by Ben Elton
This produced a positive explosion of suppressed merriment from the kitchen followed by the sound of little boys’ laughter and then, worse, a little girl’s voice indulging in a whispered effort at mimicry.
‘I should like a glass of lemonade please, Herr Professor. With quite a lot of sugar.’
The elegant, refined little girl sitting stiff and straight-backed beside her father could hardly help but hear the ridicule being directed at her and so put her nose in the air, her effortlessly superior expression making it clear that she was used to ignoring boys and other riff-raff.
‘I’m sorry,’ Wolfgang apologized. ‘My sons. I’d chuck them out and let them beg but I’m obliged by law to look after them. Damned Weimar Government, too soft by half, eh?’
Herr Fischer smiled.
‘Boys,’ he said indulgently. ‘I seem to recall having once been one myself.’
‘There’s a girl too,’ Dagmar said firmly. ‘I heard her most clearly. A very very horrid girl in my opinion.’
Wolfgang smiled apologetically.
‘Our maid’s daughter. But she’s all right, just high-spirited, that’s all.’
‘My mummy says that there is never any excuse to be rude or unkind. Certainly not high spirits.’
This pious observation brought forth further suppressed giggles and Wolfgang decided he’d better move things along.
‘I’m afraid we don’t have any lemonade, Dagmar. Sorry, just water actually. And I’m not a professor either.’
‘If you are to teach me then you are a professor, Herr Professor,’ the beautifully dressed little girl replied firmly, her huge, dark eyes turning unblinkingly upon him. ‘All of my tutors are professors. It is how things are done.’
Her father, Herr Fischer, smiled indulgently, no doubt under the impression that Wolfgang must be finding his lovely, porcelain doll of a daughter as charming and clever as he did himself. In fact Wolfgang was struggling to conceal his desire to give little Dagmar a slap and get her and her father out of his apartment as quickly as possible so that he could have a cigarette and get back to his piano.
But he had to go through the motions. He had promised Frieda and they really could do with the money. Although Wolfgang was quite certain that he would be turned down. These people were not his people. Wolfgang knew who the man was, everybody did. He was Fischer of Fischer’s department store on Kurfürstendamm. And people like Herr Fischer did not entrust their daughters to people like Wolfgang who didn’t even have any lemonade in the house and wasn’t even a professor.
‘May I ask, Herr Fischer,’ Wolfgang said, ‘why you’ve come to me? I’m not exactly a society tutor and I’m new to teaching. I can’t claim much experience with children either. Particularly one as young as your daughter.’
Particularly snooty-looking little creatures like Dagmar, Wolfgang thought. A Ku’damm princess whom Daddy wanted to acquire a ‘refined’ and ‘dainty’ skill to make her more marriageable to the right sort of minor ex-royal or son of an industrial magnate.
‘Little experience with children?’ Herr Fischer laughed. ‘What were those two young maniacs who ran out of the room when we arrived, then? Hobgoblins? They sound naughty enough to be.’
The boys had in fact begun to edge their way back into the room, and were lurking in the doorway just out of Fischer’s vision, their faces contorted with exaggerated expressions of hostility and contempt. Paulus and Otto were prepared to tolerate the existence of girls at their school but in their own home they drew the line (Silke being an honorary boy). Particularly girls with perfectly placed pink ribbons in their hair, snow-white trimmed black velvet dresses and clouds of delicate lace at their necks and wrists.
‘Boys are rather different,’ Wolfgang replied. ‘Besides, I only have to live with those two, I don’t have to teach them music.’
‘You mean you don’t teach them music?’ Mr Fischer enquired. ‘I would find that very surprising.’
‘Well, yes, of course I do,’ Wolfgang said, slightly confused, ‘as a father, yes, of course. But professionally I have only ever taught adults and quite frankly I’m not even much good at that. I’m really not at all sure that I’m the sort of person you—’
‘My husband will be thrilled should you decide to place your lovely Dagmar with us as a pupil,’ Frieda said, bringing in a tray of biscuits from the kitchen.
There was a loud raspberry from behind her at this but again, when Frieda glanced round angrily, no culprit could be seen.
‘I’m Frau Stengel, Herr Fischer,’ Frieda said, offering her hand. ‘Frau Doktor Stengel.’
‘Thanks, darling,’ Wolfgang said firmly, ‘but I think I can arrange my own clients and I really don’t think this would work out for either of us.’
‘Really?’ Fischer enquired. ‘Your advert said you were taking on pupils. Is there anything wrong with my daughter?’
‘Of course not, no!’ Wolfgang said quickly. ‘But look, Herr Fischer, I know who you are. Fischer’s is a Berlin institution. You’re a rich man, you could afford to hire the chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic to teach your little girl. You don’t want me.’
