Life's a Scream

by Ingrid Pitt

  Once the funeral was over I made my mother’s life hell. I tried to kill myself. I just couldn’t stand the pain. I still find it difficult to bear, so many years later. But then it burned in my heart like fire and I believed only a bottle of pills would make the agony go away. Only when I had swallowed them all did I begin to think about the misery I would cause my mother. How would she feel burying me too? In a daze I tried to get to the hospital to have my stomach pumped. Apparently I walked in the middle of the road and a car picked me up and took me to Emergency. They pumped the old pot out and saved me.

  Mother was incredibly angry. I’d never seen her so mad. She hit me, slapping my face again and again. She had never done that before but I thought she was right to slap sense into my stupid brain. I begged her to forgive me. She knew the argument that would stop me from ever contemplating such a cowardly thing again. Did my father give up? she asked me. Did he ever, once, think that killing himself was the easy option? What would he think of me if he knew what I had done?

  After my father’s death everything changed. I didn’t want to go to school. I wanted just to sit on the balcony, not get dressed, and think about him. Not putting on clothes was important because getting dressed meant saying ‘yes’ to life and the future. Not doing it was a sign of giving up. Going to school seemed useless and a waste of time. I wouldn’t learn anything I didn’t already know. My father had taught me everything anyway. He taught me about courage, love, the world, the stars, the universe . . .

  Although I considered myself pretty switched on it was a view not shared by my teachers. They were constantly on my back, demanding that I should do better. It all seemed so unimportant. My mother was called to the school and told about my poor performance. When she told the headmaster that I wanted to be a surgeon, he laughed at her. She was so furious that she stalked out wordlessly.

  Most of my father’s family were in some branch of the medical profession and Mascha was determined that I should follow them. The fact that none of them had spoken to her since her marriage was hurtful, but she wasn’t going to let their aloofness get in the way of her baby’s success. She wrote to them and got a reply from the paediatrician I had met at the orphanage. Despite my cold behaviour when we’d met, he was willing to do what he could for me. I sat an examination and didn’t do terribly well, but my stepbrother was a member of the medical school faculty and was able to railroad me through. I was offered a place in the school to which he was attached. It meant leaving my mama but we both agreed it was in a good cause.

  I was accepted into the medical faculty as a probationer. Having gained my position through the back door, I was the focus of some resentment from the faculty and students. One day I arrived slightly late at a lecture. They were showing a film on vermin, so it was dark in the auditorium. Rushing to my seat I sat down, only to find something already on my seat: something furry and dead. I screamed. The lights came on and I found myself standing with a recently deceased rat in my hand. When I saw the beast swinging in front of my face, my screams tripled in intensity and, instinctively, I threw the rodent into the crowd. That started everyone else screeching in horror, especially the women, although most of them couldn’t have known what they were screaming about. I didn’t care. I stormed out of the place and that was virtually the end of my career in medicine.

  Of course my poor mother was summoned to see the Dean. He got all sniffy and told her to take her wretched daughter out of his wonderful establishment. No mention was made of the fact that someone had deliberately put a rat on my seat. Dear old Mum still thought I had a career among the bedpans and pleaded for my reinstatement, but the Dean was unyielding. Matka, however, would not give in. She went to see the Bürgermeister – mayor – and he used his influence to get me reinstated.

  The next semester was Pathology. The professor put a rat before me and said, ‘Dissect!’ Only I was given a rat. I went potty once more and was duly thrown out again. Even my mama didn’t try to get me back in. Thus I did not become a surgeon.

  Twelve

  Being booted out of medical school, however undignified the departure, didn’t traumatise me. I had realised almost as soon as I’d put on the obligatory white smock that it was not for me. What I wanted, although I’d never confided my secret dream to anyone, was to be up there on the screen, a fainting heroine rescued by Sabu the Elephant Boy or maybe a sultry female pirate mixing it with the likes of Errol Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks Jnr.

