The Extra (9 page)

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen,” Unku whispered.

Lilo, even standing three feet away, felt Unku’s terror.

“Better a whore, I think, than an urchin,” Leni said softly.

“Leni, we need urchins following you around, not whores. You are the idol of the village children.” Harald had come up to her and put his arm around her shoulders. She shook him off.

“Well, make her look younger. Call the hairdresser. Much too much hair. Cut it. It will make her look younger, and sew up the blouse. We don’t need to see her tits.”

From her pocket, she drew out not a chocolate but a small notebook. It was the same notebook Lilo had seen her write in at Maxglan. She now wrote something down in it. When she had finished writing, she looked around at the street urchins, who were all watching her. She smiled slightly, then looked down and wrote something else, closed the notebook, and tucked it into her pocket. The entire operation took no more than thirty seconds, but it was as choreographed as the dance she had performed for the camera.

“M
ama, can you carry a jug on your head?”

“What do you think I am, a peasant?” Bluma was sitting in the barn, playing with one of the barn cat’s kittens.

“Mama!” Lilo rolled her eyes. “It’s only acting.”

“Why would I want to act like a peasant? I am a lace maker.”

Please, please,
Lilo prayed silently.
Don’t be stubborn, Mama.
“Mama, let me explain this carefully.” She crouched down and picked up the kitty, then looked right into her mother’s eyes. “Django says —”

“Django says.” Her mother spoke scornfully. “Django says this. Django says that. You believe everything that boy says.” Lilo felt a mixture of embarrassment and anger.

“No, not really. I can think for myself. So forget what Django says, then. But I do know that if you don’t work here, if they can’t find a part for you as an extra, you go back.” She let the words sink in. They caught Bluma’s attention. “Back to Maxglan, or east, Mama,” she whispered.

Bluma rose slowly. There was an empty bucket nearby. She bent over and picked it up. She put it on her head and walked three steps. “If I can walk with a bucket on my head, I can walk with a jug. Of course, silly girl.”

Lilo clapped her hands. “Oh, Mama!” She squealed happily.

Bluma took the bucket off just as Unku walked by.

“What happened to you?” Bluma asked. But Unku kept walking sullenly and did not answer. “What happened to her, Lilo?” Bluma whispered.

“Fräulein Riefenstahl made the hairdressers chop off most of her hair to make her look younger.”

“Heh!” This was the distinctive snort her mother gave when she was scornful of something.

“Younger? She just didn’t want anyone prettier. The woman is vain. And what’s more, she’s dangerous. I saw it from the first step she took through the mud at Maxglan. I know vain women. Remember, I work in fashion. Unku was too pretty.” She paused. “And you know what else?”

“What else, Mama?”

“This isn’t Hollywood, and we’re not extras. They lock the barn, remember? We bathe in the cow barn and go to latrines. We sit on rough boards to do our business. You think Gary Cooper did this or Marlene Dietrich when they were making
Morocco
? We’re film slaves.” She paused, and her face became still. “But I’ll carry the jug.”

Lilo knew that her mother was right. She was a quick study. She hadn’t seen Leni Riefenstahl for more than a couple of minutes back at Maxglan, but she had summed her up. Her body might be failing, but Bluma Friwald’s mind was sharp as ever. Lilo found this heartening.

“You be careful of that woman, Lilo. She cut the pretty Roma girl’s hair. She could do a lot worse, I bet.”

Lilo thought of the notebook but decided not to tell her mother.

“Don’t worry, Mama. I’m not pretty enough.”

Bluma looked at her daughter with an inscrutable expression clouding her eyes. She pressed her mouth together, and the corners tipped down. Her mother almost never cried, but she looked like she was about to now. Why was she looking at her in this way? What did she see? Lilo always knew she wasn’t ugly, but she had just missed being pretty. Her nose was too long, her eyes too big for her narrow face. Her chin sharp and her eyebrows so thick they reminded her of woolly caterpillars. Her hair had never been as lustrous and thick as Unku’s, and now an ugly reddish cast had crept into it, which her mother had told her came from hunger and no decent food. Indeed she had noticed it in some other prisoners’ hair.

