three-way good time, all of us?”

  Robin smiled and they walked on. Every few steps a girl emerged from an alley or a doorway. The proposition never varied. They made the girls who paraded down Seventh Avenue and Central Park South look like debutantes. These were rough little Fräuleins, educated to cater to the sailors with their striped shirts and eager appetites. They cut through another street and Sergio stopped before a dark, wooden planked gate. The white painted letters read: VERBOTEN! Sergio opened the door. Robin followed him in silent amazement.

  “This is Herbertstrasse,” Sergio whispered.

  Robin couldn’t believe it. The long cobbled street was narrow and lined on both sides with solid rows of tiny two-story houses. The windows of the downstairs rooms went from floor to ceiling. And in each lighted window sat a girl. A few windows were dark. Sergio pointed to the upper room: “That means she is working.” People flowed up and down the street studying the girls. To Robin’s amazement he saw women walking there with men. He spotted a well-known movie star with dark glasses and a bandanna—the German representative from her picture company was giving her a “tour.” Robin felt as open-mouthed as the actress. He couldn’t believe anything like this still existed. The girls behind the windows seemed oblivious of the people who walked along the street. They sat in tiny bras and G-strings, sipping glasses of wine. Their hard mascaraed eyes seemed to stare past the spectators. Occasionally one girl would turn to her companion in the next window and make a comment. The other would laugh. Laugh? How could there be laughter in a world like this? What did these girls feel and think? How could they laugh?

  “Christmas Eve is the sad night,” Sergio whispered. “They actually have little trees in the windows and they give each other gifts. Then at midnight they cry.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “My sister worked here,” Sergio said quietly.

  “Your sister!”

  “I was born during the war. My father was killed in Tunisia. My mother did the best she could to support me and my three brothers. We were all under ten. My sister was fourteen. She began working the streets to bring us food from the Americans. Later she wound up here in the Herbertstrasse. She died last year at thirty-five. That is a long life for a girl in the Herbertstrasse. Come, I will show you where they go after they are thirty.” He led Robin into an alleyway off the main section of the Herbertstrasse. Here the windows faced a blank wall. They were relegated to fat older women in their thirties. Robin looked at a blowsy hennaed woman with a gold tooth and muddy eyes. A beery-faced man with a red-veined nose knocked on her window. She opened it. He stood with three other men. A guttural argument ensued. Suddenly she slammed her window shut. The men shrugged and tapped the next window where a straw-haired woman sat with a kimono covering flattened breasts that hung to her waist. There was more conversation. She opened the door and the men entered. The lights went off as the group went upstairs.

  “What was that all about?” Robin asked.

  “It was a matter of price,” Sergio explained. “They were willing to pay the proper amount of marks for the man who would have the affair, but the others wanted to be allowed to watch for a small bit of money.”

  Robin laughed. “A group plan.”

  Sergio nodded. “The second one agreed, but she made them promise that if they masturbated while watching she would make them pay to clean the rug.”

  They walked back to the main section of the Herbertstrasse. In one window, Robin saw a girl who reminded him of the prostitute he had beaten. She was standing wearing boots and held a whip.

  “Advertising her talent,” Sergio whispered.

  They returned to the Reeperbahn and wandered into a discothèque where they were quickly shown to the door. Robin had a quick glimpse of women dancing together, holding hands at the bar. Here men were verboten. They stopped at a café where the barker at the door promised “wonderful nudes.” Robin shrugged and Sergio followed him inside. The place was jammed with sailors and they were shown to a small table in the back. The nightclub floor was elevated and a girl had stripped down to complete nudity—no pasties or G-String. There was a scattering of applause and the girl went off. Now music began. Another girl came on—she looked about nineteen—fresh-eyed and eager in a pink chiffon dress, and her smile held the guilelessness of a girl going to her first prom. “This one probably sings,” Robin decided.

