“Excuse me, miss, but Gita Ratleman, your boss, gave me my ticket and,” I shrugged, “here I am. Do you think you could advance me some D-marks, so that I might get a hotel?”
She snorted disdainfully and turned her back, saying, “You must come again in the morning,” and returned to her telephone call. She had seen girls like me before, girls who smoked pot and played the guitar. She had a very smart Mary Quant sort of haircut and the heels of her olive suede shoes were not worn down on each side the way mine were. I waited humbly, by now very tired.
“Look,” I tried again when she at last got off the phone, “at least you could advance me enough money to get a meal … .”
Scornfully, she looked me up and down. “Do you mean you have no money at all?”
I looked out the clean expanse of window into the twilight. The air over the yard was dense with empty branches. “Yes,” I admitted.
“Oh, come,” she scoffed. “No one changes countries without any money. Not even rootless photomodels.” She delighted herself with her grasp of the language. The disdain in her voice dripped with her true feelings for the models she booked. And there was a horror there, underneath. She’d made her choice, this girl. Hers was a safe, humming office and health insurance. No gallivanting around the world for her.
“I don’t have a single mark,” I protested, knowing I must sound pathetic and realizing what she said was certainly true, yet here I was. I’d come this far. If I was ever in this snippy little office worker’s place, I promised myself, I would behave in a more charitable way. I would be darned if this small-minded Fräulein would play any role in thwarting my destiny. Suddenly I didn’t care what she thought. “Listen,” I said in a harsher tone, “Gita Ratleman is your boss, isn’t she?”
Like most bullies, she had little spine when bullied herself. She unpursed her lips.
“I don’t think she would have paid for a flight for me from Milan if she didn’t think I’d work here.”
She gave a hard laugh. “Gita takes a chance on a lot of girls. That’s what she does. Tickets are tax deductible. Only one of ten will work, though. She makes money either way.”
I uncrumpled the paper I still held in my hand. “But this fashion magazine, Freundin, booked me for two days starting tomorrow. At least you’ll be assured to get your advance back.”
She really saw me for the first time.
“I went there first, by mistake,” I explained.
Her eyes widened at the signature on the paper. Suddenly, she became almost courtly. “I’ll tell you what,” she acted as though we’d been chummy all along, “I’ll advance you twenty marks from my own pocket and book you a pension near the Leopoldstrasse. The Franz Joseph. It is cheap and clean. And it’s in Schwabing.”
Even I knew that twenty marks was hardly anything, but I was so tired and hungry now. All I wanted was to get away. Laboriously, she wrote out the directions for the trolley but as soon as I was out of sight, I stuck out my thumb. There wasn’t much traffic out this way. Swans glided up the canal, hoisted up their skirts of belly and waddled across chunks of ice, then plopped back in the water and continued gliding down the canal. They eyed me as they passed.
This was so different from Italy’s dark, narrow canals, its lives behind groaning shutters. Out here were spacious lawns of clean blue snow. The twilight had turned the water a shimmering purple. I wished I’d thought to open my trunk and find a thicker sweater. Far off, stout ladies and men played a serious game of Eisstockschiessen—bowling on ice. The people were all twice the size of Italians—and I could hear the pins clacking in the crisp air where they played. I could see right into kitchen windows edged in white lacy curtains. Farm lamps twinkled. Families ate their supper. I thought of my mother and father back home. The newspapers open. The smell of food. A car came down the lane but passed me by. It didn’t matter how long it would take. Twenty marks would not go far and who knew what tomorrow would bring? Eventually, a car did stop and I hitched a ride to the Pension Franz Joseph. It seemed hitchhiking wasn’t done, but the fact that I’d transported this great trunk with me struck them as jocularly original. Each of my drivers had laughed and laughed at my plight, but each one had driven me to exactly where I’d had to go.
