by Pierre Frei
'You were seven when you came alone for the first time. Do you remember, Mascha darling - the child absolutely didn't want to get undressed. Why not is a mystery to me to this day.'
Jutta laughed. 'Because I had a brand-new dress on, red with big white spots. I thought I looked truly beautiful in it. How often have you drawn me. Professor?'
There were fourteen nude drawings. Raab took them out of their folder after the sitting and looked at them, pleased. 'From little girl to pretty young woman. All of them good. They'll be yours after my death. Will you go on modelling for me?'
As long as you like.'
'Unless we have to go away,' Mascha said, with an anxious look.
'Nonsense, dear heart, no one will actually harm us. They'll remove me from my position, that's all. A kind of early retirement. We can live with that.'
'Time for your insulin, Georg.'
And I must go and help Mutti in the kitchen.' Jutta said goodbye.
The professor showed her out. 'Make yourself desirable for your Jochen.' He smiled slyly. And introduce Isabel to the lawyer.'
As always, hasty footsteps could be heard along the two shopping streets shortly before closing time. A babble of voices rose from the shops. Office workers were buying their supper on the way home from the U-Bahn. Jutta bought half a pound of freshly churned butter in the dairy, and quarter of a pound of sliced meat in Lehmann's butcher's shop.
'Hello, bookworm,' Jochen greeted her by the public clock.
'Good evening, teacher, sir.'
'Hop in.' He took a half eaten apple off the passenger seat. 'Want a bite?'
'Thanks, no. I had breakfast ages ago. Was the weekend with her fun?'
'Oh, don't be silly. We worked damn hard. Isabel's a good companion, that's all.' He pulled her close. 'You're the only one I love.'
'When?' She let the tip of her tongue play in his ear.
'Later, you immoral girl. Off to school first.'
The Hanomag set off, making a comic rattling sound. They stopped in the Dahlem district, outside a large building with a double roof. A mighty clock tower rose above the broad entrance. The wings of the building adjoined the central section to right and left.
'The Ernst-Moritz-Arndt Gymnasium, my future place of work as teacher of German, English and history. Qualified Schoolmaster Weber. Sounds good, eh?'
'Provided you pass the exam,' she said cautiously.
'The last test was this morning. They handed out the certificates this afternoon. I passed the whole thing. What do you say now, bookworm?'
'Three cheers!' she cried so loud that a pedestrian turned to stare. She hugged him hard. 'Why didn't you say so at once? I thought you wouldn't know until next week.'
'So you'd quake with anxiety on my behalf? Well, it's over and done with now.'
'You're a genius,' she said happily.
'Lucky, more like. I shone with those Merovingians in my history viva, thanks to Isabel's knee.'
'You were cheating, then!'
'No worse than Armin Drechsel. Professor Gabler himself hinted that he'd be asking him about Charlemagne.'
'Gabler's favourite?'
'Gabler's Party Comrade.'
'Does he still go about the place in silly short trousers with his knees braced rigid?' Jutta had met Drechsel a couple of times, and hadn't really taken to him.
'Drechsel is high up as a Hitler Youth leader. He's going to teach maths, so we'll be seeing each other daily in the staff room. I have to get on with him as well as my other colleagues. Isabel's coming round later with sparkling wine. We're going to celebrate our success.'
'Not a day without Isabel.'
'Don't be a spoilsport. She's a nice girl. Come on, let's look at my new workplace. The caretaker knows we're coming.' They ran hand in hand up the steps to the porch. Inside was a vestibule with pseudo-Romanesque columns, and between them a roll of honour of former pupils who had fallen in the Great War.
Jutta read aloud. 'Imperial Count Kuno von Schweinitz - Baron Artwig Schreck zu Cadelbach - Prince Heinrich XXIII von Selb. Not a single ordinary Schulze, Meier or Muller. It's pure Almanach de Gotha.'
All of Prussia sends its sons to board here,' Jochen said. A Prussian Eton. The headmaster was tutor to the imperial princes.'
'What a snob you are!'
'So why do you think I want to marry Princess Jutta von Kopenick?'
'Do you really want to?'
'You bet I do, princess. Come along, I'll show you a classroom and the big hall. The caretaker locks up at eight on the dot.'
