Gently he took hold of Erich's shoulders. "I shall achieve that immortality. With your help."
As gently as they had been placed, Erich removed the hands.
"My help?"
"You and your dogs. They're special. We both know that. The canine equivalent of what we Germans shall be in a generation. One people. One mind. One soul." He made a fist, then said in a husky voice, "But they're not SS. They never will be as long as you are in charge of them."
As if she understood the words, Achilles' growling became more pronounced; Erich's once benign mood became a growing fury that twisted in him like a rope. There would, he thought, be no pleasant bicycle ride tonight.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Damning himself for wanting Miriam's approval--even after his success with the dogs--Erich shouldered his way toward her dressing room. People not associated with the show normally were not allowed backstage, but he came to see her at least twice a week and was used to making his way relatively unnoticed between the performers and props crowded in the cabaret's stage wings. His presence usually aroused nothing more than an occasional leer.
Tonight, however, he was carrying a pineapple, its aroma unmistakable even in the wine- and sweat-filled air. He could probably buy any chorine for the price of one slice of the coveted fruit, he thought bitterly. Certainly the fruit gained him attention, such as might have been given a Yank overtly carrying nylons. If anything, his gift was even more appealing here, where desire was the stock-in-trade. The cabaret's name was, after all, Ananas: Pineapple.
A long-legged chorus girl dressed in little more than feathers and flesh emerged from the storeroom that served as the main dressing room. Eyeing him, his uniform with its new captain's bars, and the pineapple with open and equal admiration, the girl bent to smell the fruit.
"Which tastes better, you or the pineapple?" She tickled him under the chin and laughed when he batted her hand away. "Wish you were waiting for me, Poopsie." She wiggled her bottom. "That one won't give you ice in winter, you know."
She was pretty enough, but he couldn't manage a smile; the woman disappeared in a flurry of dyed ostrich feathers.
He could see Miriam's dressing room from where he stood. Though she knew he was coming, the door was closed. The paint had peeled where a star once marked it, leaving only two faded points. Everything in the club was tawdry and cheap. Everything, he told himself, except that goddamn Miriam. Which was doubtless why he continued to make an idiot of himself, bringing testimonials of love--and despair--to heap at her feet.
Striding to the door, he raised his hand to knock, decided the hell with that and turned the handle.
Miriam sat before a cracked mirror framed with tiny,flame-shaped light bulbs. Some cast a pink glow; other filaments glared from plain glass. The mirror was decorated with faded sienna photos, bits of ribbon, ragged feathers and splashes of make-up.
"Know how to knock?" she asked Erich's reflection.
She picked up her mascara, spat in it and mixed it vigorously with the small brush she used to apply it to her lashes. As she leaned forward to put on a layer of eye shadow with the tip of a finger, one of the narrow rhinestone straps that held up her dress slid down her shoulder. The dress was little more than a silk slip, black and flimsy, an illusion as thin as stardom's hope. Erich had to stifle the urge to unzip the back and slide his hands beneath her arms and over her breasts--to make love to her, now, at once, on the grimy carpet if need be.
"What do you want?" she asked brusquely, without turning.
"I came to warn you."
"About yourself?"
She stood and, placing each foot in turn on the chair, adjusted the seams of her black lace stockings. Her dress was slit up to her thigh on one side, and he could see the edge of black lace panties.
"Say what you have to say, then leave me alone." She slipped into silver shoes and straightened the dress against her hips. "I'm tired of you bothering me, and I'm just plain tired--period. I'm here until four in the morning and up at ten to help in the shop. I eat on the run, take the trolley here to dance for the animals...I have no time for what you want. Nor," she looked right at him, "would I take the time if I had it."
"You don't have to live with the Freunds or work in the shop." He set the pineapple on the vanity. "I've offered to get you a place of your own."
As always, she ignored his offer to take care of her. Lifting the pineapple by its green topknot, she thrust it back into his hands. "Why don't you try this on one of the other girls? They may be stupid enough to confuse exotic with erotic."