  My regular reading, apart from War and Peace, which I read again and again, were the film journals that were freely available in Berlin, courtesy of the Gls. I read about how this star was discovered on a farm or the other in a drugstore, how Sam Goldwyn had never intended to cast Virginia Mayo but asked the casting agent for the wrong woman. Once he had her he was too bull-headed to admit to being wrong and she became a leading player. There were dozens of happenstance stories that resulted in the big time. Why shouldn’t it happen to me? Hadn’t I been a right little entertainer in the camp? What tougher audience could you get than Nazi guards? The more I thought about it the more I convinced myself that there were powerful men out there just looking for me.

  ‘Hey, you, kid!’ Cecil B. De Mille would say to me as he climbed out of his Cadillac. ‘I want you to star in my next picture. I’ll make you a star. What d’ya say, kid?’

  I confided my dreams to my mother and instead of banning me outright from pursuing them she took the chance to practise a little blackmail – or should it be called psychology? She told me she would support my efforts if I first learned to do something that would be of use if the acting thing didn’t work out. To my horror she suggested I learn to type. I considered the idea a great waste of time. Cecil B. had never discovered a star in a typing pool.

  The following morning Matka plonked a typewritten tract in front of me and said nothing while I read it. By the time I had finished I knew what it felt like to hear your death sentence read out in court. In bright, flowing text the paper enumerated all the wonderful things you could do with your life once you had received your diploma from the Memmert Academy of Shorthand & Typing. Somehow book-keeping sneaked in there but since I was hopeless at maths it was the first casualty of my new, sensible life. ‘Waste of time,’ Herr Memmert told my mama after a few lessons. ‘Waste of money.’

  I sat in a row of girls doing the ten-finger typing exercises. I thought of the theatre and wanted to weep. The school was close to the train depot and I watched the Stadtbahn come and go, knowing it went to where the theatres were. What would become of me? I couldn’t just go and work in some bloody office. I wanted to be an actress. I was convinced I’d be good at it.

  The day came when I was presented with the diploma that guaranteed that my dancing fingers would be a major asset to any profitable business. I showed it to Matka and she began to put her mind to the question of who would employ me.

  ‘Hold it!’ I said to her. ‘What about being an actress?’

  She looked at me as if I had told her a dirty joke. What did I want with being an actress when I could be a secretary?

  To be fair to her, she didn’t put up too much opposition. Getting a job as a secretary at that particular time was almost as hard as becoming a Broadway star. So Matka suggested that we visit some of the theatres that were opening up all over Berlin, mainly to cater for the American dough-boys with more money than artistic appreciation. It didn’t seem odd to me to appear at the theatres with my mother but it certainly did to a lot of the sleazy entrepreneurs of the time. They would brighten up considerably when I arrived, tarted up like a Mikado extra and starry-eyed. Their libido generally got a bashing when I stepped aside to reveal my mum. Some even took me aside and suggested I got rid of her and returned later that night to get down to some real entertainment. It was the sort of offer you got every couple of steps on the streets of Berlin if you were over nine, with no obvious VD scabs, and laid any claim to having some tepid blood in your veins. I’ve always been up for a compliment but
I wanted to be a star, not some round-heeled floozy in a café theatre.

  I was a quick learner and after being thrown out of one or two of the better-class theatres I realised that I was supposed to be able to stand on stage and convince a sceptical director that I had something an audience wanted to see.

  In a battle for survival, I’d back my mother against anyone, but for advising me on the thespian art she just didn’t have the right background. There wasn’t a lot of theatre in the dressage ring she had inhabited before the war. The only person I knew who had even a wind-up gramophone was Haneli.

  I thought it was wonderful how Haneli had survived the war with her lust for the good life intact. When I first contacted her and said I would like to visit her, she was full of enthusiasm, but on hearing what it was all about she cooled off a little. She wrote a letter to my mother and asked her if she supported my becoming an actress. When Mascha wrote back and said that we had an agreement that if it didn’t work out I would get a sensible job, Haneli was overjoyed.

