by Naomi Wood
I wanted this to be true, so I let her talk and did not interrupt her.
‘The Survey was meant to get rid of me. The cocaine was meant to split us all apart. Now this! Don’t you see? Every time he’s been in my life he’s tried to ruin what I have. Getting me to England – that’s just the newest stratagem. He wants to ruin what we have, and the way he’ll do that is through you. He’ll make everything rotten between us. He’ll plant suspicion where he can. Making everything obscene. Don’t you know by now, Pauli? Walter König cannot be trusted. Not with secrets; not with our lives; not with anything. Who’s to say Ernst Steiner and his lackeys won’t be waiting at the airport to arrest me? It’s just another treachery, Paul. And that makes it number three. It’s his last move.’
48
Berlin
On the windows the next morning there was a pattern of scalloped ice. I kissed Charlotte, waking her; she told me she loved me, and in her eyes there was something like a promise.
All night Walter’s words had roiled my brain. You must persuade her to go with him. In my dreams I had been again behind the Japanese screen, near the painted woman and sparrow; and there had been Walter, in his dressing gown, shaking, hectoring me for action.
‘Stop worrying, Paul,’ she said. ‘Please. We’ll be fine.’
Soon the sun fell to the bed, a gate of pale orange in which she slept, then, as it rose higher, it lit the tram wires and melted the iced windows. Between us I felt a renewal, and in the hour or so in which we drowsed, I knew it had been a bad idea to see Walter yesterday. Charlotte was right: we had no reason to trust him; his past behaviour had proved this. That this was a final flare in his perversity was entirely credible. He wouldn’t want to see Charlotte happy. He’d want to see us split. When Jenö had proposed the English plan, he’d have thought – even if it was unconsciously – here’s a way to deny her what she has.
Like this I put Walter’s proposal away.
We slept all morning, and I remembered the happiness of that frosted-up weekend, when danger was at the periphery of Berlin, but we were safe together.
Later I brought her coffee and we watched the street. A waiter in a bow tie and waistcoat threw a bucket of water into the stream of a busted pipe. At the cobbler’s a mechanised doll hammered a boot. A woman passed with flowers; a man with an Alsatian. Jets of U-bahn steam. A boy in a sailor’s outfit ran after another kid. ‘He looks like you,’ Charlotte said, and she ran her mouth up my neck. ‘A bit furious.’
Her smell in the morning was always a little rank. ‘You need to have a wash.’ I nudged her away and she laughed.
‘I’m going to the Bauhaus later,’ she said. ‘I hope that’s all right?’
‘It’s fine,’ I said. The boy disappeared around the corner. ‘Were you serious, Charlotte, about having a child?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘If you are. It would be quite fun, wouldn’t it? A mix of me and you. Imagine. A little baby. Ours forever.’
‘Let’s do it. Let’s do it soon,’ I said, as if to say, and not this, not the other thing. Then I closed my hand into a fist. ‘Let’s play. One last time. For old times’ sake.’
‘You don’t have anything in there.’
‘I do. This time it’s an abstraction.’
‘But it has to be here. Materially here,’ she said, and I wondered that she had remembered those words from the River Ilm. ‘That’s the rules of the hiding game.’
‘You’re the sleeper,’ I said.
‘Give me the clues, at least,’ she said, with closed eyes, then opened them once more: ‘Unless it’s just hot air.’
‘All right. Let’s see. Berlin. Family. Impossible-impending-wealth.’
‘Too many words!’
‘The last one was a compound noun.’
‘Is it our life?’
‘Not quite.’ I opened up my fist. ‘Our future.’
‘Impossible wealth!’ she said, kissing me, laughing. ‘What a notion!’
Charlotte went to find her clothes. Maybe it was not so impossible; such wealth. Now that she could use the Bauhaus looms, Charlotte could sell her weaves. Maybe she’d even be able to patent a design, invent fabrics with industrial application, just like she had done with her soundproofing. What had Jenö said, about Otti setting up an adjunct company, one over which she had control? And I could see if Josef needed an assistant. After all, Jenö would soon be gone.
