by Ben Elton
Frieda felt sick to her stomach. Just when things had been looking up a little, the republic’s foremost statesman was dead. That old German madness had reared its crazed, iron-clad head again.
She got off the tram on the busy Müllerstrasse and turned into a side street which had once contained small businesses and store houses but which was now principally residential. The street was on the edge of the working-class district of Wedding, which was much favoured by artists for its earthy credibility and somewhat Bohemian air. Karlsruhen rented a studio just close enough to the centre of things to gain a little cachet from the borough’s reputation, but not so close as to be fully immersed in a dangerously left-wing area that was known throughout the city as Red Wedding.
The concierge of Karlsruhen’s building gave Frieda the usual dubious glance as she let her in, clearly under the impression that nude models must be whores. Frieda returned the woman’s look with proud disdain before making her way up the stairs to the attic studio in which Karlsruhen worked. The door was half open and she could hear him singing along to a gramophone recording of Götterdämmerung. He always had music on while he worked but he did not normally sing. Frieda wondered if he might be a little drunk. Karlsruhen loved his beer and schnapps.
She knocked firmly, causing the door to swing fully open under the force of her fist. She knew that Karlsruhen would shake his head at this. He had once rebuked her for ‘banging on the door like a stevedore’, admonishing her to be more ‘gentle and reserved’ and a credit to her sex. This of course made Frieda knock all the louder the next time, and from then on she was always sure to give his door a knuckle-rattling bang whenever she visited. Such displays of spirit, however, seemed only to increase Karlsruhen’s attraction to her. He would giggle with silly indulgence as if she were a naughty girl and he her long-suffering father.
All this made Frieda pretty uncomfortable, but she had final exams to prepare for and standing about naked had to be the easiest way to make money in Berlin. She knew plenty of girls who would kill for her luck.
Recently, it was true, Karlsruhen’s behaviour has begun to get a little bolder. He had taken to calling her his ‘cheeky pet’ and his ‘little bud’, which made her squirm. Wolfgang had said she should demand a pay rise. Instead she had taken strength from reminding herself that once she qualified as a doctor she would never have to see the silly old fool again.
‘Enter,’ came the familiar, self-important voice from within. ‘Advance, sweet child, and be recognized.’
Karlsruhen had never served in the army but he loved to affect a slightly military air.
He was alone, of course, as Frieda had been certain he would be. Before, there had always been one or two young men busying themselves with plaster and tools in distant corners of the studio, Karlsruhen’s ‘pupils’, as he called them. He made much of the fact that he had ‘pupils’ (although to Frieda’s eye they seemed more like paid assistants), clearly fancying himself in the Michelangelo mode. Recently, however, Karlsruhen had taken to ensuring that these pupils were away purchasing supplies or on some other errand when the time came for Frieda’s sittings.
Frieda entered the huge space, which spanned the entire length and width of the building. In the daytime the studio was flooded with beautiful natural light, which shone through the skylights even on cloudy days. But night was falling and Karlsruhen had turned on the meagre forty-watt bulbs that hung from the ceiling eaves and cast eerie shadows across the silent plaster figures standing about the room.
At the far end of the studio a desk lamp stood on an empty plinth, its shaded bulb pointing to the place where Frieda would be posing, like a theatrical spotlight.
The great man was standing at his usual place, wearing his habitual white smock and beret, although Frieda did not think he had been doing much work as there was a schnapps bottle in his hand.
Karlsruhen worked mostly in clay, producing mildly erotic figures from which a mould was cast and numerous plaster replicas made to be sold at markets. But he also had pretentions to greater things and sometimes worked in bronze and occasionally even marble, although such materials were of course not readily available.
The white-clad figure watched in silence as Frieda walked the length of the room, her shoes clicking on the dusty bare floorboards. Past half-finished heroic figures and shy nymphs, round stepladders and sacks of plaster powder, over brushes and palettes, past trestle tables laden with knives, chisels, pencils and paper. Perhaps twenty metres in all with Karlsruhen’s eyes on her every step of the way before finally she arrived at the little screen in the corner, which Karlsruhen referred to as her dressing room.