  Hanusia had now moved into a new flat. It should not have taken long to get there had Berlin buses not had to negotiate the gangs of workmen who were still rebuilding the city. Instead of a journey of half an hour, however, it quite often took half a day. Because of this, it was decided that I would spend the weekends with Haneli. She was happy about that. Her family had been murdered in Treblinka and she was all alone. One night when we had already gone to bed and turned out the light, Hanusia told me what had happened when the Nazis came to take her away. My uncle Utz had defied them and stood in front of her, daring them to kill him first before he would let them get his wife. They just shot him. Then they raped her and left. She tried to kill herself but a neighbour got help and saved her life.

  Hanusia spoiled me. She’d rustle up wonderful titbits, like blinis with sour cream, borscht and piroszki. Sometimes it was mashed spuds – I’m obsessed with potatoes – with her very special tomato sauce, and she also knew a man who baked black bread, which I loved.

  Sometimes we would go to the Hunting Lodge in Grunewald, a forest in the middle of Berlin, and we’d hear great concerts. We loved listening to Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky, and, naturally, I adored Elgar. I learned Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto by memory although I couldn’t play the fiddle, and Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto. We had the most ecstatic times.

  We also went to the theatre. There wasn’t a play put on in Berlin during this time that Hanusia and I didn’t attend. It began to come home to me that being an actress was a bit more difficult than just standing in front of a camera and saying whatever nonsense came into your head. Reading had always been a source of great pleasure for me. But the scope had been limited. I’d read only Russians: Tolstoy, Turgeniev, Gorki, Dostoevsky, Gogol and of course Chekhov. I loved Chekhov. Haneli changed all that. She introduced me to the classics and modern plays. She made me slog through Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, and everything she thought would help me to make my way as an actress. It was Haneli’s enthusiasm that carried me through. At night we would lie in Haneli’s big bed and read through the programmes of whatever we had just seen and she would make outrageous comments. She would also question me about what I claimed to have read the previous week and if she didn’t like my answers would insist that I reread whatever it was and take it in this time. I learned that whipping through a book was not the same as reading it slowly and thinking about it. I still take a long time to read and I love just sinking into a book and turning the pages. When I put it down there’s a melody that lingers on, and I often mull over scenes and imagine how I would play them in a film.

  I am also very affected by nature, as my father was. Trees are my first love. I hate seeing them cut down. There’s something so sad about looking at a giant, standing there, impervious to the weather, being felled by a little pygmy with a chain-saw. It’s one of the sounds I hate most in the world: the roar of a chain-saw, then the dry crack of branches, like the snapping of bones, as the majestic being crashes to the ground.

  Animals I’m a bit more ambivalent about. I’ll eat anything that moves without the slightest compunction, but I can’t bear to see animals, and especially birds, in cages. Haneli shared my feelings. Nevertheless, for some reason, on one of our Sunday outings, we ended up at the zoo. It was almost closing time. It was cold and most of the mums and dads had abandoned the teddy bears’ picnic and gone home for Pfannkuchen around the fire. We stood there looking at the poor animals padding mindlessly up and down in the cages. Before I had time to think I ducked under the barrier. I don’t know what I thought I was doing but without any regard for the damage I might do, I made my protest. I unlocked several cages before I was caught red-handed by one of the zoo attendants. While my freedom was curtailed, the animals in the cages I had opened just looked at me and made no attempt to liberate themselves. I was taken to the police station and charged with a public order offence. Haneli pleaded for me but I think she was a bit too well dressed and confident to get sympathy from the ill-paid police.

