by Rex Baron
She walked off, leaving Claxton with an odd feeling of imploded excitement. His throat tightened at the idea of having Helen as his wife. He had wanted it for years. It was something he had let creep into the recesses of his mind, but he had been unclear in his intentions. He had allowed the thought to shape itself into being, without the direction of his focused will, and as a result, he had reaped as his reward for his inattention, a mockery of his original idea, a hollow form that on the surface appeared to be what he had intended but inside contained no substance, no truth, not a shred of love. He buried his face in his gloved hands for a moment and laughed helplessly at his punishment.
•••
Lexi locked her equipment cabinet with a small silver key and undressed leisurely. She wrapped a towel around her body and stepped into the steam room, anxious to allow her muscles to relax after the strenuous game. Hot soothing steam engulfed her body as the door closed behind her. She stretched out on a wooden bench, letting the towel fall from around her, and breathed in the healing vapor of eucalyptus.
A movement at the corner of the room caused her to bolt up and grasp the towel to her naked body. A woman emerged from the steam, descending the stair-like tile benches, appearing through the fog like an apparition. It was Helen.
“I hope I'm not disturbing you,” she said.
“I thought I was alone,” Lexi answered, her face still imprinted with a fading expression of surprise.
Helen stood over her, back-lit by the diffused glow from the glass door. She scrutinized the other woman carefully.
“You have a trim figure,” she said. “I envy you that.”
“Thank you,” Lexi said, pulling the towel tightly around her breasts to avoid Helen's appraising glance. “Tennis is very slimming.”
“You could say you have the figure of a twenty year old,” Helen said, drawing nearer. “But then, you couldn't be twenty could you? In fact, I'd say you were nearer to my age.”
She sat down on the bench next to Lexi, causing the young woman to retreat into the darkness of the corner, cut off from access to the door.
“I thought we were nearly the same age when we first met, and I guess that was nearly ten years ago.”
The woman's face peered out from the shadows, the caution in her eyes hidden behind a passing wisp of vapor, like a nocturnal cloud passing over the moon.
“We know each other then? I'm sorry I don't recall,” Lexi said, adopting a more social tone.
“How we met and where is of little consequence,” Helen said, placing her hand on Lexi's bare shoulder.
The woman recoiled under her touch, and retreated even farther against the wall, pressing her bare skin to the concrete, now running with its own perspiration of scalding dampness.
“The point is,” Helen continued, “I know who you are and what you are. There is no pretending with me.”
Lexi wrenched her shoulder free from Helen's grasp. “What do you want from me? Who are you?”
“Like I said,” Helen answered. “I'm an old acquaintance, that's all. But I know for a fact that you are a Jew and are masquerading as a Gentile in order to further your career.”
“That's not true,” Lexi shrieked, then covered her mouth as if to stop herself from saying more.
Helen's dark eyes glistened like burning coals through the veil of steam that separated them. “I hope you realize you could go to prison for such a deception,” she whispered.
Lexi's eyes bulged as she stifled her breath with her hand, waiting to hear what Helen intended.
“I respect your ambition,” Helen continued. “I might even say I see a bit of myself in that, and as they say in my country, a girl has to get by. I'm told you are very talented and that is something I respect along with our illustrious Fuhrer.”
“What do you want from me?” Lexi demanded.
“I'm going to ask a lot of you, I admit,” Helen said with studied sincerity, “but then, I'd say it was a small price to pay for your own safety, and those of your family and friends. I promise not to expose your little deceit as long as you work for me and do as I ask.”
Helen's captive stared at her wide-eyed but did not dare speak.
“I want your career,” Helen whispered, “no small thing, but then again, a small price to pay for the lives of those you care about.”
Helen watched Lexi's eyes, darting back and forth like a metronome, struggling to keep pace as Helen outlined her plan. Her fat friend in the hat had been right when she said the power of the future lay in the hands of the architects and artisans, those who would build the sprawling new cities and shape the boundaries of the new Europe. Helen had every intention of being on the right side of the great and powerful, when those new cities were being planned. She had waited for this opportunity. She had asked, in her deepest meditations, for some avenue by which the power might come to her. But it had been a long time coming.
For a long while she had been aware that the power of her pretty face and voice had diminished. Even with the benefit of the dark Kraft, she knew she needed more. These were the new days, when charm had given way to intellect, and desire had given way to purpose. This was her chance, the long awaited answer to the hours spent sitting in the dark, contemplating the swirling masses in her mind, trying to open the lines of communication with the eternal forces in order to create a single possibility, some small, yet valuable opportunity, so that she might have her way.
“I want to meet Herr Ziegler,” Helen said. “I want a chance to be his associate.”
The tennis player buried her face in her hands and cried.
“But you can't,” the muddled words filtered through her fingers. “I've worked so hard for that position. It's taken me years.”
Helen gently lifted the naked woman's face until they were aligned eye to eye. “Do you think they would let one of you, an infidel to their cause, have so powerful a voice? To have any voice at all?”
She shook her head, as if to pantomime the woman's reply.
