Fraulein M.

by Caroline Woods

  Grete turned away from him, leaving the trash scattered on the ground. She walked toward the alley and did not look back. By the time she reached the apartment, the door to Frau Eisler’s bedroom was closed.

  That night, before Herr Eisler returned, Frau Eisler came to inform Grete that she’d be sleeping in the kitchen. It took her a few days to find a cot. Grete slept on the floor in the meantime and tried not to listen to the argumentative tones coming from their bedroom. The terror and loneliness she felt that first night faded a bit, however, when someone began hiding alphabet game pieces in her blankets. The K, the F, the scharfes S.

  None of the Eislers would look her in the eye after Anita’s visit except Klaus, who encouraged her to attend Hitler Youth meetings for girls, even as his mother began the search for a new maid.

  Berni, 1932-1933

  “And you, Fräulein?” The man cleared his throat. “Er—mein Herr?”

  The faraway sound of Anita’s laughter reached Berni’s ears, and she realized the doctor was talking to her. She tore her eyes from the window. Disrupting what would have been a picturesque view of the Tiergarten were squadrons of Hitler Youths, marching in protest outside the Institute for Sexual Science. Fat, wet, early December snowflakes had been falling for nearly an hour, but that hadn’t stopped them. They were beginning to make loose snowballs and throw them at passersby who wouldn’t take their pamphlets.

  Somewhere in this cruel city, Grete was alone, and Berni could not reach her.

  She looked at the doctor, a nervous man with a thin mustache, parted precisely in the middle just like his hair. In the beginning, when Berni had been in a better mood, she had giggled about him with Anita. He had never addressed Berni directly before.

  “Excuse me, Herr Doktor, I’m not sure I heard you correctly,” said Berni. “Did you just call me mein Herr?”

  “I’ll call you whatever you prefer,” the doctor replied, clearing his throat. “I’ve just finished with your friend for the day. I thought you might answer some questions.”

  Berni tilted her head, puzzled. She had been coming to the institute for over a month as the researchers studied everything they could about Anita, from a handwriting sample to measurements of her skull, trying to decide whether she’d be a good candidate for surgery. It was something Anita wanted so desperately she was willing to ignore what Berni considered the frightening mechanics of the process. Just one year prior, the famed Lili Elbe had died as a result of sex change operations performed at this very institute.

  “Me!” said Berni, laughing. “I am already a woman. I’m here because Anita’s afraid to go past the Nazi pigs by herself.” Initially, Anita had also lured her there with the promise of free contraceptives, but Berni did not even want to think about that anymore. “Oh, and I enjoy your books.” On her lap she held a book on naturopathy and an illustrated volume of erotica, neither of which she’d been able to concentrate on. “Do not waste your time on me, Doctor. I’m normal.”

  She put her head down, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Anita grimace. Then she hid behind her hair, which had finally grown long enough to brush her shoulders. Tossing the red wig aside, she’d debuted her hair triumphantly the week before: shiny, thick, brown. Tucking her real hair behind those ears was, Berni knew, a significant milestone.

  “But of course you are normal,” the doctor told Berni. “Everyone is an intermediate of some kind. No such thing as a ‘full man’ or ‘full woman.’ This is what we have set out to prove, what will help us dispel fear!” He shook his fist. “Without fear, we can change the laws persecuting homosexuals! Now”—he uncapped his pen—“if we could open a file on you, it would add to our research . . .”

  The doctor, Anita, and two busts of Socrates and Sappho in their shelves all watched Berni expectantly. The room with its heavy draperies and plush furniture would have seemed less a hospital than an upscale library, were it not for the cases of wooden phalluses and Japanese sex toys on display along the walls. Berni shut the books on her lap and pushed them away from her. “You don’t understand. I prefer men.” One in particular, she thought with a wince.

  The doctor made a note on his chart. “You are still a variant, Fräulein. Look at what you’re wearing.”

  Berni pulled at the lapels of her secondhand dinner jacket; with it, she wore trousers and shirtsleeves. Her hair was still very short—she liked feeling air tickle the backs of her ears—and she kept it sleekly styled, a tortoiseshell comb peeking out of her breast pocket like a fey young gentleman.