It made Frieda laugh inwardly that he insisted on this ludicrous ‘courtesy’. After all, there was no ‘dressing’ to be done, only undressing, which she did as quickly as possible because her hours only began once she stood naked and in position. It would have been simpler to strip off beside her podium. Frieda had pointed this out but Karlsruhen insisted that there was a proper way to do things and she must disrobe in ‘private’, as feminine modesty demanded. Recently Frieda had noticed that her screen had moved further and further away from her podium. Clearly Karlsruhen enjoyed watching her walk naked across the studio – more fun, no doubt, than leering at her in frozen immobility.
‘Good evening, Fräulein,’ Karlsruhen said. ‘What joy it is to see you, the sun has set but its light still shines in your smile.’
‘I’m not smiling today, Herr Karlsruhen. Have you heard? They shot Walther Rathenau.’ She had not really meant to bring it up, she always tried to avoid exchanging views with Karlsruhen on any subject, but it was better than engaging with the leaden and saccharine horror of his unwanted compliments.
‘Yes, I heard,’ Karlsruhen remarked dismissively. ‘But don’t think of it so much as losing a Foreign Minister as getting rid of a Jew!’
And he laughed as if he had made an excellent joke.
Frieda didn’t reply. She was used to casual anti-Semitism. It was generally assumed that she herself was not a Jew and so she heard it all the time. It was as common in Berlin as remarks about the weather. Nothing much was meant by it, and if she had spent her days confronting it she would have had no time for anything else.
‘I can’t claim credit for that line,’ Karlsruhen went on, ‘a friend phoned me with it. He heard it on the Tiergarten within moments of the assassination. People are so clever, aren’t they?’
‘Perhaps we should start,’ Frieda said.
‘Yes! At once, little one. Let us not dwell on Germany’s terrible present, but instead journey together to her mythical past! Although I fear that my poor talent cannot hope to match the beauty with which you grace my studio, and no cold clay nor bronze nor even marble could ever aspire to capture the warm and subtle tones of your exquisite soft, pale skin.’
On another evening Frieda might have tried to force a smile at the man’s creepy compliments, if only to cover her nauseous embarrassment at them, but this time she remained stony-faced as she disappeared behind the disrobing curtain. There was something a little different in the atmosphere. Karlsruhen was more confident than usual, more full of himself. Clearly the schnapps had emboldened him. Frieda hoped he wouldn’t drink any more.
She threw off her clothes as quickly as possible and emerged naked, feeling unaccustomedly embarrassed. She was used to Karlsruhen’s hungry gaze and normally almost indifferent to it, but this time as she felt his eyes explore her she felt suddenly revolted. She took her place on the little podium and assumed the pose on which they had been working over the previous session, perched delicately on a stool that Karlsruhen assured her would later be transformed into the rock on which a bewitching Rhinemaiden would disport herself within the foaming fury of the great river.
Karlsruhen turned on the reading lamp and Frieda blinked as she felt herself bathed in its glare.
‘My dear, is it a little cold for you?’ she heard the shadowy figure behind the lamp enquire. ‘I see that the p
oints of your breasts are proud. A lovely detail for me as an artist, particularly since my mythical creation is to be depicted in freezing mountain water, but I fear you might catch a chill.’
Frieda could feel herself reddening beneath her mask of stillness. Karlsruhen had begun to speak like this more and more. Offering extravagant compliments and making personal observations about the detail of her body. Becoming less and less careful to conceal his obvious desire beneath the pretence at professionalism.
Thank goodness she would be leaving soon. And in the meantime, just block it out. After all, weren’t all artists secretly somewhat in love with their models?
‘Your hair is a mystery, my dear,’ Karlsruhen was saying, not even bothering for the moment to work away at his clay but instead simply standing and staring. ‘Is it auburn? Is it brunette? I swear sometimes when the light from my lamp catches it just so, it almost glows a fiery crimson.’
