She went over to him. “Are you feeling ill? You barely ate.”
He patted her hand. “I’m fine.”
She knew she shouldn’t ask, but she couldn’t help herself. “Are you upset over a girl? Is that why you were late this evening?”
His jaw tightened.
Lev commented on how Franz studied too hard and occupied himself with various clubs; he didn’t have time for girls. After inserting a baby potato into his mouth, he stated, “It’s none of our business anyway. Leave the poor man alone.”
Josephine stared questioningly at Franz, but he refused to look at her, concentrating on his water glass. For a moment, the image of Franz lying on the chaise lounge, telling Dr. Dührkoop his innermost thoughts, comforted her. But he would never agree to go. She ran her fingers through his hair. He tilted his head toward her. They didn’t have to speak anyway. She more or less knew how he felt just by looking at him. But tonight, he’d erected a barrier she couldn’t cross. That’s how it is with children, she thought, stroking his head. One minute they need you, and the next, they want nothing to do with you. Lev had been trying to impress this upon her, joking that she shouldn’t have breastfed Franz when he was a baby. It had made her overly dependent on him, creating an untenable bond. Whereas with Vicki she’d hired a wet nurse.
Franz suddenly excused himself, and she felt a pang of worry. Of course Lev remained wholly unconcerned. She was always the one who worried, and he never did. Infuriating. Watching Franz walk away, she admired his broad shoulders and slim waist. He’d inherited her father’s build.
After dinner, she debated whether or not to knock on Franz’s door, knowing Lev waited for her in the bedroom. Oftentimes, he fell asleep before she retired, a relief from his pawing insistence that they make love. He knew it was often painful for her, but he still insisted, quoting from that Velde book how the key to an enduring marriage lay in mutual ongoing sexual pleasure and how a hell of torment could, with work, become a state of unending bliss. But if she never relented, how could she blame him for his dalliances? Even Dr. Dührkoop had stressed the importance of sexual pleasure, a topic she tried to avoid with him, but since the revelation about Herr K, he insisted they explore the vagaries of her sexuality. Dührkoop supported the notion of mutual orgasm and suggested that if a woman failed to reach orgasm, auto-therapeutic measures were better than none at all.
Josephine lightly rapped on Franz’s door. She heard him spring up from the bed. Opening the door, he said, “I knew you’d come.”
She touched his forehead with the back of her hand. “No fever.”
He motioned to the open window. “Herr Levenski is trimming the hedge again. I know you despise him.”
“He’s very territorial about his roses.” Sitting on the foot of the bed, where Mitzi had been, judging from the black dog hairs, she noticed how Franz had put fresh ferns in a vase next to the snapshot of Wolf. She tilted her head toward the photograph. “How is he?”
“Next weekend, we’re going on a nature retreat.”
Josephine nodded, brushing the black dog hairs away.
Franz sat on the windowsill, the window open behind him, which made her nervous. But he doesn’t need me to warn him, she thought.
He twisted around, staring into the darkness. “Of course when I’m sitting right here, he stops clipping.”
“Franz, careful!”
He smiled at her. “I won’t fall out.”
She sighed heavily. “Is everything else all right?”
He crossed his arms over his chest.
She held out her hand to him, but he remained seated on the windowsill. “Come. Tell me.”
“The Wandervogel, the particular club Wolf belongs to, doesn’t accept Jewish members.” He stared at her with large unblinking eyes. Her heart contracted.
“We’re Aryan, Franz.”
He hung his head. They had been through this countless times, faithfully following the same script. To ease him out of his discouraged state, she went over to him, massaged his shoulders, and assured him that he came from celebrated Bavarian stock through the matrilineal line, which clearly had, judging from his physical appearance, withstood all genetic influence from Lev’s side of the family. She stroked his cheek, feeling the coolness of the air on his skin. “You’re an exact replica of Grandfather. It’s a comfort to see how he lives on in you.”
