To put an end to this exhausting situation.
In this context, Albert seems to her like a refuge.
Anyway, she prefers the surgeon’s hands.
Albert tells Charlotte about his meeting with Paula.
Thrilled, she insists that he invite her to dinner.
It would be such an honor.
He obeys.
On the evening in question, Charlotte wears her best dress.
The only one she likes, in truth.
She helps Hase prepare the table and the meal.
Everything must be perfect.
At eight o’clock, the doorbell rings.
Eagerly, she rushes to open it.
Paula gives her a big smile.
You must be Charlotte, says the opera singer.
Yes, that’s me, she wants to reply.
But no sound emerges.
The meal passes in an atmosphere of muted joy.
Paula invites Charlotte to see her in concert.
And afterward, you can visit my dressing room.
You’ll see, it’s very beautiful, Paula adds.
Backstage is the only place where the truth exists.
She speaks softly, her voice so fine.
There is nothing diva-like about her.
On the contrary, there is a delicacy to her gestures.
Everything is going wonderfully, thinks Albert.
It’s as if Paula had always lived here.
After dinner, they beg her to sing.
She approaches the piano.
Charlotte’s heart is no longer beating—it is pounding.
Paula leafs through the sheet music next to the piano.
Finally she chooses a Schubert lied.
And places it over the Bach.
6
Charlotte cuts out every article about Paula.
It fascinates her, that one person can be so loved.
She loves hearing the applause in the concert hall.
She is proud that she knows the artist personally.
Charlotte basks in the audience’s enthusiasm.
The noise of admiration is fabulous.
Paula shares with her the love she receives.
She shows Charlotte the flowers and the letters.
All of this takes the form of a strange consolation.
Life becomes richer, goes faster.
Suddenly everything seems frenetic.
Albert asks his daughter what she thinks of Paula.
I simply adore her.
Well, that’s perfect, because we’ve decided to get married.
Charlotte throws her arms round her father’s neck.
Something she hasn’t done for years.
The wedding takes place in a synagogue.
Raised by her rabbi father, Paula is a true believer.
Judaism has had little importance in Charlotte’s life.
One might even say: none at all.
Her childhood is based around an absence of Jewish culture.
In the words of Walter Benjamin.
Her parents lived a secular life.
And her mother loved Christian hymns.
At thirteen, Charlotte is discovering this world that is supposedly hers.
She observes it with that easy curiosity we have for things that seem distant to us.
7
Albert’s new wife moves to 15 Wielandstrasse.
Charlotte’s life is turned upside down.
The apartment, long used to emptiness and silence, is transformed.
Paula brings the cultural life of Berlin into their home.
She invites celebrities.
They meet the famous Albert Einstein.
The architect Erich Mendelsohn.
The theologian Albert Schweitzer.
This is the zenith of German domination.
Intellectual, artistic and scientific.
They play the piano, they drink, they sing, they dance, they invent.
Life has never seemed so intense.
There are now little brass plaques on the ground outside this address.
These are Stolpersteine.
Tributes to the victims of the Holocaust.
There are many of them in Berlin, especially in Charlottenburg.
They are not easy to spot.
You must walk with your head down, seeking memories between the cobblestones.
In front of 15 Wielandstrasse, three names can be read.
Paula, Albert and Charlotte.
But on the wall, there is only one commemorative plaque.
The one for Charlotte Salomon.
During my last visit to Berlin, it had vanished.
The building was being renovated, under scaffolding.
Charlotte erased for a fresh coat of paint.
Sanitized, the house façade looks like a movie backdrop.
Immobile on the sidewalk, I stare at the balcony.
Where Charlotte posed for a photograph with her father.
The picture was taken around 1928.
She is eleven or twelve, and the look in her eyes is bright.
She already looks surprisingly like a woman.
I dally for a moment in the past.
Preferring to look at the photograph in my memory rather than the present.
Then, finally, I make a decision.
I weave between the ladders and the workmen and go upstairs.
To the second floor, outside her apartment.
I ring Charlotte’s doorbell.
Because of the construction work, the place is empty.
But there is a light on in the apartment.
As if someone’s there.
There must be someone there.
And yet I hear no sound.
It’s a large apartment, I know.
I ring again.
Still nothing.
While I wait, I read the names listed above the doorbell.
Apparently the Salomons’ apartment has been turned into offices.
The company headquarters of Dasdomainhaus.com.
A firm that develops websites.
