The Girl Behind The Curtain (Hidden Women) (21 page)

Otto seems to be unusually upset about the whole thing. I tried to make him feel better as best I could. I asked him to sing for me, since singing usually brings him out of himself. When he said that he didn’t feel like it, I sang for him instead. I sang ‘The Song is Ended’. Our song. Otto clutched my hand. He asked me if I had heard anything from my parents. We need to get married as quickly as possible, he says, so that he can take care of me properly. I told him I had still heard nothing but it didn’t matter.

‘Tonight,’ I said. ‘Let me take care of you.’

I ran a bath for him in the shared bathroom on my hotel floor. I put a notice on the door to make sure that nobody burst in on us, though from the smell of the hotel’s other residents, I doubt some of them even know there is a bathroom here.

While Otto sat in the bath, I soaped his back as though he were a small child. The feel of his smooth skin sliding beneath my fingers was as soothing to me as I hoped it felt to him. I traced the muscles of his chest with a sponge. I brought a flannel right up between his legs. It took a moment, but at last he began to stiffen as my ministrations crowded out his worries.

‘Isn’t that better?’ I said.

Otto agreed. ‘With you, I can forget the outside world.’

After a while, I took off my slip and climbed into the warm water with him. The bath was small, but it was just big enough for the two of us, if I sat on top of him. Otto rubbed the soap between his hands and applied the suds to my breasts, paying extra attention to my longing nipples.

‘You would make a beautiful mermaid,’ he said.

‘Perhaps I will incorporate that into my next act,’ I told him.

‘I don’t think I want anyone to see you wet except me. You’re too enticing.’ He reached up to kiss me.

I moved myself into position above him and sank down slowly upon his cock. Otto closed his eyes in utter bliss. Carefully, I slid up and down his manly length. I put my hands on his chest to steady myself and teased him with my undulations. Otto put his hands on my waist to help me move but I would not let him set the pace.

‘You’re driving me crazy,’ he said, as I refused to speed up.

‘I want this to last for ever,’ I told him. ‘Or at least until the water goes cold.’

Eventually, I was starting to be almost as frustrated as he was. I could feel my own ecstasy building within me. At first it was just a tingle in my most intimate place but soon it was an itch that must be scratched. I began to move more quickly, like a rider taking a horse from canter to gallop. I braced myself with my hands on the side of the bath. I moved faster and faster, taking my cue from Otto’s face.

‘Don’t stop,’ he said. ‘Don’t stop! Don’t stop!’

1st March 1933

This morning Enno complained that someone caused a flood in the third-floor bathroom.

8th March 1933

Dear Diary,

Another terrible thing has happened. Marlene did not come to the club last night. We joked backstage that she had likely found herself a handsome man who was keeping her busy in the bedroom. The truth was much less pleasant.

After the club closed, Isadora decided he would drop in on Marlene at home. Just to check that she wasn’t laid up with the flu, which has been going around. Both Schluter and Old Hans have been laid low. When Isadora knocked on the door at Marlene’s place, there was no answer, but as he left the building, he looked up at Marlene’s window and saw the curtains move, proving that his instinct was right. She was in.

‘Hey!’ Isadora called up at the window and threw a small stone against the glass for good measure. Marlene opened the curtains just a crack and gave Isadora notice, by subtle hand signals, that he should come up to the door again. Just as Isadora was about to knock a second time, Marlene opened the door and yanked the boy inside by his collar.

‘It was a terrible sight,’ Isadora told us this morning.

Marlene had spent the day in bed all right, but not because she’d met a man or been laid low by flu. On her way home from the club two nights ago, she was approached by a handsome young buck who asked her whether he hadn’t just seen her on stage at the Boom Boom. Marlene was so taken by the fact that such a good-looking fellow would choose to talk to her that she confirmed she was indeed Marlene of Boom Boom fame. The young man asked if he could walk with her awhile. When he suggested that he and Marlene step into the park for ‘some action’, Marlene thought that her luck was in. That couldn’t have been further from the truth.

As soon as Marlene and her beau were inside the park the mood changed. Her pretty young man was joined by his friends. All of them youthful and handsome. None of them wanting sex with a transvestite. They were out for a fight. They kicked Marlene to within an inch of her life. They broke her nose and one of her cheekbones. They blacked her beautiful eyes.

‘And when they had finished,’ said Marlene, ‘they stood around me in a circle and clicked their heels.’

We all knew what that meant.

15th March 1933

After we heard about the beating, Schluter sent word to Marlene that she should stay away from the club for as long as she wanted to. He would make sure that her rent was still paid. She needed time to recover and she should take it. But Marlene responded that she would not be cowed by bullies. She was back at the club just this afternoon. When she had her make-up on, the black bruises around her eyes were all but invisible.

When Otto heard the story, he grew graver than I had ever seen him. ‘This is happening more often. It used to be safe here. People used to be open-minded. Nobody cared what their neighbour wanted to do in his spare time so long as it didn’t bother them. It’s the Party that’s behind this, mark my words. The election results have made them cocky.’

Marlene wouldn’t hear it. Didn’t want to.

‘Otto, darling. Picking up the wrong fellow is a hazard of being one of my kind. You’re wrong to imagine that this is a new trend. I should have been more careful. I should never have gone into the park. As if a young bloke like that really wanted to be with an old cow like me.’

‘You’re not an old cow,’ I assured her. ‘You’re beautiful. Even with that black eye.’

Marlene squeezed my hand. She looked so sad and vulnerable. It’s hard to imagine that I ever found her intimidating. She continued to explain that such attacks were part of life for a transvestite. There was nothing political in it. But I felt that she was repeating the story as much to convince herself as the rest of us.