The pension was in a dark, gated Hof. The stones on the ground were worn with the centuries and shone with moonlight. I lugged my trunk through the yard and up the stairs. The stout woman behind the heavy wooden door spoke no English but it didn’t matter because everything she said was drowned out by the shrill barking of her four vicious dachshunds. Together, they showed me to my tiny room. I shut the door. The window looked out onto a medieval stone courtyard. I had never seen a bed so soft and high or linen so white. Cherishing the thought that this would be mine tonight, I took from my trunk my sketchpad and charcoals, a heavy sweater—my brother’s varsity football sweater from St. John’s University—put the wrought-iron door key in my pocket, and went out to find some food.
This place didn’t look so bad, I thought. I went into the Pschorr Brauerei on the Leopoldstrasse, where huddles of university students sat smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. No one troubled over my sketchpad here. I could sit and draw to my heart’s content. I ordered a goulash soup and a glass of milk, the only dish I could decipher on the menu. I can taste it still. The milk was odd tasting and not cold but the soup was delicious, hot, greasy, and spicy. I wiped the bowl with the last crispy roll and sighed with renewed hope. The next day I would begin to work. Work! I calculated my expenses. Why, I could live for weeks on one day’s paycheck, if I scrimped. I began to draw the smoky room.
“Excusez-moi?” A young man stood at my table. I looked around, meaning to indicate another table, but the restaurant had filled. Before I could answer, he sat down and stuck his straggly head of long hair behind a menu. He wore a Greek sweater tied around the waist and raggedy clothes. He introduced himself. “I am Chartreuse.”
“I’m Claire Breslinsky.” Nice, I thought, eyeing the acoustic guitar slung over his shoulder. Like Angelo, my friend in Italy.
“Student?”
“Always.” I smiled. “But not matriculated.” I apologized, “I just model, I’m afraid.”
“Ah.” His eyes glittered. He actually rubbed both hands together in leering appreciation.
“You are French?” I asked shyly.
“I am … shall we say … intercontinental.”
“Oh,” I said, impressed. I was so happy to speak English. “Are you a student?”
“Mais non.” He eyed my sketchpad. “I am an artist.” He did look like an artist; his long, lustrous hair down to his shoulders, his dirty fingers, his handsome nostrils flaring with sensual abandon. He could have been a rock star.
“Imagine,” I gushed naively, “the first person I meet in Germany is an artist!” I blushed. “It’s what I hope to become!”
We smiled at each other. He glanced over his shoulder. “Joint?”
“Sorry?”
He held a hand-rolled fabrication of hashish and tobacco—complete with filter—up in the air.
I looked around. “What about the police?”
He laughed. “This is Schwabing. Student territory. What you would call the Left Bank of Munich. No one weel bother you here.”
“Oh, not tonight, thanks,” I hedged. “I’ve got to be up before dawn tomorrow. We’re going to Austria. To Kitzbühel.”
“Ah! Keetzbuhel! I love eet! Which mountain?”
“They didn’t tell me that. It’s for some magazine called Freundin.” Little did I know that in my country that was like saying ‘some magazine like Glamour or Mademoiselle.’ Chartreuse’s eyes opened wide.
“Would you do me a favor?” I asked. “I just want to pay my bill and I don’t speak German.”
“But, of course.” He snatched the twenty-mark note from my hand and signaled the waitress. In one deft movement he slipped the rest of the rolls from the breadbasket and smuggled them into the Nepali bag he wore across hi
s chest. The waitress arrived, counted up how many rolls were gone, and added them to the bill.
Chartreuse paid with an elegant flourish. He had beautiful eyes. Yellow. Rimmed in kohl. Then these long silky eyelashes. He, too, was short, I realized when I stood.
I can’t tell you why I liked him. I believe now that the attraction happened because I was at that time still innocent. It was before anything untoward had happened. Perhaps my goodness was drawn to his wickedness. But there was something very sweet about him, too, something of the small boy alone in the desert hankering for Westerners and all they brought with them. And he looked at me as though I were made of gold. He seemed romantic to me. Not in a sexual way, certainly (I remain aghast at dirty fingernails) but as a pal, another artist. I held out my hand firmly for the change he’d so cavalierly pocketed. He gave it back. We grinned at each other.