“They will put you in prison and all who befriend you, unless, of course, you have the good sense to be my friend.”
Lexi jerked her chin free from Helen's grasp, but continued to listen.
“Through me, you will have more than you ever dreamed. I know about such things. I know how to get what I want. I know about the ways of the world… both worlds, the seen and the unseen. I will make you master of both.”
Her voice was a dark, low whisper, the voice of a lover, so near to the ear that Lexi was not entirely sure whether she actually heard the words or felt them planted inside her head, growing like a fungus. She was told that she would survive. Her worst fear had been realized, and yet, the discovery of her secret would not spell the end as she had dreaded, it only heralded a simple change in plans, a shift of responsibility, as Helen called it. It was a solution. She could stop worrying. She had been found out and could now, at long last, feel safe under the protection of one more powerful, one who truly understood and cared about her work.
Helen wiped the dampness from the slender woman's face. She wrapped her arms around her and rocked her like a child, comforting her, mesmerizing her into agreement.
A jet of steam shot from a valve at the other side of the chamber, producing the sound of snakes in a pit. The image passed through Helen's consciousness, bolstering her intentions as she continued to whisper soothing words. Like the snake in the Garden of Eden, she imparted her instructions to Lexi, promising to set her free.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Berlin’s Hofgarten
Claxton folded the newspaper noisily, purposely distracting Helen from her thoughts. She drew her attention away from the crowd of people gathering outside the old Archaeological Gallery in the Hofgarten and readjusted her elegant posture on the park bench.
“Here's a little item that might interest you,” Claxton said. “It's a proclamation of sorts from the Reich’s Kultur Kammer, issued by your precious Professor Ziegler, about the nature of criticism in
art. I find it most appropriate, considering we're here today to witness his little attack on what he calls Degenerate Art.”
“They seem to have a Kammer here for just about everything don't they,” Helen sighed, “a Filmkammer, a Theatrekammer. They regulate what time a shopkeeper opens his shop in the morning, and how many blondes can work in the same restaurant at the same time. This is the most controlling place I've ever been.”
“Exactly,” Claxton snickered. “It's tailor-made for us. Listen to what your friend Ziegler has to say in the paper. In big letters it states: Official notice to all critics...
The art report of the future presupposes reverence for artistic activity and creative achievement. It requires an informed sensibility, tact, a purity of mind and respect for the artist's intentions. In future, only those Art Critics (who shall, hereafter, be called Art Editors), will be allowed to report on Art, who approach the task with an undefiled heart and National Socialist convictions.
The professional regulations of the German press will require a special approval for the position of Art Editor and this approval will depend, in turn, on proof of truly adequate training in the field in which the editor in question will work.
“This sort of thing would never go over in New York. They'd be rioting in Times Square,” Claxton laughed. “Your friend Ziegler has big plans, I fear.”
“Stop calling him my friend Ziegler. I'm only meeting the man today for the first time,” Helen snapped.
Claxton let the newspaper fall to the grass and crossed his arms against his chest.
“Are we a little nervous about meeting the man of the hour, or is it that my dear little wife, in name only, isn't used to having to duke it out fairly with someone else for what she wants.”
Helen shot him a look of annoyance.
“Who is this little person, this Isa Becker, who at the moment, stands in the way of your destiny? I thought the tennis player was a shoo-in for this job, before she decided, so wisely, to abdicate to you.”
Helen sniffed in contempt. “Isa Becker is of no importance.”
Claxton watched her lapse into silence, her eyes riveted ahead at the row of flags crackling in the wind. She had the far away look that he had come to recognize as a direct meditative link-up with the unseen forces.
She most certainly had a plan or was hatching one, to minimize any undue competition offered by this unsuspecting girl. She had been restless the night before, pacing the drawing room and rising from bed sometime after three, to sit awake, pondering the situation. He had heard her muttering to herself and seen the light of the parlor room, under the bedroom door. The darkness of her shadow passed over the crack of light, again and again, like a ghostly hand polishing a wand of gold.
It was the pungent scent of incense, numbing his senses, lulling him back to sleep, that made him now realize she had been more than restless.
Claxton jerked upright on the park bench.
“You've done something, haven't you? Last night you bound a spell to throw on this girl… didn’t you?”
He had been a fool not to have seen the signs of witchcraft afoot, her irritability, a kind of disconnection behind the eyes, making them appear glassy and unfocused… and in her particular case, a swelling of the ankles caused by an imbalance in the electrical flow of energy through her body. He leaned forward and looked down at her feet.
“You can lie to me,” he said, “but your ankles can't. They look like two great sausages. What have you done?”
“Nothing,” Helen answered, trying to appear nonchalant. “I have every confidence that the work that belongs to Lexi and me is superior. I just took out a little insurance, in the event that my friend Ziegler is as big a fool as he looks.”