Otto was very serious when he walked me home. He told me he was concerned about me living alone in the hotel.

‘You mustn’t worry,’ I told Otto. ‘I can handle myself.’

‘I saw how well you can handle yourself the first time I met you, remember?’

‘Oh, the boots. Well, I was trying to extricate myself politely. He was old enough to be my grandfather. If he’d carried on licking my feet for much longer, I would have kicked him in the head, have no fear.’

‘It’s not funny, my darling. We need to be more careful. Perhaps you shouldn’t work at the club any more.’

‘And do what instead? My German still isn’t good enough for me to get an office job and you can’t afford to keep me while you’re still studying. Besides, I love being at the club. I would go crazy if I had to be a
hausfrau
.’

‘My mother and sister would keep you company.’

I tried to seem grateful, of course, and told him I thought that would be lovely, but I wanted to be among my friends at the Boom Boom. Now more than ever, actually.

‘Besides,’ I said to Otto, ‘how dangerous can the Party really be? For the most part, the people who trumpet their involvement with Adolf Hitler and his friends seem to be rather inadequate. They are the sort of people who like jobs with plenty of rules. They are unimaginative and angry in a very passive way. Most ordinary folk see the Nazis as ridiculous,’ I said. ‘No one wants Berlin to change.’

Otto told me I am too trusting. He says that the years of hardship have left a nasty streak of anger and envy behind and that Hitler is dangerous because he is promising an easy redistribution of wealth.

‘He is pitting people against each other. He is making people think that the reason why they don’t have what they want is because their neighbours have it instead. Specifically, if their neighbours are Jews.’

‘I don’t believe that people are really taking all that much notice of him.’

But Otto’s right about one thing. You see those horrible armbands much more often now. Apparently the symbol painted on them is called a swastika. Even the way they look is menacing. They remind me of a bandage around a gunshot wound. And they certainly seem to have got their claws into Gerd.

Chapter 28

Berlin, last October

Later on the Sunday afternoon of the conference weekend, I met Nick for coffee and cake before he headed to the airport and thence to Venice. I asked him if he had enjoyed Berlin.

‘Would have been better if I’d spent more time with you,’ he said. ‘But I definitely couldn’t live here. Too many ghosts.’

‘But isn’t that what you once said about Venice? Now there’s a city full of ghosts.’

‘Yeah, but they’re happy ghosts. They’re ghosts that went out on a high. This place is different. It’s sad.’

‘I like it,’ I said.

‘Good job,’ Nick told me. ‘Since you’re staying here. Though you know there’s a position going in our department back in Venice. You’d be a shoo-in. We’d love to have you back. Bea especially.’

‘I’ve only just started here,’ I said. ‘I need to give Germany a chance.’

What I didn’t say was that I also needed to put a great deal of space between Venice and me. It would be a long time before I could even look at a picture of the city without feeling a knife-twist of melancholy in my heart.

Nick didn’t push it. The conversation moved on to the other attendees at the conference: which lectures had been worth seeing and which turned out to be a waste of time. He touched on the subject of Steven. He tried to make his enquiry sound casual but I knew that he was fishing.

‘It was nice to see him,’ I said. ‘Not as hard as I imagined. Perhaps exes can be friends.’

Nick seemed to cheer up at that. All the same, when it was time for him to go, Nick hugged me but didn’t try to kiss me. Instead, he presented his cheek for a kiss, like a reluctant nephew. I responded like a dutiful aunt.

He straightened up and I got ready to wave him off. He was walking towards the taxi rank when he suddenly stopped and doubled back.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe I nearly forgot. I told you I had a reason to see you before I left. Apart from enjoying your company.’

He set his case down on the pavement and opened it up. He hunted around in a pocket in the lid.

‘Bea sent this for you.’

He handed me a Jiffy bag that felt as though it contained a book.

‘She said that I wasn’t to look at it. Feels like a book though. Perhaps it’s an annotated copy of
Fifty Shades of Grey
.’

‘If I’m lucky,’ I said.

Nick took the opportunity to kiss me this time.

I waited until he was gone before I opened up the envelope. I took it back into the café with me and ordered another pot of tea. It was grey outside and the drizzly weather made the café seem especially inviting. Plus, I didn’t think that Bea’s envelope would really contain anything risqué that I should only read in private.

Inside the padded envelope was another envelope. Bea had inserted a handwritten note in between. I pulled it out.

Dear Sarah,

I hope Nick remembers to give this to you! I’m dying to know what’s inside it. Of course, you will trust I haven’t peeked. Having said that, perhaps I should have done. I may well be sending Nick onto the plane with a letter bomb! But I don’t think so. Though this envelope’s contents may be explosive for you in some other sense.

It happened like this. I thought I was being stalked! I had the distinct sense that someone was following me when I left the university the other day. I was not wrong. He pounced as I left the Campo Santa Margherita. It was an elderly chap. He asked me if I was your friend. I told him I might be but why was he asking. He thrust this envelope into my hand and told me you left something behind last time you were at the Palazzo Donato. I was to get it to you. Urgently! But he said I shouldn’t trust it to the ordinary post.

That’s why I’ve sent it with Nick. I hope he doesn’t forget. You know what a dreamer he can be. If he’s standing there in front of you as you read this, at least give him a kiss for his troubles. And make sure you let me know what is inside it! Your friend was so serious when he entrusted me with getting this to you that I’m sure it must contain some hugely precious artefact. If I’ve inadvertently smuggled one of Italy’s greatest treasures out of the country, I shall be most upset!

Lots of love and kisses,