5
Charlotte is eight when her mother’s state worsens.
The depressive phases drag on.
She no longer has any desire to do anything, feels useless.
Albert implores his wife.
But the darkness is already settled in their bed.
I need you, he says.
Charlotte needs you, he says.
She falls asleep, for the night.
But gets up again.
Albert opens his eyes, watches her.
Franziska walks over to the window.
I want to see the heavens, she says to reassure her husband.
Often, she tells Charlotte that everything is more beautiful in heaven.
And adds: when I’m there, I’ll send you a letter to tell you all about it.
The afterlife becomes an obsession.
Don’t you want mama to become an angel?
Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
Charlotte says nothing.
An angel.
Franziska knows one: her sister.
Who had the courage to put an end to it all.
To exit life silently, without warning.
The death of an eighteen-year-old girl.
The death of promise.
Franziska believes there is a hierarchy of horror.
The suicide of a mother is a superior suicide.
She could occupy first place in the family tragedy.
Who would contest the supremacy of her devastation?
One night, she gets quietly out of bed.
Not even breathing.
For once, Albert does not hear her.
She goes to the bathroom.
Picks up a vial of opium and swallows it all.
Her groan finally awakens her husband.
He rushes over, but the door is locked.
Franziska does not open it.
Her throat is on fire, the pain is unbearable.
She doesn’t die, however.
And her husband’s panic ruins her goodbyes.
Does Charlotte hear all this?
Does she wake up?
In the end, Albert manages to open the door.
He brings his wife back to life.
The dose was too small.
But now he knows.
Death is no longer merely a fantasy.
6
When she wakes up, Charlotte goes in search of her mother.
Your mama was sick in the night.
You mustn’t disturb her.
For the first time, the little girl goes to school without seeing her.
Without kissing her.
Franziska will be safer at her parents’ house.
That is what Albert thinks.
If she stays alone, she will kill herself.
It is impossible to reason with her.
Franziska goes back to her old bedroom.
The place where she grew up.
The place where she was happy with her sister.
With her parents’ support, she regains a little strength.
Her mother tries to conceal her anxiety.
How is it possible?
Her second daughter attempting suicide, after the first killed herself.
No hope of any respite.
She seeks help wherever she can.
They call a neurologist, a family friend.
She has gone through a rough patch, but it will pass, he reassures them.
An excess of emotion, a highly sensitive personality, nothing more.
Charlotte worries.
Where is mama?
She is sick.
She has flu.
It’s very contagious.
So it’s better not to see her for the moment.
She’ll be back soon, Albert promises.
Though he doesn’t sound altogether convincing.
He is angry with his wife.
Especially when he sees Charlotte in such distress.
All the same, he visits her every evening.
His parents-in-law greet him coldly.
They hold him responsible.
He is never at home, always working.
The suicide attempt is obviously an act of despair.
Provoked by her terrible loneliness.
They have to blame someone.
And what about your other daughter, he wants to shout, is that my fault too?
But Albert remains silent.
He ignores them, and goes to sit next to the bed.
Alone with his wife at last, he brings up a few memories.
It always ends like this, with memories.
For a moment, things look hopeful.
Franziska takes her husband’s hand, manages a faint smile.
These are instants of peace, even of tenderness.
Brief passages of life between the dark desires.
They choose a nurse to care for the patient.
That is the official version.
Her real job, of course, is to watch over Franziska.
The days pass under the gaze of this stranger.
Franziska never asks about her daughter.
Charlotte no longer exists.
When Albert brings one of their daughter’s drawings, the mother turns her face away.
7
The Grunwalds eat in the large dining room.
The nurse crosses the room, sits down next to them for a moment.
Suddenly, the mother is seized by a vision.
Franziska alone in her room, walking over to the window.
She glares at the nurse.
Jumps to her feet and runs upstairs to her daughter.
She opens the door, just in time to see the body falling.
She screams her head off, but it’s too late.
A thud.
The mother moves forward, trembling.
Franziska is lying in a pool of her own blood.
Part Two
1
When she hears the news, Charlotte says nothing.
A violent attack of flu has taken her mother.
She thinks about that word: flu.
One word and it’s all over.
Years later, she will finally learn the truth.
In an atmosphere of general chaos.
For now, she comforts her father.
It’s all right, she says.
Mama told me about this.
She has become an angel.