Expecting to find Lev waiting for her in bed, she drew a sigh of relief at the empty room. She sat down in front of her vanity mirror, slowly untwining her coiled braid, letting her mind drift. Possibly, Lev would stay downstairs, with his cigars and whiskey. Or he might venture out, scurrying off to one of his private clubs, a distasteful habit, she thought, as he always returned home late, smelling of liquor and complaining that he was famished. He would rouse the whole household, scouring the larder for cheese and jam to make a midnight sandwich. She couldn’t stop herself from springing out of bed at the sound of banging plates and knives echoing from the cavernous kitchen. Standing in her silk robe, arms crossed, she would watch him from the kitchen doorway as he hastily piled slices of cheese onto brown bread, after which he would shove it into his mouth. Upon seeing her, he would cheerfully wave, unaware of the late hour and that he had awoken her. After these nocturnal outings, he was always particularly insistent about lovemaking, which made Josephine wonder if, in fact, he did not keep a mistress but had remained faithful to her despite the many temptations he must encounter in the city at night. Listlessly brushing out her hair, the strands catching static in the warm room, she recalled Frau Blutcher’s tone today when she rang for Lev. She’d sounded confused and tentative, and when Josephine pressed her, she muttered something about a haircut, followed by, “I don’t really know.” When Josephine said, “Well, what do you know, Frau Blutcher?” her voice grew tight over the line, as if she might have a nervous attack. Out of annoyance, Josephine hung up without wishing her good afternoon, something she rarely did. It was an embarrassment, to let a secretary get the better of her, when Josephine generally abided by the rule of not allowing employees to become privy to such emotions. Now, she could be sure, Frau Blutcher would triumphantly gossip that Frau Perlmutter suspected Herr Perlmutter of having an affair, and then she would weigh in, like an expert, when she didn’t know the first thing about the inner workings of this family.
Lev’s voice floated up from the dining room, his admonishing tone recognizable as he bantered with Vicki. Josephine put down her brush and examined her neck. Did she still look young? Turning her head to the side, she peeked at her profile. She leaned in closer, noticing a tiny row of broken blood vessels curling along the edges of her nostrils. But how could she possibly blame him, if he kept a mistress? They hadn’t made love in months, not since the dinner party at the Hoffenstaldts. A mistress might relieve her of such “wifely duties” or, at the very least, shoulder some of the burden. The thought made her smile, and yet she felt guilty finding such irony in her own circumstances. Lev had arrived home tonight freshly shaven, his hair slicked back and trimmed, proof he’d visited the barber, but where had he gone afterward?
The clink of a teaspoon against a china cup interrupted her thoughts, and she pictured Lev stirring milk into his coffee, the whiteness bleeding into the black. No, she said to herself, swiveling around on the stool to face the bed, it wasn’t that she didn’t like sex, but rather it was the frequency of his demands, his insatiability, that overwhelmed her. She preferred the prelude to sex, when she was still cozily encased in her robe, her head on his chest, his hand stroking the length of her thigh, before the impudent meshing of bodies. She worried that she had lost all elasticity, but after birthing two children, she knew this couldn’t possibly be true. Other times, it was more tolerable, even enjoyable, which led her to believe the pain was psychological. And so the extent of Herr K’s sexual advances had become gradually embellished to provide her some respite from the demands of the marriage bed. Whether or not Herr K actually did violate her remained an
open question, but his menacing presence was real, and she chose to interpret the past in a way that best served her in the present.
She started to take off her coral necklace when Lev strode into the room. Startled, she hadn’t heard him come up the stairs, and she stared at his reflection in the mirror, her hands frozen behind her neck.
He undid his bowtie. “Can I help you with that?”
She shook her head, unhooking the clasp. The coral beads slid off her neck.
20
At night in the city, Elsa was finally taking Vicki to Romanisches Café. As they sat in the back of a taxicab, the glimmering advertisements filtered through the trees, lending Elsa’s face an intimate glow that Vicki hoped illuminated her own face in the same way. As the cab turned onto Kurfürstendamm, the candelabras fastened to the tree branches swayed in the summer wind. They passed the tall glass windows of department stores and enclosed café terraces, the lit-up marquees of movie theaters and cabarets and restaurants interspersed with elongated apartment buildings. People strolled the wide boulevard, gazing up at the windows, their dark silhouettes dwarfed by the barrage of neon advertisements looming from above, as if the billboards were suspended in the night sky by invisible hooks.
