by Thynne, Jane
‘He’s not an actor. His name is Sturmbannführer Steinbrecher.’
It worked. The seductive nonchalance of Brandt’s face vanished and he placed his hands in his pockets. He lit a cigarette and inhaled, continuing to scrutinize her all the while.
‘Is that so? Well, if you won’t come to bed with me, Clara Vine, perhaps you’ll come to dinner?’
Clara wanted to. She had an urge so deep it surprised her. It had been a year since she had had a dinner date with a man. There were always actors, of course, at the studios, who would meet up at one of the popular restaurants in town, the Einstein Café or Borchardt’s or Lutter und Wegner’s, but a dinner date, with a single man, who did not want to dissect his own film career or fret about his future in the Reich Chamber of Culture, was a rarity. Yet now was not the time and besides . . . there was something about Brandt that felt not quite right. Clara had a sixth sense that there was more to him than met the eye. Chanel’s salon was full of Nazi agents and she feared a trap.
‘I’d like to, Herr Brandt. Believe me, I would. But I leave at six in the morning and I don’t want to miss my train.’
‘It wouldn’t do to be stuck here in Paris, you mean?’
‘I mean I do genuinely need to get some sleep.’
‘Perhaps we’ll meet again in Berlin then.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Could I not tempt you to stay? Just a day? We could see the Mona Lisa, the only woman in Paris more inscrutable than you.’
She smiled.
‘The Tour d’Eiffel? Montmartre?’
She shook her head. ‘Maybe another time.’
‘What about the artistic ape in the zoo? The one who makes beautiful drawings?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Auf wiedersehen, then.’
Taking her hand, he raised it to his lips and kissed each knuckle in turn. The gesture caused a soft, melting sensation deep inside her, so that for a moment she longed to raise her own lips to his mouth in response, but instead she steeled herself to keep her face down as Brandt lifted his hat to her and turned away.
Clara took the long way back to the Hotel Bellevue, almost losing track of time as she wandered the streets, deep in thought. Partly, she wanted to savour the last vestiges of her time in Paris and partly, after the encounter with Max Brandt, she was too full of nervous energy to sleep. The moon hung over Paris like one of Chanel’s own pearls, its soft brilliance blackening the sky around it. As she walked, Chanel’s remark sounded in her mind. I think you, Mademoiselle Vine, are like me. Was Chanel suggesting that Clara, like her, was cynical and accustomed to using men for her own advantage? If so, then the accusation resonated uncomfortably. She had rejected an offer from the only man she had ever considered marrying, Leo Quinn, in order to commit herself to her life as an agent in Berlin. The last man she felt anything for had advised her to forget him. Was she destined to become one of those single women who rattled from affair to affair, finding nothing profound or lasting, searching for love the way an ageing actress searches for parts, sleeping with whichever handsome Nazi diplomat came her way? Or did Chanel think a ‘realist’ meant forgetting your country and your loyalties and siding with whoever might be a winner?
And yet, she thought, perhaps you should take pleasure wherever you found it, in case it never came again. Sometimes you passed love like a blossoming tree, without properly noticing it, hurrying on to a future where you imagined that it would be in endless supply, not realizing that you had already bypassed your entire chance of happiness.
Clara stopped, and gave herself a mental shake. Chanel was right about one thing. She was growing cynical about her chances of finding enduring love. But that didn’t mean she was not prepared to defend everything else that she held dear.
When she got back there was a bouquet waiting for her at the reception desk. It was a lavish bunch of roses, papery white petals with a soft blush at their hearts. Clara closed the door of her room behind her and removed the note that was tucked in the tissue paper.
Dinner in Berlin.
That was all. She rested the petals for a moment against her cheek and inhaled their sharp fragrance. It was intense and delicate, with an edge of dew-drenched gardens and freshly cut grass. Then she took the flowers over to the basin and stripped the petals methodically one by one, until a heap of bruised shapes littered the porcelain beneath. But there was no listening device inside. Nothing suspicious at all. Just roses.
Chapter Five
Berlin
‘He fixes the horoscopes, you know.’