  “These are the clothes I feel comfortable in. Nothing more.”

  “Sartorial habits reflect your inner nature and even your hormonal makeup. People like you are valuable to us—you show the natural variation.” The doctor grinned, showing rodent-like teeth. “All the better if you are a heterosexual.”

  “There is no if. I am. I told you, I’m normal.” Berni began wrapping her scarf around her neck. “And I have somewhere to be.”

  “Let her go,” Anita told the doctor, examining one of her fingernails. “Berni has just experienced heartbreak. She is not quite herself.”

  Berni wanted to argue—heartbreak had nothing to do with it, she was herself, and that was just it, she was normal—but she’d already insulted Anita enough. “I really do have an appointment,” she said quickly when the doctor stopped her to give her a few brochures.

  “The least you can do is hand these out,” he said. “Counteract our friends outside.”

  Berni read the title aloud: “What Must Our Nation Know about the Third Sex?”

  The doctor nodded, stroking his mustache. “We suggest all variants give a copy of this to loved ones so they can understand.”

  A wave of nausea passed over Berni. She had to leave then, right away, with hardly a goodbye for either the doctor or Anita, who looked panicked all of a sudden at the prospect of exiting the institute alone.

  Downstairs, a group of people of indeterminate gender clustered around a string quartet. A plate of cake and fruit sat out on a table in front of a crackling fireplace. Berni’s stomach growled, but she had to keep moving. Outside in the cold, she took long, deep breaths, stinging her throat. The Hitler Youths in the street noticed her, and from the portico she could see their eyes and ears prick up like a pack of guard dogs.

  Give a copy of this to loved ones. That, she realized now, was the problem. That was why she couldn’t answer the doctor’s questions. She didn’t want to be a “variant,” an “intermediate,” a member of “the Third Sex.” She wanted to be the kind of person with whom her sister would feel comfortable again.

  The snow had stopped and was already starting to melt along the edges of the grass. As she approached the protestors, Berni had to remind herself once more: the Nazis had suffered a crippling defeat in the parliamentary elections. Yet here they were, not even a month later, swarming the gate of In den Zelten 10. Boys, she saw as she came closer, they were only boys, with grim little mouths and pockmarks on their cheeks. Still, she felt a pang as she imagined Anita going down this path by herself.

  The tallest among the boys, his face long and pointed as a dachshund’s, stepped in her way. “Fräulein,” he said, sneering openly at her clothes. “Take this.” He pressed something into her hand, laughing to his friends behind him. “The bitch needs it,” she heard him say.

  “Here,” she replied, slapping the Third Sex pamphlet against his chest, startling him so that he had to take it. “It’s a trade.”

  She ignored the torrent of obscenities that followed her, walking with her hands in her pockets past the row of embassies strung along the Tiergarten. Outside, chauffeurs and butlers warmed waiting cars or, for those diplomats who appreciated pomp, fringe-footed draft horses attached to Droschken. She crossed into the park and found the spot where she’d planned to meet Helmut, beside one of the ponds.

  Church bells dinged on the other side of the embassies. He was fifteen minutes late.

  She looked out at the water, o
paque gray and calm. The bare white trees were like veins on the darkening sky. The Nazi flyer, she realized, was still balled up in her hand. Prodded by a sort of masochistic curiosity, she opened it to find a brochure praising the role of the housewife, urging women to leave the public sphere.

  She cannot feel spiritually satisfied if she must divide her attention between her duty to bear children and other distractions: the pursuit of income, political action. The world of the home may seem small and limited, but in it she will be relieved to find her microcosm . . .

  She was illustrated glowingly as an aproned, dimple-elbowed Hausfrau.

  Berni chucked it to the ground, producing a squawk from one of the three swans who dug their beaks through the silt on the bank. Half-buried in the mud was a metal bowl full of swollen kibble. The one who’d honked at her flopped its head upside down.

  Heartbreak. It had been a month since she’d seen Helmut. She’d been to the Eislers’ building the week before, looking not for him, but for Grete. In the alley she found a girl carrying trash down the fire escape, a stringy girl with hair the color of under-ripe rhubarb. She’d admitted she worked for the Eislers, but she claimed to know nothing of Grete.