I hear a noise.
Footsteps coming closer.
Someone hesitating, then opening the door.
A worried-looking woman appears.
What do we want?
Christian Kolb, my German translator, is with me.
He takes his time before speaking.
Dot dot dot is always in his mouth.
I ask him to explain why we are here.
French writer … Charlotte Salomon …
She slams the door in our faces.
I stand there stunned, immobile.
I am only a few feet from Charlotte’s room.
It’s frustrating, but some things should not be forced.
I have plenty of time.
8
Charlotte is enriched by the discussions she hears.
She starts reading: a lot, and with passion.
Devours Goethe, Hesse, Remarque, Nietzsche, Döblin.
Paula thinks her stepdaughter is too withdrawn.
She never invites friends home.
Charlotte becomes possessive with her stepmother.
During parties, she follows her around like a shadow.
Cannot bear other people to spend too long talking to her.
She wants to give Paula something special for her birthday.
She spends whole days searching for the ideal gift.
Finally, she finds the perfect powder compact.
All her pocket money goes toward it.
She is so pleased with her find.
Her stepmother will love her even more.
The evening of the birthday, Charlotte is on tenterhooks.
Paula opens her present.
She is very happy with it.
But it is one gift among many.
She thanks everyone with equal sweetness.
Charlotte falls to pieces.
She is crushed by the dis
appointment.
Driven crazy.
She rushes over to grab back the compact.
And hurls it on the floor, in front of all the guests.
Silence descends.
Albert looks at Paula, as if it is up to her to react.
The singer is coldly furious.
She accompanies Charlotte to her room.
We’ll talk about this tomorrow, she says.
I’ve ruined everything, thinks Charlotte.
In the morning, they see each other in the kitchen.
Charlotte starts babbling excuses.
She tries to explain what she was feeling.
Paula strokes her cheek, to comfort her.
Glad that Charlotte is finally able to put words to her malaise.
Paula remembers the joyful adolescent she met.
She doesn’t understand what it is that troubles her so much now.
For Albert, his daughter’s reaction is a manifestation of jealousy.
Nothing more.
He refuses to see the depth of her suffering.
His work takes up all his attention; he is an important doctor.
He is making major discoveries in the treatment of ulcers.
His daughter’s tantrums are not his priority.
Paula continues to worry.
She thinks Charlotte should be told everything.
The truth.
What truth? Albert asks.
The truth … about her mother.
She insists.
No one can build their identity on such a lie.
If she finds out that everyone has lied to her, it will be awful.
No, Albert replies, we must say nothing about it.
Then adds: her grandparents are adamant.
They do not want her to know.
Paula suddenly understands.
Charlotte often goes to stay at their house.
The pressure is incessant.
They never let anyone forget that they have lost their daughters.
Lotte is all that’s left to them, they moan.
When she returns from staying with them, Charlotte is somber.
Her grandmother loves her very deeply, of course.
But there is a dark power to her love.
How can that woman look after a child?
That woman whose two daughters killed themselves.
9
Paula agrees not to reveal anything to Charlotte.
As that is the family’s wish.
But she sends a scathing letter to the grandmother.
“You are the murderer of your daughters.
But this time you won’t have her.
I am going to protect her …”
Devastated, the grandmother withdraws into herself.
The past she attempted to bury is coming back in waves.
She lets the successive tragedies overwhelm her.
There are her two daughters, of course.
But they are only the culmination of a long line of suicides.
Her brother too threw himself in a river, because of an unhappy marriage.
A doctor of law, he was only twenty-eight.
His corpse was exhibited in the living room.
For days on end, the family slept close to the tragedy.
They didn’t want to let him leave.
The apartment would be his tomb.
Only the stink of decomposition put an end to the exhibition.
When they came to pick up her son, the mother tried to stop them.
She could accept his death, not his absence.
Not the absence of his body.
She sank into insanity.
Two full-time nurses were hired.
To protect her from herself.
As would later happen to Franziska, just after her first suicide attempt.
So history would repeat itself.
Repeat itself endlessly, like the refrain of the dead.
The grandmother remembers such difficult years.
When she had to constantly watch her own mother.
She would speak to her sometimes to soothe her.
This seemed to calm her down.
But inevitably she started mentioning her son again.
She said he was a sailor.
That was why they didn’t see much of him.
And then suddenly the reality would hit her in the face.
It would bite, hard.
And she would scream for hours.
