by Rex Baron
“You look like a fetish version of a chauffeur,” she blurted out her thought aloud. “I am certain that is why these two find you so fascinating. But I don’t find you so fascinating. You look like a fool… ein Narr… absolut.”
Carl-Heinz did not know how to react at first. He thought for a moment that what Ilse had just said was perhaps her idea of a joke, a clever comment she contrived to try and keep up with the others at the table. But then, he realized that she was intent on insulting him in front of these strangers. “I may be a fool, but you are drunk, and I must tell you that I do not find it very attractive.”
Claxton shot an excited glance to Helen and settled back in his chair to watch whatever wonderfully embarrassing spectacle these two beautiful children might provide.
“I don’t care what you find attractive and what you don’t find attractive… obviously anyone but me,” the girl snapped at the handsome blonde boy.
“What’s gotten into you, Ilse?” Carl-Heinz asked.
“I’d forgotten how jealousy played itself out in the very young,” Helen observed, returning Claxton’s glance, and commenting on the situation as if the two young people were not present.
“This is all your fault,” Ilse insisted, turning her penetrating stare on Helen.
“How is it my fault?” Helen laughed.
The teenager slumped back in her chair and let her head fall back in a grotesque parody of relaxation, like someone who had just died of heart failure.
“For being so beautiful… and someone that all men want.”
“A brilliant and more than accurate assessment, dear girl,” Claxton responded, trying to gain favor with Helen.
Helen merely sat and watched the girl unravel.
Ilse turned her confused attention back on Carl-Heinz. She fought back her tears as she spoke.
“I don’t understand you. As our Youth Leader you are such a fine boy. You speak of noble things… of Germany and our destiny… the future that we must all work to build. You say that we must sacrifice ourselves and denounce the decadent ways of the old world, and yet, here you are dressed like a fantasy footman so that you can please her.”
Ilse pointed an accusing finger at Helen, who took a sip of her pink gin.
“It is the alcohol speaking,” Carl-Heinz tried to make an excuse for his fellow German.
“Oh, don’t apologize, dear boy, I’m enjoying myself immensely,” Claxton replied.
“I don’t know who you are,” Ilse nearly shouted at Carl-Heinz. “The person I thought you to be would never come to a disgusting place like this, and yet, you seem to know these people… you know all about them.”
“Well, maybe I’m not who you think I am,” the tarnished Youth Leader snapped back in annoyance. “Maybe I am someone else altogether, and it is a good thing that you find out about it now. You and I are not as suited to each other as you thought.”
“No, no… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you angry with me,” Ilse said, as she started to quietly cry. “It’s the alcohol. I feel sick. I want to die.”
“It’s always life and death with these Germans, isn’t it?” Helen remarked philosophically.
Claxton caught her glib comment, but knew there was truth in what she observed. Just as in Faust, for the Germans, all love and joy seemed to come at a high price. And the cost of love was the highest of all. Just as he had thought, as he watched Helen singing on stage, love and death were two sides of the same coin. And in this puritanical country, to paraphrase the old axiom, it was not only the wages of sin that brought death, but the wages of love as well. Here in Germany, in spite of a vision of a glowing new world, filled with peace and equality, the old ways still prevailed, and those who dared to burst through the bonds of regimentation and tradition in order to experience passion instead of familial love, were sure to pay the price.
“Well, you mustn’t die, and for god sake, don’t throw up,” Helen advised the girl.
Carl-Heinz stood up on shaky legs. He too was feeling the effects of what he had drunk.
“I need to spazieren ein bisschen… excuse me… to walk around a little,” he said calmly. “I am glad that we came here tonight, and everyone sees who everyone is.”
The young chauffeur stumbled across the floor, disappearing into a crowd of people.
Helen and Claxton sat in silence as they both watched the teenage girl, now laying face down on the table, sobbing.
“Odd, how we both lack the parental skills to even begin to comfort this poor wretched child,” Claxton observed. “If I so much as patted her head I’d positively feel like a pedophile.”
Helen snorted in amusement.
“Let her cry. If she gets in the habit of falling for the pretty ones like him, she’d better get used to it.”
Claxton sighed with mild frustration.
“I hope that wasn’t a reference to your luscious Latin lothario, Paulo Cordoba, after all these years,” he replied cynically.
“Oh, shut up,” Helen answered dryly.
“Well, if we can’t do this kid any good, I’m going to find a place to unload some of these cocktails. I’m sure there’s a men’s room around here somewhere… but what the hell is the word for it in German?”
Claxton left the table, abandoning Helen to deal with the emotional wreck that lay there sobbing into the tablecloth. He made his way across the dance floor and lingered for a moment as a handsome middle-aged woman grabbed him by the lapels of his tuxedo and insisted that he kick up his heels in one of the new fangled American dances that seemed to have made its way into the cellars of Germany. He cut the dance short and leaned in toward the woman shouting his regrets that he must wander off due to the call of nature. As he piloted his way toward a door marked Herren, he realized that the woman probably hadn’t the slightest idea of what he had said to her.