Steffi Schaeffer nodded towards Clara’s copy of the Berliner Tageblatt and gave a sniff more robust than seemed possible for a woman of such refined appearance, in her pale grey linen skirt and jacket, with a silk flower in her lapel.
‘Who does?’ asked Clara.
‘Goebbels,’ said Steffi, scornfully. ‘He tailors them. He likes people to think that everything’s going well. He orders them to print lines like A successful and happy day. Germany is a land of smiles! Ha! Has he looked at the faces in the streets recently? You don’t notice many smiles there.’
Clara glanced out of the window at the street below. She was back in Berlin all right, and just as Steffi said, a single glance at the citizens was better than any horoscope at predicting the general mood. The sultry heat had not broken and worry whipped the streets like a dry summer wind. Most people darted along in a hurried way, as if on urgent business, heads down, trying not to attract attention. Most likely the people in the street below were heading home because they were Jews served with a curfew and must perform all necessary tasks within daylight hours or risk arrest.
The two women were in a small studio with a scruffy, pockmarked façade, north of the Hackescher Markt in the Scheunenviertel. This quarter had been the centre of Jewish life in Berlin for centuries. Its narrow streets were the first port of call for Ostjuden refugees fleeing from the east and it was now the hub of Berlin’s textile trade. Shafts of light from the high windows illuminated a room dominated by a large wooden table, crowded with rolled bolts of vivid cloth, scissors, pins and kaleidoscopic spools of cotton. Tailors’ dummies stood around like ghostly guests in half-finished finery, and hat stands bore toques, turbans, pillboxes and tip-brimmed hats in felt, flowers, feathers and pastel braided straw. It was a place of disguise and concealment, which was fitting considering that Steffi Schaeffer’s other role was as part of a resistance network helping Jews to leave Germany. Clara had never discussed this aspect of Steffi’s secret life with her, but her friend Bruno Weiss, the painter, had secured a false passport and travel documents to Switzerland courtesy of this elegant and popular woman.
Outside, a passage led off from the street to a dingy courtyard containing a patchwork of workspaces and storage areas occupied by tailors and cloth sellers. Stalls on the pavement sold ribbons and buttons and the shops were largely selling clothing, stockings and shoes. On the street side many of the shop fronts were painted with a white J, as well as obscene cartoons, six-pointed stars and pictures of Jews being hanged, a decoration for which they had roving bands of stormtroopers to thank, or sometimes brigades of Hitler Youth sent out on Saturday mornings with paint pots and brushes.
Clara turned back to Steffi, who was at that moment darting around her dress with a mouthful of pins, adjusting the hem.
‘I thought Goebbels took horoscopes really seriously,’ she said. ‘He and Hitler often consult the horoscope of the Third Reich when they’re planning policy.’
‘He does,’ said Steffi. ‘He even loves Nostradamus. He says that Nostradamus predicted German troops would march to the Rhine and occupy Vienna and now he’s saying that Nostradamus predicts Hitler will triumph in the Sudetenland too. The destiny of the Third Reich is written in the stars, though that doesn’t stop Goebbels from giving it a helping hand.’
She pursed her mouth and jabbed the pins into the cushion on the table. ‘But then I suppose none of us knows what’s coming so it may as wel
l be Goebbels as anyone else.’
A tough life and the loss of her husband five years ago, not to mention nights of sleepless anxiety since, had etched hard lines on Steffi’s face, yet she was still a beautiful woman in her mid-thirties, petite, with dark blonde hair, sharp, elegant cheekbones and eyes of violet blue. Her talents as a dressmaker had won her steady work from the costume department of the Ufa studios, until the Aryanization measures introduced by Goebbels outlawed Jews from working there. As a Jew on her mother’s side, Steffi was barred from working in any part of the Reich Chamber of Culture and now the commissions she had from society women were drying up too.
She stretched the cornflower-blue cotton for Clara’s dress between thumb and forefinger.
‘It’s hard enough to get the material with this textile shortage, so I can’t think why you want to spoil it by making it look like a dirndl,’ she said, curling her lip at the square, low-cut neckline. ‘It’s not your style at all. You always prefer something elegant.’
‘It’s not a dirndl. It’s just a little lace at the neck. Besides, I’m going to be working in Munich. They like things a little more traditional down there.’
