The Weather in Berlin

by Ward Just

  Some men wander because they like it, Dix said. My father did. He was a sort of bumblebee, hopping from bush to bush. He saved passports the way other men save money, and every so often he’d look through them, remembering his journeys. Every few years he’d buy a new wallet. So he had a stack of wallets, wallets bought in Syria, Ireland, at an open-air market in Provence, on the waterfront at Bombay. His wallets and his passports were his diary.

  Anya smiled. My father thinks of his passport as a burden. Perhaps a curse.

  That’s why I’m here, Anya went on after a moment. I thought that if I came to Germany I could see him regularly and that would bring us close. And it has, a little. Not in the way I’d hoped. He’s a difficult personality. He believes he has been conspired against. Have you ever believed you were conspired against? It’s a bad feeling, it causes you to behave irresponsibly. You neglect your duties. All his life he has been forced to open the wrong door. He took us to Lübeck and that was a mistake, and then to America and that was a mistake also. He did not get along with his colleagues in America any more than he had gotten along with them in Germany. He thought the American doctors were worse even than the Germans. Domineering, he said. Sure of themselves, even the young ones. And the young ones most of all.

  Who does he blame?

  He blames me, Anya said.

  They had paused under a linden tree. Up ahead, a noisy cadre of workmen were gathered around a moving van. They were lit by the fuzzy light of a streetlamp. Beyond them, the road curved down to the lake, and through the trees he could see the dark water, a kind of void. His father never blamed anyone for anything, was patient also in passing around credit. Conspiracies were natural. Harry had a turtle’s carapace of an ego, heavy and thick, unbreakable. He was sheltered by it, living within it as the turtle did. And he gave it no more thought than that. His passports and his wallets were all he needed to move from one day to the next, confident that his narratives were welcome, until one day they weren’t.

  And naturally he blames political conditions, Anya went on. He blames the Russians and the Americans for causing the division of Germany. He believes he lost his future because Germany was divided, forcing him to leave the East for the West and the West for America. Et cetera.

  And it’s your fault, Dix said.

  It seems to be. He says it is. He says I must square the account. When he moved back to Germany he wanted me to come with him, but of course that was impossible. He said I owed it to him, after all he had done. But I refused.

  So, she said, a story of a German family.

  They walked on, more slowly now in the gathering chill. The wind had come up again. Now and then Anya would point out a particularly grand villa and give its provenance, built by an industrialist, a banker, a merchant, an art dealer. They were three-story villas that suggested the solemnity and ambition of monasteries, and spared only because the Red Army was busy in the East. Between the wars this part of Wannsee was a Jewish neighborhood. Many of the villas had been confiscated by the Nazis during the war and returned afterward, to those owners who could be found. Many had disappeared in the camps or overseas, so the city of Berlin looked after the properties. They were square-built with narrow windows, chimneys left and right, a Mercedes under the porte-cochere, a coat of arms worked into the locked wrought-iron gates. A few houses were dark, their owners in the south somewhere, Italy, Spain, the Greek islands. The great lawns were lit but the dwellings themselves were vacant. They reminded Anya of haunted houses in the stories her mother read to her as a child, ghosts at the windows, ghosts in the air you breathed, always present, never visible. These houses give me the creeps, she said suddenly. I imagine people at the windows, standing in the shadows where you can’t see them but they can see you. Anya quickened the pace as they approached the moving van under the streetlamp.

  One of the workmen looked up and smiled broadly.

  Good evening, Professor.

  Good evening, Thomas.

  Are you joining us?

  No, I am out for a walk with my friend. This is Herr Greenwood.

  The workman took off his cap and shook hands.

  Herr Greenwood is in the film business. In Los Angeles.

  Thomas nodded politely, turning to speak sharply to the other workmen. They were busy manhandling boxes and wardrobe trunks from the van, then stacking them on dollies and walking them down the drive to the villa by the lake. The house was ablaze with light, giving it the aspect of a stage set. A group of young men and women were standing on the porch smoking and drinking beer. An older woman waved at Anya and she waved back. When the woman motioned with her hand, Anya turned to Dix.