Frieda sensed that it was not her hair that Karlsruhen was looking at, but she could not be sure as he had positioned himself just out of her eye line and she was not allowed to move her head.
‘How I wish you would let it grow and be your true crowning glory, instead of these ridiculous pageboy monstrosities with which you and your modern sisters vandalize yourselves. You know that when I come to begin upon my Rhinemaiden’s head I must make you wear a wig of golden plaits, for a true German daughter of the soil lets her hair flow all the way down to her … to her … derrière.’
There was a catch in his voice. He was circling her. She could feel him pause behind her and she knew what he was looking at.
Frieda set her mind to blocking out his uncomfortable chatter and the thought of his big sweaty face leering behind her. At least she was not required to respond, that was the one redeeming feature of the job really. She was absolutely not required to speak. He paid her to remain still, expressionless and mute.
That was how he liked it too. She knew that. He enjoyed her silence, her compliance. Her obedience. Wasn’t that the biggest part of the whole Kinder, Küche, Kirche thing that these old völkische dinosaurs obsessed about? Children, Kitchen, Church. Those were the duties of a good German woman. And above all obedience to her man. Well, it was 1922 and all that was changing, thank God. Her medical degree would be proof of that. Frieda set her mind to considering her studies. That was always how she tried to pass the long weary hours of posing, by reviewing in her mind the reading she had done the day before. Her current subject was circulation of the blood so she set herself to leafing through the pages of her mental textbook, exploring the anatomy of the heart.
She was just trying to sort out the arteries from the veins when she felt it. Karlsruhen’s hand on her breast.
She jumped as if she had been electrocuted, stumbled off the small podium on which she had been perched and ended up in a bruised and naked heap on the floor.
‘Please. Please,’ Karlsruhen said stepping forward. ‘Let me help you up.’
‘Get away from me!’ Frieda scrabbled to her feet. ‘What do you mean by touching me! I’m a married woman. I want to get my clothes.’
But Karlsruhen was in her way, standing between her and the curtained changing area, his expression a mixture of fear and lust.
‘You stumbled,’ he protested. ‘Your leg must have gone to sleep.’
‘That’s a lie! You touched me!’ Frieda exclaimed in fury. ‘You felt my breast. Let me past.’
‘I adjusted your hair. An inadvertent movement. My hand slipped. What are you suggesting, Frau Stengel? It is I who am wronged. You offend me.’
Frieda stared at him hard. She knew what had happened but he was denying it and there was an end to it. In a way she felt relieved. Money or no money, their relationship was over. She’d never have to see him again.
‘Get out of my way, Herr Karlsruhen. I’m afraid I will no longer be able to model for you.’
‘No! Don’t say that, please.’
‘Yes. I must. Please get the money you owe me while I dress.’
She walked past him, thinking the incident was over, but to her horror he grabbed her from behind. Suddenly his arms were around her and his face was buried in her hair.
‘Please,’ he mumbled. ‘I love you, little one. You are everything. Everything to me!’
Frieda struggled in his grasp, shouting once more that she had a husband, and also that he had a wife.
‘That heifer!’ Karlsruhen blurted, spinning Frieda around, his hot breath on her face. ‘She doesn’t understand me. You do! You are everything a woman should be, you are my muse. My love.’
He gripped her closer now, clamping her naked body against his chest. She could smell the schnapps on his breath. He was not a young man but he was strong and booze and lust had given him power. Frieda struggled but she could not free herself. Now she could feel his hand behind her, clawing between her buttocks as he ground his erection against her stomach.
‘My little Rhinemaiden,’ he was gasping, ‘meine kleine Woglinde, Wellgunde und Floßhilde!’
Then Frieda realized how to stop the madness.
Naked, much smaller than her assailant and caught unawares, she could not hope to fight him off, but she didn’t need to. She had seen his weakness. He wasn’t pawing her, he was pawing a fantasy, a warped romantic obsession.
One word would still his ardour.