  She walked around the floor grinning at all the sailors and tossing greetings to them. They shouted back good-naturedly—she was obviously a favorite. Then the music began and she started to strip. Robin couldn’t believe it. She was attractive and fresh-she would have looked more natural as a young junior secretary at the IBC network than strutting on that floor, chatting with the sailors. Suddenly she was completely nude. She stood there and pivoted with the same cheerful grin. The bitch enjoyed her work. Then she pulled a chair to the center of the floor and sat on it and spread her legs, grinning merrily all the while. She finally left the chair and walked around the club, leaning down to each table and allowing the men to suck at her breasts. She came to their table, looked at Robin and Sergio, then laughed and shook her head. She winked at them knowingly and went on her way.

  Robin threw some money on the table and started out of the room. Sergio hurried after him. They walked down the street in silence.

  “That girl,” Robin said. “She couldn’t have been more than twenty. Why? How?”

  “Robin—these girls are the product of the war. They grew up struggling for food. And children like that grow up with a different set of values. To them sex is not love—sex is not even for pleasure. It is a way to survive.”

  As they walked down the street, girls accosted them every five feet. “Look, I’m packing it in,” Robin said.

  “Come to one more place before we go back to the hotel.”

  They entered a cabaret on Grosse Freiheit Strasse. It was elegant and subdued. And attractive people were sitting quietly at tables, conversing with one another as a muted string trio played German love songs. It was a long room dimly lighted, paneled with Austrian drapes. There were groups of men, which aroused Robin’s suspicions, until he saw several heterosexual couples, holding hands and listening to the music.

  “The food is excellent here at the Maison Bleue,” Sergio said.

  “You eat. I want to get loaded.”

  Sergio ordered a steak which he attacked with such eagerness that Robin felt guilty—he had forgotten they had skipped dinner. Robin ordered a bottle of hundred-proof vodka to be left on the table. He sipped it straight. It felt like hot white velvet… .

  The string ensemble stopped playing. A drummer joined the band, cymbals were crashed, a guttural announcement was made, and the show began. Robin watched without too much interest. It was obviously a high-class supper club. A French chanteuse named Véronique came out. She was good, a true contralto. She finished to polite applause. He poured himself another shot of vodka. He narrowed his eyes to place the next girl in focus. She was blond and vapidly pretty and she was singing something from Gypsy. Ethel Merman didn’t have to worry. He looked up groggily as the orchestra went into a fanfare. Then the leader shouted, “Brazillia!” And a slim dark girl stepped into the spotlight.

  Robin sat up. She was worth the fanfare. She wore a man’s evening jacket over a leotard. Her black hair was tucked into a French knot under a black slouch hat worn at a rakish angle. Slowly she began an apache dance. It was amazingly good. The girl had a solid classical ballet background. She finished in a frenzy and whipped off her hat and let her black hair cascade down to her shoulders. The applause was strong, but she did not leave. She waited until it subsided, then the music began the familiar beat. She swayed suggestively and removed her coat. Slowly she fell to her knees, then like a snake shedding its skin, she writhed her way out of the leotard, r
evealing a smooth white body with tiny silver bikini pants and bra.

  The music went faster, the lights began to flicker; he saw the silver-and-white body leaping into the air, falling into splits. The lights dimmed. She pulled off the bra and bikini pants, the lights came up to give the audience a fleeting flash of the nude slim body and the small compact breasts. Then the lights went off, and she disappeared to loud applause. The show was over and Robin was quite drunk.

  “I want to meet Brazillia,” he announced.

  “We’ll go to Liesel’s down the street where they all go for breakfast. You’ll see Brazillia there.”

  Robin looked at his watch. “Are you kidding? It’s three A.M. This place is about to pack in. Nothing will be open.”

  “There are places in Hamburg open twenty-four hours.”

  Robin paid the bill, but insisted upon sending a note to Brazillia telling her to meet them at Liesel’s. Sergio patiently wrote it in German and gave it to the waiter along with a handful of marks. The waiter returned and an exchange of German passed between him and Sergio. “She will be there,” he told Robin. “Come—we will leave.” Robin followed obediently.