  That was the director, Frau Baz. Perhaps you would be interested?

  He said, What is it?

  They film drama for the German television, Anya said. Have you never noticed the bright lights in the windows at night? You of all people should recognize them, lights for filming. They film all day long and often late into the evening, as now. They do this for a living until they can find their way into more serious things. Anya explained that she was a technical consultant. The drama was set at the turn of the century, and she advised them on clothes and what wellborn Germans would say to one another, the forms of politeness and of insult. What operas they would go to and what they would say about the opera. What the women would be reading. What the men would do for recreation and who they would do it with. How they behaved toward their parents. And the servants. How husbands behaved toward wives and vice versa, language they used in public and private. They are trying to be authentic, you see. About the details of daily life. So long as the details don’t interfere seriously with the plot. She smiled, raising her eyebrows.

  She said, How they arranged liaisons.

  Where they would go and when.

  Dix laughed, looking at the group gathered together on the porch. How did they arrange liaisons?

  Notes passed. Notes on perfumed stationery. The episodes often begin with a note passed from one hand to another. There’s always a difficulty, a wife or a husband suspicious. Suspense comes from uncertainty. Will the lovers be discovered? Worse, will they be discovered during the undressing? The unhooking! Corsets and petticoats, garters, stockings. And for the men, cravats and suspenders. Sometimes spats. The studs in the shirt, the cufflinks, the shoes.

  Period drama, Dix said.

  Turn of the century, Anya said.

  And you advise them on authenticity.

  I don’t have to tell them how to undress, Anya said. They do that naturally, but the boys always have trouble with the studs, the cufflinks, and the spats. When they become frustrated, they are like eight-year-olds. They whine and curse. They throw things. The girls have less trouble, probably because they enjoy it more. When it is cold, as it is now, we shoot them on the terrace at the back of the house with portable heaters to keep them warm, the heaters out of sight. Even so, sometimes they get goosebumps and shiver during the lovemaking. But that, too, is sexy depending on how it is shot.

  It is the most popular Sunday program in Germany, Anya said proudly. Everyone watches it. This year it is called Wannsee 1899. Next year, Wannsee 1900. Each January we advance one year in order to keep history straight. The turn of the century was not such a bad time in Germany. Zeppelin flew his balloon. The nation was prosperous and stable. All Europe was at peace, dancing to Lehar and Strauss. Really, the twentieth century was far away. They called it “the new era” but they did not want it different from the old. Maybe Nietzsche did, but he died in 1900. We have fifteen good years left. God knows what Frau Baz will do after the archduke and Sarajevo. I suppose she’ll send everyone off to the front, the girls, too. They can arrange their liaisons in the trenches and field hospitals. But the program will not continue that long. Nothing does.

  Masterpiece Theatre in German, Dix said.

  Not at all, Anya said. Each episode is an original script.

  A script-at-a-certain-level, Dix said.

  I supp
ose so. Our best people contribute.

  The program announced by a flourish of trumpets?

  The adagio from Mahler’s unfinished Tenth, Anya said. Critics say it was written to resolve the turbulence Mahler felt in his marriage. But I don’t believe it. I think it was Mahler’s premonition of the war.

  I agree with you, Dix said.

  Wasn’t one of your movies about the war?

  The war and after the war, Dixon said.

  But there were scenes—

  One scene, Dix said. A flashback, very brief.

  Adam Kessel was talking about it at dinner the other night. He called it a classic, his favorite movie. He couldn’t say enough about it. I myself have never seen it, but I wanted to after listening to Adam. He fell in love with the girls.