After eight years of mental exhaustion, she finally succumbed.
Perhaps the family would be able to find a semblance of peace.
But it wasn’t over for Charlotte’s grandmother.
No sooner was their mother in the ground than her younger sister committed suicide.
Inexplicably, unforeseeably.
At eighteen years old, she got up in the night.
And threw herself in the icy river.
Just as the first Charlotte would do later.
So history would repeat itself.
Repeat itself endlessly, like the refrain of the dead.
The grandmother had been paralyzed by her sister’s death.
She had not seen it coming—and nor had anyone else.
She had to get away, fast.
Marriage was the best option.
She became a Grunwald.
And quickly had two daughters.
…
A few years passed, strangely happy.
But the black march began again.
Her brother’s only daughter committed suicide.
And then it was her father’s turn, and then her aunt’s.
So there would never be any escape.
The morbid atavism was too powerful.
The roots of a family tree gnawed at by evil.
And yet she never would have thought her own daughters contaminated.
Nothing suggested it during their happy childhood.
They ran all over the place.
Jumped, danced, laughed.
It was unthinkable.
Charlotte, then Franziska.
Shut away in her room, the grandmother continues to mourn her dead.
The letter lying on her lap.
Soaked with tears, the words blur, distort.
What if Paula was right?
After all, that woman sings like an angel.
Yes, what she says is true.
Everyone around her dies.
So she must be careful.
Protect Charlotte.
She will see her less often, if it’s better that way.
Her granddaughter will no longer come to stay here.
That is the essential thing.
Charlotte must live.
But is that even possible?
Part Three
1
Charlotte is now sixteen.
A serious girl, brilliant at school.
People sometimes find her mysterious.
Her stepmother considers her insolent, above all.
They no longer get along so well.
Albert is still obsessed with his medical explorations.
So the two of them spend long days together.
Getting on each other’s nerves, growing irritable: what could be more normal?
Charlotte is increasingly divided.
She idolizes Paula, and she can’t bear her.
But she never tires of hearing her sing.
She goes to all her concerts in Berlin.
And feels the same emotion she felt the first time.
Paula is one of the greatest living divas.
Crowds rush to hear her.
One night, she records a magnificent version of Carmen.
Charlotte is in the first row that night.
Her stepmother holds the note a long time.
The last note of the concert.
The audience holds its breath.
The sound fades elegantly.
It’s a triumph, an ovation, somet
hing even greater if that’s possible.
Here and there, people shout bravos.
Charlotte observes the bouquets of flowers that clutter the stage.
The bouquets that will soon decorate their living room.
Everything is red.
And in the heart of this redness, a dissonant note.
To begin with, Charlotte is not sure.
Perhaps it’s a slightly strange form of admiration.
The shouting grows more raucous, the whistling more shrill.
No, it’s not admiration.
It’s coming from somewhere above.
It’s still not easy to see.
The lights have not come back on yet.
The noise grows louder.
Now the boos are drowning out the applause.
Paula understands, and runs backstage.
She does not want to listen to that.
She does not want to hear their hatred.
Men yell insults, horrible things.
They tell Paula to go home.
They don’t want to hear her anymore here!
Charlotte, trembling, goes to find her.
She expects to find her stepmother devastated.
But no, there she is, standing in front of her mirror.
She looks strong, almost unshakeable.
It is she who reassures Charlotte.
We have to get used to it, that’s just how it is …
But her voice rings false.
Her veneer of calm cannot hide her anxiety.
Back at home, Albert is still not asleep.
He is aghast when he hears what happened.
The scene they describe makes him want to throw up.
It is becoming simply unbearable.
Some of their friends are going to leave Germany.
These friends encourage them to do the same.
Paula could sing in the United States.
Albert could easily find work there.
No, he says.
It’s out of the question.
This is their homeland.
This is Germany.
They must be optimistic,1 must believe that the hatred is ephemeral.
2
In January 1933, the hatred comes to power.
Paula no longer has the right to perform in public.
For Albert, professional death will surely follow too.
Medical care carried out by Jews is no longer reimbursed.
He imagines them taking away his teaching diploma.
He who has made important discoveries.
Attacks are spreading, books are burning.
In the Salomons’ apartment, they meet up in the evenings.
Artists, intellectuals, doctors.
Some continue to believe this is a passing phase.
The logical consequences of an economic crisis.
Someone must always be blamed for a nation’s woes.
Charlotte Page 3
