The Empire of the Senses

by Alexis Landau

  “I should be on my way,” she said.

  “But weren’t you supposed to hear the lecture?”

  “It’s too late now.”

  “So you have a few hours?”

  Vicki blushed with pleasure. This was exactly what she wanted him to say.

  They ended up at a French café along the arcade. The tables were placed closely together along the wall, and Geza motioned for her to take the seat facing outward. He signaled for the waiter with a brusque movement of his hand and ordered two glasses of red wine, and for a moment, he seemed worldly, as if he had studied the city and its inhabitants and picked up on their idiosyncratic customs, disguising himself as one of them.

  Then that silly song, “Mein Papagei frisst keine harten Eier” (My parrot doesn’t eat hard-boiled eggs) came on. Geza stared at her expectantly, and in a moment of panic, Vicki blurted out, “Actually, there was a Berlin lady who took her chambermaid to court because the maid had given the woman’s ancient pet parrot hard-boiled eggs to eat, even though the song plainly states parrots don’t eat them. The parrot died. The judge dismissed the case out of hand.”

  “That’s silly.”

  She shifted in her chair.

  A long pause followed. She wanted to ask him many questions, but unlike most people she knew, he didn’t seem like the type who relished the chance to talk about himself. Instead, he sat across from her with a half-amused expression on his face, as if he was surveying the crowded café, and her, from a cool distance.

  The waiter placed down two glasses of red wine.

  She took a hurried sip. “Did you hear about the Berlin cat burglar?” Not waiting for his reply, she continued, “He robbed Hugo Stinnes, who was staying at the Adlon with his wife, and then a Swedish businessman spotted the burglar but didn’t want to catch him because he was at the hotel with his mistress. But it didn’t matter anyway because the burglar fell from the first-floor balcony and broke his leg.”

  “What happened to the cat?”

  She smiled apologetically. “Oh, I don’t know.”

  Normally, a young man would laugh, or at least pretend to, and make some funny quip in return, at which point they would exchange various inane comments for the rest of the evening. But he just sat here, uninterested in this form of repartee without which she felt afloat. What did he want with her anyway? She sighed and glanced down at the scalloped edge of the place mat. He took a long sip of wine and then reached across the table for her hand. “Vicki—I owe you an apology about the other day.”

  She drew in a breath, wondering if she should take his hand.

  “I knew your father in Mitau, and when I found out you were his daughter, I tried to stay away from you. I didn’t want to complicate matters. I still don’t.”

  “You knew him during the war?”

  He nodded and drank more wine. Then he ordered some schnapps. The crowd had thinned, and a sonata played, casting a melancholy air over the place.

  She took his hand. It felt calloused and sweaty. She clenched it in hers. “What was he like then?”

  Geza stared down at the table. “He was one of the good German soldiers. He helped us, gave us food in winter. He took me shooting for birds.”

  “He helped you and your family?”

  “Yes,” Geza said. “And we remain grateful.”

  “He doesn’t talk about the war,” Vicki said, playing with her bracelet, a thin gold chain that reflected the light.

  Geza shrugged. “Most men don’t.”

  “How old were you then?”

  “Fourteen.”

  She calculated his age now: twenty-three. An attractive age, six years her senior. But did he find her too young and inexperienced? She drank more wine and felt her cheeks flush. “You should meet my father again—he’d be happy to see you after so much time.”

  Geza made an offhanded gesture. “As it is, I’m not staying in Berlin. I’m going to Palestine.”

  “Palestine?”

  “There are quotas, and you need money, which is why I’m working in Berlin first.”

  “What kind of work?” she asked, thinking he didn’t care to meet her father or care for such formal introductions, which were expected when a boy called on a girl regularly. Was she a casual passing fancy? She forced herself to listen as he told her how he’d started off working as a nightclub errand boy in the western districts. “I could have gotten into some trouble there, if it wasn’t for Felka.”

  Vicki tried to ignore the sudden stab of jealousy when he mentioned this woman’s name. “Felka?”

