Marlene: A Novel

by C. W. Gortner

  I shrugged. I liked that she didn’t know. If I had her guessing, I could make others do the same, including the public who saw me on-screen and on the stage.

  My career was finally on the rise. At home, Rudi and I had to face it. He couldn’t look for another permanent job until our child was older. He could take occasional work when I was available, but one of us had to be with Heidede.

  He finally revealed what must have been gnawing at him all along, abetted no doubt by Mutti. “You don’t want to stop working, do you? Our life together is not enough for you.”

  We sat at the table, having finished our dinner. I still tried to cook for him every night, as busy as I was, either on the set or the stage or racing between casting calls.

  I lit a cigarette. “No,” I admitted, “it’s not. I want our life. But I want a career, too.”

  “And what about me? Am I supposed to give up my career? Imagine how it looks: I am your husband. I should be providing for you and our daughter.”

  “Does it matter who provides, as long as one of us does? I have work now. Rudi, you know that if I don’t take opportunities when they come, there won’t be any more.”

  “In other words, your career is more important,” he retorted, but he didn’t sound convincing, as though he were mouthing words he believed were the right ones to say.

  “I’m telling you what I want,” I replied. “Now, tell me what you want.”

  “I don’t know what I want.” He tossed his napkin on the table. “Right now, I want to take a walk.” He threw on his coat and left. After washing up, I spent time with Heidede until I heard his key in the door. He came into our bedroom, where we’d set up her bassinet. “Very well,” he said. “But if you don’t succeed, promise me you’ll give it up. I know you want this, and I want you to have it, but I won’t be made a fool.”

  “I promise,” I told him.

  Thus, it was established. Following work and suppers at home to save my marks, evenings were taken up imbibing cocktails, attending the latest hit play or revue, followed by the cabarets. I tried to be seen wherever I could make an impact and make contacts, finagling my way even into the exclusive El Dorado nightclub to see Josephine Baker stage an impromptu act from her box-office-shattering La Revue Nègre, frolicking on tabletops in her strings of pearls and nothing else. Sleek as a panther and as gutsy as an empress, she inspired me, particularly when she sauntered among the gaping patrons singing her signature “I’ve Found a New Baby.”

  I kept up my socializing with Leni and Anna May, and Leni must have sensed the intimacy between Anna and me, for she began to openly vie for attention, emulating whatever outrageous outfit I happened to wear, until I found myself purloining one-of-a-kind items from wardrobe departments to disconcert her, such as a shaggy wolf pelt I paired with a lacy blouse, baggy sailor pants, and military boots. Leni promptly went and found herself a mottled tiger skin that she donned as a cape.

  “She’s absurd,” laughed Anna May as we sprawled on her bed in her little flat close to the Kochstrasse, where we met once or twice a week. “Did you see her last night? She kept dragging that poor tiger skin around like she was on safari. If you ever show up naked with a feathered fan à la Baker, there will be Leni in all her glory behind you.”

  I lit a cigarette, inhaling first before putting it to her lips. “Speaking of La Baker, what do you think about starting our own act? We’d have fun and earn some money while we’re at it.”

  She slid her eyes at me. “An act? Such as . . . ?”

  “How about singing? We can call ourselves Sisters About Town, find bookings on the Nollendorfplatz. Not in the nice cabarets of course,” I said. “They’ll never take us—but the others. I’m sure we can do as well as the drag pansies or dildo queens.”

  “Especially if we pin violet sachets to our cooches,” said Anna May. “But Leni can’t carry a note to save her life. She’ll be furious if we exclude her.”

  “Who says we’ll exclude her? If she can’t sing, she can introduce us and tell dirty jokes.”

  Anna May inched her fingers down to my navel. “Not so blind anymore. You’re learning. To oust a rival, make her wilt in your shadow.”

