Wild Lavender

by Belinda Alexandra

  ‘Mademoiselle Fleurier,’ said the Count, tapping my arm, ‘you haven’t finished your question. You have me in suspense now. Two very unlikely what?’

  I had dug myself into a hole and now I was going to have to climb out of it. ‘Two very unlikely…I mean…Germany and France, for instance. Will they always be enemies?’

  The Count seemed to find me funny at that moment, but he sat up straight and answered me seriously. ‘The French and Germans have more in common than anybody else,’ he said. ‘During the Great War, the men in the trenches used to throw food to each other when the fighting for the day had ceased. No, the next time Germany decides to cause an international disaster it will be due to self-combustion. The most dangerous enemy is always the enemy within.’

  I glanced at him. Why was it whenever anyone spoke about the future of Germany, it was in terms of another war?

  ‘Now that the middle classes have been turned out of their homes and we have made beggars of small businessmen, who will keep Germany stable?’ the Count asked.

  The ominous warning in his words sent a shudder through me. I played with the bread on my plate. I knew that as long as I lived I would never forget that starving girl’s face. Seeing first-hand what humans were capable of doing to each other had changed me. But what could I do about such suffering? The problem seemed overwhelming. I looked at the Count again. He was smiling.

  ‘In answer to your other question, Mademoiselle Fleurier,’ he said, ‘let me say this. You are unusually self-possessed. One rarely sees that in someone your age and even more rarely among entertainers. You would make a more suitable companion for a certain young man than anyone else I know. Why, if I were thirty years younger, I would marry you myself.’

  I leaned across the table and gave the Count a kiss on his cheek. I knew he was lying about the second part. He was Germany’s most resolutely confirmed bachelor.

  The Count was correct in his prediction that André would break off his relationship with Mademoiselle Canier and return to Berlin alone. I didn’t press André for information and he offered no explanation. But if I had thought that the elimination of Mademoiselle Canier would make any difference to André’s feelings for me, I was sorely disappointed. If anything, André became more distant, treating me the way one business partner would treat another, warmly but professionally. He never spoke to me about his brother or of his feelings about his family again. After a few sleepless nights, I resigned myself to the fact that André Blanchard and I were never going to be anything more than friends. And, to take my mind off my disappointment, I threw myself into my work schedule.

  André, Count Kessler and I welcomed in the New Year by attending a party hosted by Karl Vollmoeller, the playwright.

  ‘Vollmoeller throws bizarre parties,’ the Count warned me on our way from the Adlon to the Pariser Platz, where Vollmoeller lived. ‘He invites his publisher and the Berlin theatre crowd, then he goes about in a taxi collecting any eccentric he can find “to add a bit of spice”.’

  ‘At his last party,’ André added, ‘I had Kurt Weill on my left and some nut Vollmoeller had picked up outside the Charité Hospital on my right. The whole night he wouldn’t stop talking about the rate at which different parts of the human body decay.’

  ‘Vollmoeller’s girlfriend is attractive though,’ said the Count.

  ‘What is her first name?’ asked André. ‘Vollmoeller only addresses her as Fräulein Landshoff.’

  The Count shrugged. ‘If I ever knew, I have forgotten. She is the niece of Samuel Fischer, the publisher.’

  We passed some children who were lighting firecrackers and sending them shooting up into the air. Golden sparks sprinkled across the sky with a succession of bangs that were louder than shots from a gun. I thought of Kira back in my hotel room. I had left her a saucer of milk and some chicken, but she would probably spend the night hiding under the bed.

  Vollmoeller’s party was under way by the time we arrived. Around the edges of the room, pushed to the sides like the furniture, stood men in evening suits and women with diamond earrings and matching necklaces—the kind of people you might find dining at Maxim’s in Paris or taking in a show at the Moulin Rouge. But in the middle of the room, writhing around to jazz music from a gramophone, was a mass of naked bodies. In the middle of this orgy a petite woman danced on top of a coffee table. She wore a man’s dinner jacket and a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles.

