The Glimmer Palace

by Beatrice Colin

  Lidi’s contract stipulated that she had to attend the film’s premiere. As the film was being edited, however, she grew increasingly restless. She was not alone. It wasn’t just the endless military parades up and down the Unter den Linden or the public beatings, it was the sense that the city wore its new bravado with an underside of shame. Since homosexuality had been criminalized, many of the bars and cabaret clubs she used to know had closed down or had changed hands, while countless new decrees banned Jews from working, owning shops, even hiking in groups.

  Mr. Leyer was taking care of Ilya. He had found him a job in the film-processing plant again, working the night shift as a negative cutter. It was a mundane and laborious task, cutting miles of film together in the order that he was instructed, slicing and pasting reels and reels of numbered frames. He would be safe there, Mr. Leyer told Lidi, until the time came.

  The premiere of The Queen of Sorrow was held in February 1935. Lidi wore a gold lamé dress and a pair of diamonds in her ears that had been given to her by the minister of propaganda. He had seen the rough edit and had informed the Führer that it was a “singular triumph.”

  The night was cool and clear and the sky was overcrowded with stars. The cinema’s façade had been draped with white cloth and was bathed in cool blue electric light. When Lidi arrived in a long black Mercedes-Benz, two dozen white doves were released from a series of birdcages. She paused momentarily on the stairs and smiled out at the crowds. Many photographs were taken by the party photographer. None is known to have survived.

  One by one, more cars rolled up and dispensed their passengers. As well as party officials, the specially invited audience was made up of actors, journalists, and businessmen. At the welcoming reception inside were trays of French Champagne and English muffins. Dozens of jokes were made about the choice of refreshments. None of them was particularly funny, but they were symptomatic of an almost tangible anxiety that was in the air that night.There was a definite sense, it was said later, of foreboding.

  As Lidi took her seat between the minister of propaganda and his wife, there was news of a delay. The film was so new, the rumor spread, that a final print had only just been completed. At first the film star made polite conversation about the weather, but then she lapsed into a tense silence. She closed her eyes and willed herself back into Ilya’s arms, she tried to remember his softness, his laugh, the upward slant of his eyes. But the reality of her situation could not be ignored for long. There was not enough time: their plan had allowed for a fifteen-minute delay, but not for this. If she didn’t leave soon, she would miss the train. Not long now, she told herself, not long now. But as the minutes ached by, she began to tremble with unease, with apprehension, with pure hot fear.

  “Nervous?” asked Goebbels.

  Lilly nodded. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t trust her voice not to give her away.

  It was then announced that it was a person they were waiting for, not a print: a rather special person who was late because of business of an official capacity. Goebbels took advantage of the lull in the proceedings to mount the podium and thank his leading lady. He praised her beauty, her purity, and her decision to support her country when it mattered. If there was something triumphant in his tone, Lilly didn’t register it.

  At the Ufa-Palast, at nine, an hour after schedule, the lights lowered and a single spotlight picked out the entrance of the small man with the black mustache. He marched to his seat, turned, saluted once to the assembled crowd, and then sat down. Hitler was a little put out to discover, when the houselights rose again before the feature, that Lidi was gone. He had been looking forward to meeting her. But the screening was already late and Goebbels pointed out that women were apt to make frequent visits to the lavatory in these sorts of circumstances. And so, when the orchestra launched into the overture, he sat back, relaxed, and waited for the red curtains to part.

  Mr. Leyer met Lilly at the back door of the Ufa-Palast with her suitcase. A car was idling at the curb.

  “It’s a close call,” he said, “but you’ll make it as long as the traffic’s light.”

  “Where’s Ilya?” Lilly asked. “I thought he’d be here.”

  “Don’t worry. He took a taxi from Afifa. The ministry made out a ticket for him in your name and left it at the ticket office. I’ve just checked and he’s already picked it up.”

  “He was working tonight?” Lilly said. “How can he at a time like this?”

  “He’s been on night shift,” Mr. Leyer explained. “We don’t want to arouse their suspicions. Now hurry or you’ll miss the blasted train and he’ll go without you.”