After the guided tour they chugged away again. Twenty minutes later they parked the little car at the end of Trabener Strasse. There was no wind, and it was sultry. A storm was in the air. Jochen put up the convertible's roof to be on the safe side.
The man on duty at the turnstile to the Grunewald railway yard greeted them. They climbed over rusty rails and clinker with thistles growing in it. Their destination was an old saloon car, out of service and in the sidings, which the Mitropa rail company rented out cheap. Jochen had made himself comfortable here with his books, a spirit stove for cooking and a paraffin stove for heating. Jutta enjoyed this idyll two or three times a week.
She wound up the portable gramophone and put a record on. '1 don't have a car or a manor house, I'm not rich . . .' The hit of the season echoed from the box, which was covered with black artificial leather.
'Where are we off to today, then?' Jochen inquired.
'The Riviera. We'll ride from Menton to San Remo and on to Genoa.' She went into the sleeping compartment. He followed her soon afterwards. She leaned out of the window. 'How blue the sea is! Oh, look at that big white ship!' she cried, inventing scenery for them to pass. She was still wearing her blouse, but from the waist down she was naked. She cried out with delight as he entered her. They called this 'going on our travels', and it was their favourite game.
Isabel came picking her way across the tracks with two bottles of sparkling wine in a net bag. She looked up with interest at Jutta, whose flushed face spoke volumes.
The gramophone was idling to a halt as they went to the front of the saloon car. Jochen switched it off. Isabel was lounging on an upholstered seat. 'Hello, you two,' she murmured lazily.
Jutta put water on. She had wrapped herself in her dressing gown. When the water came to the boil she turned the flame down and put half a pea sausage in the pan. 'Something hot every day, that's what my mother insists on. And there's sliced meat too.'
Jochen sawed slices of bread off a loaf and unwrapped the yellow butter from its greaseproof paper. The smell of pea soup rose from the pan. 'Pea sausage,' he told them. 'Steamed pea-meal mixed with fat, salt and spices and pressed into a sausage shape. The recipe was developed for the Prussian Army during the Franco-Prussian war to save on weight for transporting supplies, and to enhance its keeping quality.'
'The things you know,' said Isabel admiringly.
He spread pate on some slices of bread and put cooked ham on the rest. He opened a bottle of sparkling wine and poured three glasses.
Jutta handed Isabel a cup of soup. 'Did you pass too?'
Not as brilliantly as your fiance.'
Jochen indicated the letter beside his plate. 'Mail from Africa. My parents send their love. They'd come and meet you if it wasn't so far from Windhoek.' Jochen's grandparents had emigrated from Mecklenburg to German South West Africa at the end of the last century, to raise cattle. His parents had remained there, breeding cattle even after the end of German colonial rule. They sent their younger son to school back in the home country, so Jochen had grown up with relations in Naumburg.
'Why not go there on honeymoon?' Isabel suggested.
And of course you'll come too,' Jutta said mockingly.
'If you like.' There was no throwing Isabel off balance. She took a good bite of her bread.
After supper, they listened to the Berlin Philharmonic under Furt- wangler. The programme included Mendelssohn's Fifth Symphony. 'Better pus
h the window up,' Isabel warned them. 'The composer's just been banned.'
'Do you seriously think anyone over in the signal box can tell Felix Mendelssohn from Paul Lincke? And what if it turns out that Lincke has a Jewish great-grandmother? Will his "Little Glow-worms" be banned too? Do we really have to go along with this idiocy?' Jutta was furious.
Jochen kept calm. 'Don't get so worked up, bookworm. We're not the ones who make the rules.'
'We keep them, though, like a flock of sheep.' Jutta tucked her knees under her chin and immersed herself in French Cuisine; she had asked her boss to let her borrow the book. 'Did you know that they put fox meat in a real daube provencale? They wrap a piece in muslin and add it for the flavour.'
'No. I didn't know.' He yawned. 'We'll drink the second bottle another time.'
'Fine. Goodnight, lovebirds.' Isabel disappeared into the dark.
Jutta sighed. A little less Isabel would be a little more welcome.'
'She doesn't have anyone else.'