  Liesel’s was obviously owned by the fat woman who greeted them and led them into a cellar with small tables and checked cloths. Sergio ordered beer. Robin’s gaze wandered as he sipped vodka. A tall good-looking man entered and sat at a table across the room. Soon a few effeminate men joined him. The tall man stared at Sergio. Robin was drunk but he was able to detect the instant radar that went up between Sergio and the man. “You’re sure this is where Brazillia comes, and not just a faggot hangout?”

  “It’s everything. It is also the only place on the block that serves breakfast.” Sergio was staring at the good-looking boy across the way.

  Robin patted him on the shoulder. “Okay. Sergy, go join the boys.”

  “I will stay with you. Perhaps Brazillia will not come. I do not want you to be alone.”

  “Listen, chum, I don’t need a caretaker. And don’t worry, she’ll show.”

  “Robin, I don’t like it. You know what kind of a girl Brazillia is, don’t you?”

  “Beat it, or the muscle man across the room will lose interest. He probably thinks I’m your date by now.”

  “But, Robin—”

  “Do I have to toss you out?”

  At that moment the door opened and she entered. She looked around the room hesitantly. Robin stood up and waved. She walked directly to his table. “Beat it, chum,” he said under his breath.

  Sergio shrugged and joined the table across the room. Brazillia sat down beside him. The woman who ran the place brought her a cognac.

  “I speak English,” she said in a low throaty voice.

  “You don’t have to talk, baby.”

  He glanced up in time to see Sergio leave with the handsome man. Sergio waved and Robin formed a victory sign with his fingers. The girl sat and silently drank her cognac. Robin ordered her another. He reached out and held her hand. She returned the pressure. A blond, effeminate young man entered the room and walked over to their table. He spoke a few words in French to Brazillia. She nodded and the man sat down. “This is Vernon. He does not speak English. He is waiting for a friend and does not like to stand at the bar alone.”

  Robin signaled for a drink for Vernon. To his surprise the fat woman brought him a glass of milk. “Vernon does not drink,” Brazillia explained.

  Just than a tall rugged man entered. Vernon gulped down the milk, and dashed to meet him. “Poor Vernon,” Brazillia said. “He does not know what he wants to be.”

  “It’s pretty obvious,” Robin said.

  Brazillia sighed. “During the day he tries to live like a man. At night he is a woman. It is sad.” Then she turned to Robin. “Are you here for wild thrills?”

  “I like any kind of thrills.”

  “If you expect something wild and crazy with me, go away.” She sounded weary. “You are handsome. I would very much like to go to bed with you. But I would like a night of love, of beautiful sex—no sickness. You understand?”

  “That’s fine with me.”

  “It will be like that?” She was almost pleading.

  “You call the shots, baby.”

  “Excuse me a moment.” She walked to the bar and whispered something to Vernon. He nodded with a faint smile. Then she returned. “Let us go.”

  As he paid the check he wondered what her deal with Vernon was all about. But then, many girls had fags as confidants and close friends. Amanda even said a model friend of hers lived with a fag. And look at him with Sergio.

  A cab was parked outside but she tossed her head in dismissal. “I live near here.”

  She led him through dark cobbled streets until they came to a large building. They went through a wooden door into a courtyard. Suddenly there was a look of Paris about the place. The geraniums in the window boxes, a stray cat prowling around, middle-class domesticity. They walked up to the second floor. She leaned down and picked up a loaf of bread and put the key in the door. “I always have bread delivered, in case I have had too much cognac. If I eat bread, I don’t wake with a hangover.”

  The apartment was small, but totally feminine. Sparkling clean and almost virginal with the white ruffled bedspread and the dolls on the bed. There was a picture of Brazillia on the dressing table. And on the mantel above the fireplace was a picture of one of the girls in the show—the one named Véronique.

  “She’s too good to open the show,” Robin commented. “She could make it in New York.” Then he reached out and caught her around the waist. “And you’re too damn good a dancer to strip. You’re really good.”