‘Why not?’
Wolfgang gestured at the crowded untidy apartment. The trombone leaning in the corner. The accordion on the table amongst the newspapers and musical manuscripts. Cushions and books on the floor. Coffee cups balanced on the bookshelves. The theatre and film posters on the wall, Piscator and Chaplin side by side.
The framed prints, grotesque cartoons of fat greedy capitalists and homicidal Prussian officers, their hands filled with money and dripping with blood while all around them the poor and the sick looked on in sullen anger.
‘George Grosz,’ Fischer said, ‘from the First Berlin Dada Fair.’
‘You know it?’ Wolfgang looked surprised.
‘You think a shopkeeper can’t appreciate art?’
‘Well … I admit I’m surprised that you … Do you like Grosz then?’
‘I admire him,’ Fischer replied warily, ‘I can’t say I’d hang him in my drawing room.’
There was a moment’s silence. Frieda offered Dagmar a biscuit at which the little girl nibbled tentatively, like a bored mouse who can expect better later.
‘Look, Herr Stengel,’ Fischer said, ‘I don’t know much about music and I don’t know anything about teaching. What I know is selling. Now when I employ a person to work in one of the departments in my store, I try and find someone who’s interested in the thing they’ll be selling so they can make the customers interested in it too. It said in your advert that you are a composer, arranger and orchestrator as well as being a working professional musician. I like that idea. I can’t imagine anyone being more interested in music than a composer, can you? Unless of course it’s a piano salesman.’
‘You want me to “sell” music to your kid?’ Wolfgang asked, unable to disguise his disdain.
‘Well, it’s like anything, isn’t it? If you’re going to spend a lot of money on a hat you’ve got to be really convinced that you love that hat. To put in all the effort it must take to learn an instrument I imagine you’d really have to believe in music, wouldn’t you? So, yes, I want you to “sell” music to Dagmar that she might be inspired to learn.’
Wolfgang could not deny the sense in what Fischer was saying or the honesty with which he said it.
‘And you have children yourself. I don’t think there’s any more impenetrable psyche than that of a small child. I personally can’t make head nor tail of them, which is why my wife and I employ two nannies. You have children and clearly you’re raising them yourself. It all looks like a good fit to me.’
Wolfgang was about to reply but a look from Frieda silenced him and Fischer continued.
‘Dagmar’s mother and I think that she’s shown a bit of talent … No, don’t worry,’ he went on in answer to the flicker of amusement that crossed Wolfgang’s features. ‘I’m not one of those ridiculous parents who think their child is a genius prodigy. I
t’s just that we’ve noticed that she’d rather mess around at our piano than with her dolls so we thought we’d give her lessons. I took a look at a couple of expensive chaps in the city but their “studios” as they called them looked like a cross between a prison and a cemetery to me. I want Dagmar to have a bit of fun. I’ve seen you play a couple of times too.’
‘You have?’ Wolfgang said, perking up immediately. ‘Really? Where?’
Frieda smiled at Wolfgang’s puppy-like eagerness.
‘Not recently, bit busy for late nights these days, now the economy’s expanding again. But during the inflation, we were all a little looser that year, weren’t we? I saw you at the Joplin Club.’
‘Best gig I ever had.’
‘Yes, it was fun. Quite crazy really. I remember the owner, he came up to my table and actually offered to buy my department store. There and then. Absolutely extraordinary, he couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen.’
‘Eighteen, just,’ Wolfgang replied.
‘Really. A young man destined to go far, I think.’
‘Sadly not. He died.’
‘Oh dear. Of what, may I ask?’
‘Tastes he’d developed during the inflation that he couldn’t afford to sustain when it was over.’
‘I see.’
‘There were a lot of casualties that year. He was one of them.’
‘Well, I’m very sorry to hear that.’
‘Yes, so was I. He couldn’t play a note but he was as jazz as any man I ever met. Whenever a great new disc comes off the boat from the States I still think of him. Of how much he would have loved it. The silly fool. Anyway, Herr Fischer, you’ve convinced me. I’ll take the gig. I’ll sell music to your daughter.’
‘Wolf!’ Frieda admonished. ‘You’re supposed to convince him.’
‘Oh. Yes, of course. Sorry.’
‘Quite all right.’ Herr Fischer laughed. ‘It works either way.’
There was another raspberry from somewhere just beyond the living-room door, followed by chuckling and the scuffling of feet.
‘And I promise you Dagmar will have fun,’ Frieda said brightly.
And in that moment the course of the four young lives was set.
The Saturday Club
Berlin, 1926–28
THE BOYS’ INITIAL reservations about their father’s new music student evaporated at the very first lesson when Dagmar Fischer arrived for her tuition bearing a large chocolate cake.
