Marlene: A Novel

by C. W. Gortner

  I assented, prepared for the worst. Those who were still here—despite their forlorn appearance, they must have done something. No one could be entirely without blame, if only for their silence. And Camilla had always been an opportunist.

  “Well, in case you’re wondering,” she said, “I never fucked one. I should have; it might have made things more tolerable. Instead, I was arrested twice, first for refusing to salute some SS pig and then on suspicion of working for the resistance. I wasn’t a spy, so they convicted me of traveling without a permit. I spent three months at the women’s prison in Vechta.” She shrugged. “It could have been worse. I could have been Leni. I knew they’d be watching me, so when I was released, I went to Italy and made a few pictures there. Now I’m back and looking for work. Not that there’s any to be found. Vienna is no better off than Berlin or Rome. The world may have gone up in flames, but unemployed actresses are as plentiful as ever.”

  Relief flooded me. “I can’t believe you’re here,” I said, as she thrust out her glass and her hovering admirer hastened to refill it. “After all this time, I thought—”

  Her ironic laugh cut me off. “You never thought of me. You were too busy being famous. I understand. Life goes on. We leave some behind.” She paused. “Still married to Rudi?”

  “Yes. He’s living in New York with our daughter.”

  Her smile widened. “He was quite the prize. I hated you for that.”

  I chose not to tell her that the prize wasn’t all he’d been made out to be. As we sat together reminiscing, I learned that others we had known were missing and presumed dead.

  “Trude died of a stroke,” Camilla said. “She never saw the worst of it. But Karl Huszár-Puffy, remember him, who played the publican in The Blue Angel? And Gerron, who played the magician: both sent to the camps. And the girls of Das Silhouette went to Dachau. That’s where they sent all the degenerates. So much talent,” she mused. “We’ll never be the same.”

  Fury gripped me. Friends and colleagues, the most vibrant and daring, who’d infused Berlin with her sparkle—gone. I might have suffered the same, had I not gone abroad. Or perhaps later, if I’d returned to Berlin. Hitler’s admiration had not precluded killing his own.

  Biting back futile tears, I turned to regard our companions, lubricated on cheap alcohol and engaged in fierce debate. “We’ll become something different,” I said vehemently, as if I was trying to convince myself. “Nothing can stop artists from creating.”

  “When there’s no other choice, what else can we do?” Camilla reached for the vodka. “I certainly intend to keep on acting. We’ve hit the bottom of the heap—and this bottle, too, by the looks of it—so we must start over. Germany is a phoenix. She will rise from the ashes.”

  I gave her a contemplative look. “Will she?”

  “We can always hope.” She clinked her glass against mine. “To absent friends.”

  I proceeded to get drunk. At one point, someone cited a producer I’d known from the Nelson revue, who was now staging an Allied-approved version of Weill’s The Threepenny Opera, and I shot to my feet, sloshing gin as I cried out, “I’ll buy a theater. I’ll repair it, and Camilla and I will star in a revival of Two Bow Ties. Everyone here will have a job!”

  Everyone there applauded. Only, when I swerved to Camilla, she regarded me archly and demurred, saying, “Aren’t we rather long in the tooth to play showgirls?”

  Gulping down the rest of my drink, I staggered into the kitchenette to prepare Ersatzkaffee, offering up my carton of American cigarettes and doling out advice on how all of us, together, could re-create the acerbic joy of our Weimar days until most of them passed out.

  Although she’d imbibed more than me, Camilla remained sober. When I escorted her to the door to say good night, she abruptly pressed her gin-soaked lips to mine. Then she pulled away with a sly look. “We never did get our chance together. I hated you for that, too.”

  “Stay, then.” I caressed her wrist. “Mutti is sleeping next door. Stay with me tonight.”

  “Oh, no. We’re also rather long in the tooth for that. Let it remain something you never wanted and something I can always desire. We’ve too little left to sacrifice our regrets.”

  I never saw her again.

  But as she tugged up her collar and vanished into the night, I knew she would live. She would continue to survive. A woman like her could never be defeated.

  She was one of our good Germans.