She slept nestling close to Jochen. Even the storm didn't wake her. In the small hours she dreamed of riding through Africa by train. Rainer Jordan sat beside her. He was wearing a topi and looked very handsome. She enjoyed the rhythm of the wheels on the tracks and the characteristic smell of soot and steam which, to her, meant the glamour of distant places. Just before Windhoek the locomotive whistled so shrilly that she woke with a start. It was early, not yet six in the morning. Outside, the signal box that had always stood at the far end of the railway yard was gliding past. They stopped with a jolt. 'What's going on?' Jochen was still half asleep.
Jutta got into her dressing gown and leaned out of the window. Down below stood men in railway uniforms. 'Hey - what d'you think you're doing in there?' one of them barked up at her. He had silver braid on his cap.
'We were sleeping peacefully until a moment ago. Now we're going to make breakfast, if you don't mind.'
Evidently the man with the silver braid did mind. He stormed into the old railway car. 'This is no place for the homeless,' he shouted at them.
Jochen got to his feet. 'I don't like your manner, sir. May I ask what you want?'
'I'm Reich Rail Officer Schmitz,' barked the man with the silver braid. 'You'll have to clear out of here. This carriage has been handed over to the Grunewald SA as a meeting place.'
'But I'm the legal tenant.' Jochen searched his case. 'Here's my rental agreement with Mitropa. Here's the police registration. My fiancee Fraulein Reimann is visiting me.'
'This car has been transferred to us by Mitropa, so the Reichsbahn is now its owner. We're not interested in your agreement. You'll have to be out by the end of the week. Heil Hitler.'
'Same to you,' Jochen snapped back. 'Darling, what are we going to do? Apartments are very hard to find.'
'we'll have breakfast first,' said Jutta. 'Then we'll go and see our lawyer.'
'I didn't know we had one,' he said in surprise.
The ubiquitous Isabel was already sitting in the Hanomag. 'You'll take me with you, won't you?' She didn't seem to mind where they were going. Normally Jutta would have minded a great deal, but today it suited her plans nicely. 'We're calling on Dr Jordan. An interesting man and a lawyer. He's going to sort out Jochen's rights to his place. You can come and listen.'
She enjoyed Isabel's reaction when she introduced her to Jordan. Isabel was cool, but never took her eyes off him. Jochen explained the situation to the lawyer. 'If the Reichsbahn throw me out I'm homeless. Of course I could go to my fiancee and her parents in Kopenick, but that's not a permanent solution, particularly in the eyes of the school board which is my future employer. I'm starting as a teacher at the Arndt Gymnasium in Dahlem after the summer holidays.'
Rainer Jordan was in good spirits. 'Fraulein Reimann, Herr Weber, you've come at just the right moment. No need for any argument with the Reichsbahn. I'm starting in the legal department of UfA next week, and moving to Babelsberg to be near the film studios. Why don't you just take over this apartment? I believe you're soon getting married, and I'm sure a married schoolmaster will be welcome as a tenant to the owners - they're a big real estate company. I'll be happy to introduce you to the property manager. Bring the necessary documents with you.'
'Can we look round?' Jochen asked.
'By all means. Two rooms, kitchen, bathroom, if that's enough for you.'
As they walked around the apartment, Jutta heard Rainer Jordan making a date with Isabel. She smiled quietly to herself.
The tiny, modern kitchen was all electric, a rarity in the Berlin of 1935. There was even an electric water heater. Jutta used it every day. The toaster, however, a construction of Bakelite, heated wires and tin that was apt to burn your fingers when you opened its side flaps, was plugged in only on Sundays. It was a wedding present from Rainer and Isabel Jordan. They had managed to get married before Jochen and Jutta.
Outside, a rainy November day was dawning. Water dripped from the bare branches of the acacias beside the road. A wet mongrel dog was lapping water from a puddle on the pavement. 'Filthy weather. I'll take the bus.' Jochen usually cycled to school. 'When we have a car again ...' he daydreamed out loud. The Hanomag had died of old age.
'With a chauffeur, of course,' she teased.
A car's not as far beyond our reach as you may think,' he told her. 'You save five Reichsmarks a week, and if you do that for three years you can order the car. Then you pay the remaining two hundred and seventy-five marks on delivery.'