Inside the bathroom, he hurriedly found a urinal and relieved himself of what seemed like a gallon of pink gin. As he stood there, he noticed that several questionable young men seemed to linger where they stood, as if somehow attached to the porcelain fixtures. They were each dressed in a unique style, some in tight-fitting suits that showed off their physiques, others with almost feminine details, like a ruffled front shirt or a scarf tied around the waist. In the dim amber light from the bulbs over the sinks, he could see that several of them wore a hint of powder or rouge and all of them had accented their eyes with kohl to look like an American film star. Claxton could not help but wonder if any of them could see that he had come from the world they so admired, or if, by the slightest chance, they had seen any of his films. If they only knew who he was, he thought, they would surely revere him and worship him as a god.
He sighed heavily at the idea of no longer being recognized and made his way over to the sink to wash his hands. As he turned on the tap and looked in the mirror to appraise the damage the evening had done to his face, he was aware of two men, half hidden by the shadows of the distant corner. He leaned into the glass and squinted to get a better look at the man dressed all in grey, realizing that it was his chauffeur kissing the handsome, bankrolled singer, Raoul, who he had pinned against the wall with his knee firmly planted in his groin. Carl-Heinz turned to look at him, as if the kiss had been interrupted by some unseen energy that passed between them, as if two different generations of passion-seeking perverts had come upon each other unaware.
Claxton left the bathroom laughing to himself. Well, at least he had been able to offer some paternal advice to one of his two young companions of the evening. He had suggested that Carl-Heinz make a beeline for the singer with the link to daddy’s bank account and he, like a dutiful son, had heeded his advice.
“Even if you have to fuck him to get it,” he muttered to himself, as he made his way back into the thick of the party.
Across the room, at the table, Helen had tired of the young girl indulging herself with tears and had decided to offer her some, if not motherly, at least worldly advice.
“Sit up
and stop blubbering,” she shouted harshly, as if she were still giving orders to her maid. “You’d better get it through your head right now that displaying your ravaged emotions is not what a man wants to see. Women think… stupid women think that a man will melt and feel sorry for them if they cry. They think that the man will feel responsible for making them feel bad and will change the way they are acting in order to please them and make them stop. The truth is, honey, crying women are nothing but a bore… to everyone.”
The young woman lifted her head from the starched tablecloth and stared at Helen in stunned silence.
“That’s more like it,” Helen said with a sigh of relief. “I hate that women have been led to believe that acting as if they were the victims of a man’s neglect, or even abuse, will force the man to do anything different. At best, they’ll just leave you altogether to find some other girl who is going to be more agreeable. I suppose you think you’re in love with this Carl… whatever his name is.”
Ilse nodded in a submissive way that annoyed Helen even more.
“Well, if you think you’ve got anything to worry about from me… you don’t. I’m just toying with him because he’s foolish enough to think he can play with the grownups. He’s a nice looking boy, but that’s it. He’s not a man, so, I’m not interested.”
A hint of a smile brightened Ilse’s face as she heard the good news.
“I thought that he cared for me, that maybe he even loved me,” she said, as she hung her head in shame and the tears began again.
“Don’t start... no crying,” Helen responded.
As instructed, the girl lifted her head and wiped her eyes with the palm of her hand.
“I thought he loved me,” she started again, “but now, I think he does not. He was just saying all those things about sacrificing for Germany to get what he wanted. I don’t know you Miss Liluth… I only work for you, and we are not friends. But I must tell you that I need to make Carl-Heinz love me. He must love me… for the sake of the baby.”
Helen’s mouth dropped open in surprise.
“Jesus Christ… what were you thinking? A woman can use sex to get something from a man… that’s called seduction. But you can never use sex to get the man… that’s called a trap, and sooner or later, he’ll chew his arm off, if he has to, to get away.”
“What can I do?” Ilse lamented.
“Are you sure you’re pregnant?”
“Yes, I think so, I missed my last monthly and I am sick each morning. I am dizzy and my stomach turns as well.”
“Two very convincing symptoms,” Helen replied.
She watched this girl from where she sat and wondered if there had ever been a time in her own life that she was as vulnerable and unworldly as Ilse. She had always instinctively known how the game of life was played and never questioned for a moment who was holding the winning cards. She could almost feel sorry for the girl, if she hadn’t been such a little fool.
“What can I do?” Ilse begged again.
“Do you want the baby?” Helen asked.
“Yes, the Fatherland needs children. It is part of the new doctrine, and I would have the baby for Germany, even if Carl-Heinz does not want me. But I love him and want him to be part of it. Oh, if only there were a way to make him fall in love with me.”
Helen’s thoughts were immediately drawn to the love philter that Claxton had made to enchant the Prince, and the disastrous results it had brought about. But, in spite of that, she knew there were ways of using magic, simpler ways, to get someone to take notice of you and see you in a light that might inspire new feelings of warmth and affection, possibly even real love. Before she could think better of it and stop herself, she made Ilse a proposal.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said to the pale, exhausted girl who sat across from her. “I will show you something you can do to make this boy want you, and want to be with you. But you have to forget about all the religious nonsense you’ve ever heard about the Devil and black magic. Magic is magic. It’s like cooking… you just put the ingredients together and you get a cake. All you have to do is really want a cake… the intention is the key.”