  Leni glowered but refused to be left out. I imposed a strict rule: no drugs or drinking. Anna May could control herself, but Leni had a penchant for too much of everything, particularly when in a certain mood. I chose songs by Brecht and had us wear matching tuxedos, only mine was in white broadcloth. At Das Silhouette, the White Rose, Always Faithful, and other cabarets, we booked our act whenever we weren’t working elsewhere, Leni warming up the crowd with a risqué comedic routine before Anna May and I took to the spotlight, her sultry voice accompanying me as I sang before an enraptured audience of rouged boys, gaudy transvestites, and besotted lesbians, smoking my lyrics as I did my copious cigarettes.

  The transvestites adored me. I was besieged for advice on everything from makeup—“Marlene, is this shade of lipstick too garish?”—to accessories: “And these lamé wrist cuffs? Are they too divine or does it look like I lost the matching gloves?” In turn, I learned tricks from them, observing how they exaggerated femininity by cocking a hand higher on the hip to minimize the size of their hands or walked with the pelvis thrust forward to appear more curvaceous and distract the eye from their ropy calves.

  My cabaret performances also gave me access to influential people, slumming it on the town. Theater producers often went to the cabarets to find new ideas; decadence was in, and where better to breathe it than the place where it had been born? Like Anna May and Leni, sometimes I took these influential people to bed, though my liaisons were fleeting, and were always designed to ensure that when passion faded, goodwill remained.

  Margo Lion, wife of the homosexual producer-writer Marcellus Schiffer and a violet devotee who wore black lipstick and had an alabaster pallor, accosted me after my act; she and her husband wanted to cast me in their new musical revue at the Komödie Theater, It’s in the Air, a satirical play about a department store, which mirrored the social upheaval in Germany. I had several numbers, including a song titled “Sisters,” which Margo and I performed together, two women buying underwear for each other while their boyfriends were away.

  “‘Perhaps it sounds pathetic,’” we sang as we pored over panties, bras, and garters, “‘but we find it magnetic. Though our palms and pants get wettest, it is nothing but a fetish.’”

  The song’s sapphic tone was blatant and such a hit, audiences demanded encores. My other number involved singing about the joys of kleptomania while dressed in a provocative green gown with a slit up my hip, a drooping fedora, and black gloves with fake diamond bracelets on each wrist. Growling the lyrics “‘We steal as birds do, despite that we are rich, for sexual licks’,” I stood motionless onstage, then took a slow, deliberate walk across the stage, casting detached glances at the audience as if they were objects I might purloin. In a rush, they shot to their feet and bombarded me with applause.

  It was my first standing ovation.

  Much like a magnet, it seemed indifference did indeed draw an opposing reaction.

  RUDI MUST HAVE KNOWN I WAS UNFAITHFUL. I came home every night, but often so late he was already asleep. In the mornings as I dashed about, gulping coffee and selecting outfits for the day, he didn’t ask where I had been and I did not volunteer it. I reasoned that as long as I didn’t rub his face in it, there was nothing to say. As he had pointed out, it was the business. And we’d settled into a routine. I went to work while he stayed home with our child and his new occupation: raising pigeons on our rooftop and selling them as delicacies to local restaurants. He did all the cleaning and cooking now; he took Heidede to the park and the bakery for cakes and chocolate. She was happy and plump. He seemed content. But we no longer had much of a sex life. And while he sometimes took a temporary assignment as a production assistant or script manager, I could see his heart was not in it. He did not want a job that took him away from home, constantly fretting over
Heidede, though his assignments only lasted a few weeks and we left her with Mutti, who adored her and instilled the same practical upbringing that my sister and I had.

  I couldn’t begrudge him. I was earning money and our daughter needed a parent; I missed her, too, when I had to work, but I was too restless for constant motherhood. I wanted the very best for her, but I wanted the same for myself, even if Mutti groused, “It’s not how things were done in my day. Men worked while their wives stayed at home. You have it upside down.”