  Helmut’s wife must have found out about her and sent Grete away. That was the only explanation. Berni didn’t like to blame other women, but hell, in this case, she would blame Gisela Eisler. Helmut had alluded to the fact that his wife was a Hitler supporter.

  “Berni!”

  Goose bumps broke out over her skin when Helmut came close and said her name again: “Berni.” His voice, deep and resonant, made her toes curl in her boots. “I’m so sorry, darling, I was trapped behind a motorcade. Berni, look up. Look at me. Are you all right?”

  “I didn’t ask you here for lovemaking,” she said, watching the muddy pond. “Where’s Grete? Did you fire her?”

  “Berni, look at me.”

  She looked instead at his Adam’s apple, which pulsed apologetically. She pushed him hard on both shoulders. “What have you done with her? Of all times, these . . . where is she?”

  Her eyes stung with tears she thought might freeze. Helmut wiped them with his thumb. His mouth hung open, showing his bottom teeth. At one time she’d loved watching him speak; when he did, only the lower lip moved up and down. She’d liked to chew that lower lip.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know it seems Grete’s been punished for what you and I have done. She’s safe, though, she’s safe. Bernadette—”

  She kissed him. She couldn’t help it. She shut her eyes and let them roll back in her head. His scent enveloped her, divinely familiar. A voice in her head criticized her for letting him overpower her, for falling under a man’s control.

  No—she pressed her mouth to his, so hard she might make his lip bleed. Her own desire, not Helmut, was what mastered her.

  • • •

  The smell of him, the taste of his aftershave, brought her back to a scene not six months earlier, in bed: Helmut playing the glockenspiel of her vertebrae, tapping softly with the tips of his long fingers. “Have I told you, my darling, I played in a festival band. Pretend I’m holding the mallets. Da, da, dum . . .”

  “You’re a musician?” she murmured into her pillow. They’d thrown the windows open to let in the breeze, and the swish of street cleaners’ brushes drifted in. The beginning of the morning’s light touched her ceiling. When she and Helmut were together they did not sleep.

  He turned her over and kissed her, pulling her bare chest to his. “I was, in another life. You’ve made me feel reborn.”

  “Don’t get too sugary with me. I’ll throw you out.”

  “Speaking of sugary.” He went, naked, to the jacket he’d hung on her chair. She admired his long body, even the hollow spot in his left thigh where a bullet had pierced the muscle. He produced a gift: a hat with a glass-eyed bird on it.

  “You silly man!” She flung her arms around his neck, kicking the hatbox off the bed. “Do I look like the kind of girl who wears a hat like this and favors pink ribbon? I’m practically a boy. I don’t know what you see in me at all.”

  “You’re like a great city house.” He draped a piece of her short hair behind her ear. “You’re a big townhouse with all its lights on.”

  “I can’t accept an expensive gift. No matter what it is.”

  “Why not, my darling? If I could I’d give you everything.” Those urgent brown eyes. That bottom lip. She loved him. She couldn’t help it. He began kissing her again, his elbows on the pillow, framing her head, his hands up in her tousled hair. This made it worse, because now she’d have to interrupt him. It would be obvious she’d planned what she said next.

  “I can’t take something like this when my sister still suffers in the orphanage.” She’d known this would tug at his heart. He began kissing her all over, as quickly as he could. The stubble of his beard felt exquisite on her shoulder.

  She tried to keep her mouth free of his so that she could talk. “Grete’s been scrubbing floors to keep St. Luisa’s afloat. It is brutal.”

  “Nobody has enough money these days,” Helmut murmured against her skin. “My God, you are smooth and fair.”

  “You should see her. Tiny, blond, fragile. She’ll never survive in a factory. She should be someone’s maid. I can’t sleep until I know she’s all right.”

  She said it just like that, so that he would think it was his idea, and she refused to feel guilty about it. Grete would help him in return, making Berni no Sonje, and he, no Trommler. They loved each other, or at least they loved the time they spent together. She accepted no money, no gifts, and even helped him choose presents for his wife (Drachenfutter, they said, laughing—treats to appease the dragon). When they dined together they ordered pickled herring and crackers at cheap counters and split the bill. She didn’t worry about what this indicated, in terms of his finances. She didn’t think until it was too late about who would come last.