The taxi driver grunted at the traffic. He had been rude from the start. Vicki almost said something until she noticed the gouge in his cheek and realized he was probably one of the war-wounded. He leaned on his horn, but this did nothing to move the long line of automobiles forward. Admiring Elsa’s lavender hat with its wide up-curling brim, Vicki wondered if she looked as smartly dressed. While Elsa’s hat was quite feminine, she wore tuxedo pants paired with a slim-fitting dinner jacket, and inside the slanted front pocket, she’d arranged a lavender pocket square, drawing the eye back up to her lavender hat. It was all quite a performance, Vicki thought, deciding that her black silk shift with the gold spangles was in no way daring enough. She’d gone to pains this afternoon, crimping her hair into rigid waves, which looked dated compared to Elsa’s slicked-back hair. Absently touching her earrings, the new ones from Wertheim’s, Vicki felt a small sense of relief that at least she had worn these. The driver sped down Tauentzienstrasse, almost passing Romanisches Café before Elsa barked, “Stop!”
Little round tables peppered the main floor under a great vaulted ceiling whose soaring arches were affixed with hanging lanterns. The heady scent of expensive perfume, luxury-brand cigarettes, and sweat hung in the air, and a roaring cacophony of chatter competed with the jazz band playing in the far corner. Every now and then a trumpet or sax riff would cut through the talk, and the clear sound of music enticed people to pause a moment and listen. An imposing red-carpeted staircase led to an upstairs gallery where men played chess while women sat on their laps and smoked. Vicki had heard of this place from her father. He used to come here on Sunday afternoons with her mother, when everyone wanted to be seen eating cake and taking a stroll through the various rooms of the café. Lev sometimes referred to it as Café Grössenwahn, or Café Megalomania, or even Rachmonisches—from the Hebrew rachmones, which meant “mercy”—because so many Jews frequented this place. They congregated here as if it were their personal office, lingering at the same table, nursing the same cup of coffee for hours on end. Elsa explained that upstairs the café was divided into two distinct rooms: one for celebrities and one for aspirants, rooms known respectively as “the swimming pool” and “the kiddy pool.” “And I’ve sat in the swimming pool, believe it or not, with Egon Kisch’s circle.”
Sensing Vicki’s hesitation, Elsa said, “You know, the famous journalist. He founded the Association of Proletarian-Revolutionary Authors.”
“I know,” Vicki said, when in truth she’d never heard of Egon Kisch.
The garnet-colored lanterns, suffusing a dim reddish glow, muffled rather than created light, causing Vicki to squint across the room at a man in a white dinner jacket shaking hands with two well-dressed women. After a moment, she recognized it was Wolf von Trotta, Franz’s best friend.
She nudged Elsa. “There’s Wolf.” He had always flirted with her in an arrogant, merciless kind of way. And his ice-blue eyes seemed as if they belonged to a murderer.
“He’s such a cad,” Vicki added.
Elsa shrugged. “He looks ridiculous in that white dinner jacket.”
Wolf noticed Vicki from across the room and his lips curled into a smirk. Nervousness flooded her, but she shook it off. Strange, how he eternally made her feel like the little sister trailing behind, the younger one who didn’t know enough. She wondered if he was impressed to see her here, in such a sophisticated club, but he never appeared impressed by anything, or at least he had trained himself to maintain a cool, detached demeanor.
“Let’s get a drink,” Vicki said, thinking this would relax her, and Elsa flagged down a bar girl. All the girls working here looked the same, with the same slender, narrow hips, a sylph woman-child serving seductively colored cocktails, which made Vicki think of semiprecious gemstones—emeralds, sapphires, and amethysts distilled into liquid form, poured into glass bowls one had to cup with both hands. “I’ll try that,” Vicki said, gesturing to a waitress ferrying a fiery pink drink, the color of the sunset. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Wolf flirting with one of these bar girls, twirling an unlit cigarette between his fingers.
Elsa suggested they go upstairs to see Egon. Lightly, she fixed Vicki’s hair, smoothing it over to the side of her face. “That’s better.” Then she signaled to the bar girl, tilting her chin upward, a signal, Vicki gathered, indicating they were moving upstairs. Tonight, Elsa was in a sisterly mood, having forgotten the embrace in the Wannsee, when for a few seconds their limbs intertwined underwater, and for this Vicki felt relieved. Plus, she didn’t really believe Elsa was a lesbian, or a garçonne, as she called herself, even though she boasted about her attendance at the Ladies Club Erato, a lesbian social club, which met Monday afternoons at Zauberflöte. And even though a shiver went through her when Elsa applied a dab of perfume to the nape of Vicki’s neck, her cool fingertips resting there for a suspended moment, Vicki failed to extract Geza from her mind, even here, in a place he didn’t know existed, a place where she would never see him. What would he think if he saw her dressed in this black silk shift with Elsa’s arm around her waist as they ascended the stairs, laughing? Would he see her as frivolous, unworthy of his attentions? She guessed he was a Communist but not one like Elsa, who happily drank champagne, cherished her silk stockings, and flirted with artists.