I sat on the bed, wondering what to say next. ‘Kaspar asked if we wanted to go skating,’ I said, making something up. We would need to kill time until Jenö’s flight.
‘Sounds nice. And Irmi too?’
‘Irmi’s not really speaking to me.’
‘Oh.’ Charlotte didn’t ask why. ‘But she loves skating. She always does it with a frown. Very serious, as if she’s Field Marshal von Hindenburg with skates on. You won’t see Walter again, will you?’
‘No.’
‘Because Irmi’s not the only one who’s been in love with you.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Oh, come on. Walter’s always been half in love with you.’
‘Nonsense. It’s only ever been Jenö for him.’
‘That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a little reserve left for you. Why do you think he’s so keen on getting me to England?’ Charlotte laughed; laying out her trousers, shirt, jumper, blazer. There was a sound outside, a truck backfiring. She looked outside: she resembled Irmi, in that moment, her face watchful. ‘Do you think we’re in danger?’
‘No.’
‘And Jenö?’
‘He’s a Master at the Bauhaus. He’s just more exposed than the rest of us, that’s all. Whereas us: we’re nobodies.’
‘I’m a Czechoslovak nobody,’ she said, her expression changing once more. ‘There’s a difference.’
She dressed and then, after breakfast or lunch or whatever it was, I watched her walk down the street in her man’s hat and coat. I should have told her not to wear those clothes. I wondered if she was asking herself why I hadn’t protested as I had done before Irmi’s party. But to do so would have been a sop to Walter’s presentiments about the dangerous city, and, as I have said, I am compromised, and selfish, and almost perverse. Grave errors happened because of me. I prized having her over her own safety. And then she slipped out of sight. This was only the first day I’d have to outwait. Every day at the Bauhaus Jenö would try and persuade her to go. Every evening in Kreuzberg I’d have to persuade her to stay. I simply loved her too much to do the right thing.
49
Berlin
It’s a strange feeling, waiting to see if someone will leave you. Stranger, too, to constantly question whether you should ask them to go. Every evening I waited for Charlotte to come home and tell me she had changed her mind. And every night, after she had not left, after she had not mentioned London or England, Walter’s words turned the nights upside down.
You must persuade her to go.
For though I had managed the first day well enough, I soon learnt that the dark brought a different story. Depending on the time (three in the morning was the worst; my hour of lead) I came to different conclusions about what I should do. Persuade her to go. Persuade her to stay. I thought often of my father’s words from Isaiah: ‘that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good’.
I’d hear the couples come in from the road, and I’d wait for the noises of the elevator, imagining their reflections in the mirrored chamber dashing away from them like fish, and then the laughter in the corridor dispersed them, and the tail-lights of the motorcars rowed the ceiling, and Charlotte slept soundly by my side.
But – it was odd, I knew that even then – as soon as daylight came, the dilemma would disappear. Charlotte would be fine. Nothing would happen to any of us. After a strong coffee, my mind would clear. And the days – it embarrasses me to say this – would even turn out tolerable. I just ignored the question (remarkable that I could suppress it; that this is the way the mind works).
After I kissed Charlotte on her way to the Bauhaus, flinching at the man’s suit which I no longer commented upon, I put myself to work and my mind went to blankness. That week I became like one of Charlotte’s Dessau weaves; a Beinahe Nichts, an Almost Nothing, with the occasional streak of such vibrant anxiety at three in the morning that I wondered I didn’t pull her arm from the joint and drag her to Jenö’s on foot.
But there: the mind of the liar is a spotless place aside from where dreams rise.
I have called myself perverse. I am. It’s my special gift: this knack I have, of lying to myself. In the days I was able to bury the part of me that knew Walter’s words were true. And when it became too much I walked out into the city’s snow and tried to forget.
Porcelain days; porcelain city.
New bodies were fished from the Landwehr that week. More snow came. A Star of David was painted on Rosenberg’s shopfront. We saw our friends, and walked Berlin, Charlotte wove at the Bauhaus, I painted (my overabundance; it was almost pathological).