•••
By noon, the orderly queue of people started to move through the door of the exhibition hall. Claxton folded his paper and rose to his feet. Helen stopped him with a silent gesture of her hand. She purposefully perused the manicured shrubbery, searching for a perfect gardenia. When she had found one, she plucked it from the tree and spread its petals carefully with the tip of her finger. From her handbag, she produced a small vial of liquid and sprinkled a few drops onto the flower. She pinned the flower to the lapel of her suit and extended her arm for Claxton to take.
“There,” she whispered, “now, I am willing to trust my future to the fates.”
The exhibition of confiscated works deemed degenerate was crowded into a narrow hall usually used to display the plaster casts of the Archaeological Society. The mode of display was intentionally detrimental to the art and the general claustrophobia was enhanced by the addition of partitions, which organized the display into nine categories, grouping the works under: The Prostitute in Modern Art, Jewish Paranoia and The Negro and South Sea Islander as the Racial Ideal in Modern Art.
At the entrance to the main salon a banner hung, emblazoned with the words: Kampf um Die Kunst.
Helen squeezed Claxton's arm.
“Look,” she said, drawing his attention to the slogan. “The Battle For Art. God, these people have to turn everything into a struggle.”
“I hope you can trust your little Jewess.” Claxton whispered. “They're blaming Jews for everything, discrediting all of them. It wouldn't go well if your little deception was discovered.”
“That's the very reason why I can trust her,” Helen replied evenly. “She has far too much to lose. Besides, no one here knows she is a Jew except for me, and once I'm where I want to be, I'll back her up, create an entire history for her and be her girlhood chum. That is, as long as she keeps producing for me.”
“The goose that laid the golden egg,” Claxton sighed. “You know darling, sometimes I find your ambition rather exhausting.”
There, crowded in the narrow hall under poor lighting, were the paintings of Otto Dix, Max Ernst, Paul Klee and Picasso, each with a slogan attached posing the question: Is this freedom or madness?
A small panel at the rear of the exhibition compared the work of the modern painters with sketches done in violent colors by inmates of a local asylum, awarding higher marks of creativity to the mentally ill.
Claxton shook his head in disbelief.
“I certainly wish I could safely buy up most of these paintings without bringing on a firing squad. This collection would be worth a fortune in any other country in the world.”
Helen listened with only mild interest. She scanned the room, searching for professor Ziegler. After a moment, she saw him off in a corner speaking with a pretty young woman with a flawless complexion, outlined by a braid of golden hair woven around her face. She wore a plain tweed suit, but beneath the rough texture of the fabric, it was apparent she possessed a figure of admirable proportions. Her firm breasts heaved up slightly as Herr Ziegler lightly placed his hand on her arm, and her face radiated into a warm and ingratiating smile.
Helen had heard that Herr Ziegler had been an obscure painter of no importance before the Party had risen into power. And now, although he headed the most powerful agency of censorship in the Reich, he was mocked, behind his back, for his clumsy paintings of nude women and was secretly dubbed the “Master of German pubic works.”
The gallery space was hot and overcrowded. The exhibition would have been considered an enormous success, based on the amount of spectators it drew, if it had been allowed to be taken seriously. The intention was to publicly denounce the corruption and limitless freedom of expression in the chaotic world of what was called Modern Art. It promoted a return to the solid German values of the family and village life, the pastoral landscapes and picturesque peasants depicted by the nineteenth century painters. What rubbish, Helen thought.
She adjusted her hair and quickly checked the seams in her stockings before crossing the room to introduce herself. As she approached, she took in a deep breath and placed her consciousness at the center of her forehead to produce an unseen mesmerizing beam of powerful radiation that would insure their attention and receptivity toward he
r.
“Eleven o'clock tonight…” were the words she heard as she broke into their private circle. The fragment had fallen from the smiling lips of the young blonde before she turned in surprise to see Helen.
“Herr Ziegler, I am Helen Claxton,” she said, extending her hand. “I'm one of the candidates for the Council post.”
His eyes moved down the length of her body, hesitating an instant here or there, before he nervously cleared his throat and answered.
“Well, my dear,” he said, “I'm more than pleased to meet you.”
He was a much older man than she had imagined. So many others in the service of the Reich seemed to have been chosen for their youthful aggression and singleness of thought. Ziegler appeared to lack the veneer of devotion to the cause, coupled with the frustrated sexuality and need for power that she had sensed in so many of the other, decidedly younger and more robust officials. He was small and balding, and the skin of his face was shiny and red, causing her to wonder whether he simply responded to the suffocating stuffiness of the smoky room, or whether his color flushed at having been caught in the act of arranging a secret assignation with the pretty young woman whose hand he still held firmly in his. He released his grip when he saw Helen focus on it.
“Let me introduce Miss Isa Becker, “ he said, bowing slightly in the direction of the tweed suit.
“I've heard much about your work,” Helen said graciously, addressing the young woman.
Miss Becker extended her hand and smiled at Helen, then returned her doting gaze to Ziegler. It was suddenly apparent to Helen that there was no real competition involved for the position in the Reich’s Kammer. Helen was now certain that from the start, the idea of competing contestants was merely a smokescreen to hide the already existing relationship between the old Bureaucrat and the braided blonde.