Chess tables lined the upper gallery, allowing the players to gaze over the balustrade and consider the people below as they contemplated their next move. The “swimming pool” room was also on the upper level, and from what Vicki could see, red damask padded the walls, and a cloud of smoke floated through the open archway leading into the exclusive section. Elsa strained her neck to check if Egon was in there, but from their vantage point, they only saw the hunched-over backs of men studying a sketch someone had just completed. A few bored women loitered in the archway, smoking. Elsa pointed out one of the women, known as Little Moth, infamous for ruining a renowned musician who was no longer seen at the café. Vicki wondered what it took to ruin a man. The musician must have been desperately in love with Little Moth, who from here looked like nothing special: slight features, an upturned nose, ash-blond hair, too much makeup. Elsa added, “These girls take trips to Biarritz and Cairo, popping up here in between their travels and their men.” As she said this, Vicki detected a hint of envy.
“It all sounds very decadent.”
“Hmmm,” Elsa replied, gazing at the smoke-filled room, searching for Egon. From one of the chess tables, a ginger-haired woman called out Elsa’s name. Dressed in tuxedo trousers and a button-down white shirt, she had gone to great pains to fit her plump body into gentleman’s attire. She stood behind a man with a full beard and round silver eyeglasses who hunched over the chessboard, staring at the empty squares.
Walking over to their tabl
e, Elsa whispered, “That’s Emanuel Lasker and his longtime girlfriend Lise Schuler. He’s a mathematician and the best chess player there is.” She paused. “I know Lise from the Erato.”
Vicki nodded, staring at Lise, who spoke frenetically about how Emanuel was preparing to play Thomas Grant from Chicago. “He always assumes this hooded dark stare when he plays, as if he’s preparing to eject himself over the chessboard and club his opponent. Absolutely chilling.”
He held up his hands, still concentrating on the chessboard. “Silence. I can’t think when you’re near. All this meaningless chatter.”
“You might as well get married the way you two carry on,” Elsa teased.
With that, Emanuel scooted back his chair and lit his pipe. “Why didn’t I marry her after all these years? That’s what everyone keeps asking, as if I’m letting this jewel of a woman slip through my fingers.”
Lise threw back her head and laughed with her mouth open. Red lipstick freckled her front teeth. “Tell them, darling, tell them what you always say.”
Emanuel shook his head, his long, gray face sagging. “I’ve known her for too long.” Then he turned to Vicki, his cool gaze sweeping over her. “She’s no longer on her good behavior.”
Again, Lise laughed hysterically. Emanuel puffed on his pipe. Elsa asked if they’d seen Egon, but Lise ignored her question, inquiring where they were going next, after Romanisches. She rattled off a list of places, bemoaning the fact that Herr Wanselow ran a club in his flat called Aleifa, and despite the club’s extremely liberal environment, especially in all matters sexual, he didn’t allow Jews. “But I prefer the Adlon bar myself,” she said, taking a sip of champagne and checking her makeup in a small octagonal compact. She powdered her nose, but this did not conceal the shadowy depressions under her eyes or how her mouth appeared predatory. Vicki felt repulsed, watching Lise apply powder, and when Lise noticed her staring, Vicki glanced away. Her head hurt from the pink drink made with gin, syrup, and chilled champagne. The conversation turned to Josephine Baker. Elsa gushed about her sex appeal, and then she smiled at Vicki, both of them recalling how they’d listened to her throaty voice on the rooftop only a few days ago, the day she cut off all her hair, which already seemed so far in the past. Because I’ve met him since then, Vicki thought, her life beforehand appearing in miniature, as if the roof of a dollhouse had been lifted off, revealing all the tiny chairs and beds and tables and grandfather clocks.
The Empire of the Senses Page 28