Her tone was cold and uncompromising. In the two years since her return to Berlin, she had yet to give him one gentle look, one pleasant word. She had been, at best, polite until he had told her finally that he could do nothing about her estate. Surely she knew he had tried his best. He had broached the subject with those few individuals he knew who dared speak frankly to the Führer. Professor Gerdy Troost, widow of Hitler's favorite architect. The Harvard-educated eccentric Ernst Hanfstaengel, who had drawn and published, with Hitler's consent, caricatures criticizing the Führer. Leni Riefenstahl, the actress turned film maker.
Of the three, only Fraülein Riefenstahl had agreed to look into the matter. She had met him over a cognac to inform him quietly, "You pursue this, and your Miriam Rathenau could lose a lot more than her estate, and so could you. Goebbels would rather have that house than all his harlots."
Clearly Leni was right, Erich thought. The house was not the issue, not anymore. The danger to Miriam, and to Solomon and his family, was growing more evident by the day. Somehow he had to take care of them, but how? He could try to help them get out of the country, but that would ensure his losing Miriam. Not that he had ever really found her again since her return to Berlin.
Damn little Jewess! Who was she anyway? Nothing but a saucy ex-debutante who thought herself better than everyone else. Which was probably why he wanted her--because she considered herself inaccessible. Jews were so stubborn! And foolish!
What if she or the Freunds did something stupid and were arrested? Only God, if indeed He existed, could withstand an SS interrogation. Even if talking meant implicating him--and just knowing him was enough to do that--he would want them to save themselves. Add to that his reputation as an officer, an Abwehr member no less, who had criticized the Reich and who openly worshipped the niece of the man who exemplified everything the Reich detested....
No matter what he did, Erich thought, he could only lose.
Feeling awkward and angry, he continued to hold the pineapple on his open palm. "Tomorrow is Christmas, Miriam. If you don't want this, give it to...to someone." He was thinking of the Freunds and his parents but was unwilling to mention them by name.
"Tomorrow is Christmas! That's what you crawled in here to tell me? Wonderful. I'll mark my calendar and make sure there's room at the inn."
He lowered the pineapple. If any other woman dared treat him like this. he'd give her a boot in the backside and send her out the nearest door. "You must be careful, Miriam."
"What are you, my protector? I'm told you beat up one of Himmler's cronies after the show the other night because he made a comment about me. Sounds like you should be the one to be warned. Your dear friends may not appreciate your solicitude."
"I am not concerned with what--"
Someone rapped twice on the door, stopping him from adding more lies to the ones he had already told himself. He had been about to tell her that he didn't care what others in the Party thought of him--that, unlike them, he could never be a racist. He alone among his classmates in the Bavarian camp and in the Berlin-Tegel classrooms was different. Was Solomon not his friend? He knew most of the others in the Party were not fit fodder for pigs, but that would change as the Führer rose above his petty need for scapegoats.
"Duty calls." She lifted an index finger. "In the future, if you want to talk to me come to the shop. You do remember where it is, don't you?"
"You know I do
n't go there."
"More shame on you, Oberleutnant Weisser." She spoke with such venom, he recoiled as if from a snake bite. Then, frowning at his uniform, she corrected herself. "Forgive me. I see it is Rittmeister Weisser. That little choreography of your name-change paid off, did it?"
"This warning isn't something to shrug off, or laugh at." He put a hand on her forearm as she opened the door.
Her glance at his hand contained only contempt.
He let go of her, feeling ashamed. Why was it that the lower he seemed in her eyes, the more he wanted her? "The cabaret scene's under fire by the National Socialists. There could be trouble. Real trouble."
"You're telling me nothing new."
Her gaze strayed to the pineapple and, for an instant, she looked hungry. Women! Why couldn't she be like the rest, capable of love at any time as long as there was some price tag attached?
"Don't you know that we're part of the Jewish conspiracy to pervert the purity of Germany's young men?" she asked. "Their strength and virtue might become so drained they could no longer lift blackjacks and billy clubs against old women and rabbis. We must not corrupt you boys with elegance such as this." She gestured toward the dirt-encrusted pipes that crisscrossed the room. "We must save ourselves for true-hearts like Herr Himmler, and pray that Goebbels--the darling--will honor us with a visit."