  THE FOLLOWING WEEK while I undertook a short military tour outside Berlin, Mutti died. It was November 6, a few days before her sixty-ninth birthday. As with Uncle Willi and my father, her heart stopped. It was sudden. Painless. As she would have said, it was God’s will.

  The Wilmersdorf cemetery where she’d laid my uncle to rest had been destroyed, so in an adjacent lot covered in slush and cinders, I had a hole dug and buried her in a makeshift coffin built from discarded school desks. Several GIs volunteered to assist me; as they lowered her into her grave, in my grief I thought of what Camilla had said.

  There was indeed too little left to sacrifice our regrets.

  Not having had more time with my mother was mine. She’d been my final link to my homeland, the last person to remind me of who I was. Our Felsing store was lost. Despite my promise, I couldn’t save it. The Russians had served me with an impossible bill. Either I repaired the wreckage or the store would be torn down. Already, they were bulldozing half the city, hauling out its ravaged past to make room for their steel-and-concrete future. I didn’t have the money to satisfy their demands; even if I had, there was no point. What Mutti most feared had already come to pass. Our name was lost. All I could do was ensure I didn’t bring it more dishonor.

  And under a glacial rain powdered with snow, I crumbled a handful of dirt over her and recited the poem she’d once embroidered on a panel and hung above our mantel:

  “‘O love, while it’s still yours to love!

  O love, while love you still may keep!

  The hour will come, the hour will come,

  When you shall stand by graves and weep.’”

  I must say good-bye. There was nothing for me here. I had left Germany long ago.

  But as I turned around to depart, as the GIs shoveled sodden earth upon her casket, I heard my mother’s voice, as clearly as if she were still beside me.

  “Tu etwas, Lena. Do something.”

  XII

  I thought of selling my saw, my gowns and stockings, pawning the rest of my stashed jewelry in Switzerland and turning my back on Hollywood. I could live in Paris. Germany was not my country anymore, and America certainly wasn’t the place where I wanted to die. I didn’t even own a bed there to die in.

  But I had my husband to support, and once I returned to New York, I found Rudi’s health had declined. He had a persistent lung ailment that had Tamara in a constant state of worry. Like me, he’d been advised to stop smoking. Like me, he refused.

  “I’ll have to go back,” I said to Tamara. “I need work to pay the bills.”

  She was helping me unpack in the spare bedroom; she said, “Do you want to?”

  I sighed from where I sat on the edge of the bed. “I don’t want to do anything but sleep. So, for now, that’s what I’ll do. Then we’ll see what tomorrow brings.”

  “Very Scarlett O’Hara of you. Maybe they can remake Gone With the Wind. You can play a woman who must rebuild her bombed-out cabaret. It would fit the times, don’t you think?”

  I laughed. I also slept, for twelve hours straight, so exhausted by my travels and my grief over my mother that the world went dark. When I awoke, my neck sore from the soft heap of pillows, Tamara was standing at my bedside with a coffee cup and a telegram.

  “From Mr. Welles. He’s holding a soirée at his house next month. All the big names, the studio heads and important pretty people, will be there. You’re invited.”

  “A Hollywood party?” I groaned, seizing the cup from her. “I’m in no mood.”

&nbs
p; “No?” She crossed her arms at her chest, the telegram between her fingers. “Then I suppose you don’t care that the queen herself has announced her retirement and is scheduled to make her final appearance at the party.”

  I burned my lips on the coffee. “Garbo will be there?”

  Tamara nodded. “In the flesh. Shall I start packing your bag?”

  IT WAS SURREAL.

  Chinese-style lanterns dangled over the illuminated flagstone terrace and pool; buffet tables draped in pristine linen were heaped with hors d’oeuvres. As a small orchestra played the latest tunes in the background, handsome waiters in short white jackets and crisp trousers circulated with platters and chilled champagne. The war seemed even more remote here than in New York, with only a few familiar faces to ease my discomfort: Bette in a hideous taffeta gown and slash of lipstick. Gary with his silvering temples and satisfied smile (he’d won an Academy Award for his role in Sergeant York). John Wayne, who copped a feel when no one was looking. And Mercedes, who murmured, “They’ve been dying to see you. No one thought you’d come. But I knew you would. The Venus from Berlin doesn’t hide from battle. She greets her enemies in full bugle beads, with a Viennese saw between her thighs.”