Jutta did some quick mental arithmetic. A car for a thousand marks? You don't believe that yourself.'
'The Fiihrer guarantees the price. The first Volkswagens will be delivered next year.'
'Five marks a week is twenty marks a month, and they have to be earned first.' Jutta was a realist.
'Drechsel gives private maths coaching. He's recommended me to the parents of a pupil who needs coaching in English. It was very kind of him.'
'You think so?' Jutta disliked Jochen's colleague as much as ever. 'We could do with the money, of course,' she conceded. 'Listen, I found a furniture store in Klein Machnow. All modern pieces from the People's Workshops. They'd be just what we want.'
'We have all we need.'
'Oh, do we?' She pointed to the sideboard, dining table with six chairs and bookcase, all in ugly walnut veneer. There were two worn, leather club chairs too. Parents and friends had equipped the young couple. She hated the furnishings, including the heavy green velour curtains. So far their combined salaries had run only to bedroom furniture in pale birch. Jochen's desk was in the bedroom too; there wasn't room for it in the living room.
Two marks per coaching session. Two or three pupils a week. That'll get us the car. I'll make sure we have the savings book for it, anyway.'
She cleared the breakfast table. 'Would you bring me up some coke?' He carried a scuttle of coke up from the cellar and filled the boiler in the kitchen that piped heating to the four radiators. If you turned the air supply right down it would last until evening. They hugged and kissed. Only Jutta's reminder, 'Take your umbrella,' kept them from a passionate return to bed which would have made them both late. At five to nine she closed the door of the apartment behind her. Herr Vollmer was just opening up the apartment next door. 'Good morning, Frau Weber.' He politely raised his hat.
'Morning, Herr Vollmer. Any air raids likely soon?' Jutta mocked gently.
The Reich Air-Raid Defence League had rented the apartment next door as its Zehlendorf office. It was run by Herr Vollmer, a friendly man of fifty who didn't really know why they were supposed to be defending themselves from enemy planes when there was no war in sight. 'You'd have to ask Hermann Goring. I'm just responsible for collecting the contributions of our National Comrades. I wish you a pleasant morning.'
It passed quickly, what with sorting out the card index for the lending library and drinking coffee in the back room. There was a light on to cheer up the grey day. Frau Gerold was cross because of some official letter she'd had. 'Today's
my afternoon off,' Jutta reminded her. Once a month, Jutta had the afternoon off to do her housework.
'That's fine. There's not much going on in this weather anyway.'
She changed the bed, dusted and washed the dishes. Then she took a long bath. At three the doorbell rang. A boy was standing outside. He stared. Jutta quickly closed her dressing gown, which had been flapping wide open. 'Sorry, I was still in the tub,' she apologized. 'I'm Frau Weber. Come on in.'
The boy was standing beside the bookcase when she came into the living room, now dressed. He wore shorts and knee socks. His bare thighs were red from the cold, wet weather outside. He didn't seem to mind. He was a strong lad with dark, curly hair. 'Oh, look, Karl May!' he said reverently. Jochen had kept all twenty books of May's stories from his youth. They were on the shelves between the Brockhaus encyclopaedia and the Muret-Sanders dictionary.
'What's your name?'
'Paul Grabert.'
'How old are you?'
'Eleven.'
'In your second year at the school?'
'Yes.'
And you've come for English coaching?'
Jochen arrived, putting an end to the laborious exchange of questions and answers. 'The meeting went on longer than planned,' he apologized.
'Well, I'll leave you two alone now. Goodbye, Paul.' She shook hands with him.
'Goodbye, Frau Weber.' He bowed.
A nice lad.' Laughing, she told the tale of her open dressing gown over supper.
Jochen didn't make an big issue of it. 'Well, at least he has something pretty to think about while he's masturbating.'
'Do all boys masturbate?'
'Most of them.'
And men?'
'Sometimes.'
She went around the table and put her arms round his neck. 'Will you show me?' she whispered in his ear. It was the signal for passionate erotic games. She couldn't get enough of them.
They got new furniture a year later. Pale wood, modern, just what Jutta liked. Frau Gerold had given her a rise. Her parents had contributed too. Jochen was saving hard for the Volkswagen.
