Marlene (2 page)

“Please, Mademoiselle.” I clutched my satchel to my chest. “If the headmistress finds out, she’ll . . .”

“What?” She cocked her head. “What will she do? It’s not a crime to know how to speak another language. You’ll waste your time here. Wouldn’t you prefer to use this hour for something you can actually learn?”

“No.” I was close to tears. “I . . . like learning French.”

“I see. Well. Then we must see what we can arrange. Your secret is safe with me, but I cannot vouch for the others. They might be negligent, but they’re not deaf.”

“
Merci,
Mademoiselle. I’ll study very hard, you’ll see. I only wish to please you.” It was my standard avowal, accompanied by an awkward curtsy, as Mutti had taught me during social calls after church, when we went to visit other respectable widows for hot cocoa and strudel. Then I started for the door, desperate to escape her amused eyes and my own impulsiveness.

As I left I heard her say, “Marlene. You do please. You please me very much.”

II

I
skipped my way back home, swinging my satchel. Crossing the tram tracks and dodging street vendors shouting out the price of their wares, I ignored everything, hearing her voice in my head, like an echo in the soft rustle of the leafy linden trees lining the avenue.

You do please. You please me very much
.

By the time I dashed up the cracked marble stairs to our flat at 13 Tauentzienstrasse, I was humming under my breath. Tossing my satchel onto the foyer table, I went into the immaculate parlor where my sister, Liesel, sat hunched over her books. She glanced up, looking as weary as if she’d been sitting there for weeks.

“Is
Der Gouverneur
here?” I asked, reaching to the plate at her side for a leftover slice of strudel.

The disapproving line between her eyebrows deepened. “You mustn’t call Mutti that, it’s so disrespectful. And you know on Thursdays she works late at the von Losch residence. She’ll be here by seven. Lena, use a plate. You’re dropping crumbs everywhere. The maid just left.”

I bent to the threadbare carpet, dabbing up the few crumbs. “There.” I licked my finger.

“Better use the broom.”

I went into the kitchen for the broom, even if it was futile. Mutti would re-sweep the carpet after we went to bed, and scrub and wax the floors, too. She never tired of cleaning, despite the fact that she spent the entire day doing it for someone else. She had let four maids go in as many months, declaring them slovenly. It happened with such frequency that Liesel and I didn’t even bother anymore to learn the current maid’s name.

Still humming under my breath, I moved to the small fortepiano and violin in the living room. Both were in dire need of expert tuning; the violin had been my eighth-year birthday present, purchased by Oma, my grandmother, after my private music tutor had assured Mutti I had talent. The tutor had gone the way of the governesses yet I persisted in my practice. I loved music; it was one of the few interests I shared with Mutti, who was an accomplished pianist herself after years of her own childhood lessons. We often played together after supper and I now found waiting on the piano lid an étude by Bach that she’d left for me to rehearse.

As I settled the violin onto my shoulder, Liesel said, “You’re in a rare good humor. Did something special happen at school today?”

“Nothing.” I adjusted the tuning pegs, hoping to spare the worn strings. Mutti would buy new strings for my birthday, but December was still months away. I had to make the best of these until then. As I passed my bow over the bridge, releasing a discordant twang, Liesel added, “Nothing? You never come home with a smile. And you never start practicing as soon as you do.
Something
must have happened.”

I began to play the sonata, wincing as the worn strings resisted my efforts. “I have a new French teacher. Her name is Mademoiselle Bréguand.”

Liesel went quiet, watching me play. I glanced only once or twice at the sheet music; despite the poor quality of my strings, I had memorized this piece. Mutti would be proud.

Then my sister said, “You’re happy because of a new teacher? I don’t believe you. I know how much you detest that school. You’re always saying the teachers are frumps and the girls chatter about nothing. Tell me this instant. Did you meet a boy?”

My bow slipped, ruining my concentration. I stared at her in disbe
lief before I snorted. “Where would I meet a boy? All my classmates are girls.”

“You still walk home every day. You see boys on the street, don’t you?” She sounded serious. And somewhat angry, too.

“The only boys I see are the ones who kick stray dogs and run around like hooligans. I don’t meet them. I avoid them.”