  ‘There is Fräulein Landshoff,’ said the Count.

  ‘Where is Vollmoeller?’ asked André. The Count shrugged.

  A woman brushed past us wearing nothing but a string of pearls and a smile on her face. She was followed by a man with horns on his head and a horse’s tail tied to his behind. I watched their buttocks wobble through the crowd before they disappeared into another room.

  ‘Can I get you anything?’ the Count asked us. ‘Champagne? Beer? Cocaine?’

  André and I settled for champagne.

  A trio of boys was sprawled on a sofa near the door. Every so often, one of the dignified men would walk past and a few minutes later one of the youths would get up and follow him out. I thought about what the Count had said about Germany self-combusting one day, and about the poverty that lurked in Berlin’s dark corners beyond the hedonism on display in this room. I also remembered the Count’s comment that the Germans and the French had much in common. Didn’t we also wash away our fears with fine champagne and lose ourselves in eroticism? I blinked the thoughts away and turned back to the party. What good would it do to worry about these things? I couldn’t change anything. I had one life to live—I might as well enjoy it, I told myself. But the sensation that we were all teetering on the edge of an abyss niggled at me.

  The Count returned with our drinks—not champagne but a potent German punch called Feuerzangenbowle. It was made of warmed sweet wine, orange and lemon juice and spiced with cinnamon and cloves. A stocky man with electric blue eyes and waves of grey hair sidled up to us.

  ‘This is Max Reinhardt,’ the Count said.

  ‘The Count has been telling me that you are a talented young woman,’ Reinhardt said to me in his rumbling Viennese accent. ‘Perhaps one day you will come to my acting school and become a great actress.’

  I was more amazed at having one of the most famous directors in Europe kiss my hand than I was by the naked people wriggling around me. But after a glass of Feuerzangenbowle, I was incapable of sensible conversation.

  ‘Well, after she has conquered Paris, New York and the rest of the world with her singing and dancing, I don’t see why Mademoiselle Fleurier shouldn’t act as well,’ André told Reinhardt.

  At a quarter to midnight some of the guests braved the cold and ran out into the square to watch the fireworks created by the students from Humboldt University’s chemistry department. The Count suggested that we stay in the apartment and watch from the windows. ‘It is too cold out there and I am in no mood to lose an eye. At least one of those students manages to blow up himself—or some bystander—each year.’

  Fräulein Landshoff—there was still no sign of Vollmoeller—instructed everybody to turn off the lights and blow out the candles. We huddled around the windows and counted down to midnight in unison. Just as the students let off the most impressive of their explosions, sending sparks whizzing by the glass, a body pressed close to mine. Hands grabbed my elbows then spun me around. I was crushed against a man’s chest. His breath skimmed over my forehead then warm lips pressed against mine. From the height of the person and the clean smell of his skin, I was sure that it must be André. But before I could think whether to kiss him back or not, the person let go and the room was lit up by a brilliant green flare. Fräulein Landshoff cried out that she had dropped her glasses and someone turned on a lamp to help her find them. I looked around for André; he was with the Count at the window furthest away from me. I stared at the other men standing nearby. They were all tall and wearing evening suits. It could have been any one of them.

&n
bsp; André glanced in my direction and lifted his champagne glass. I couldn’t read the meaning of his smile.

  In January, André returned from a trip to Paris with good news. The impresario of the Adriana was planning a spectacle on a scale never seen before in the capital and was looking for someone sensational to star in it. He needed something novel to compete against the Folies Bergère, which was having unprecedented success with Joséphine Baker, and the Moulin Rouge, which was staging its most grandiose revue yet, ‘ça C’est Paris’, with Mistinguett. The impresario had considered Camille or Cécile Sorel, but since André had talked to him about me, he wanted to meet me as soon as possible. We had to leave immediately.

  Count Kessler came to see us off at the station. ‘Remember me when you are a star!’ he said, kissing my cheeks. I smiled to think how formal he had been when I first met him and how close we were now.