‘Well, I’ve done my best to give this dress a Marlene Dietrich twist.’
Steffi made the final stitch on the hem and began to fold the dress up.
‘Thank you, Steffi. And for the lovely green silk dress. You’ll never guess – I meant to tell you – I wore it to the salon of Coco Chanel.’
Steffi Schaeffer widened her eyes and laughed, displaying even, white teeth. ‘Coco Chanel saw my work! I can’t believe it! I would have loved to have been there. Perhaps she could give me some commissions!’
‘I assume things are getting worse?’
Steffi shrugged. ‘Of course. Most of my regular customers are going elsewhere now. On the other hand, in the past few weeks I’ve found a new income stream.’
Clara tilted an inquisitive head and Steffi hesitated, obeying a deep, instinctive caution, until their eyes met and she confessed, ‘It’s a new type of tailoring I’m doing. Since the latest announcement.’
‘Which one is that?’
Since the introduction of the Nuremberg laws three years ago, the lives of Jews in Germany had grown ever more circumscribed. They were no longer allowed to marry gentiles, or even call themselves citizens. In recent months, however, the daily stream of restrictions had gathered pace. Almost every day there would be a fresh encroachment on Jewish freedom announced in the upper right-hand side of the newspaper front pages. Jews could no longer practise medicine or law. They could not hold bank accounts. Their cars were issued with Jewish licence plates and all too often Jews with cars were called to report to the police station and when they were released, their cars remained in custody. Just that week Jews had been told they would all be photographed and fingerprinted and issued with new ID cards.
The escalation in tension was visible everywhere. In June shops with Jewish owners had been freshly plastered with smears of ‘Jew’ all over the walls and doors, shop fronts smashed and shopkeepers forced to pick up the glass of their smashed windows with their own bleeding hands. Restaurants known to admit Jews were raided and their customers taken away in Gestapo trucks.
‘This month all non-Aryans had letters ordering them to give up their jewellery to the state. They have to take everything to the nearest police station and hand it over. Can you believe it? The thieves! My friend asked for a receipt and the cop said, “What do you want a receipt for? You won’t be seeing these again in your lifetime”.’
‘So what’s this new tailoring you’re doing?’
‘Simple.’ Steffi walked across to a tailor’s dummy on which hung a coat of checked tweed and drew it back to reveal the lining.
‘You know how we sometimes put pfennigs in the lining? So it hangs properly? Well, this time it’s not pfennigs. It’s a little more valuable.’
She ran her neat, painted fingernails down the navy satin and found an edge which had been left unsewn. Tucking her fingers inside, she withdrew a pearl necklace and from the lined flaps of the pockets, she picked out a pair of ruby and diamond earrings.
‘If you need to leave the country, you’re going to need to take your coat. Or your jacket, or your suit. This way, you can take your jewellery too.’
Clara shook her head in admiration.
‘But it has to be done by a professional so the seams lie flat. See? It’s no good botching the job, the Gestapo aren’t stupid. I do hats too.’ Steffi gestured at a hat stand on the table. ‘They’re even better because, look—’ She ran her fingers along the intricate folds, where the raffia was stitched into rivulets. ‘They’re stiffer. They have more detail. They’re harder to unpick.’
She pulled over a creation of plum velvet, with a scrap of veiling, and removed a rosette from the crown. In the cavity beneath glistened a gold ring.
‘Everyone who leaves gets searched. The guards on the trains take the soles out of shoes and they even squeeze tubes of toothpaste looking for valuables, so it pays to be very careful if you’re going to conceal something.’
‘It’s so cleverly done.’
Steffi shrugged.
‘Women don’t mind leaving everything else, but they won’t leave their jewellery. It’s not just the value. It makes them feel beautiful. We all need that now.’
‘I’m glad you’ve found some business.’
Steffi crossed her arms and frowned. ‘Business? I’m not sure I’d call it that. Sometimes they pay me with a bit of butter or a few eggs. Sometimes, I do it for nothing. What’s the point of money if it’s going to be taken away from you?’
‘I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me. I didn’t mean . . .’