"They wouldn't come here."
"Oh? Göring already has. Twice. Our manager led everyone in a standing ovation. I wonder if that fool even entertained the possibility that Henri was mocking him! I wouldn't be at all surprised if Goebbels showed up too. He does hate to be outdone. Wouldn't it be wonderful if he got a hard-on watching Rathenau's niece strut her little butt!"
"Stop it!" Furious beyond caution, he gripped her arms. "You have to leave this place. It's dangerous, immoral, not for you."
"Where else can a dancer with Jewish blood find work these days?" She jerked free of his hold. "As your mistress? While you're earning your keep playing footsie with the Nazis, I could take in laundry, and while you're entertaining the officers' wives, I could earn pin money in one of those cabarets where they have sex on-stage. Would that turn you on?"
To taunt him, she took a wide-legged stance and placed her hands on her hips. "Zieh dich aus, Petronella, zieh dich aus," she sang. "Get undressed, Petronella, get undressed." She had Trude Hersterberg, the most famous of the stars who satirized Berlin's penchant for nudity, down pat.
Erich's head pounded. It frightened him, this side of her.
"I could fornicate with one of your shepherds onstage. Now that would be unique! Pisces and a Jew going at it while you Nazis applaud and Goebbels stomps his clubfoot!"
Stunned by her outburst, he let go of her. Without another word she walked from the room, not with the saucy hip-swing some of the other performers affected, but with the grace he remembered from long ago. At the end of the hall, where a red curtain hung in an archway whose plaster was badly chipped, she turned and blew him a kiss. "Happy birthday, Erich."
He stood in the dimly lit passage, damning her again--and himself for allowing her to stir him so. Only he seemed to bring out this side of her. It was as if she were punishing him for not having been born a Jew or for not being foolish or philosophical enough to scrape off his foreskin and cover his head with it like a caul, seeing only what his culture wanted him to see...thinking its hooded thoughts.
He could feel the anger rising in him, as it always did after yet another defeat at Miriam's hands. The time had come to stop treating her like the princess she pretended to be. Why should he have to feel like this whenever she rejected him. He wasn't a leper, unclean and unworthy. His approach had been wrong, that was all. She was always pushing him toward the edge. Tormenting him. Pushing him to be more insistent. He could see her now, fighting him and fucking him with equal abandon.
Sometimes he stood outside the cigar shop, watching her with Solomon and envying their ease with one another as they arranged cases and swept the floor and waited on people. With Solomon, the Freunds, sometimes even with his own parents, she laughed freely, her spirit one of dogged optimism. She was also like that with those customers who could no longer afford real Havanas or Cubans and bought cigars made of cabbage leaves soaked in a solution of nicotine.
He had seen Solomon walk her to the trolley, watched them exchange smiles as she boarded. Their umbrella of shared warmth made him feel small and cold, an uncovered child curled up asleep on a drafty floor.
Not that he was jealous of Solomon, he assured himself--even given the probability that Solomon and Miriam were sharing a bed.
After all, he did not lack women. On the contrary; the wealthier and more powerful their husbands were, the more the wives seemed to want him. Because it pleased him to do so, he made them beg for what they wanted. Lately, however, the more they writhed and moaned, the more he loathed them, and himself. He slept little, and usually alone, falling asleep to dream of Solomon's hand on Miriam's pubis, his mouth on her breasts.
"You shouldn't be back here now." A balding, thickly sweatered dwarf lifted a broom like a quarter-staff and shook it at him. "It's show time."
Erich shoved the pineapple into the dwarf's arms and pushed past him into the nightclub. The place was crowded, a-throb with a four-four beat. Faded, water-stained green and white awnings sagged from black poles; a pink, plaster Venus de Milo wearing a maroon brassiere decorated the bar. Men in ratty suits and overalls, some cradling bar girls in short leather skirts and silk stockings, lounged beside tables covered with green and white tablecloths. The air was heavy with smoke and stank of sweat.