  “A Polish whore.” When he saw her startled look, he rejoined, “Oh, it was nothing like that. She saw me standing on the corner of Fröbelstrasse, a greenhorn in the big city selling these little brown paper packets. I thought it was only headache powder—that’s what my boss said—but of course it wasn’t. As I was about to get picked up by a cop, she intervened on my behalf. I think she knew the cop. Seeing how frightened I was, she let me stay with her for a few days. Central heating and a sofa were appealing. Under all that paint on her face, she was delicate, almost pretty, and when she asked me, after she had undressed, why I didn’t want to sleep with her, do you know what I said?”

  Vicki shook her head.

  He leaned forward, lowering his voice. “I once saw this beautiful girl, all in white, walking with her father on Charlottenstrasse. I’ve never been able to forget her.”

  Instantly, she felt her face grow hot. Staring down at the silverware, she asked, “Where are you staying now?”

  “At a boardinghouse on Grenadierstrasse.” Then he explained how it was a way station for Jewish refugees from the east. Many had arrived from the Russian POW camps after the war. They came from Ukraine, Romania, Lithuania. “Of course,” he added, “they all plan to move to Holland or America or Palestine. But you know, it’s not so bad. Sure, it smells of cooking oil and old bedsheets and hordes of people living on top of one another. Old Jews smoke pipes all day, playing chess. Screeching children run down the halls. In the sleeping rooms, families squeeze together, packed as tight as sardines.” He laughed, shaking his head. “Never enough space.”

  She nodded and tried not to seem overly concerned—he might think she was too sheltered, too rich. Maybe she was.

  He sighed, running a hand through his unkempt hair. “It’s better than dying for the czar or the Kaiser or being massacred by a horde of Cossacks.”

  The music had stopped, and the waiters were stacking up the chairs.

  He smiled sadly. “It doesn’t mean I don’t miss home sometimes.”

  “What is it like there? My father only told me a few things.”

  “How can I describe the feeling of home to you? I’m not a poet.” He frowned, his thick eyebrows knitting together. “There are so many things I could say.”

  She took his hand and pressed it to her cheek.

  He sighed. “When I’m especially missing home, there’s this song.”

  “Sing it to me.”

  “I can’t,” he whispered.

  “Please,” she said.

  His voice, soft and lilting, began, “The wind and I, we’re two of a kind; no house or yard or body to shed a tear over us.” He stopped.

  She leaned over the table. “Keep going.”

  He shook his head.

  “Please,” she said.

  He pulled her toward him, her waist folding over the edge of the table.

  His mouth tasted of apples, of the orchards that must grow there, of the warm earth and the strong sun and the sweat that peppered his chest. He gripped the back of her neck so even if she wanted to stop kissing him she couldn’t, but she didn’t want to stop.

  32

  It was almost Christmas. When the sun rose, it was soon eclipsed by the onset of early evening, lending the city a damp and dark feeling and yet this aching coldness contrasted all the more greatly with the heat radiating from her body whenever she thought of him. Daylight was sparse, but the city made up for it
with the mingling of lights shining from illuminated store windows onto the wet sidewalks, the warm glow of streetcars passing by. Fir trees lit with electric lights decorated squares and parks and gardens. Hand in hand with Geza on the city streets, Vicki felt Berlin was opening up to her, revealing all her riches, riches that had been obscured for many years but only needed the life and breath of new love to unveil them.

  The Tiergarten, a park Vicki believed she knew so well, became a mysterious expanse, a winter-white maze of paths and hillocks where they wandered for hours in the cold, warmly encased in their heavy coats, making the occasional stop for hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls.

  And Geza showed Vicki the Temple of Solomon, or, rather, an exact replica in every respect of the one described in the Bible, using papier-mâché and balsa, gold paint instead of real gold and cedar wood. Herr Frohmann from Drohobycz proudly traced his long finger over every single detail: from each curtain to crenellation, the temple was constructed to scale, he explained. Vicki and Geza stood before this miniature revelation, displayed in the back room of a bar, which smelled of fish. “Marvel at its beauty. Admire its precision. The temple will be gone in two days,” he said, lording over his creation. An old Jewish man in a skullcap swayed before the temple, humming a hymn under his breath: Kim, kim, Jisruleki l aheim, in dein teures Land arain …(Come, come, Jerusalemer, come home to your beloved homeland.) Geza explained how Frohmann carted his temple from ghetto to ghetto showing it off, praising it, and old Jews stood before it, forlorn, praying and weeping, as if they were at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, as if they had come home.