‘Don’t worry.’ She smiled. ‘Besides, I’m not the only one with extra work. A friend of mine, Herr Feinmann, is a paper manufacturer and he says the demand for blackout cardboard has soared. He can’t keep up with it. You know what that means.’
Clara did. Bomb shelters and blackout materials were on everyone’s mind. Troops were visible on the street in ever greater numbers. Public buildings were being transformed into barracks.
Steffi looked at Clara intently. Though she knew no detail of Clara’s real life, their four-year friendship meant they trusted each other implicitly.
‘Last month they told us we have to change our names. Did you hear that? All Jewish passports will be stamped with a J and Jewish people who have names of “non-Jewish” origin have to add Israel or Sara to their given names. Gentiles will be banned from giving their children Jewish names.’
‘What? Like Joseph, you mean?’
They laughed, despite themselves, at the monstrous absurdity of Goebbels.
‘Joseph is exempted. It’s been declared an honorary Aryan name.’
Steffi’s brave smile died and her voice hushed, even though there was no chance of them being overheard.
‘It’s dreadful, Clara. Every day people are being fetched from their homes and taken to Oranienburg or Buchenwald. They take away their belts and ties and shoelaces, and when they get there, they make them stand in the square all night with spotlights on them. A lot of the men round here spend the day dodging the Gestapo. They stay with friends and their wives pretend that they’re travelling. Everyone’s leaving. Why wouldn’t they? It’s that or stay here and take poison. A woman I know killed herself just the other day, up in the West End. Everyone I know is trying to get to Palestine, or South Africa, or Italy. We’re being forced to creep away from our homes like criminals.’
Clara had the impression that Steffi was only just holding herself together. That every day the knocks and the fear carved the lines a little deeper in her face.
‘First the Nazis want you to leave, then they make it impossible for you to get out. People spend all day going to different embassies and all they do is learn the word “no” in twenty different languages. People turn up at the embassies with hundred-mark notes folded into their passports. They sen
d baskets of fruit and flowers. But it never does any good. That’s why I’m trying to help.’
‘What can you do?’
Though Clara’s voice was hushed, it still sounded unnaturally loud in the quiet of the workshop.
‘I do what I can. There are several of us.’ She bit her lip, and frowned at Clara. ‘You must know.’
Clara did. They were called U-boats, the escapees, because of the sudden descent they made into the vast Berlin underground.
‘There are houses all over Berlin, and further out. Some people are going into hiding, you know, sleeping in friends’ basements, or moving from house to house. We all contribute what we can. Look here.’
She walked across to a wardrobe built into the wall and pushed at the back. The wooden panel gave way to reveal a further, narrow space, in which a series of uniforms hung.
‘I have a friend – not a Jew – who owns a clothing company that is now obliged to work for the Wehrmacht. He knows how the uniforms are made, and how to make them up. They check everything, you know. The way the cloth is cut, the precise location of the buttonholes. They leave nothing to chance.’
‘What about you, Steffi? Are you trying to leave?’
‘I can’t.’ Steffi folded her arms and looked at Clara resolutely. ‘There’s my mother to think of. I couldn’t leave her.’
Clara had met Steffi’s mother once, a smiley woman with snow-white hair and eyes clouded by cataracts, confined to a chair by a bout of polio.
‘Even if I could go, what would happen to Mutti? There’s no one to look after her. Except my brother of course and he’s hopeless. He says, “We Jews made it through the Red Sea. We’ll make it through the Brown shit.” Mutti can’t even feed herself so I’m staying put. But it’s Nina I’m worried about.’
‘How old is she now?’ Clara recalled Steffi’s only child, an anaemic-looking girl with narrow shoulders whom she had met when collecting a dress from Steffi’s home. Like her mother, Nina was dressed beautifully in neatly pressed, hand-stitched blouse and handmade skirt, but unlike her blonde mother, Nina was dark, with her father’s sallow skin and golden brown eyes. It was those eyes Clara remembered most, taking in every detail of her face and clothes, hesitating before eating the cake that Clara had brought. Nina reminded Clara of herself at that age, observing the world without intruding on it, creating an elaborate interior universe behind a self-effacing façade.