Onstage, a clown wearing a green-and-red shirt, baggy pants, and a wolf's mask which sported a bulbous nose, boasted of his days as a waiter at Luna Park. "There I was on Naked Days, in my formal attire," he said, eyeing the derrière feathers of a blonde-wigged Red Riding Hood who came prancing onstage, "while Berlin's best families romped nude around me."
As if determined to make up for lost time, he took hold of the blonde, knelt beside her, and began working his nose under her feathers and into her ample posterior. Wide-eyed, the girl jumped forward with a startled "Oooh!" The audience screamed its approval, cheering and whistling and stomping in time to the music.
Appearing to gather her resolve, Red Riding Hood turned and confronted the beast with her only weapon. She opened her cape, and wriggled. A St. Nicholas beard covered her pubis, and her red brassiere, studded with jingling bells, had holes that revealed blinking green nipples. The drooling wolf's pants burst open and a prosthetic penis the length of a broomstick sprang up, a Christmas bow tied behind the knob.
Daintily she tugged at the ribbon, and a banner unfurled under his wolfhood. It read: "Sieg Heil."
The crowd roared and the curtains closed. Knowing Werner Fink, on loan from Katakombe on Bellevuestrasse while that club was being revamped, would be on next, the audience grew silent. They had come to see the infamous conférencier half in the hopes that they would be there on the inevitable night of his arrest, for why and how he had survived this long remained a mystery.
Fink stepped out between the curtains and threaded toward a table. The spotlight followed him. He was a pasty-faced man with heavily mascaraed eyes and hair slicked with black shoe polish.
Standing there in his black shirt and tie and too-small black jacket, he surveyed the audience.
"We were closed yesterday, and if we are too open today, tomorrow we may be closed again."
Laughter followed Fink's famous opening lines; several men in the audience raised their mugs and shouted, "Prosit!" Erich, who liked Fink, wondered if the man had avoided arrest precisely because he was so outrageous. It might be useful to keep that in mind.
The conférencier made his way to center stage. "No, I'm not Jewish." He placed a white-gloved hand to his forehead. "I only look intelligent."
The drummer hit the cymbal. Mugs were lowered and the laughter became more restrained. A man in the uniform of the SS, seated at a
table to the far left of the stage, stood up, his face a study in disgust. He clicked his heels, saluted smartly, and strode out of the nightclub. Erich quickly took the man's chair.
Fink stared out over the stage lights. Cupping his hands like a megaphone, he asked, "CAN YOU HEAR ME ALL RIGHT? ANYONE OUT THERE WHO'S NOT HARD OF THINKING?"
Erich was close enough to the stage to smell the sweat of the performers and to see the spray of saliva that emerged from Fink's mouth as he continued his diatribe. However, the awning overhead was ripped and hung annoyingly in his face, disturbing his vision. He slapped it aside.
"Just tear it down." The swarthy man seated at the table placed the elbow of his grimy leather jacket on the table and revolved his black cigar with his tongue, chewing rather than smoking it. Picking a clump of sodden tobacco off his lip, he frowned and wiped his hand on his grease-spotted white shirt. Coarse black hair poked out of an old workman's cap, and a two-day growth of beard completed the picture of a man of the masses.
In the subdued applause that followed, the man said, "The name's Brecht. Bertolt Brecht."
Before Erich could give his name, Fink's rapid-fire delivery filled the room. "I love black shirts." He opened his jacket and puffed out his chest. "Brown ones, too. I salute them!" Raising his hand in the Nazi salute, he looked from his hand to the floor and back again, and said, "That's how deep we're in the shit."
While Fink bowed to polite applause, a dancer who doubled as a waitress sauntered over to Erich's table. He ordered Berliner Weisse mit Schuss, champagne-beer with a shot of raspberry syrup. When she brought the glasses she bent and placed a napkin on his thigh, giving him ample view of her cleavage. He knew he was expected to slip folded money between her breasts. He glanced away. She gave him a hard smile, swiped at the table with a bar rag and walked off.
"I can tell you from personal experience," Brecht said, "that one has more honey in her pants than a Bremen beehive."
"Not interested."
Child of the Light Page 24