  Brazillia shrugged. “It gives me extra money and makes me a headline act. Ah, but what is the difference? None of us will go anywhere no matter how badly we want to. Once you live and work on the Reeperbahn, it is too late. But I was in America once. I played Las Vegas.”

  “You did?” Robin was surprised.

  “Yes, not doing what I am doing now. I was part of a chorus. There were six of us. We did a straight dance, to support an old has-been American singer. He could barely get out the notes and we came on behind him to drown him out. That was ten years ago. I was eighteen and I had hoped to study the ballet seriously. But when the act was finished, all I had left was a return ticket home. So I came back.”

  “Where is home?”

  “It was Milano. I stayed there for a time.” She poured him a cognac. “Then I realized that trying to wait on tables and live the bourgeois life that was expected of me was as dishonest as—” Again she strugged. “Come, are you like all the others—must the life story be part of the evening?”

  “No. You don’t have to tell me a damn thing, Brazillia. But you are young and attractive. Don’t give up all your dreams.”

  She pushed him on the couch and sat on his lap. “Tonight I am having a dream come true.” She ran her fingers along his profile and her tongue flicked his ear. “To have a handsome man like you want to make love to me.”

  “Eager to make love to you,” he said. He kissed her gently, she clung to him… . Then she pulled him to his feet and led him to the bedroom.

  The moment they were in bed she became the aggressor. Suddenly she seemed to be everywhere. Her tongue was like butterfly wings across his eyelids, her firm young breasts were against his chest, her long dark hair fell on his face. She made love to him and he lay back powerless to do more than accept her love. When it was over he lay limp with pleasure and exhaustion. In the dim light he reached out and stroked her head. “Brazillia, I’ll never forget tonight. It’s the only time in my life that a girl made love to me.

  “I enjoyed it, Robin.”

  “Now it’s my turn.”

  “You don’t have to …”

  “You crazy little idiot. I want to.” He stroked her face and her body and when he entered her he moved rhythmically and held back. He wanted to please her. He moved deeper and faster. She was clinging to him, but he sen
sed she wasn’t ready. He continued the steady rhythm for what seemed an eternity. A pulse was beating against his temple, he was using every bit of strength to hold back. And still he felt she wasn’t ready. This had never happened to him before. And he had never held back this long without pleasing a woman. He gritted his teeth and kept moving. He had to please her! Then he felt the unbearable yet wonderful weakness flood through his groin as he reached his climax. He fell off her exhausted, with the knowledge that he had not satisfied her. She reached out and touched his cheek. Then she snuggled against him and kissed his brow, his nose, his neck, “Robin, you are a marvelous lover.”

  “Don’t pretend, baby.” He got up and went to the bathroom. It was frilly, like the rest of the apartment, and complete with bidet. He showered and returned in his shorts. She held a lighted cigarette out to him and patted the bed. He stared at her lovely body. The breasts stood upright under the sheer nightgown she had put on. She smiled. “Come, have a cigarette.”

  His smile was weary. “Brazillia, in my country they think I’m pretty good in the kip. But I’m not up to another session.” He took the cigarette and began to dress.

  She jumped out of bed and threw her arms around him. “Please, stay with me all night. I want to sleep in your arms. Tomorrow morning I will make you breakfast. And if the day is nice, we can take a walk. I will show you St. Pauli in the daylight, and then perhaps in the late afternoon we can make love again. Oh, Robin, it was so wonderful—please stay.”

  He began knotting his tie.

  “Didn’t you like me?” she asked.

  “I liked you plenty, baby.” Then he turned to her and reached in his pocket. “How much?”

  She turned and sat on the bed. He walked over and touched her shoulder. His voice was gentle. “Come on, Brazillia, how much? You name it.”

  She lowered her head. “There is no charge.”

  He sat beside her and lifted her face. Tears were spilling down her face. “Honey, what’s wrong?”

  “You don’t like me,” she sobbed.