  “Thank you so much,” Lilly said as she squeezed his hand. “For everything.”

  Mr. Leyer’s eyes glistened. He knew he was a sentimental fool.

  “Good luck,” he called out as the car drew away. “And give my love to that husband of yours.”

  It was only then that he looked down and found the pair of diamond earrings that Lilly had pressed into his palm the moment before she had climbed into the car.When an SS man found them several months later in Mr. Leyer’s desk, he pocketed them and gave them as a gift to a girl from Hamburg.They were found in the rubble of a building near the Rathausmarkt in late 1943.

  Of course, everyone stared at the film star as, still dressed in lamé, she hurried through the station toward platform 12, but nobody approached her for an autograph—not there, not then. They could see by her face that she would not have paid them any attention, that she was cutting it fine, that nothing or no one could detain her.There was a commotion at the ticket office—another random act of violence, another senseless beating—but she barely registered it.

  The guard helped Lilly aboard the very last carriage and then blew the whistle. As the train began to move, she stood for a moment at the back of the train, watching the platform, the station, the city recede, her golden dress catching the reflection of a million streetlights.And then she turned and began the long walk to the front of the train, to carriage A, to compartment 14, where her husband was waiting for her.

  Hitler was furious, Goebbels apoplectic. All press representatives were ordered to hand in their notebooks and swear never to write a word on the matter.The orchestra was sacked on the spot, the invited audience held for five hours without food or water and then released with muttered threats to keep the whole event quiet. They were lucky: the projectionist, the ushers, and the cinema manager were arrested and interrogated.

  The actress had departed, not only from the Ufa-Palast and from Berlin, but also from the actual film. Not a single frame of her remained.Whole scenes were cut out, or cut in two, or edited down to remove her presence entirely. Other actors talked to closed doors, to themselves, to each other, but never to Lidi. Instead, the crowd jeered at nothing; Sir Thomas Bromley, played by Hans Albers, convicted an empty stand of treason. It was ridiculous; it was hilarious. No wonder so many at the premiere laughed into their handkerchiefs. They couldn’t help it.

  The producer blamed the director, the director pointed to the editor, the editor singled out the negative cutter—not the usual negative cutter, he quickly ascertained, but the one who worked the night shift, the one hired recently by Mr. Leyer: the Russian. The next morning, Afifa was surrounded and searched.The Russian, however, had gone.

  One may imagine the moment Lilly reached compartment 14 of the boat train to Le Havre. Were the curtains closed? Was the guard still with her, carrying her suitcase, or did she carry it herself? Did she pull back the heavy glass door slowly or with an impatient wrench? And when she saw who was inside, did she wonder for a moment if she had the wrong carriage, the wrong reservation, the wrong train? Because, sitting in compartment 14, a man sat nervously fingering a newspaper: a man, his face now scarred, whom Lilly had believed for almost twenty years to be dead.

  Stefan Mauritz had been sleeping when the SS came to look for him earlier that evening. His landlady showed them up into his room with a concerned frown. Herr Mauri
tz was one of her most respectable tenants, tidy, well-bred, and conscientious. The poor chap, she would say later, had had a difficult life, what with his face, but haven’t we all? When they told him to pack, he was filled with panic. He had done nothing illegal.

  “I’m not . . . Jewish,” he said.

  When they told him that his wife, the film star Lidi, had arranged for him to leave Germany with her that very night, he was overwhelmed with emotion. But the joy was short-lived. It didn’t make any sense.

  “How did you know about me?” he asked.

  “We arrested your sister in a bar of ill repute last week,” they replied. “In custody she claimed she was a personal friend, a relation, of the actress Lidi, real name Lilly Nelly Aphrodite. We investigated her story and found a record of a marriage at the Church of St. Michael near the Oranienplatz in 1916. She’s a lucky girl, your sister. . . . You are Stefan Mauritz, aren’t you?”

  As they waited, Stefan packed quickly and was escorted to the station. The lady at the ticket office handed over the permits and tickets without hesitation. It all ran as smoothly as Goebbels had planned: his men had been working on Lidi’s case ever since the chief of police’s phone call the previous week.