  “Are they my enemies?” I accepted a flute of champagne from a waiter and wished there was something stronger. “I thought we were among friends here.”

  Mercedes clucked her tongue. “It’s Los Angeles. Even our friends are enemies.”

  Truer words had rarely been spoken.

  I’d arrived here the previous week, and Orson and his wife took me under their wing. Rita had become an international sensation, adored by the public and criticized by the censors for her performance as the temptress Gilda—a part I’d have undergone two face-lifts to play—with her taunting black-satin shimmy and lush red mane. But at heart, she was a generous, simple girl who loved to dance and yearned for a family, her Spanish heritage imbuing her with a penchant for domesticity that ill-suited Orson’s wandering eye. She’d confided to me one evening that she knew he was unfaithful. When I replied that infidelity didn’t signify a lack of love, she retorted, “But refusing to buy me a house does. All this, you see, it’s rented. Even the furniture. He says he doesn’t want the responsibility because it interferes with his freedom.” Rita pouted. “Why marry at all if you don’t want to be responsible about it?”

  I didn’t comment. I was hardly an example, although in her naiveté, Rita seemed to think Rudi and I were the perfect couple.

  “So many years together,” she sighed as she helped me apply my makeup that night, having plucked my hairline to broaden my forehead—“A studio trick,” she said, showing me her own heightened brow—and scoring the lower rims of my eyes with a white pencil, “to enhance their luster.” She even applied false eyelashes she’d trimmed to a feathery texture, as I’d come woefully unprepared, and loaned me her own shade of crimson lipstick.

  After she finished and I cocked my hip in my azure satin gown with its diamanté-clasp straps, she applauded. “Stunning. They’ll be green with envy to see you so beautiful.”

  “Envious enough to offer me a job?” I checked in the mirror for lipstick stains on my teeth. “I’m considered rather an old warhorse these days.”

  “You are not.” She was indignant. “Women like you don’t get old. You ripen like wine.”

  I hugged her. “You’re the wine, Liebchen. I’m just an aperitif.”

  She took me downstairs, her hand clasping my elbow. “Now remember what they say,” she whispered as I paused at the terrace entrance, overwhelmed. I’d had no fear of prancing onto creaking stages that threatened to collapse underneath me, and singing amid exploding shrapnel and the rattle of gunfire, but the predatory glances already turning my way, the quick incline of heads to share whispers, made me want to flee.

  This was a mistake. I should not have returned here.

  “What . . . do they say?” I quavered.

  “‘Never let them see you sweat.’” Rita smiled at my startled expression. “Papa stayed with us once. He adores you, his Kraut. He couldn’t be here tonight, but he said to remind you if you ever showed up.”

  “Did he?” I said, and I tossed my recently bleached-and-waved hair before I strode into the arena. Mistake or not, I would not let them see it.

  Now, I stood with Mercedes, surrounded by people who knew me, who’d seen my pictures or heard of my war efforts, and I’d never felt so isolated. Bette had hissed that she wanted us to visit together “as soon as this kiss-ass fest is over,” but aside from her, no one appeared too excited to welcome me. Some of the younger actresses, whose names I didn’t know, gauged me as if I might steal a coveted role from under their upturned noses. Things had indeed changed. Yet everything remained the same. At forty-four years of age, I reasoned I should take solace in the fact that I was still impressive enough to be seen as competition.

  “Is she here?” I finally asked Mercedes, who of course knew to whom I referred.

  “Not yet. Unlike you, she does prefer to hide. Why? Do you want to meet her?”

  I shrugged. “If she’s going to be here, why not?”

  Mercedes lifted an eyebrow. “After all this time, you still carry a torch. I believe you’re as curious about her as she is about you.”

  “She is?” I forgot my nonchalant stance. “Has she ever said anything about me to you?”

  “Marlene.” She sighed. “Why ask?”