We walked outside together and then back to my pension. I wasn’t sure I could have found my way and I was glad for the company.
“So long!” He gave me a peck on both cheeks as I fished for my key. His breath smelled of sen-sen, which I learned later he kept at all times in his pocket. “See you soon!”
“How will I find you?”
He gave an easy shrug. “I am always at the Café Münchner Freiheit.”
There, I thought as I slipped the lacy key into the gate, one day in town and already I’ve got a friend. I went to my room, washed up, and climbed into that scrumptious bed. Then, for some reason, my eyes would not close. I turned over. I thought I’d crack open the window a bit and rolled out of bed. But before I could open the sash I caught sight of a figure below in the dark. People still hurried down the tree-lined avenue but someone stood there in the shadows looking up. The ember on his cigarette had captured my attention. I took a step back and peered through the drapes. Why, it was Chartreuse.
I left the window shut and stole back to my bed. I lay there, contented in the assumption that he’d fallen for me. I felt idiotically proud. But you know what they say about pride.
The next day I began to work.
A caravan of oversized Mercedes taxis arrived in the still-dark morning. I climbed aboard one of them. They were full of sour, sleepy, grumpy Germans—they were so big! I think I was half the size of every one of them. They dozed with their heads pillowed against windows and I was forced to wedge myself into a middle spot of the last car—low man on the totem pole as I was. Still, I was excited. We were headed for the Alps. The Alps! I sat up straight, the driver and I the only ones awake. We chatted convivially in English. He was happy to point out the sights.
My hungry eyes devoured the picturesque countryside.
We drove and drove. I was beginning to doze off myself. At the Austrian border we were jostled awake, our passports reviewed by humorless, armed agents, then waved through.
At last we arrived. The muddled gray sky and the bitter air were not very inviting. I just let myself be pushed along with my group. The men were all impossibly handsome, I noticed, and effeminate. They minced along. The women, more masculine, were bleary-eyed and their hair was done up in rollers. They stomped along carrying “falls”—great manes of pretend hair that they would later anchor with combs to their own.
We were hustled into a large gondola, where, standing, we were wedged like sardines among early morning skiers and photographic equipment. I felt my stomach drop as we became suspended onto a cable and lifted, airplane-like, upward. Breaking through clouds is always a thrill, I don’t care how many times you’ve done it. Suddenly we were bathed in morning light.
Nothing the Germans like more than sunlight. At once they awoke and began to chat. Outside, the sky was crisp and blue. The other passengers, used to this sort of thing, were prepared in their own ski clothes and boots. It became manically cold. I wriggled over to the side and took a peek down. We glided above what looked like miniature villages and pines. Cars and trains the size of toys slid by and then, stuck in a cloud, the gondola hesitated, then swayed. It jigged an interrupted little dance, sending the passengers into one another. My heart was in my throat. I could feel the sweat on my back. We lunged higher still. I began to tremble. The others, however, were as casual as New Yorkers on the el train. There was the smell of suntan lotion and the happy sound of loud, guffawing bliss that is the German in unrestricted sunlight.
We landed, sliding along an icy embankment, and were jostled into a herding gate. I was glad to see some sort of rest house of glass and wood built into the mountain. It was rimmed with broad balconies and slanted, magnificent skylights. One steward swept away the snow and behind him another went about setting up leisure chairs. I could smell coffee and the promise of food. Coming from New York as I had, I’d never tasted air that sharp and fresh. It practically bit you.
“Hey!” One of the models nudged me with her huge tote bag. “Mach’ mal! Beweg’ dich!”
I imagined she meant, “Get a move on!”
“Sorry!” I said, pulling myself together and moving along more quickly. She looked vaguely familiar although I couldn’t imagine why. I supposed it was because she and I were the only redheads—I was auburn, she had the I-love-Lucy red. That sort never quite trust my naturally dark brows and lashes. She was of the pale-lashed, pinkish-eye variety. She wore an awful lot of jewelry for so early in the morning, I thought to myself, but I quickly dismissed her. There was so much going on.
