Marlene (21 page)

I was taken aback by Rudi’s suggestion, after all his declarations about propriety and respectability. Though everything in Berlin was upside down, with people doing whatever they must to survive, the arrangement was hardly orthodox. A husband caring for a baby was not the norm, regardless of how terrible one’s finances might be.

“Are you certain?” I said. “It’ll seem very unusual.”

“You have this picture,” he replied. “I don’t. Your mother is tired and Heidede needs one of us here. It might seem unusual, but it’s all we can do for now. After you finish shooting, you stay home and I’ll start looking for another job.”

If he was fine with it, I wasn’t going to complain. I was starting to feel smothered, much as I loved my daughter, bored with diapers and snatching naps whenever I could. I was exhausted; I needed to get back to work to save my own sanity. I had to have more in my life.

Mutti was not pleased. “Men don’t know the first thing about rearing a baby,” she said when I informed her. “Let him go out and earn a living. He’s the man, not you. Men are supposed to support their families. You’ll make him feel like a failure. I thought this nonsense of becoming an actress was over. You have a child. Do you want her to grow up without a mother?”

I sighed. We had come full circle. “We need money. We need it for our child. She can’t live on pride alone. We still need to eat and pay our rent.”

Mutti pursed her lips. Despite Rudi’s assurances that he’d be fine, she scaled back her own work to help him in the mornings. I would have to make up the difference in her pay.

My role of Micheline in a picture bankrolled by the UFA and directed by the renowned Arthur Robison, with Lya de Putti, Berlin’s reigning queen, in the lead, was certain to garner notice. I felt rusty, uncertain after more than a year away from acting. My first day at the Babelsberg Studio did not go well. I missed my mark several times and fumbled my lines, requiring retakes for which Robison lambasted me.

“You have one week to prepare,” he threatened. “One week off to learn your lines and get this part right. If you don’t return ready to work, don’t return at all.”

To distract me, Leni arranged a night out to the kinos, bringing along a new Chinese-American actress-acquaintance of hers, Anna May Wong, who’d recently arrived in Berlin and caused a sensation. Slithering to our seats in our gamine apparel, me in a tweed suit of Rudi’s that I’d altered and paired with a bowler hat, Leni in trousers with suspenders over a vest, and Anna May in a slinky kimonolike garment that revealed plenty of thigh, we had the other patrons eyeing us in lustful admiration or intolerant condemnation.

But everything around me faded as the film began.
The Joyless Street,
directed by G. W. Pabst, starred a new revelation—the Swedish actress Greta Garbo. In a doleful plot about murder and greed in postwar Vienna, Garbo played a devoted daughter whose decision to take in a lodger leads to romance with an American lieutenant. Critics either eulogized or panned the picture, but all were unanimous in praise of Garbo. On the stage, she
couldn’t have gotten away with such enigmatic complexity, but the camera revered her, enhancing her poise, the translucence of her skin, and the flame in her pale eyes. Without doing much of anything, she conveyed a passion far more persuasive than mere dramatics; she had me, and everyone else, swooning in our seats.

I left the kinos in a daze, barely hearing Anna May as she told Leni, “She’s already left for Hollywood. Louis B. Mayer attended the premiere of this film with the sole purpose of getting her under contract. He’s announced that MGM will make her a worldwide sensation.”

Anna May turned to me. “Marlene, did you hear? One picture. Garbo has become famous with one role. And you look a little like her, doesn’t she, Leni? Those same hooded eyes and that beautiful white skin. Lighten your hair and you could be her sister.”

I didn’t think I looked anything like that sphinx who had just devastated me with her beauty. Neither did Leni, who said tersely, “I suppose there is a slight resemblance.”

Anna May’s eyes gleamed. “I’ve heard that our new star prefers violets, too.”

“Violets?” I’d never heard the term before. In delight, Anna May explained it to me. “French gourmands and certain women covet the petals as a delicacy. Do you understand?”

I went still, feeling Leni’s stare as Anna May used her fingernail to wipe a clot of lipstick from the corner of my mouth. “All the girls know it. Fräulein Garbo prefers to dive.”