At that moment, Django came along. Bluma put the bucket back on her head. “Will this do, Django?”

His face lit up. “It certainly will, Frau Friwald!” He held a thick packet in his hand. It was the shooting script for the film. He had “organized” it.

That evening over a bowl of potato soup, which actually had some meat in it, Django and Lilo and Rosa studied the shooting script. Not of course before Django launched into how terrible the music was in the tavern scene.

“It was a record they were playing, not live music. The guitarist just had to fake the fingering,” Lilo said. “I saw it, behind a curtain.”

“His fingering was all wrong, and the music they chose was ridiculous. They should have me holding the guitar and not the accordion. Besides, I wasn’t in one shot with the stupid accordion. I could show them a thing or two about real Spanish music,” Django said. It was one of the few times Lilo had ever heard him really angry.

“Enough of your music review. Tell us about the film. What’s the script like?” Rosa said, tucking a short strand of hair behind her ear. Lilo flinched when she saw some of the hair simply fall out, but Rosa didn’t seem to notice. She had once been a very pretty girl. She had a straight little nose and high cheekbones and blue eyes.

“First off, I discovered that this film is not just
one
of the most expensive but
the
most expensive film ever to be made in Germany. I heard them talking. She — Tante Leni —”

“Are we really going to call her that?” Rosa asked.

“I don’t think we have a choice,” Lilo replied, and fingered her chocolate, which she had somehow resisted eating and planned to share with her mother before bed.

“She was given fifty thousand reichsmarks for just this part here in Krün, and it’s only, as they say, the tip of the iceberg,” Django said.

“Who’s paying for this?” Lilo asked.

He opened the script to the inside cover. “See that stamp?” The girls bent close to look at it.

“The Reich Film Department,” Rosa whispered.

“Yes, Hitler, the Third Reich, is footing the bill here.”

Lilo and Rosa both sat back. It all seemed very confusing.

“Why should the government pay for it?” Lilo asked.

Django sighed. “She’s a charmer, that one. She’s obviously charmed the Führer.”

All Lilo could think of when Django said the word
charmer
was
snake.
Tante Leni was both the snake and the charmer. In her mind’s eye, she saw Fräulein Riefenstahl writhing up from a conjurer’s basket with her glittering beady eyes.

“What do you think that notebook is that she always carries?” Lilo asked.

Django shrugged. For once he didn’t have an answer.

“Django, tell us the story of the movie,” Rosa said.

“All right. The scenes with the red marks by them have already been shot, and you can see that they don’t go in order at all. They haven’t even filmed the opening scene. They have to go to the Dolomites for that. The hero, Pedro, kills a wolf.”

“A wolf!” Lilo exclaimed.

“Yeah, a wolf. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing . . . nothing at all,” Lilo said. “Go on.”

“The wolf is threatening the shepherd’s flock of sheep — well, actually they’re the marquis’s sheep. The shepherd works for the nobleman. And there’s a knife scene toward the end where Pedro kills the marquis.”

Rosa laughed. “Oh, thanks for spoiling the ending for us.”

“I’m confused,” Lilo said. “The ending can’t spoil anything if you don’t know the story. Tell us the story. And begin at the beginning. Why are they calling it
Tiefland
?”

“All right. Here it is: First,
Tiefland
means lowlands. There are problems in Roccabruna, which is in the lowlands. There’s not enough water. The greedy marquis, Don Sebastian, owns prize bulls. He gets the stream diverted so he can water his bulls. The farmers, therefore, don’t have enough water. No water means no crops. And no crops means no money. Farmers can’t pay the rent to their lord and master, Don Sebastian. Pedro is a shepherd for the Don’s goats or sheep or whatever grazes up there. Now, you have to understand that lowlands doesn’t just mean low in the geographic way. No, it’s a symbol.” He pulled his mouth down in a sarcastic grimace. “This is fancy literature, I guess. It means low-down, bad people. And in case the audience misses the symbolism, someone warns Pedro, “Don’t go to the lowlands, Pedro. The devil lives there.”