  Everyone did, Dix said. They were—unusual. And they never appeared in another movie. They were one-time actors, like those one-time cameras that you use and then throw away. They went back to wherever they came from. Lusatia, they said, but that would have been difficult in 1972. Maybe as Sorbs they had ways and means to fall between the cracks. Wherever they are, they’re middle-aged. They’re married with children. Probably they have grandchildren. And the grandchildren insist that they tell the story about the strange Americans from Hollywood who came to make a feature film about a summer on a German lake just after the Great War. And then again, maybe they’ve forgotten all about it, this interlude in their migration.

  You never tried to find them?

  No, I never did. When we finished shooting, we went home.

  One of the girls was lost, he added. A swimming accident. The last day of shooting. Her name was Jana. Her actual name and her name in the film. Let’s talk about something else.

  Anya said, I’m sorry. Then, after a moment: I love the movies. That’s one of the things I love about America. I go by myself in the afternoons when my husband is watching football. I sit in the air-conditioned dark and watch American movies on weekends when the theater is full. I like the tearjerkers and my husband can’t stand them. Anya waved to the director and said to Dix, Actors are amusing to be around. They love what they do. I know it’s only a television thing, but they try to do serious work, something they can be proud of and make a living from. And along the way they become famous because everyone in Germany watches them on Sundays.

  You say the director is good? Dix asked.

  Very good, Anya said.

  I’d like to watch her work.

  Anya asked the workman Thomas for his cell phone. While she spoke to the director, Dix watched the roughhouse on the porch, the boys clowning with one another while the girls looked on. One of the boys was juggling tenpins, the pins spinning furiously in the bright floodlights. He ended with a flourish, catching the last one behind his back and bowing to laughter and applause. They were all wearing jeans and flannel shirts and sneakers. Two of the boys sported wispy goatees, giving them the look of teenagers trying to appear grown up. The girls wore their hair short. When the older woman appeared in the doorway and gestured, they stopped talking and went inside, squaring their shoulders as if bound for a police lineup or final exams. The atmosphere was businesslike and cheerful at the same time, usually a good sign on the set. He could see the troupe through the wide front windows. The girls were donning wigs and necklaces, and suddenly they were turn-of-the-century German girls. The boys were out of sight. The older woman moved among the girls, speaking to each in turn and wagging her forefinger like a conductor with a baton. And then the curtains were drawn and the villa looked as drab and lifeless as its neighbors.

  That was Willa, Anya said. The director, Willa Baz. She says we are welcome. She says this will be an amusing shoot, a lovely shoot. Willa wanted me to tell you that Dixon Greenwood is welcome on her set. She is honored.

  Anya and Dix stood in a corner back of the cameraman. The atmosphere was tense, the cameraman taking light readings and the soundman muttering into a microphone. The troupe was in formal period dress. The boys were got up in tight trousers, stiff white shirts, and black swallowtail coats, indistinguishable each to the others, except for the blond heavyset one with the gold watch chain and a two-inch ponytail. The actors’ faces were heavily made up and they listened attentively as the director explained something in rapid German. Anya translated it for Dix. Willa Baz was telling them where to stand and how to move. She essayed a few gliding steps to waltz music, played by a trio of violinists and a pianist at an upright Bechstein. The boys tried a few steps as the girls giggled. Then ponytail put his arm around the waist of the nearest girl and began to swing in a slow, sliding circle, his arms extended like a bird’s wings. In a moment the girl closed her eyes and moved with him, the others stepping tactfully out of the way as Willa watched with approval. When she clapped twice, they stopped dancing and stood at attention, though the music continued.

  The director now spoke to each of the actors in turn, raising her voice and gesturing when one or another of them nodded dubiously.

  Listen to me, she said in English. Listen.

  Dix remembered then how difficult it had been with the three Sorb girls, attempting to explain to them the narrative, and how he wanted them to move and react when the men spoke to them or touched them. He wanted them to speak reluctantly, never more than a half-dozen words at a time, because the men were voluble. The girls measured their words with the circumspection of a chemist measuring nitroglycerine. He explained himself in English, then in German through an interpreter. The interpreter was often baffled by the Sorb dialect, and in any case the girls were indifferent to instruction. Each day Dix thought he was making progress and then everything broke down in a clutter of incomprehension, the girls turning away sullenly and threatening to go home.