“You would help me?” Ilse asked in amazement. “I do want a cake. I would do anything to have the future I want.”
“You Germans are all obsessed with the future and your visions of how your world should be,” Helen replied.
She could not help but think of Kurt with his handsomely scarred face and his delusional visions of a future with himself in a position of power.
“I suppose when your country has lost so much in the last war, as painfully as Germany has, it is impossible to go back and recover the past… all that is left is to visualize the future, and hope that you can shape it in a way that has some promise of happiness in it for you.”
Ilse nodded in agreement.
“I know I can make Carl-Heinz happy, and the two of us can serve the State by having a family and helping build a new Germany.”
“That sounds like something you read on a poster somewhere,” Helen said, “but nevertheless, if that’s what you want, then so mote it be.”
The young woman responded to her words with a quizzical look.
“Never mind,” Helen stated with a little huff of a laugh. “It’s way too complicated to explain.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Helen and Claxton’s apartment, Bayreuth
As promised, the next afternoon, Helen called Ilse into her bedroom and told her to sit on the lounge chair and pay attention. On the dressing table she had already assembled the things that she would need to create a small charm that was intended to make Carl-Heinz profess his love for Ilse. She had asked the girl into her room because she did not want to carry out the modest ritual under the watchful eyes of Claxton, and have him interject his personal brand of ridicule, that combined true instruction laced with cynical commentary and derision. She did not want to hear his salacious views on the nature of love, or his jaded philosophy on the institution of marriage. She simply wanted to help this girl to get what she wanted, so that she could ship her off and be rid of her and her ridiculous unborn baby. She shuddered at the idea of having a disgustingly swollen woman padding around the apartment, and then a squalling brat. It was a far wiser idea to run the risk of being regarded as beneficent and kind, rather than allow the lowest aspects of animal nature to contaminate her world in the form of an infant.
“Now, you’re sure you want to keep it?” Helen asked the young woman who sat wide-eyed, staring at her from across the room. “After all, this is the perfect time to get rid of it, if you want to.”
Ilse shook her head no.
Helen began the instruction.
“Now, here is what you do to make your young man desire you. The charm we are making will make him see you as an object of desire, but it is up to you to make him really love you. We are making a talisman not casting a spell. It is witchcraft, but really only a garden variety that women have been using for centuries. It doesn’t involve the Devil or demons or anything like that, so you needn’t be afraid that you’re selling your Soul or going to Hell. But you must be committed to the idea that this is powerful magic, in spite of what I’ve just said, and that there is no turning back once we begin.”
“I want this with all my heart,” Ilse professed.
Helen sighed in mild disgust… that someone could be so deluded as to want something so useless as a nineteen-year-old boy for a husband.
She walked over to where Ilse sat and stroked her sandy hair with her fingers. Then, grabbing a tiny strand between her fingertips, she unceremoniously tore it from the young girl’s head.
Ilse let out a scream of unexpected pain.
“In that case, I will not try to discourage you,” Helen replied coolly. “Now, here is what you must do. Take three hairs from your head… from the strand, which I have just taken the liberty of harvesting for you, and braid them together with two like strands of colored thread… three red and three black. Th
e red thread symbolizes the passion of desire and the black thread, the death of surrender. Once you have done this, tie the braid into three knots and cut it in half, so that one knot is cut away from the other two.”
Helen watched carefully as Ilse followed the instructions she had just given, and smiled at the result.
“That’s fine,” she said reassuringly. “Now, you take a small scrap of the fine yellow parchment paper that I have over there on the dressing table, and write the name of your beloved.”
The young girl followed the directions, as if she were doing something as harmless as cutting out a pattern for a new spring frock. Helen examined the braided tri-colored cord, careful not to touch it so that it would not be unintentionally charged with her energy.
To supply the next ingredient needed for the talisman, she retrieved a simple gold band from the top drawer of her bureau and handed it to the girl. It was an old ring that she had stolen from one of her aunts when she was a small girl in California. The woman had refused to buy her a necklace with a Bakelite cat hanging from a chain, when they were at a church carnival in one of the towns where they picked fruit. She had waited for her aunt to remove the ring when she went to wash her hands, and then, she crept up and spirited it away, insisting later that she had seen a boy take it from the outside basin sideboard and run away. She had never worn the ring because it was old and ugly. Regardless of the sentiment it held for her aunt… if she was going to be denied the Bakelite cat, then her aunt must likewise be without the stupid old ring, given to her by her dead husband.
Helen placed the ring in front of Ilse and instructed that she put it in her mouth to cleanse it, and wash away any old vibrations that might have clung to it from the past. With a look of mild horror, Ilse complied. Helen then asked her to thread the ring onto the braid containing the two knots and secure it there by tying yet another knot of love.