  “But you see,” Geza said, “we will build roads, not temples, in Palestine.”

  Walking back outside into the cold, Vicki said, “You should meet my grandmother—you sound just like her.”

  “Now we are meeting grandmothers?” Geza asked, unable to mask his pleasure.

  Vicki shrugged. “You still won’t come see my father.”

  He kissed her nose, then her forehead. “I told you. I don’t think he wants to be reminded of the war, of the people he knew then.”

  Vicki peered up at him. “Why not? What was so terrible?”

  He pulled down her knit cap. “There. Now your ears won’t freeze.” He cupped his large hands around her head—it made her feel safe, warm.

  “Why change the subject always?” she persisted.

  A light flurry swirled around them.

  Geza shook his head. “You know, Vicki, for such a worldly girl, I thought you’d understand my hesitation.” He paused, his eyes twinkling.

  “You’re teasing me.”

  “I’m not.”

  She gave him an imploring look.

  He stroked her cheek. “Okay, maybe I tease a little. But can’t you see? I’m poor, from Eastern Europe, and a Jew—do you really think that’s who your father had in mind for you?”

  Vicki pouted. “I don’t care what he has in mind.”

  Geza murmured into her hair, “Of course you do.”

  She stamped her boots on the icy sidewalk and shook her head. He kissed her wetly on the mouth. She inhaled his breath, the milky scent of him.

  “Now show me where your grandmother lives. It can’t be far from here,” he said.

  Vicki first met her grandmother when she was nine years old, just after her father returned from the war. Before that, she only had one grandmother, Marie, whom they visited on Sundays. Vicki used to feed chocolate-dusted macaroons to the corgis, and Marie sat, all in black, on the sofa with Josephine. There were dried rose petals in bowls, menthol drops, dainty teacups, and an assortment of sweets. The visits were long and tedious, and because they were both bored, Franz and Vicki often fought, but Marie would smile kindly even if they spilled tea or crushed a cookie into the rug or accidentally ripped the velvet curtain off its hanging rod. Agatha, Marie’s sister, was less forgiving. Vicki thought it a sign of life’s blind cruelty that Agatha, who was in good health, despite her insistence that she wasn’t, continued to live, while Marie, the kinder of the two sisters, had suffered a long agonizing death from cancer of the pancreas.

  When she met Mara, Lev’s mother, Vicki felt shy and nervous around this woman who was more beautiful and much younger than her other grandmother. And she didn’t look like a grandmother, in her high heels and modern dress. She smoked and talked and prepared food, all the while conversing with her cats. After they ate salty foods Vicki had never tasted before, Mara pressed Vicki to her chest. Vicki heard Mara’s heart thumping through her thin silk blouse as if it might explode. Stroking her hair, Mara had murmured, “Your mother has hid you away from me for so long. And now I finally get to hold you in my arms, my little bird. My little bubeleh.” Her father stood by sheepishly. But when Mara carried on about her misfortune, asking how was it possible she did not know her only granddaughter until now, Lev said something in a different language, and Mara fell silent. Vicki later learned that the language was Yiddish and Mara was Jewish, which made Lev Jewish and also maybe meant Vicki was Jewish. But what did it mean to be Jewish? No one could give her a clear answer. She thought of her old schoolmate Sybilla, who was Jewish, and she wondered what they had in common. They both had dark hair, dark eyes, and pale skin, but Sybilla wore thick glasses and feared horses whereas Vicki loved horses and had perfect vision. And Vicki still wore a St. Christopher around her neck, and her mother said she was a Christian. They still went to church on Sundays and they still recited their prayers before bed, and Vicki still believed in Jesus. When she had asked her father to explain, he told her fantastical stories about the Israelites—which was apparently another name for people who were Jewish. He told her about Queen Esther, who married Ahasuerus and saved the Jewish people, and about Yael, who saved the Jewish people by killing a man with a tent peg, and about Judith, who triumphed over the Assyrians by also killing a man, Holofernes. Sometimes Vicki wondered if Mara, by the way she cursed and smoked and furiously chopped onions to mix into sour cream, was a direct descendent of those sword-wielding heroines. And now, although Vicki would never call herself Jewish if someone asked, and she certainly had no intention of taking up the religion as her father had impressed upon her the importance of assimilation, of being German first and foremost and not falling into antiquated habits, living, as they did, in an age when nationality, not faith, determined one’s path, she couldn’t help but feel a strange wonderment whenever she visited the Scheunenviertel and looked into the windows of restaurants at the Jews sitting there with their tall fur hats and dark clothing, hunched over newspapers and small plates of food. And how did they see her? Was she an intruder, a curious Berliner, a shiksa (as Mara called Vicki’s mother), or, possibly, as Jewish as they were?