“Okay, we get it,” Rosa said. “On with the plot.”

“I know what’s going to happen, Django doesn’t need to tell us,” Lilo said confidently while scraping up the last dregs from the soup bowl with her fingers. “Pedro and Don Sebastian both fall in love with Martha. Pedro wins. The good guy always wins. That’s what happens in the end with the knife fight, right?” Everyone fell silent as soon as Lilo said this. But now she felt foolish, because she knew that it was not that the script was so simple but that life was more complicated.

The good guys didn’t always win. Django, Rosa, Lilo, and Bluma had lost in every battle so far. This was proof enough that the bad guys had already won over and over again. When there were no more people to be killed, maybe that’s when Hitler would lose.

Django broke the silence. “Yeah. You’ve got it, Lilo. Simple.” That one word cut deeply. It was the only time he had ever betrayed any contempt. That she should have provoked it felt horrible.

She sighed. “How’s Unku doing?”

Both Rosa and Django shrugged.

“I think I’ll go see her,” she said suddenly, and jumped up to leave. Django reached out and brushed her hand softly. He was saying he was sorry — she knew it. Her eyes filled, but she was still ashamed.

“Unku?” she called softly when she reached the top rung of the ladder to the hayloft where Unku slept. “Unku?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s me, Lilo.” She scrambled up over to the loft window, where Unku had made her pallet with the blankets.

“Don’t say it doesn’t look so bad, please.”

“It looks terrible.”

Unku laughed. “Good, at least you’re honest.” She raised her hand to her head and rubbed it. “Look — I even have a bald patch.” She tipped her head forward, and indeed, there was a spot the size of a five-reichsmark coin.

“They made that with scissors?”

“Oh, no. Fräulein Riefenstahl herself took the razor and very carefully shaved that.” Unku paused. “She’s very careful about details.” There was something in the way Unku said these last words that made Lilo’s heart almost stop.

“Details,” she whispered.

“Yes, details. Did you see that notebook she took out and wrote in?”

“Yes,” Lilo said.

“Did you wonder what she wrote down?”

“Sort of?” Lilo lied.

“I think she wrote something about me. She took it out again just after she cut my hair, and asked my name again.”

“She did?”

Unku nodded solemnly, tears beginning to run down her cheeks.

Lilo didn’t know what to say. “Unku, your hair will grow back.” As soon as the words were out, she knew it was the stupidest thing in the world to say.

Unku looked at her. Her eyes were seething with anger now and not tears. “It’s not my hair, you fool! It’s everything. My mama, my papa, my older sister, my only brother. I can’t grow
them
back again. They take everything! Everything, Lilo. Even your mother’s insides.”

Lilo was not sure how long she had been sleeping when she heard a whimpering in the night. She opened her eyes and listened carefully. It wasn’t Unku. It sounded too young, but not a baby. Or rather not the baby — the little girl who had cried most of the night before but had at last gone to sleep this evening. A child? She got up from the hay and went to investigate.

At first she thought it was just a pile of dirty old blankets stuffed in what looked like a feeding trough, but as she approached, she saw something stir under the blankets. Bending over, she lifted a corner of the coverings. It was the small boy, Otto. He was sobbing in his sleep. She put a hand on his heaving shoulder and patted him gently. This seemed to wake him.

“Bad dream?” she asked.

“Oh, no. Good dream about my mother.” He rubbed his eyes, looked at her, and then sat up in the trough. He was so small. Probably not bigger than the calves or lambs that might eat from the trough. He looked around. “This is the bad dream,” he said.

She looked at him. What was it about the youngest boys that they all looked like little old men — wizened before their time?

“Your name is Otto, right?”

He nodded. “Otto Kunz. My mother is Frieda Kunz.”

He paused and then added in a barely audible whisper, “But she’s not here.”