She always said how wonderful it is in heaven.
Albert does not know how to respond.
He wants to believe this too.
But he knows the truth.
His wife has left him.
Alone, with their daughter.
Everywhere he goes, memories haunt him.
In every room, through every object, she is there.
The air in the apartment is the same air she breathed.
He wants to rearrange the furniture, smash it all up.
Or, better still, move to a new house.
But when he speaks to Charlotte about this, she refuses.
Her mother promised to send her a letter.
Once she is up in heaven.
So they have to stay here.
Otherwise mama won’t be able to find us, says the little girl.
Each evening, she waits for hours.
Sitting on the window ledge.
The horizon is dark, gloomy.
Perhaps that is why her mother’s letter has not found its way here.
Days pass, without any news.
Charlotte wants to go to the cemetery.
She knows every inch of it.
She walks up to her mother’s gravestone.
Don’t forget your promise: you have to tell me everything.
But still nothing.
Nothing.
This silence, she can’t stand it anymore.
Her father tries to reason with her.
The dead cannot write to the living.
And it’s better t
hat way.
Your mother is happy, up there.
There are lots of pianos hidden in the clouds.
What he says doesn’t make much sense.
His thoughts get tangled up.
Finally, Charlotte understands there will be no letter.
She is terribly angry with her mother.
2
Now, it is time to learn solitude.
Charlotte does not share his feelings.
Her father hides in his work, buries himself in it.
Every evening, he sits at his desk.
Charlotte watches him, stooped over his books.
Piles of books, high as towers.
Mad-eyed, he mumbles all sorts of formulas.
Nothing can block his progress on the path to knowledge.
Nor on the path to renown.
He has just been given a professorship at the medical faculty in Berlin.
It is a consecration, a dream.
Charlotte does not seem very happy about it.
In truth, it has become difficult for her to express any emotion.
At the Fürstin-Bismarck school, people whisper as she passes.
They must be kind to her, her mama is dead.
Her mama is dead, her mama is dead, her mama is dead.
Thankfully, the building is comforting, with its wide stairways.
A place where pain is soothed.
Charlotte is happy to go there every day.
I took the same walk myself.
Many times, following in her footsteps.
There and back, in search of Charlotte as a child.
One day, I went inside the school.
Girls were running through the lobby.
I thought that Charlotte could still be among them.
At the front office, I was welcomed by the academic counselor.
A very affable woman named Gerlinde.
I explained to her the reason I was there.
She did not seem surprised.
Charlotte Salomon, she repeated to herself.
We know who she is, of course.
…
So began a long visit.
Meticulous, because every detail matters.
Gerlinde talked up the virtues of the school.
Observing my reactions, my emotions.
But the most important was yet to come.
She suggested I go to see the biology equipment.
Why?
Because none of it has changed.
It is like diving into the last century.
Diving into Charlotte’s world.
We walked through a dark, dusty corridor.
And came to an attic full of stuffed animals.
And insects spending eternity inside a jar.
A skeleton caught my eye.
Death, the ceaseless refrain of my quest.
Charlotte must have studied it, Gerlinde announced.
I was there, almost a century after my heroine.
Analyzing, in my turn, the form of a human body.
At the end, we visited the beautiful auditorium.
A group of girls was posing for the class photo.
Encouraged by the photographer, they were goofing around.
A successful attempt to immortalize the joy of living.
I thought of Charlotte’s class photo, which I had seen before.
It was not taken in this room, but in the schoolyard outside.
It is a deeply disturbing picture.
All the girls stare into the lens.
All of them, but one.
Charlotte’s eyes are turned in a different direction.
What is she looking at?
3
Charlotte lives with her grandparents for a while.
She stays in her mother’s childhood bedroom.
This confuses the grandmother.
She gets her eras mixed up.
A child with the face of her first daughter.
A child with the same name as her second.
In the night, fearful, she gets up several times.
She has to check that little Charlotte is sleeping peacefully.
The girl grows wild.
Her father hires nannies and she does all she can to drive them to despair.
She hates anyone who tries to take care of her.
Worst of the bunch: Miss Stagard.
A stupid, vulgar woman.
Charlotte is the most badly brought-up girl she has ever known, she says.
Thankfully, on an outing one day, she falls into a crevasse.
She screams with pain, her leg broken.
Charlotte is in seventh heaven, finally rid of her.