  From 1926 to 1928, I made nine pictures and did numerous plays, with some roles bigger than others, some dramatic or comedic. Then I had the good fortune to win a part in the film The Café Electric. It was shot in a studio in Vienna, a beautiful city with magnificent scenery. My leading man was Willi Forst, Austria’s top male star, who proved as seductive off the set as on it. He relished flaunting himself in café society with pretty women. I was amenable, for it earned me extra press. The picture was a lurid yarn in which I played a dance-hall girl who falls for Forst’s pickpocket. But my legs and wardrobe were given ample screen time, and our canny director had Forst and I perform at night in a revival of America’s hit play Broadway, thus gaining double attention. Our affair (designed more for the press than an actuality, though we did sleep together a few times) became an item, reported in all the scandal sheets.

  I did not expect Rudi to notice. Until he arrived unannounced at the studio.

  “Enough,” he said, barging into my tiny dressing room as I prepared for my next scene. He had a newspaper rolled in his hand, which he flung at my feet. “Look at the entertainment section. Pictures of you and Willi Forst all over the place! It’s gone on long enough. Will you make me a cuckold before everyone we know?”

  Ignoring the newspaper, I took a cold look at him, disheveled in his rumpled suit, as if he’d raced from the train station without pausing to comb his hair. “Where is Heidede?”

  “With your mother of course. Unlike you, I care about her safety.”

  Fury singed my voice. “Are you accusing me of being a bad wife or a bad mother? Because,” I warned, “I’ll admit to the one charge, but God help you if you dare make the other.”

  “Which one?” He stared at me. “Which do you prefer? They’re both true.”

  I bunched my fists. “You have a nerve. I’ve tolerated your inability to keep a job and raise Heidede while I pay our bills. But I will not stand for this.”

  “You only tolerate it because it suits you. You tolerate it because it’s what you want. You love being the center of attention, even if it means breaking our marriage vows in public.”

  “If I broke my vows, it’s only because you’re a pathetic excuse for a husband,” I lashed out, and then, trembling, realizing it was the first time I’d insulted him, I turned to my dressing table for a cigarette. “You’re being ridiculous,” I said. “Go back to Berlin. I’ll be home soon enough.”

  “No. I will not let you make a fool of me.”

  He stood before me with a ham-fisted defiance that was oddly reassuring. He’d not lost his pride, at least. Yet I was struck in that moment that much as I appreciated the gesture, it came far too late. I no longer cared. “You always did think too much about appearances,” I said. “I’m still your wife. Willi Forst is not going to change that.”

  “I should hope not. He’s also married, like you. Or have you forgotten?”

  “Careful, Rudi. I don’t respond well to threats.”

  He snorted. “You respond well enough when it’s in your best interest.”

  “Yes, and if you continue to badger me, it’ll be in my best interest to stay in Vienna longer than I intended.”

  I saw despair overcome him then. His eyes, which had lost their smile, brimmed with tears. I was repulsed. If he started to cry, I thought I would leave him, though the very notion was anathema to me. We had a child. We had a comfortable life. I saw no reason to end our marriage, which had thus far been agreeable, over something that meant nothing.

  “Rudi,” I said. “Everyone is unfaithful, more or less. It’s not as if I’m in love with him.”

  He sank onto a stool, his face in his hands. “But you’re not in love with me.”

  I went still. I couldn’t lie. There was no point. He knew the truth. I wasn’t in love with him. Looking back, I probably had never been. I’d been in love with the idea of him, with his charm and nonchalance, with the illusion of security he seemed to present, not with the man he had turned out to be. I was stronger than him. I hadn’t known how much so until now.

  A knock came at the door, followed by the production assistant’s nervous request, “Fräulein, you’re expected on the set.” My dressing room walls were nylon thin; no doubt everyone within earshot had overheard us shouting.

  “Look at me.” When he did, I said, “We are husband and wife. We have a beautiful daughter. What more do you want? To return to work? Do it. We’ll hire a maid, arrange our schedules so one of us can stay home when the other is working. We can do both—”

  His bitter laughter cut me off. “You don’t see it. You think it’s just a matter of hiring someone or rearranging our schedules. But it’s more than that. I never expected you to . . .”

  “What? Just say it. What did you never expect?”

  “This,” he whispered. “All of it. I thought you’d pursue acting for a time, but you’d eventually grow tired of it and come home. I thought it would pass. I thought you’d give up this obsession with becoming as famous as possible.”