  We had been having farewell drinks with Max Reinhardt and my teachers, and now we were running late. The porter sprinted ahead with our luggage, but the platform was crowded. André lifted Kira’s cage onto his shoulder. We had just stepped through the platform gate when a man with bloodshot eyes thrust some pamphlets into our hands. ‘Liberate Germany from the Jewish scum! They are destroying the country!’ he shouted.

  I was too taken aback to react, but the Count grabbed the pamphlets from the man’s hands and ripped them to pieces.

  ‘Liberate Germany from ignorant scum like you! You are the ones who will destroy the country!’ the Count yelled at him.

  The man screamed something back that I didn’t understand. André pulled the Count away.

  The porter called out to us: our luggage was on board but we still had to make the train. André and I clambered up the steps as the whistle sounded and the train started moving off.

  ‘I shall see you both in Paris, soon,’ the Count called, walking beside the train as it gathered speed. ‘I’ll come to see Simone star in her show!’

  I blew him a kiss. He blew one back and his mouth twitched. A gleam of light flickered over him. For a moment I saw my father standing by the farmhouse, waving to me. But in a blink of an eye the image was gone and the Count was there again, waving to me from the platform. ‘Goodbye, my sweet Simone,’ he called out. ‘Goodbye, André!’

  A mist of steam blurred him from view. ‘Goodbye, Count,’ I called through the smoky shadow. A sense of gloom fell over me, but I shrugged it away and followed André to our compartment.

  NINETEEN

  The Adriana on the Champs élysées was Paris’s most modern music hall and its impresario, Regis Lebaron, one of the most daring entrepreneurs in Europe. Set back from the other nineteenth-century buildings on the avenue, the theatre’s entrance was a chrome arch with columns on either side. The façade was opaque glass and in the foyer four figures representing Zeus, Aphrodite, Iris and Apollo held up giant globes of light. The decor was a blend of the ultra modern with Greek mythology and the seats in the auditorium were equipped with head and armrests. The chairs were said to be so comfortable that copies of them were found in many fashionable houses.

  Lebaron, who had made his first fortune at the roulette table and his second as an impresario, spared no expense when it came to hiring the best. He used Italian scenic artists to create lavish palaces and Russian émigrés to recreate Tsarist ballrooms and courts. His technicians were British or American and his costumiers were French. The Adriana had been the first music hall to incorporate the medium of film into a show, using it as a backdrop to some of the dance numbers. Lebaron’s personal motto was ‘Better than the best’ and he strove to make each show even more spectacular than his last triumphant success. Only now, according to André, there was a danger that the best of the best was running out of steam. It was going to be hard to match Paris’s long-time favourite, Mistinguett, and its newest star, Joséphine Baker. Camille was the next biggest female star in Paris, but as Lebaron had said to André: ‘Being beautiful will only take you so far and the novelty is starting to wear thin. I want to launch someone new.’

  I had never thought the day would come when anybody would consider me over Camille Casal. She never seemed to doubt herself; her calm behaviour before the Casino de Paris shows confirmed that. To me that was the sign of a true star: absolute confidence in yourself.

  I glanced at André who was leaning back in his train seat. The sun shining through the birch trees outside the window flickered stripes across his face so that he looked like a character in a film. He was puffing on a cigarette, the fourth he had smoked since we had left Potsdammer Station an hour before.

  ‘Lebaron says that if you are half as good as I say you are, and twice as good as you were when you were at the Casino, he will take you on. He will make you the star. The comedian will get second billing.’ André stood and rested his arm against the glass. ‘Do you understand what that means, Simone? No more waiting in line and working your way up. You will be there!’

  My heart dived into my stomach. I hadn’t even auditioned yet. It was a long way to fall if I failed. I had been driven to work hard in Berlin not only by my own ambition but out of a burning desire to please André. I knew better than to express any doubts now. He had put himself on the line to get me an audition and, although he smiled at me, his face was tense. In many ways, my debut was André’s debut, and that scared me. Perhaps the reality of what we had been aiming for was finally dawning on us.