‘Herr Karlsruhen!’ she shouted, forcing her face into his. ‘I am not your little Rhinemaiden, you arsehole! I am a grown-up woman! I am soon to be a doctor and, above all, I am a JEW!’
There was a pause of perhaps a second or so before his grip loosened and he stepped backwards, astonished.
Frieda seized the opportunity to rush behind the curtain for her clothes.
‘You’re … a Jewess?’ he said. ‘You never said.’
‘I ought to call the police!’ Frieda shouted in fury, pulling on her underwear and buttoning up her dress.
‘You … you don’t look like a Jew,’ she heard him mumble.
‘What does a Jew look like, you fatuous bastard?’ Frieda shouted as she emerged from behind the curtain, pulling on her shoes. ‘Do you think I should have a nose like a boat hook, you stupid old prick!’
‘Please … such language. It is not fitting for—’
‘Language! You were trying to rape me!’
‘No!’ he protested, ‘just an embrace, a kiss, I thought you wouldn’t mind. I’m sorry. You must go.’
‘Give me my money first!’ Frieda said, grabbing at a large palette knife and pointing it in Karlsruhen’s face.
Karlsruhen reached into the pocket of his smock and pushed a bundle of notes into her hand.
‘Go. Please go,’ he said.
Frieda threw down the knife and ran to the door.
‘And let me tell you, Herr Karlsruhen. The only reason I won’t be telling my husband what you did today is that he’d kill you. Do you understand? He’d kill you!’
District and Circle Line
London, 1956
IT WAS MID-MORNING when Stone emerged from the house on Queensgate in which he had been interrogated. A troop of cavalry from Chelsea Barracks were rattling their way up the road towards Hyde Park. They were in khaki, not dress uniform, but nonetheless made an impressive sight. An echo of imperial greatness. Stone found himself offering a wry salute. Force of habit, perhaps. You can take the man out of the army, as they say. But Stone actually liked the army, not the spit and polish bullshit, but the courage and the comradeship. Briefly the British army had given him a home.
He headed down towards South Kensington tube station. Lorre and Bogart had told him to go home, call in sick at work and keep himself available. They promised to square things with Stone’s head of department, assuring him that he would lose neither wages nor credit.
Stone didn’t care about wages. He had thoughts only for the shocking revelation that Dagmar was an officer of the Stasi.
And yet was it so shocking? The war had changed them all so much. We
re he to go back in time and look at his own carefree, soccer-mad, rebellious pre-war self, he would surely not have predicted the journey that boy would take. That at the end of it he would find himself fading to grey behind a desk in Whitehall, doing his long weary penance for surviving.
Dagmar would scarcely recognize the man he had become. Would he recognize her?
Stone made his way through the fine red-tiled entrance of the nineteenth-century tube station, declining the offer to buy a first edition Standard. The news was the same as the day before anyway. The aftermath of the Suez debacle still dominated the front pages with its ongoing humiliation of Britain at the hands of Eisenhower and the US State Department, not to mention Nasser himself. The UK was finished, Egypt was in the ascendant and all over the Middle East Arabs were flexing their muscles.
There was Lonnie Donegan music playing through the open window of one of the flats that sat above the station entrance. Usually Stone quite liked Lonnie Donegan, except for the stupid one about chewing gum and bedposts. He liked skiffle in general because it was scruffy and disrespectful of authority. Now, however, he found it irritating. He found the chatter of girls in front of him on the stairs irritating. And the platform announcements too.
He was trying to think.
Dagmar had said in her letter that she’d been in a Soviet gulag. That made grim sense. The Russians had imprisoned hundreds of thousands of recently liberated innocents after the war, however much the craven apologists of the London Left might try to deny or excuse it.
Dagmar was, after all, a bourgeois Jew. Two strikes against her in Stalin’s book.
But that had been ten years ago. She could not possibly have spent all of the intervening period in a Soviet camp and yet now be a Stasi official. At some point during those years she must have been released and ‘rehabilitated’. And yet only now had she got in contact. Why had she taken so long to try and find him?