I wanted to add that if she was so interested in boys, she should go out more. But I bit back my retort because it wasn’t Liesel’s fault that she had weak lungs or phlegmatic bronchial tubes or whatever the current illness might be. Mutti fussed constantly over her, which, in my opinion, did her no good; but the fact remained that my sister was “delicate” and she embraced the condition wholeheartedly.

“I only ask because I’m concerned,” she said. “I don’t mean to pry, but you’ll be thirteen this year, almost a woman, and boys—well, they tend to . . .”

Her voice faded into uncomfortable silence. Retuning the violin, I pondered what she’d said, and more important, what she had not.

Liesel’s experience with the opposite sex mirrored my own. Since our father’s demise, the only man we saw with regularity was our uncle Willi in Berlin. But I didn’t point this out because Liesel and I weren’t close, not as siblings should be. We weren’t antagonistic, either—we shared a bedroom and rarely quarreled—but our temperaments were so disparate that even Mutti remarked on it. Physically, the differences were apparent. Liesel was thin and wan, like a faded lamp under a shade, with our father’s sallow complexion. I’d inherited Mutti’s plump build, her blue eyes, upturned nose, and near-translucent skin that turned as red as a beet if I stayed out in the sun for too long. But our differences ran deeper than that. As I’d grown older, I began to realize that my reticence in public was due to Mutti drilling into me that it was how girls ought to behave. She never had to remind Liesel, to whom it came naturally. Calling attention to herself terrified my sister; it was why she never left home except for our Sunday social calls, trips to the market, and monthly outings to Berlin.

“Are you saying boys might tease me?” I said, with a deliberate lift of
my eyes. She went rigid on her chair, betraying the fact that it was precisely what she was trying to say.

“Do they?” she breathed.

“No. Or at least not that I’ve noticed.” I paused. “Why? Should I—notice, that is?”

“Never.” She was appalled. “If they ever tease you or say something improper, you must ignore them and tell Mutti at once.”

“I will.” I caressed my bow across the strings. “I promise.”

I wasn’t lying. No boy had paid me any mind. But today someone had. And I knew the way she’d made me feel wasn’t something I should admit to.

Your secret is safe with me.

I’d never had a secret before. I intended to keep it.

MUTTI ARRIVED AT PRECISELY FIVE PAST SEVEN
. We’d already cleared the table of Liesel’s study materials and set it with our chipped ceramic dishware, as the Meissen porcelain was reserved for special occasions. I was heating up a pot of
weisse Bohnensuppe,
a white-bean potage I’d prepared the day before. Mutti refused to let the maid do any cooking and had put me in charge of our daily supper. I enjoyed cooking and was better at it than Liesel, who always ended up with a scorched sauce or an underdone roast. Much like playing music, I found a soothing orderliness in following a recipe, from mixing specific ingredients just so to create a desired result. Mutti had trained me herself, but as with everything else, she did not trust anyone’s skills but her own, coming directly to the kitchen with her hat and gloves still on to peer into the pot.

“More salt,” she pronounced. “And reduce the flame. Otherwise, it’ll turn to mush.” Turning away, she went to her bedroom. She emerged minutes later in her housedress and apron, her dark blond hair coiled at the nape of her neck. I’d never seen Mutti with her hair loose, not even when she used the washroom; unbound tresses were not something widows showed, it seemed.

“How was school today?” she asked as she directed me to bring the potage to the table.

“Good,” I replied. She nodded. I wondered whether she’d notice if I told her the school had burned to the ground. I didn’t think so. She made the daily inquiry only because it was the polite thing to do. My answer was superfluous.

We ate in silence, idle conversation discouraged at the table. When I wiped my plate with my bread (I had a hearty appetite), she clucked, “Lena, what did I tell you?” I could have recited her litany by heart: “Girls of good breeding don’t sop up their food like peasants. If you want another helping, ask.”

I never asked. If I did, she’d tell me that girls of good breeding didn’t require second helpings. An uncontrolled appetite displayed a lack of suitable refinement.