But with Hase, everything is different.
Charlotte loves her instantly.
As Albert is never home, Hase practically lives there.
When she washes, Charlotte gets up to spy on her.
She is fascinated by the size of her breasts.
It is the first time she has seen such big ones.
Her mother’s were small.
What about hers: what will they be like?
She would like to know what is preferable.
On the apartment landing she sees a neighbor boy her own age, and asks him.
He seems very surprised.
Then finally answers: large breasts.
So Hase is lucky, but she isn’t very pretty.
Her face is a little puffy.
And she has hairs on her upper lip.
In fact, you could probably call it a moustache.
So Charlotte goes back to see her neighbor.
Is it better to have large breasts and a moustache …
Or small breasts with the face of an angel?
The boy hesitates again.
In a serious voice, he replies that the second solution seems better to him.
Then he walks away without another word.
After that, he will always be embarrassed when he sees the strange girl next door.
As for Charlotte, she feels relieved by this response.
Deep down, she is pleased that men do not like Hase.
She loves her too much to risk losing her.
She doesn’t want anyone to love her.
Nobody but her.
4
It is the first Christmas without her mother.
Her grandparents are there, colder than ever.
The Christmas tree is immense, too big for the living room.
Albert bought the biggest and most beautiful one he could find.
For his daughter, naturally, but also in memory of his wife.
Franziska adored Christmas.
She would spend hours decorating the tree.
It was the highlight of her year.
The tree is dark now.
As if it, too, were in mourning.
Charlotte opens her presents.
They are watching her, so she plays the role of the happy girl.
A little theater to lighten the moment.
To dispel her father’s sadness.
Silence is what hurts most of all.
At Christmas, her mother used to sit at the piano for hours.
She loved Christian hymns.
Now the evening passes without a single melody.
Charlotte often looks at the piano.
She is incapable of touching it.
She can still see her mother’s fingers on the keyboard.
On this instrument, the past is alive.
Charlotte has the feeling that the piano can understand her.
And share her wound.
The piano is like her: an orphan.
Every day, she stares at the open sheet music.
The last piece her mother ever played.
A Bach concerto.
Several Christmases will pass this way, in silence.
5
It is now 1930.
Charlotte is a teenager.
People like to say that she is in her own world.
Being in one’s own world, where does that lead?
To daydreams and poetry, undoubtedly.
But also to a strange mix of disgust and bliss.
Charlotte can smile and suffer at the same time.
Only Hase understands her, and it happens without words.
In silence, Charlotte rests her head on the nanny’s chest.
Like that, she feels listened to.
Some bodies are consolations.
But Hase no longer spends so much time looking after Charlotte.
Albert says a thirteen-year-old girl has no need for a nanny.
Does he have any idea what his daughter wants?
If that’s how it is, she refuses to grow up.
Charlotte feels ever more alone.
Her best friend is now spending more time with Kathrin.
A new pupil in the school, and already so popular.
How does she do it?
Some girls have the gift of making others love them.
Charlotte is afraid of being abandoned.
The best solution is to avoid becoming attached.
Because nothing lasts.
She must protect herself from potential disappointments.
But no, that’s ridiculous.
She can see what’s happening to her father.
By separating himself from other people, he has become a gray man.
So she encourages him to go out.
During one dinner party, he finds himself talking to a famous opera singer.
She has just made a record, and it’s wonderful.
All over Europe, people are praising it.
She also sings in churches: sacred music.
Albert is tongue-tied, intimidated.
The conversation is full of silences.
If only she was ill, the doctor would know what to say.
Alas, this woman is in sickeningly good health.
After a while, he stammers that he has a daughter.
Paula (that’s her name) is charmed by this.
Chased constantly by admirers, she dreams of a man who is not an artist.
Kurt Singer, the dashing Opera House director, idolizes her.
He wants to give up everything for her (his wife, in other words).
His wooing borders on harassment.
For months, he has been promising Paula the earth.
A neurologist too, he helps women with nervous problems.
To cast a spell on her, he even tries hypnosis.
Paula starts to yield, then pushes him away.
One night, coming out of a concert, Kurt’s wife suddenly appears.
Desperate, she throws a vial of poison at Paula.
Poison that she probably thought about swallowing.
A tragic love story.
This incident leaves Paula weak.
She decides it is time she got married.
Charlotte Page 2