  Once again my mother came to the rescue. As soon as she heard about my trouble she travelled across town, went to the zoo and pleaded with the authorities not to prosecute me. She told them terrible stories about our lives, promised that she would keep a close watch on me and never give me the chance to do anything so stupid again. By this time, still at the police station, I was terrified. The police had told me I could go to prison for years for my offence, so when my mother appeared I agreed with whatever she said and didn’t even think of trying to share my views on animals in cages with the zoo keepers or policemen. I grovelled to the zoo proprietor and I grovelled to the police. And they decided that as nobody had been hurt and I came from a troubled background, the incident wouldn’t be taken further.

  My mama was a bit frosty with Haneli for allowing me to go berserk. Poor Haneli, it wasn’t her fault. She had tried to stop me but when I’m in full flow I won’t be denied. Matka couldn’t be mad at Hanusia for long and soon everyone was friends again. However, this misadventure did have a knock-on effect: Matka said it was time either to get a job as a secretary or to prove that I might have a career in the theatre.

  I went to every crappy little room that was making a hash of even masquerading as a theatre, with no success. At my mother’s insistence, I also approached the more conventional venues. I turned up at the Schiller Theatre, believing my bit of Chekhov would have them putting on plays just for me. I did my piece and everyone rolled around. It was pleasing to get a reaction but I thought it a strange one for a straight scene out of Chekhov. The director was quite kind, saying that it was the first time he had considered the comic possibilities of that particular scene and that he would like me to come back later – maybe in a year or two. The other theatres also seemed to think my interpretation of whatever scene I gave them wasn’t exactly what they wanted. Some said it nicely – others weren’t so sensitive. Every time I came home Matka would question me and when I told her what had happened would go quiet and set to with some unnecessary housework. I could see the stenographer’s chair looming larger by the day. Eventually, with all other options exhausted, I thought, ‘Sod it, I’ll try the best’ and made my way to the Berliner Ensemble.

  Thirteen

  The Berliner Ensemble, founded in 1948 by Bertolt Brecht, was already world famous. The only disadvantage to working with the Berliner Ensemble was that they practised their art in East Berlin, which was still accessible at this time but not exactly a holiday resort.

  Already the dross of communism was beginning to build up in East Berlin. In the West everybody was struggling to get back to some sort of normality. Now that the street battalions had gone and the professionals had moved in, the city was beginning to look better by the day. In the East they seemed to be working to a different tune and though the work battalions were still cleaning bricks and filling in pot-holes with rubble they appeared to work without joy or enthusiasm.

  In the East were also Russian soldiers. It
was the height of jingoistic communism, with an entrenched belief among the comrades that before long the mighty Soviet would rule the world. They were very mindful of what the Nazis had done to their country and the terrible death toll they had meted out. Individually the soldiers were quite sweet: they had a strong sense of home and duty, and didn’t need a lot of encouragement to whip out a photograph or tell you about the folks they had left behind. Danger came when they were together. As helpful and understanding as they could be when they were solo, en masse you soon learned to walk another street.

  Predictably, Matka wasn’t keen on my venturing through Checkpoint Charlie. But I didn’t listen. I reasoned that a lot of the folk I had met in the partisan camp had claimed to be Communists, including Kuragin – and everybody loved him. And after all, it was the exact opposite of fascism.

  I thought long and hard about the best way to present myself at the theatre. Should I write first and beg for an audition? Or should I just turn up and astonish them with my virtuosity? The downside to writing was that I would have to list my qualifications for the job and say what acting I had done before. Turned down by every other theatre and getting a laugh out of Chekhov didn’t seem to be the right sort of recommendation somehow. So I decided just to turn up and let my natural charm and overwhelming talent speak for me. I wouldn’t give them the Chekhov. It was time to box clever. I would wing it and claim my piece was by some obscure Polish writer, so nobody could bang on about ‘misinterpretation’.

  I arrived outside the theatre, walked past it and reconsidered. Now I was there, just the sight of the dirty old place was enough to get my stomach doing bungee jumps and my legs feeling like perished elastic. I walked back and looked through the door. Gloom. The only colour was provided by inspirational tracts on theatre nailed up by the local Communist party.