The Extra (14 page)

The very next day when Lilo got on the bus, she went up to Mina.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you your baby’s name.”

A fragile smile began to illuminate her face. “Brynna,” she said softly.

“And is her cough better?”

“Oh, yes! Yes! Much better.”

“Can I have a peek at her?” Lilo asked, since the infant was bundled up.

“Oh, she’s sleeping now. So peacefully, I hate to disturb her.”

“Oh, sure. I understand. But I am so happy that Brynna is feeling better.”

“Thank you,” Mina said. Her eyes suddenly seemed shiny with tears. Lilo couldn’t help but feel better. Little effort had brought so much pleasure to Mina.

As soon as they got to the set, it was announced that the following day they would be leaving for Babelsberg. The numbers of those scheduled for transport to Babelsberg were posted in the cage.

When they disembarked, there was a great rush toward the cage.

“You’re in! You’re in, both of you! And me, too!” Django said, turning to Lilo and her mother. Bluma flung her arms around Lilo.

“Miteinander!”
her mother sobbed in her ear.

Rosa, Unku, and Blanca were also in. In fact most of the prisoners except a few very old ones who rarely came to the set were on the list.

“Are you in?” Lilo said, making her way over to where Mina stood.

“Yes, yes! And so is Brynna. She’ll get to see the big city.”

“All this roaring hasn’t woken her up?”

“No, she’s still sleeping, thank God. Now that the cough is gone, she breathes easier.”

T
hey had left in a caravan. Fourteen vehicles in all. One for the Gypsies, several large trucks for the camera equipment, sets, and costumes, and an open-sided ventilated truck for the horses. Tante Leni rode in a special black sedan with the assistant director, Harald Reinl, and Franz Eichberger.

Lilo sat next to her mother, watching the landscape unfold. It reawakened her dreams of escape. She didn’t want to tell her mother until she was sure her mother was strong enough and she had a plan. They were told that the trip to Babelsberg would take one night and two days. The extras were to sleep in the bus, while the crew and Leni would be put up at a hotel in the town where they planned to stop. No one, of course, had told them which town that would be. There would be stops so they could relieve themselves, but armed guards would accompany them for these necessities. In fact, the number of armed guards had been tripled for the journey.

They had been under way perhaps for three hours when Lilo got the faintest whiff of a disturbing odor. It seemed to be coming from behind her. Had someone had an accident? She dared not turn around. Within a few minutes, though, she sensed that other people were noticing. An
Aufseher
from the front of the bus began to walk down the aisle. He was met by another coming from the rear. They conferred for a few seconds. Then they continued to walk in opposite directions, their nostrils twitching.

Then
“Mein Gott im Himmel!”
one of them roared.
“Es ist ein Kind — ein totes Baby.”

“A dead baby!” Lilo gasped.

“Nein, nein.”
It was a woman’s voice.

The bus slowed down abruptly and pulled to the side of the road. A furor had broken out in the back of the bus. The
Aufseher
came racing forward. He was carrying something. Bluma, who was on the aisle, screamed.

“Mama, what is it?”

“The baby. Mina’s baby.”

A gun went off in the bus.

“
Achtung!
Everyone be quiet. Sit down or be shot.”

“Oh, my God,” Lilo whispered. She was looking out the window. The guard who had raced from the back of the bus was by the side of the road. He wound up his arm in a pitching motion and released. The bundle sailed into the sky, the flawlessly blue sky on this cold winter day. There was another shriek as Mina raced off the bus.
Run, run as fast as you can . . . You’ll never . . .
The crack of several guns, machine guns, rived the air. Everyone was pressed to the windows of the bus. They saw the spasmodic jerks of Mina’s body, which for three seconds looked as if it were dancing as the bullets tore into her. Blood splattered everywhere, and then it was over. The body crumpled on the ground. A stunned silence fell upon the bus.

From the window, Lilo observed some of the other guards and now Leni and Harald striding up the roadside. Leni wore a stylish hat and her fancy alligator boots.

“Don’t look at her,” Bluma rasped. But Lilo could not tear her eyes away from Leni. She was arguing with someone — a guard.

“Are you crazy, Lieutenant?” Leni shrieked. “We don’t have time for such nonsense. I suppose you want to fetch a priest for this burial as well. My allegiance is to the Führer. We have to be in Babelsberg by tomorrow. This film is going over budget already. I shall hold you personally responsible. It is the Third Reich that is financing this. Do you want to explain how we took an extra day here?” The lieutenant was trying to say something, but Lilo couldn’t hear it.

“What do you mean it won’t take a day? I don’t care if it takes a minute. Now, be reasonable, sir. Look.” Leni swept her hand dramatically toward the sky. “Nature is taking care of this already.”

Lilo looked to where Leni was pointing. Three buzzards were carving arcs in the porcelain-blue sky. “God takes care of these things. God is efficient, and so am I!”

She strode away. Several guards came up and kicked Mina’s body into the drainage ditch.

But so far . . . so far from her baby,
Lilo thought, for the baby had been flung into the field.
Miteinander.