With a smile, I hooked my arms between theirs and refrained from commenting on this lurid tidbit. But the next day, I invited Anna May to lunch, plying her with questions about Garbo’s technique as well as Anna May’s own experiences in Hollywood—she’d made twenty-three films there, playing secondary roles, before coming to Berlin to increase her visibility—until she took my hand and said, “Marlene, you can’t possibly be so blind. You walk around like you own the world yet fail to see what’s in front of you. Leni sees it, though. She’s so envious of you, she can barely stand it.”

“Envious? Of me?” I started to laugh. “Don’t be absurd. Leni knows everyone.”

Anna May tightened her fingers on mine. “She may know everyone but she’ll never amount to anything unless she gets it on her back. You can act and sing; you trained at the Reinhardt academy. She is obsessed with you. She wants to
be
you.”

I sobered at once, recalling my broken friendship with Camilla. We’d not spoken again since Rudi, though I had once run into her at a nightclub. She was having some success lately in pictures herself, and she turned her back to me, refusing to even acknowledge my presence.

“Everyone thinks Garbo is a great actress,” Anna May said, “but she’s not. She simply knows that what she implies but doesn’t reveal gets our attention. That is her gift. You have it, too. You just need to perfect it.”

After lunch, I invited her to bed. My return to the world had woken me to everything I had missed; I found her sensual, attentive, and she returned my interest. She didn’t expect more; like me, she wasn’t looking for any permanency. “I’m not sure how long I’ll stay in Berlin,” she said. “But while I’m here, you’re always welcome, Marlene.”

Our afternoon of sex and advice changed me. On my way home, I submerged my guilt over being unfaithful to Rudi by pondering my career. Was I trying too much to prove myself? Perhaps I didn’t need to. Perhaps all I needed to do was cultivate a magnificent indifference like Garbo. If she had become a star, why shouldn’t I do the same?

I decided not to play Micheline as a flirt, but rather as a world-weary schemer. Rudi wasn’t convinced; he felt it was too understated, but during the shoot, I put my theory to the test. I raised my eyes slowly, at half-mast, as if just awakened from slumber, cultivating an insouciant yawn as a foil to Manon’s hysterics.

My director liked my performance. So did the critics who noticed, calling me “an arresting presence”—which brought offers to appear in a stage production of
Duel on the Lido,
portraying an amoral demimondaine, and as a Parisian playgirl on the make in Alexander Korda’s film satire
A Modern Du Barry
.

Leni bared her teeth. “Are you sure you’re not putting out, darling? Because you seem to be working far more than a girl who doesn’t put out should.”

I shrugged. I liked that she didn’t know. If I had her guessing, I could make others do the same, including the public who saw me on-screen and on the stage.

My career was finally on the rise. At home, Rudi and I had to face it. He couldn’t look for another permanent job until our child was older. He could take occasional work when I was available, but one of us had to be with Heidede.

He finally revealed what must have been gnawing at him all along, abetted no doubt by Mutti. “You don’t want to stop working, do you? Our life together is not enough for you.”

We sat at the table, having finished our dinner. I still tried to cook for him every night, as busy as I was, either on the set or the stage or racing between casting calls.

I lit a cigarette. “No,” I admitted, “it’s not. I want our life. But I want a career, too.”

“And what about me? Am I supposed to give up my career? Imagine how it looks: I am your husband. I should be providing for you and our daughter.”

“Does it matter who provides, as long as one of us does? I have work now. Rudi, you know that if I don’t take opportunities when they come, there won’t be any more.”

“In other words, your career is more important,” he retorted, but he didn’t sound convincing, as though he were mouthing words he believed were the right ones to say.

“I’m telling you what I want,” I replied. “Now, tell me what you want.”

“I don’t know what I want.” He tossed his napkin on the table. “Right now, I want to take a walk.” He threw on his coat and left. After washing up, I spent time with Heidede until I heard his key in the door. He came into our bedroom, where we’d set up her bassinet. “Very well,” he said. “But if you don’t succeed, promise me you’ll give it up. I know you want this, and I want you to have it, but I won’t be made a fool.”

“I promise,” I told him.

Thus, it was established. Following work and suppers at home to save my marks, evenings were taken up imbibing cocktails, attending the latest hit play or revue, followed by the cabarets. I tried to be seen wherever I could make an impact and make contacts, finagling my way even into the exclusive El Dorado nightclub to see Josephine Baker stage an impromptu act from her box-office-shattering
La Revue Nègre,
frolicking on tabletops in her strings of pearls and nothing else. Sleek as a panther and as gutsy as an empress, she inspired me, particularly when she sauntered among the gaping patrons singing her signature “I’ve Found a New Baby.”