We even went to the theatre. Dacia had come across tickets to see a Russian ballerina who’d come to dance for the St Petersburg émigrés. Charlotte wore a dress, possibly the most feminine thing I’d seen her in in a long while. It gave her skin a bluish note; like a painted woman in a Sargent or a Hammershøi. Before the show we found Dacia and Kaspar, who was smoking a clove cigarette in the foyer.
Charlotte told him about Jenö’s offer of London, and a seat for her on the plane. ‘He’s such a worrier!’ Kaspar said, pushing the cigarette’s spiced cloud away. ‘Always overreacting!’ he said. ‘Think nothing of it. You stay here with us. You can’t go to London. What would you do in London without us?’
‘Marry an aristocrat?’ Dacia said.
Kaspar shot her a look. ‘That’s not helpful.’
I squeezed Charlotte’s hand. Still she looked worried.
The theatre inside was golden. Charlotte kept on checking the entrances, and I wondered who she thought would join us. The government box was so far empty.
‘Will you come to the Bauhaus tomorrow?’ she whispered as the curtains opened. ‘I want to show you something.’
‘What is it?’
‘A secret.’
I couldn’t bear the idea of any more secrets. ‘Tell me now,’ I whispered.
‘No, you’ll just have to wait.’ She put her hand in mine before the applause took it away.
Charlotte concentrated hard, watching the ballerina’s dance as if it were a code which would tell her what to do. Notes from the violins filled the hall, wantonly rich. Tears magnified her eyes, then they fell away. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her cry.
All of this; what to make of all of this.
She is wavering, I thought. She is taking Jenö’s proposal seriously.
The Russian danced alone, in dance upon dance, and the spectacle looked punishing, as if she was on the very edge of falling.
The next day we walked some of the way to Steglitz through the frozen park. Because of the grit to melt the snow, there was a reddish powder on many of the roads, and it made the city look built on sand.
The Bauhaus looked different from last week: the brickwork a shade lighter. ‘There’s still telephone cradles and candlesticks upstairs,’ she said. ‘Bits of dials and Formica too. Whenever you find something it has to go straight to the foundation class. Josef’s very strict.’
By the entrance the sign squeaked against the wall: the type so rational it might have been designed by Franz Ehrlich himself.
Charlotte must have sensed my hesitation. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘He’s not here.’
As soon as she opened the door the smell took me back to a decade before: solvents, glue, the marzipan of the Wood Workshop, the minerality of Metal; and then there was that drilling sound, which never did seem to have a source, but was always there. Just like Dessau, there were students and Masters in white coats. ‘So this is where you’ve been hiding yourself.’
‘In amongst the looms. Come on. Upstairs.’
In the Weaving Workshop there were women working the machines, feet pumping the pedals. I recognised none of them. They were students, and to them Dessau – let alone Weimar – was nothing but long-gone history.
As we came in, other women filed out. ‘Hi, Lotti.’
‘Do you want lunch?’ another asked.
Charlotte said no: she was hosting a private exhibition.
‘Lotti?’ I said.
‘It’s their pet name. They won’t stop, though I’ve told them I don’t like it.’
There were balls of wool on the tables, and five or six looms. I knew these were the cheaper versions. Probably the Director had struggled to acquire even these. ‘Is Anni around?’
‘I think she’s teaching.’
Just then Otti Berger, dressed in all black, appeared in the doorway. She hardly blinked; it was as if I’d seen her days ago rather than years. ‘Paul Beckermann. I wondered when you’d grace us with your presence.’
‘I heard you were still lurking around,’ I said.
She looked the same. Like Charlotte, she was dressed in trousers and a shirt. I kissed her on the cheek. Her hair was streaked with grey but her eyes were lively and mocking. ‘I’ve got my own studio. But occasionally I learn something new at the Bauhaus. Or they learn something from me.’
Otti pulled me over to her loom. She talked about her new work using the language of photography – lights, shades, exposures. One might have thought it was typical Otti, inflating her understanding of the world, but it was also clever: dress the feminine form in masculine language, and people started to listen.
‘And what are your plans for the great exodus?’ she said, as if all talk always returned to this. She rolled another cigarette, forgetting about the one she had tucked behind her ear.