  The last time she saw Mara, Vicki had helped her distribute flyers for a KPD rally. It was just before she’d met Geza, before so much had changed. She thought they were taking an innocent stroll through the old neighborhood, perhaps stopping for a coffee, until she noticed Mara’s bulging purse. The purse was filled with flyers, which had to be stuffed into envelopes and mailed to a list of people. Such subversive activity, Mara joked, was conducted in the basement of the yeshiva. Vicki couldn’t leave her grandmother stranded at one of the folding tables in the basement, a stifling room absent of any fans, especially when people her own age greeted Mara, hugged her, and asked after her health, before returning to their tasks, diligently folding flyers and slipping them into already-addressed envelopes. Not only would they think she was a bad granddaughter but a bourgeois one to boot. And so she ended up sitting next to Mara, folding flyers into perfect rectangles, pressing her fingers along the creases, and Mara then stuffed them absentmindedly into envelopes, all the while using this opportunity to point out the eligible bachelors in the room. “That’s Arthur Oertelt—with the glasses, next to the radiator. He’s training to be an engineer. He’s quite tall—he’s sitting down so you wouldn’t know—and look at his broad shoulders. Not a trace of baldness on his fine head of hair. Ne
ver marry a bald man. They’re forever insecure and will cling to you. Next to him is Julius Levin, but everyone calls him Julo. A very talented artist, I’ve heard. Woodcuts. Comes from Stettin, up north, from a good family. They’d hoped he’d go into business, but it seems painting has consumed all his energy. He was engaged until very recently. His fiancée had this dog, a little white Pomeranian, very sweet, but she insisted it sleep in the bed, even though poor Julo has allergies. He said it’s either me or the dog, and who do you think she chose?”

  Vicki suppressed a laugh.

  “A pity, really. Now he’s single.” Mara grinned. “And over there, by the window, Stefan Lazar, the Romanian; he’s a little older, but—”

  Vicki patted Mara’s hand. “It’s okay, Nana. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “Worried? Who said anything about worry?”

  “I don’t lack invitations.”

  Mara fanned herself with an envelope. “I’m sure you have plenty of company—but it’s the kind of company you keep that’s important in life.”

  Vicki glanced around at the young men and women working quietly alongside one another, and she thought of her friends who danced on tables, wasted hours at the cafés, wore turbans and monocles and stenciled their eyebrows into an expression of eternal surprise. They competed for the best table at Romanisches, and when they failed, they sulked for days, as if the world had crumbled.

  Vicki sighed, handing Mara a stack of folded flyers. “University boys from good families take me out dancing. To be honest, I like the dancing more than I like them.”

  “Yes, but these boys, I’m sure none of them are Jewish.”

  Vicki shrugged. “I suppose not.”

  Mara held an envelope in the air, as if trying to determine which way the wind blew. “You suppose?”

  Vicki conceded that none of them were Jewish.

  Mara clucked her tongue. “So casual about these things.”

  A young, vigorous man walked into the basement carrying an electric box fan over his head. Everyone stood up, clapping. He plugged in the fan and took a bow.