We washed the plates and put them away in the cupboard. Before Papa died, this was the hour when we always made ourselves scarce so our parents could retire to the living room, where Mutti would play the fortepiano while he smoked his pipe and sipped an evening
Weinbrand
. But he was gone, and as we were of suitable age, my sister reclined on the sofa as Mutti oversaw my rendition of the Bach sonata.

As always, I was nervous. Mutti might not be experienced with the violin, but she had an unerring ear and I wanted to prove I was practicing every afternoon as instructed. She was not a disciplinarian in the physical sense; she had slapped me only once. I was ten years old and at dance class, where I refused to partner with a boy whose breath stank of onion. I’d never forgotten how she strode across the floor in full view of the other children and their parents to deliver her humiliating blow, along with a stern: “We never display our feelings in public. It’s rude.” I’d taken pains since then to never incite her again. Though she might spare the proverbial rod, her tongue could be just as lacerating, and she had even less patience for sloth than she did for dirt or rudeness. “
Tu etwas
” was her motto: “
Do
something.” We’d learned that idleness was the worst sin of all, one we must avoid at any cost.

I finished the sonata without errors. Mutti leaned back on the bench before the fortepiano. “That was excellent, Lena.” She spoke with an affection she never showed unless I had surpassed her expectations.

Relief filled me. Her praise was so rare, it made me feel as if I’d accomplished a feat.

“You’ve been practicing,” she went on. “It shows. You must continue. It shan’t be long before we must arrange a scholarship audition to the Weimar music conservatory.”

“Yes, Mutti,” I said. The prestigious conservatory in Weimar was her ambition, not mine; she believed my talent could pave the way to a career as a concert soloist and had not solicited my opinion. Girls of good breeding did what their mothers told them to do.

“And you, my dear?” She glanced at Liesel, who had applauded at the end of my performance. “Would you like to play something on the piano for us?”

Apparently, I thought resentfully, my sister’s opinion did matter, for when she demurred, “Forgive me, but I have a headache,” Mutti sighed and closed the lid on the keys. “You must go to bed, then. It’s getting late and we have to rise early tomorrow.”

Earlier than usual? I groaned inside. It meant she had chores we must do before I left for school and she went to work. As I set my violin in its case, I wondered why we kept a maid at all. Between our daily chores and Mutti’s nightly ritual—I could tell she was eager to see us to bed so she could attack the foyer parquet—surely paying a maid was another needless expense.

Then Mutti said, “Before we retire, I have important news.”

I paused in surprise. News?

We waited as she glanced at her chafed hands, which no amount of lotion could relieve, visible proof that Wilhelmina Josephine Felsing, known in the community as the Widow Dietrich, had come down in the world. She still wore her gold wedding band, tight around her swollen knuckle. She fingered it. Something about her gesture made me nervous.

“I am getting married again.”

Liesel sat frozen. Incredulous, I said, “Married? To whom?”

She frowned. As I braced for her retort that children did not question their elders, she replied, “To Herr von Losch. As you know, he is a widower, with no children; after careful consideration, I have decided to accept his proposal.”

“Herr von Losch?” I was aghast. “The man whose house you clean?”

“I do not clean it.” Though she didn’t raise her voice, her tone turned sharp. “I oversee its upkeep. I am his
Haushälterin
. His maids do the cleaning and I supervise. Are you quite finished with your questions, Lena?”

I wasn’t. A hundred more clamored in my mind but all I said was, “Yes, Mutti,” and stepped toward my sister, thinking I had just earned my second slap.

“The wedding will take place next year.” Mutti stood, smoothing her hands over her apron. “I’ve asked for sufficient time to prepare and he has granted it. I want to inform your grandmother and Uncle Willi first of course, as they must give their approval and present me at the altar. That is why we must rise extra early tomorrow. I’ve invited them to visit; before they arrive, we’ve much to do if we’re to set this house in order.”

Unless she intended us to switch out the furniture, I couldn’t see what else needed doing. Every Saturday after market we scrubbed the entire flat, addressing each nook and cranny the maid had neglected. And no matter how much we cleaned, anyone could see that, unlike Oma and Uncle Willi, we lived in a rented flat that, while not mean, was hardly luxurious. But I didn’t dare say another word, too shocked by her unexpected news.