The photographer and his assistants were already out on the mountain ledge beside the T-bar, setting up for the shots. We were led to a makeshift dressing room in the building; it was at the end of a tile corridor near the cold passageways. I looked longingly through the windows at the steaming pancakes on trays in the canteen-like restaurant but there was to be none of that. Everything was, “Komm! Komm! mach’ schnell!” “Hurry hurry,” the stylist would cry, for though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, there were bundles of outfits to be got through and the weather this high up could change in an instant. There were so many trunks of clothes, I couldn’t see how we would ever get done in a day, but, carefully, systematically, the assistants lined everything up on portable-hanger trolleys and we were soon under way.
There were six female models and six males, the men up and ready first. We women had a part of the balcony cordoned off and we applied our makeup from handheld magnifying mirrors. I remember not being very impressed with the models. To me they all seemed old. They looked as if they were almost thirty, for heaven’s sake. But these were catalog models, the kind with whom I’d not had any experience. They were “girls” who were no longer girls but who, on every roll of film, never lost the photographer a shot. They knew all the tricks, how steadily one must hold a smile, how not to move too quickly but in rhythm with the camera—just enough movement to give the outfit another angle, but never so much that the texture of the cloth might blur. In every shot the hands were extended and held with the grace of a ballerina. These were the pros. Their complexions might look spackled in person, but in the catalog or the weekend circulars they graced, they glowed like young brides. They also made a lot of money. The girl with the pink eyes, for example, in a gloss of mascara and black liner now, looked extraordinarily glamorous.
BoBo, the stylist, instructed us that we must not make use of the skis. There would be severe repercussions if anyone tried.
“Es heisst wir werden nicht bezahlt,”—It means we won’t get paid—wisecracked one of the girls and everyone laughed. I turned to get a better look at her. She was a wild stallion sort of girl with lots of unkempt, mahogany hair—not like the others with their sleek heads in varying shades of blond. She stood out.
But not only because she was dark. I noticed that everyone chuckled then shook their heads in fond indulgence when she said anything in her deep, attention-getting voice. For the first time I wished I understood German. She moved unhurried and pantherlike, comfortable in her own skin. This girl carried an edge of danger. I was just thinking that I’d love to paint a girl like that when she hopped the
fence, flung herself down on one of the sunlit chaise longues, and presented herself to the sun.
“Hey! Isolde!” the photographer shouted at her. “Bleib’ mal genau so!” Stay just as you are! Quickly, he disassembled his camera and refocused in her direction.
“Isolde.” I said her name out loud to remember. Stalking about like a panther—that’s the only way I can think to describe her.
She was as old as the rest of them but she gave off a sort of spectacular charm. They were all a good six foot but this girl had something special besides.
Suddenly she sprang from her languid pose, heaved herself away with a pair of poles, and took off down the slope. Everyone leapt to their feet and leaned in one movement over the fence to watch. Obviously an excellent skier, Isolde gave us all a good show, skimming to a stop in an arc of snow at the bottom of the hill. Not missing a beat—she was supposed to be up here working with us—she hopped onto the ascending T-bar.
I’ll never forget the way she looked. She was wearing a china red ski suit and as she glided toward us in the crisp morning sun with the blue sky behind her, every eye was upon her. She waved. Her dark mane of hair shone with good health and her agate eyes glittered with mischief. I looked at the photographer to see how he was taking her hijinks, expecting fury. Oh, boy, I thought, who’s in trouble now! But everyone seemed instead to be filled with admiration. She carried it off. She had a threat about her, something carefree and a make-my-own-rules kind of ruthlessness that you had the feeling if you went against, you’d be sorry.
Or maybe it was what I’d overheard one of them say—Isolde was a noble, a countess.
We all had a smoke. Everybody smoked in those days. Just then, the client arrived. He emerged from the gondola to see his high-priced models lollygagging at the viewing fence, puffing away. His outrage set the photographer on a tirade and we tiptoed back to work.
Pack Up the Moon Page 2