  And so, as the train compartment door swung open and his wife’s face, the face that could express more than a whole page of dialogue, registered first surprise, then horror, and then agony, Stefan Mauritz knew that it was all somehow his fault. And he wished he had died in the war after all.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Lilly had looked at the man with the disfigured face and wondered momentarily if she was dreaming. His face was a flashback from her nightmares: he was a haunting, a malign spirit; he was her stalker. But when he spoke, time seemed to flip and all at once she saw beneath the contours of his ruined face; it was the uhlan. He was alive. The spark that she had doused and buried so many years before suddenly reignited; it was Stefan. As the emotion registered, however, it was swiftly followed by another. Her eyes left his face and took in the compartment.

  “Are you . . . alone?”

  There was no one else in compartment 14. And as she realized what had happened, what Goebbels had done, it was as if the dead had risen up to spite her after all. Lilly turned and opened the door; she was going to try to get off the train, to go back to Berlin, back to Ilya, to do anything but stay, when the two SS men who had been sent to accompany her to the boat blocked her way.

  “Is there a problem?” they asked when they saw her face.

  They looked at Stefan, the war veteran, and then back at Lidi, the film star. The train began to speed up as it left the suburbs, the express train that Mr. Leyer had encouraged her to choose because it did not stop until it reached the low French coast.

  “You do know this man?” they asked when she didn’t answer. “He is your husband? Because if he isn’t . . .”

  “Yes,” Lidi, the actress, replied in a whisper. “He is. Everything’s in order.”

  But according to the French count and his daughter who had taken the adjacent compartment, she closed the door, drew the curtains, and sobbed hysterically all night.

  Lilly and Stefan Mauritz sailed from Le Havre on the Ile de France. Although they were issued temporary visitor permits in New York when they arrived, where they went once they had disembarked is unrecorded. It was possible to find work at that time without documentation and, like thousands of new immigrants, make a passable living in the so-called black economy.

  Lidi, the actress, didn’t return to her apartment in California to collect her belongings or contact any of her former acquaintances in Hollywood. After the defacement on her door, her windows, and her walls had been washed off, the apartment was eventually let out, first to a screenwriter who lived there for twenty years before he was ousted from the industry by McCarthyism, and then to an aspiring actress who tried to kill herself with a mixture of barbiturates and Kool-Aid, but went on to become one of the most famous soap stars of her generation.

  Ilya had arrived at Anhalt Station on the night of the premiere in good time. All he needed were the tickets, the exit visas, the paperwork. He was nervous, even though Mr. Leyer had assured him that he wouldn’t be missed until the following evening. Mr. Leyer didn’t know what Ilya had done.

  The first cut was the hardest: the first slice, which scored the film just before Lilly’s figure appeared, a silhouette against the light of the early-morning sun. But he was soon cutting faster; it was his script, and he knew where she would appear and for how long. Lilly’s face caught in a smile, Lilly’s figure beneath a window in a tower, Lilly’s eyes closed as she was given her sentence. It was all exactly how he had written it, the way he had imagined it. In only a couple of hours, her entire performance was lying in curls around his ankles. The risk, he reasoned with himself, was worth it. They wouldn’t discover what he had done in time to detain him. If something went wrong, however, it was a glorious epitaph. But in truth, he hadn’t let himself seriously consider the latter outcome.

  The staff behind the international ticket desk was slow to deal with his request; the ticket girl brought the bookings clerk, the bookings clerk brought the supervisor, the supervisor said he needed to speak to his superior. Ilya was waiting for the station manager when he saw Lilly, his Lilly, still dressed in lamé, hurry across the concourse toward the waiting train. He relaxed at last. It was going to work after all. How could he have ever doubted her?

  The station manager arrived a little out of breath and informed Ilya that the ticket left by the Ministry of Propaganda had already been collected in person. And no, the manager said, there had been no mistake. He’d even met the man himself. Ilya shook his head and politely asked the station manager to repeat what he had just said. Had he misunderstood? Had his grasp of German failed him?