  • • •

  “Darling,” Helmut murmured now in the cold park, his lips wet and warm against hers.

  As they kissed, Berni felt her body thaw, her mind awaken. This man had taken her affections and promised protection for her sister, and he’d failed her. She pushed him away and wiped her mouth. “Gisela knows?” Above her head, the bare branches of the Tiergarten trees seemed to claw their way closer.

  Sympathy and confusion crossed his face. “Yes, of course Gisela knows.”

  “Why ‘of course’?”

  “Well, you told her, didn’t you, my darling? I heard a girl came to the Hof and yelled about us. I thought your conscience had urged you to do it.”

  “What kind of fool do you think I am?” It had begun to snow again, frozen little drops that hit the hard ground and pinged upward, and Berni’s teeth chattered so hard she thought they might crack. When Helmut reached for her, she held him at arm’s length.

  A girl had come to the Eislers’ apartment complex, yelling about Helmut and herself? A lie from Gisela, of course. “You can’t seriously believe I’d do such a thing.”

  He lifted his collar, hunching his shoulders around his neck. “All this time I’ve wondered why you’d do it, and it has been difficult for me to forgive, but now I—”

  “Difficult for you to forgive! Where is Grete?” She began pushing him again, shoving him in earnest toward the mushy bank of the pond. “Where is she?”

  He slipped a little, his heel hitting the icy bank, and held up his hands. “She’s safe, Berni. She’s in Potsdam. She works for my elder sister, Mildred. Mildred’s well-off and infirm. She doesn’t speak. She relies on routines. It’s good work for a girl like Grete.”

  “Potsdam.” Berni’s legs felt unstable. “What do you mean, a girl like Grete?”

  “One who cannot hear well. There’s no sense in pretending it’s not the case.” Gently he rubbed her shoulders. “My son keeps in touch with her, Berni. He says she’s happy.”

  “Your son? What does your son want with her?”

/>   “My son is a good young man.” Headlights beyond the park illuminated his reluctance.

  “But?”

  A jet of white breath shot from Helmut’s lips. “Klaus is as nationalist as they come. You should have seen him and Grete, when she lived with us, singing the songs. She helped him roll the newspapers he delivered, tied the twine around them in bows.”

  Acid rose at the back of Berni’s throat, but she laughed, hard and loud. “Now I know you’re lying. What else have you lied about? What can I believe? Oh, God!”

  “Grete and Klaus grew close, Berni. I believe that’s one reason Gisela was ready to see her off. But it’s harmless. They’re young. And they think they’re patriots.”

  “I am as young as Klaus,” Berni said. It was something Helmut had never wanted to mention, and she watched him duck his head in shame, tuck his bare hands into his coat. “Give me her address so I can be through with you,” she said, something breaking within her. She was shuddering so violently now that her breastbone ached.

  Helmut reached for her, and at first she flinched, but then he held up a pen. His hand was warm, cradling hers, as he wrote the address in between the lines of her palm. He stared into her eyes as he curled her fist closed. “I’ve been forwarding her your notes. Give her time, Berni.”

  She yanked her arm backward, staggering a little. “Don’t you dare give me advice about my family, you weak man. Go set your own son right.”

  His jaw tensed. “You never cared about my family when you had me in your bed.”

  “You’ve never cared about anyone but yourself,” she said, taking a big breath, “and fuck me, I’m only seeing it now.”

  She was already walking away when she delivered her Treppenwitz, her body moving stiffly, unnaturally, because she could sense his eyes watching her go. Knowing she could run back and kiss him at any moment made her feel like she was dragging her legs through sand. A double-decker bus waited for her on the edge of the Tiergarten, and she sprinted for it. Inside the windows were fogged, the seats crowded, so she went up to the second level. The bus began to move, lurching Berni toward the seats all the way in the back. The metal seat chilled her skin, her blood. Snow pelted her cheeks. Gisela knew. Gisela could have told Grete.