  God damn them, Billy Jeidels said. They’re jerking us around.

  The girls had walked away to the clearing overlooking the lake and sat in a circle, not speaking, picking up handfuls of gravel and throwing the gravel on the ground, then bending down to inspect the result. After a moment one of them would smile or frown or in extreme cases laugh or burst into tears. Billy shook his head, exasperated, and Dix explained they were practicing geomancy, foretelling the future by means of the patterns the stones made. An occult practice that dated from the Middle Ages, related to the reading of tea leaves. They don’t like to be told what to do, Dix said to Billy. They’re independent girls, aside from their reliance on geomancy. Never again, Billy told Dix after one tearful argument, never again would he work with foreign actors. Never, no exceptions, because if you couldn’t make yourself understood, you were merely a not too innocent bystander. What good were you without control? Truffaut had had the same problem on the set of Fahrenheit 451. It drove him crazy because he liked collegiality and he believed at the end of it he had lost authority over his own film. Dix told Billy to get his camera and film sub rosa. He used a long lens to capture the girls as they sat in their enchanted circle scrutinizing the future from the patterns of the stones at their feet, the stones smaller than marbles. The girls were tremendously still, concentrating hard. Billy filmed in natural light, the moment filled with mystery and poignance. He held the frame and held and held as the girls began to rock on their haunches, a kind of torso dance, an adagio; and at that instant Dix knew they were witness to a rare ceremony. The girls continued to rock as a long shaft of sunlight fell through the clouds, a bright white rectangle coloring the stones on the ground and the girls in their yellow shifts. God knows what he would do with the sequence, where he could fit it into the narrative. But it would fit somewhere. The girls rose at last and wandered off in the direction of the lake. They were holding hands and singing softly, and then their voices rose in high harmony, some ancient country melody. Billy stopped filming when they disappeared into the woods, the water of the lake sparkling in the near distance. Dix and the cameraman stood staring at the place where they disappeared. We’ll make do with the situation, Dix said. Forget about control, let them do things their own w
ay. Let them be themselves. We’ll never find another three who look and move like these three. They’re a gift, Billy.

  Willa Baz had finished her instructions and filming began. The lights snapped on, the quartet in the alcove played Strauss, and the actors danced. The room was leaden, thick carpets and curtains, heavy furniture, an iron chandelier the size of a washtub. Landscapes in ornate frames decorated the walls, a suit of armor glowed dully in the far corner. In period dress, the young actors seemed at ease in the stifling formality of the room. Glaring lights washed out all texture, giving the furnishings a bright steely look, the ambiance of tomorrow’s Bauhaus at odds with Wilhelmine Germany. Something preposterous about it, Dix thought. But everything about commercial television was preposterous. The music commenced, the actors began to sweat. The camera followed first one couple and then another before it focused and held steady. The boy in the ponytail had waltzed his partner to the curtained window, the camera trailing close behind. The others continued to dance but without conviction. He said something to her and she laughed, touching the tiny gold crucifix at her throat. When he put his hand on her breast she pulled away indignantly. She raised her hand to slap him but touched his cheek instead. The camera moved in closer, the music rising up-tempo into a rhythm that was almost swing. The girl seemed to swoon as she spun faster and faster, her skirt billowing. His hands were all over her now. She had ceased to resist, her expression soft and dreamy as she whirled in time to the music. Her body was present but her spirit was absent. She was going through the motions, a swimmer stroking laps, conscious only of maintaining rhythm and when to make the turn. Good actors had ways and means of living inside and outside at the same time, seeking not to mystify the camera but to find a convenient location in its lens, occupying it while yielding only what they wanted to yield. Of course the camera, too, had its own specific assignment, grinding on without reference to the operator behind it or the actor in front of it. Like sailing ships, cameras had a will of their own.