  “Her husband,” the manager said slowly, his blue eyes bulging. “Lidi’s husband.”

  “But I am Lidi’s husband,” Ilya replied.

  The station manager frowned as he looked him over, a Russian with a thin face and threadbare clothes.

  “You want a ticket?” he said, producing a rail ticket and waving it in his face. “Then buy one like everyone else, or stop wasting my time.”

  A whistle blew. The boat train was about to depart. Ilya snatched the ticket from the station manager’s hand and ran: he jumped over suitcases, he pushed past commuters, he knocked over a newspaper stand to reach the heavy glass doors that opened onto platform 12. And even when the police appeared from all corners of the station and ordered him to halt, he didn’t stop running.They caught up with him on the train tracks just beyond the signal box. As they handcuffed him and wrenched him to the ground, he didn’t take his eyes off the nine-thirty p.m. to Cherbourg, as Lilly in her golden beacon of a dress, as the future he had finally let himself believe in, began to pick up speed and head at full throttle into the darkest night he had ever known.

  Goebbels had no proof that Lidi had a hand in it, but as a precautionary measure after the hushed-up premiere, he recalled every single copy of every one of her films and personally watched as his assistant destroyed them. Pages were also ripped from magazines in libraries, and film magazines had their archives raided and trashed. Ilya Yurasov, negative cutter, who was in police custody for another offense, did not deny what he had done. As well as cutting Lidi out of the film, he admitted he had burned all the original footage. He was charged with “gross aesthetic vandalism.”

  Dozens of letters addressed to Ilya Yurasov arrived at Dachau from the United States, all written in the same hand. Only one was ever passed on to him. It was so heavily censored, however, that only a few sentences were legible.

  My dearest husband, the letter read.

  After months of inquiry, of writing to . . . I finally managed to track you down to the camp outside Munich. And although I have been informed that my letters are not likely . . . What you did filled me with both gratitude and with rage. . . .
Our pasts conspired against us. . . . The first night we spent together . . . The taste of coffee on your lips and the whisper of your voice . . . poem by Rilke . . . “Be ahead of all parting, as though it were already behind you like the winter that has just gone by. For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter, that only by wintering through it all will your heart survive.”

  With my love, your Lillushka

  Even though Ilya slept with it rolled up in his hand, Lilly’s letter was eventually stolen and used either to wrap tobacco or to light kindling. Ilya did, however, manage to keep a single frame from the film The Queen of Sorrow. It was all that existed of their work together. Somehow he managed to smuggle that single square inch of film around with him until he reached Treblinka in 1940. One of the few men who survived remembered the way he used to look at it for hours.

  “Who is she?” they’d ask.

  “Hold it up to the light,” he’d reply, “and you’ll see.”

  The Final Frame

  At seven in the evening all the lights in Berlin went out, every streetsign, every advertising illumination, every traffic light and crossing beacon.They said it was an air-raid drill, a practice blackout. Everyone closed the curtains tight. Some people lit candles and played Puccini. Mussolini was coming on a state visit that very evening.

  At nine the citizens were invited by loudspeaker to step outside, and to their delight they found another world.The streets were lit by giant lighting rigs on the backs of lorries. Four rows of painted white columns had been placed along the Unter den Linden, each supporting a massive plaster golden eagle. Banners had been hung over building façades, huge flagpoles erected, pedestals installed, and rows and rows of giant searchlights aimed upward into the night sky. And then the rumble of a cavalcade could be heard approaching.

  Lit by a single spotlight, Mussolini and Hitler in an open-topped car motored slowly through the Brandenburg Gate. Behind them thousands and thousands of soldiers marched in lines that stretched forever.They all carried burning torches or banners or both. The spectators’ cheeks flushed, their hands burned from the clapping, their voices grew hoarse, but they didn’t care. No, that night was magical, electrifying, epic. Who could not believe at that moment in the heroic vision of our Führer? In one voice, they sang to the Swastika, a song of blood and destruction and tears. And when the final chorus faded and the last of the soldiers had passed, they heard it loud and clear—the unmistakable ticker of the camera.