  André’s driver met us at the station. It was drizzling and the buildings and cafés were cloaked in grey. It was strange to be back in Paris after being away for almost two years. The streets and the shops looked the same, but I was a different person, although I didn’t quite understand that yet. We drove straight to the étoile Quarter, only this time it wasn’t a shabby hôtel particulier we pulled up in front of but an apartment building opposite the park.

  ‘I hope you like it,’ said André, searching in his pocket for the key. While he turned the lock I lifted Kira out of her cage. She fled into the apartment before André or I could get in and ran to the leopard-skin chair in the hall, the only piece of furniture that was familiar.

  André put my suitcases inside the door and led me to the drawing room. The floor was inlaid with wood of different hues and my eye followed the lines of the rosewood furniture and the honey-coloured walls.

  ‘I was intending to move here myself,’ he said. ‘But it is a nice apartment for a woman and I can find another place. Once you are a star, the press will want to come and photograph you here.’

  The sofas and armchairs were strewn with oriental pillows and fur throws. The decor was sleek with touches of originality—everything André thought I should be.

  André moved to the corner of the room and pulled up the blinds to reveal a round corner window that looked towards the park and the street. Even with the overcast weather, light streamed in through the panes.

  ‘You can sit here when you want to read or learn your lines,’ he said.

  I followed him to the bedroom which was decorated in the same mixture of beiges, russets and blacks as the rest of the apartment. André threw a switch and light glowed from behind shards of crystal glass on the walls.

  ‘I like it,’ I said.

  I thought the apartment was beautiful but I wasn’t as awed by it as I would have been a few years earlier. I had grown accustomed to luxury at the Adlon and to having my needs taken care of by André. It did not occur to me that I was becoming spoilt, it had happened gradually.

  Kira pattered after us, sniffing around the floorboards and the furniture.

  ‘Your maid will come tomorrow,’ said André, resting his hands on my shoulders. ‘Now, try to rest and I will come back to pick you up at two o’clock.’

  He is good to you, Simone, but he does not love you, I reminded myself.

  I was so numb with nerves that I hardly felt André’s lips when he kissed me goodbye. I shut the door and the burn of bile rose up my throat. I had been excited when we left Berlin, but now t
hat my meeting with Regis Lebaron was only a couple of hours away, I was stricken with panic. I walked back into the drawing room and my eye fell on the drinks cabinet. I swung the door open and found a decanter of brandy. Perhaps a drink would calm me. I opened the stopper and sniffed the burnt sugar aroma. No, I thought, remembering how I hadn’t been able to make decent conversation with Max Reinhardt after a glass of Feuerzangenbowle.

  I sank onto the sofa and stared at the painting above the fireplace: a jaguar creeping through the jungle. A maid? I looked around at the glossy surfaces. You would need one here to wipe away the fingerprints. I remembered the roughly hewn furniture in my parents’ farmhouse and the oak table in Aunt Yvette’s kitchen. We wiped down the kitchen table after each meal and beat out the bed linen, but we rarely got around to polishing or dusting anything more than twice a year.

  I stood up and moved to the bureau and opened the drawers. There were sheets of writing paper and a pen. I sat down and began a letter to my mother, Aunt Yvette and Bernard, telling them that I was back from Berlin and was now living in a big apartment, so they should come and visit me in Paris because it would be a while before I could get away to visit them.

  I glanced out the window towards the rainy street. I remembered my mother in her farm dress with the silver fox fur I had bought her around her neck.

  I folded my arms and rested my head on them. Pressure bore down on me and I could hear the blood humming in my ears. Loneliness, stronger than I had ever experienced before, clutched my heart. I was heading down a tunnel and there was no one to help me. I hadn’t quite grasped it yet, but a new Simone Fleurier was being born.

  I had worked myself into such a state by the time André came to collect me that I was afraid I might be sick in his car. I was careful to hide my anxiety, however, and my misgivings proved ridiculous when my ‘audition’ with Regis Lebaron and his artistic director, Martin Meyer, turned out to be nothing like those I had gone through at the Casino de Paris or the Folies Bergère.