I kept up my socializing with Leni and Anna May, and Leni must have sensed the intimacy between Anna and me, for she began to openly vie for attention, emulating whatever outrageous outfit I happened to wear, until I found myself purloining one-of-a-kind items from wardrobe departments to disconcert her, such as a shaggy wolf pelt I paired with a lacy blouse, baggy sailor pants, and military boots. Leni promptly went and found herself a mottled tiger skin that she donned as a cape.

“She’s absurd,” laughed Anna May as we sprawled on her bed in her little flat close to the Kochstrasse, where we met once or twice a week. “Did you see her last night? She kept dragging that poor tiger skin around like she was on safari. If you ever show up naked with a feathered fan à la Baker, there will be Leni in all her glory behind you.”

I lit a cigarette, inhaling first before putting it to her lips. “Speaking of La Baker, what do you think about starting our own act? We’d have fun and earn some money while we’re at it.”

She slid her eyes at me. “An act? Such as . . . ?”

“How about singing? We can call ourselves Sisters About Town, find bookings on the Nollendorfplatz. Not in the nice cabarets of course,” I said. “They’ll never take us—but the others. I’m sure we can do as well as the drag pansies or dildo queens.”

“Especially if we pin violet sachets to our cooches,” said Anna May. “But Leni can’t carry a note to save her life. She’ll be furious if we exclude her.”

“Who says we’ll exclude her? If she can’t sing, she can introduce us and tell dirty jokes.”

Anna May inched her fingers down to my navel. “Not so blind anymore. You’re learning. To oust a rival, make her wilt in your shadow.”

Leni glowered but refused to be left out. I imposed a strict rule: no drugs or drinking. Anna May could control herself, but Leni had a penchant for too much of everything, particularly when in a certain mood. I chose songs by Brecht and had us wear matching tuxedos, only mine was in white broadcloth. At Das Silhouette, the White Rose, Always Faithful, and other cabarets, we booked our act whenever we weren’t working elsewhere, Leni warming up the crowd with a risqué comedic routine before Anna May and I took to the spotlight, her sultry voice accompanying me as I sang before an enraptured audience of rouged boys, gaudy transvestites, and besotted lesbians, smoking my lyrics as I did my copious cigarettes.

The transvestites adored me. I was besieged for advice on everything from makeup—“Marlene, is this shade of lipstick too garish?”—to accessories: “And these lamé wrist cuffs? Are they too divine or does it look like I lost the matching gloves?” In turn, I learned tricks from them, observing how they exaggerated femininity by cocking a hand higher on the hip to minimize the size of their hands or walked with the pelvis thrust forward to appear more curvaceous and distract the eye from their ropy calves.

My cabaret performances also gave me access to influential people, slumming it on the town. Theater producers often went to the cabarets to find new ideas; decadence was in, and where better to breathe it than the place where it had been born? Like Anna May and Leni, sometimes I took these influential people to bed, though my liaisons were fleeting, and were always designed to ensure that when passion faded, goodwill remained.

Margo Lion, wife of the homosexual producer-writer Marcellus Schiffer and a violet devotee who wore black lipstick and had an alabaster pallor, accosted me after my act; she and her husband wanted to cast me in their new musical revue at the Komödie Theater,
It’s in the Air,
a satirical play about a department store, which mirrored the social upheaval in Germany. I had several numbers, including a song titled “Sisters,” which Margo and
I performed together, two women buying underwear for each other while their boyfriends were away.

“‘Perhaps it sounds pathetic,’” we sang as we pored over panties, bras, and garters, “‘but we find it magnetic. Though our palms and pants get wettest, it is nothing but a fetish.’”

The song’s sapphic tone was blatant and such a hit, audiences demanded encores. My other number involved singing about the joys of kleptomania while dressed in a provocative green gown with a slit up my hip, a drooping fedora, and black gloves with fake diamond bracelets on each wrist. Growling the lyrics “‘We steal as birds do, despite that we are rich, for sexual licks’,” I stood motionless onstage, then took a slow, deliberate walk across the stage, casting detached glances at the audience as if they were objects I might purloin. In a rush, they shot to their feet and bombarded me with applause.