Lilo and her mother folded themselves into each other’s arms. Bluma stroked Lilo’s head. How long had the baby been dead? Was she dead when Lilo had asked to see her on the bus? That was yesterday morning, more than twenty-four hours ago. Had she died in the night?
Poor Mina. Poor Brynna.

“Q
uiet on the set! Bring up the wind. Action!” Lilo dug her heels into the flanks of Chico, the horse she had ridden through the archway of the make-believe village of Roccabruna. Everything, though not everyone, had been transported to the Babelsberg studios — horses, the tavern, the scenery flats of the buildings of Roccabruna. If the village of Roccabruna was a fiction, Babelsberg Studios were a fiction upon a fiction. The studio buildings stretched over hundreds of acres. There was not just one counterfeit village but entire cities and mountain ranges that had been created, facades designed and built by the scenery department. Bring up the wind! Bring up the sun! Bring up New York! Paris!
Bring up anything,
Lilo thought,
except the real world.

“Cut!” screamed Leni. Now those small eyes blazed as she walked toward Peter Jacob and Lilo on their horses.

God,
Lilo prayed,
what have I done wrong?
The scene that Lilo had witnessed by the side of the road when Leni had screeched at the guard had convinced Lilo that this woman was completely crazed, perhaps not even human. Somehow the murder had paled next to Leni’s reaction to the guard who had apparently wanted at least the semblance of a decent burial for the woman. But
reaction
seemed like a slight word. It suggested some sort of human response when there was absolutely nothing human about her behavior. Lilo wondered what might have triggered it, for there seemed to be a continuing deterioration of her behavior with frequent outbursts on the set.

“Peter!” Leni hissed. “You can’t ride a horse when you’re hungover! And it’s not just liquor I smell on you”— her voice dropped —“but whores!” The color had drained from her face. The makeup lay eerily on her skin like fresh paint. “You keep to stage left so your shadow falls on the Gypsy girl, understand!”

“Yes, Leni!” She shot him a poisonous look. “I mean, yes, Fräulein Riefenstahl.”

“You don’t know what you mean!” she muttered, and stomped away.

On the fifth take, they got it right.

Life was better in Babelsberg if only because it was warmer. They were kept not in a barn but in an empty soundstage. It was warm, and there were toilets, not latrines, and even two showers. Lilo felt incredibly lucky that the invention of her mother as her good-luck charm had worked so far. She found it amusing how her mother had so completely gotten into the part. Lilo teased her that if this war was ever over, she and Bluma would be riding side by side in Piber on the Lipizzaners. Extras and crew alike seemed more relaxed at Babelsberg. It was more of a community than the farm. It was a real village in the sense of film production. There were entire buildings devoted to stage carpentry. There were kitchens that provided food for the cast and crews of each film under production on a soundstage.

Since they were not as confined as they had been in Krün, the doors with the locks were mostly to keep people out — thieves, of course, for there was so much expensive equipment, but also starry-eyed autograph seekers. The film slaves were always indoors on the soundstage. There was little danger of any of them wandering off, unlike when they were in the countryside. Outside, winter had set in. It was warm inside, and they had hot food. These conditions were as effective as the locks on the doors. Lilo’s thoughts of escape began to dwindle.

Twenty additional Gypsies had been imported from the nearby Marzahn camp as extras. Django was pleased to see an old friend of his, a boy named Erich who was a bit younger and half the size of Django, whom one could not exactly call big.

The years Erich had spent in Marzahn since Django had last seen him had shrunk him from the size of a proper fifteen-year-old to that of a nine- or ten-year-old. Django was determined to fatten him up. It was a lot easier organizing food in Babelsberg, and Django had figured out who might be sympathetic in the kitchens. Bribery, it would seem, was out of the question, as what did any film slave own? What currency did they have to trade? However, Django devised a fictional currency to match the fictional world they lived in. The Gypsies’ roles as extras put them in very close contact with the stars — Bernhard Minetti; Franz, whom there was already buzz about in the nightlife of swanky Berlin cabarets; and Maria Koppehoeffer, who played the wealthy woman the marquis was supposed to marry but did not love.

The men and women who worked in the kitchens and the custodial staff of the buildings rarely got very close to these stars, but they longed for the smallest memento of a star. Any number of discarded handkerchiefs and an occasional autographed picture made their way to the staff. However, the best negotiation that Django ever made was to slip a screenplay written by a kitchen worker into Arnold Fanck’s briefcase. It was one of those rare occasions when the renowned director, who had been fired by Leni, visited the set. Arnold Fanck was one of the most important directors not just in Germany but in all of Europe. His visits to the set had been seldom and only in the company of the chief executive of the studio when certain high-level Nazi Party officials were escorted in for behind-the-scenes glimpses of moviemaking. But on one visit Django had pulled it off with the screenplay. “No guarantee he will love it, but it is in his briefcase. He can’t help but see it.” The kitchen worker and aspiring screenplay writer Dieter was eternally grateful. So this single act more or less opened the kitchen to Django and the rest of the film slaves.