  Two hours later, I was ready to call it a night. Rita had introduced me to Harry Cohn, the production head of Columbia Pictures who’d launched her career. He was surprisingly young and dapper, kissing my cheek and expressing his delight, but I didn’t get the impression his enthusiasm would yield an offer. He wasn’t interested in building his own talent, Orson had warned me. Rita was an exception, but Cohn was one of the new breed who preferred to hire actors on loan from other studios, thereby attracting a presold audience. I wasn’t under contract and had no presale appeal. I hadn’t made a picture in over two years, and my last one, Kismet, had been consigned to oblivion, where it belonged.

  Still, before Harry Cohn went off to engage a group of simpering starlets, he handed me his card. “Tell your agent to call me,” he said. “We should talk.”

  Rita was enthused, even if she muttered under her breath, “He’s a devil. He’ll want to buy your soul. And he can afford it. He’s a Jew.”

  I recoiled, casting a sharp glance at her.

  “Not that I care,” she added hastily. “I like Jews. But after the war, and with you being German . . . Still, he’d be an idiot not to sign you.”

  He wouldn’t. I returned to Mercedes, smoked two cigarettes, and then, just as I decided I might as well retreat upstairs and peel off my false lashes, which were fluttering at the edges of my eyes like moribund butterflies, an excited murmur rippled through the crowd.

  Mercedes straightened from her slouch. Her face took on a peculiar sheen. Before I even followed her unblinking stare, I knew what I would see.

  Garbo had arrived.

  I had never forgotten that night Anna May, Leni, and I went to see her in Pabst’s The Joyless Street and how I’d wept at her preternatural presence. I didn’t expect to encounter the same woman. Like me, Garbo was past her prime; like mine, her career had had its ups and downs. After three Academy Award nominations and stupendous critical acclaim, encroaching age and a dimming box office had precipitated her decision to leave it all behind, to retreat into privacy and her much-vaunted need for solitude.

  Still, I found myself standing on tiptoe to peer over the crowd, everything fading around me as Orson in his tuxedo escorted her onto the terrace. The stars parted before her like an awestruck firmament. As she neared and her pale eyes caught sight of Mercedes, I saw a flicker of recognition in her gaze that she immediately smothered.

  Beautiful did not begin to describe her.

  She was tall for a woman yet also, paradoxically, smaller than I’d imagined. But then, weren’t we all like
that, fashioned by nature to be enlarged, blown up to deified proportions? Despite her height, her features were fragile perfections, with those sculpted cheeks and regal nose, that extraordinary mouth and severe countenance, which could be so still, so enigmatic, that audiences etched their dreams upon it, like drawing upon pure white sand, until her private lagoon seeped forth to wash the shore blank again.

  Caught in a whirlpool of emotions, elation vying with disbelief that she was here at last, the icon I’d been told I resembled, had been styled to emulate, her trajectory blazing like a sister comet next to mine but never coinciding, I dropped my gaze to her feet.

  She might be perfect everywhere else, but Garbo had the feet of a peasant.

  Orson snapped his fingers at a gawking waiter, bringing up my startled gaze. Champagne was offered. She shook her head. Clad in a simple black dress that draped her in mystique, she whispered to Orson, who nodded, turning toward—

  Me.

  Mercedes’s mirth purred in her throat. “See? She is indeed curious. Go.”

  I stumbled forth. I lost all sense of time. As I took the few steps to where she stood waiting, I saw myself in a dizzying rush of transformation—the besotted schoolgirl with an oversize bow and soggy marzipan in her fist; the rebellious adolescent with her dedication to the violin, splaying her thighs, open for adventure; the monocle-eyed doyenne of the cabaret, sauntering through sawdust to a movie set, where her frilled underpants would kindle an obsession. I saw the protective mother with her child, the daring seductress and neglectful wife; I saw the star catapulted to adoration on anonymous desire; and then, as I came before her and reached out, I saw the battle-worn major in an infirmary, clasping a dying Nazi’s hand.

  I wanted to ask her if she had spied on Gabin when he swam naked in my pool. Instead, I heard myself say in a tremulous voice, “I am Marlene Dietrich.”

  And as I felt her touch, so cool and dry, Garbo replied, “I know.”

  AFTERWORD