‘We’re staying,’ I said, the words coming out unevenly. I took the cigarette from her ear to show her. ‘At least for now.’
Otti smoked the new one instead. I pocketed the old one, and she showed me all her teeth. ‘Good for you. I’m off to England.’
‘With who?’ said Charlotte, surprise in her voice.
‘Myself. I’m saving up. The hard of hearing are all the rage in England. Lilly’s put me in touch with a Weavers’ Guild in Norwich. I’ll be like an exiled Walloon.’
Perhaps the thing about Otti was that she did actually know an awful lot. I had no idea who the Walloons were, but maybe they had been Master Weavers in Norwich. Otti said she had to go – she had a meeting with the Director and couldn’t be late. ‘He’s annoyed because I’ve got the patents on my fabrics. Nota bene, Charlotte dearest. Irritate the Director and you know you’ve done something right.’
Otti squeezed my hand, and we arranged to meet at Aschinger’s the following week. All this planning was good for us. It showed Charlotte our rootedness. The ballet with Kaspar. Ice-skating this Sunday. Aschinger’s the week after. It was our life that was here. Our life.
When Otti left, Charlotte rolled her eyes. ‘You just can’t stop flirting with each other, can you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Otti may be hard of hearing, but I’m not.’
‘Why is it you think everyone’s suddenly in love with me?’
‘Do you want to see what I’ve brought you here for? It wasn’t just to have Otti Berger blowing smoke in our mugs.’
Charlotte opened a big metal cabinet. Inside, there were hessian sacks pegged to the hangers. On the rough cloth of the first she had stitched her name in yellow thread: Charlotte F. ‘Here it is,’ she said. She was watching my face for a reaction, then she unsacked the weave and laid it on the desk. ‘Here it is.’
Charlotte’s weave streamed with colour: cadmium, yolk, mustard, but there were reds, too, pinks and oranges. The shapes were cut as if with a razor; in its geometry it was not unlike her Dessau work, but this weave was only heat: roads and roads of sunshine. ‘Oh, Charlotte,’ I said, ‘it’s beautiful.
’ Itten’s promise had been fulfilled: Charlotte had finally seen her Jerusalem of colour.
50
Berlin
Later, as I neared Steglitz station, I heard my name called. It was a man’s voice and my heart dropped. I quickened my step. Inside the station I heard a train pulling in. I raced to the platform and stepped into the carriage as the door closed. An echo of my name from the concourse: ‘Paul! Wait!’
The Bavarian accent had been unmistakable.
At Kreuzberg, Jenö was nowhere to be seen. But no sooner was I home than the internal telephone trilled. ‘You have a visitor,’ said Mr Schmidt. The porter’s tone was warm, even excited, as if he hadn’t realised I’d kept friends as handsome as Jenö Fiedler.
I thought about telling the porter I was busy, but I also didn’t want our resident snoop to think there was any funny business. I told him to invite Jenö up.
I looked around the apartment. I had a premonition that as soon as Jenö left, the apartment would be irreversibly changed; that I was seeing it in its innocence for the last time. It was one thing to dismiss Walter’s words; it was another to hear them from Jenö.
Knock, knock.
In the doorway Jenö’s eyes were silky and the tendons in his neck stood out. ‘Paul.’ He looked into the apartment, though he must have known Charlotte was at the Bauhaus.
Cornered, I told him to come in.
He asked for a glass of water. I asked him if he wanted something stronger and when he said yes I realised he was as nervous as I was. I poured myself a schnapps and drank all of it.
In the living room Jenö took his drink but didn’t have any. I thought he’d start with other business, or some other cooked-up politeness as to why he’d followed me, but he didn’t. ‘Walter says you’re immovable. He says you won’t do it.’
‘That’s right. I won’t.’
Jenö looked away but didn’t say anything else.
‘You’re panicking,’ I said, sounding calmer than I felt. ‘It’s understandable. It’s all deeply unpleasant. But soon there’ll be a new election, and a new chancellor. And a month after that, there’ll be more elections, and another chancellor. Money will go crazy. People will lose their jobs. Then things will go back to normal. Remember Weimar: these things even out.’