  “You thought I’d give up?” I stared at him. “You were the one who told me you wanted to make me the most famous woman in the world.”

  He sighed. “I meant it at the time. I thought it was what you needed to hear. If I hadn’t promised, you wouldn’t have married me.”

  I curbed my anger, stamping my cigarette out in the ashtray. “Well. I believed you. I can’t stop now. And I must go to work. We can talk more when I return home.” As I started to move past him, he abruptly thrust out his hand, detaining me. “I’ve met someone,” he said.

  “Oh?” Though I pretended to be amused, a pit opened in my stomach.

  “Her name is Tamara. She’s Russian. A dancer. She worked as an extra on my last job and she likes me. I like her. But we must sneak around because of Heidede and your mother. I didn’t want to cause you humiliation, but if you’re not willing to do the same for me . . .”

  A lump rose in my throat. I hadn’t anticipated this. For a second, I wanted to hit him. He’d come all this way to accuse me of adultery, to force a confession that in reality hid another motivation. All those nights when I’d tiptoed home with my shoes in my hands, determined to never let him sleep alone, he’d been betraying me. But I held back because I understood how hypocritical it would be to berate him for something I had done and would no doubt continue to do. It was inevitable; I had no one to blame but myself. He loved me. I could have prevented this if I only submitted, as so many women did, shoving him out the door to go work instead. Perhaps he had needed it more than he ever let on, for me to be like my mother and hand him his marching orders—the ever-efficient hausfrau, reminding her husband of his proper place.

  “And if I told you to not give it another thought?” I said at length.

  “Then I won’t. But I’m warning you, Marlene, it could be the end of us. I’m not like you. I can’t give myself to whoever catches my fancy and then walk away.”

  “I suppose we’ll have to risk it. As I said, everyone is unfaithful, more or less.”

  His expression underwent a bewildered change. “That’s it? It’s over between us?”

  “That depends.” I softened my voice. “I’m not like other women, Rudi. Perhaps it’s not very feminine of me, but I’m not.” I reached down to brush his unshaven cheek with my fingers. “I’m not in love with you but I will always love you. Compromise isn’t part of who I am.”

  He shuddered. “Do you want a divorce?”

  “Not unless you do.
I’m content to stay as we are. I’ll try to be more discreet,” I said, with a slight smile, “but I can’t promise it. If you’d rather we lived apart, it can be arranged. And if you decide in time that you want to marry someone else—well, we can discuss it then.”

  He nodded, though he seemed irresolute. “Yes. I think it’s best if we lived apart.”

  “Very well. I’ve this picture to finish, then the play. We can arrange it afterward. Now, please go home. Heidede must miss you terribly.”

  I left him sitting there. I thought I’d feel pain, sorrow that what had begun with such hope had turned out to be another disappointment. I wanted to feel it. It was the end of my marriage, even if we never divorced. The line had been breached; we could never again recapture that heedless moment when we’d believed we had our entire lives together as one.

  Instead, as when Gerda left me, I only felt an unsettling sense of liberation. I didn’t have to pretend anymore, treading a fine balance between my career and my marriage. The less that bound me, the more I had to give, to my work and to myself. I was free to pursue whatever and whomever I pleased, even if I had to do it alone.

  Or that is what I told myself.

  XI

  In early 1929, after having extended my stay in Austria to give Rudi time to adjust to our new circumstances, I ended my affair with Willi Forst and returned to Berlin. I’d acquired a new skill. While waiting on set for lights to be adjusted or a camera change, an extra had taught me how to play the musical saw. I found it amusing, coaxing a bow across a toothless narrow plank of flexible steel held between my thighs, while it emitted mournful vibrations. I hadn’t picked up another violin, but the saw might prove useful; it kept my wrists nimble if nothing else, and upon my arrival home, I regaled Rudi with a few Gypsy tunes I had learned.

  “See?” I said. “I didn’t just make a scandal. I can play a new instrument.”

  “I’m sure Willi Forst would agree,” he replied archly. “But at least it’s not his organ.”