Paulus and Otto had certainly seen such a cake before. On rare holiday visits to Fischer’s famous food hall with dirty fingers and noses pressed against the glass of the Konditorei counter. But never had they imagined that one would ever be sitting on the table in their apartment. A slice of one perhaps, carefully chosen after much debate, cut with great ceremony by the shop lady, wrapped in greaseproof paper and put in a stripy box to be carried home and put away till after supper. Then to be divided up, a process in which Paulus insisted on using scales, a set square and a ruler for absolute fairness.
But never a whole cake.
Shamelessly the boys, who had been dreading the arrival of the posh kid and seriously considering a cup of water balanced over the door, simply melted with gratitude.
Mixed with not a little awe.
After all, a girl who had access to a cake like that must be at least a princess if not a queen in her own right.
‘Can we have a bit?’ they asked tentatively.
‘We can have all of it,’ Dagmar said. ‘Papa said that in his experience most nasty little thugs could be won over with cake.’
‘Your father sounds like an astute man,’ Wolfgang said, getting plates and a knife, ‘and fearlessly honest.’
Silke (who had never been close to even a slice of so much cream and chocolate) was made of sterner stuff and refused to be impressed. She folded her arms, put her chin out and declined even to taste it.
For possibly as long as fifteen or twenty seconds.
After which the four of them plus Wolfgang demolished the entire gateau, apart from a rather small portion which they forced themselves to leave for Frieda.
‘Just because we ate your cake,’ Silke whispered angrily to Dagmar when bidden to show the new guest to the toilet, ‘doesn’t mean you’re in our gang.’
‘Just because I let you eat my cake doesn’t mean you’re in mine,’ Dagmar replied with haughty indifference.
Wolfgang had decided to include the boys and Silke on Dagmar’s lessons because he felt that getting through ninety minutes with a group of children would probably be easier than doing so with just one. He also thought it would be more fun. He was right on both counts and the lessons were a great success from the very start. Despite or perhaps because of the endless squabbling and fighting that the four young students indulged in.
Secret notes were exchanged. Solemn pacts made and broken. Alliances formed and betrayed.
And in the midst of it all some music was actually taught. Dagmar’s father had been right, his elegant little girl did show some talent at the piano. And because of that, the twins, spurred on by jealousy and the desire not to be beaten by a girl, started applying themselves to various instruments. After all, their dad was a composer, Dagmar’s just ran a shop. Otto showed more instinctive flair but Paulus was more diligent and by sheer force of concentration made himself the better player.
Only Silke was completely without any ability to play but she could keep a decent enough rhythm so Wolfgang kept her on tambourine and maracas. Then one day he overheard her regaling the other three children with dirty songs she’d been taught by her mother’s boyfriend and Wolfgang realized that in Silke he had a vocalist.
By the end of the first year the children were able to mount a small concert for Dagmar’s parents, which even had a printed programme, created using a ‘John Bull’ printing set which Frieda had brought back from a conference she had attended in England.
Edeltraud, Silke’s mother, was also invited to the performance and came accompanied by her new boyfriend Jürgen. A pleasant young man, who held his hat in his hand, twisting it nervously and thanking Frau Stengel for allowing him into her home. He was clearly totally in awe of the celebrated Herr Fischer and his wife, and stood up when either of them entered or left the room.
As the months went by Dagmar began to spend more and more of her Saturday afternoons at the Stengels’. The lessons lasted for an hour and a half but she successfully lobbied her parents not to be picked up by her nanny for as long again after that. The Fischers were happy that their daughter was gaining some experience of children from a different class to her own. This was the twentieth century after all and Germany was a proud social democracy. Besides, the music teacher’s wife was a doctor and the children’s grandfather was a police inspector so clearly this was a good solid household. And if the little blonde daughter of the housemaid was rather rough and ready with her grazed knees, scuffed sandals and a Berlin accent that could have cut glass, then it would do Dagmar no harm at all to gain some experience of such a very different sort of girl. After all, one day she would no doubt be employing them as part of her household.
The Fischers perhaps imagined that the children spent their time in improving pursuits, reading and listening to records. Or playing board games, Snakes and Ladders perhaps, or the newly arrived and hugely popular Monopoly that Herr Fischer thought wonderful and most educational. What the kids were actually doing was wandering the streets of Friedrichshain getting up to whatever mischief they felt inclined to, which was plenty. Frieda worked on Saturdays, and Wolfgang, who could not put up with the noise of four children going wild in a small apartment, simply turfed them out, allowing them to spend glorious free and easy hours ducking in and out of tenement courtyards, playing hopscotch, throwing stones, pinching fruit from stalls and occasionally inspecting each other’s private parts.
In this last activity Dagmar was a spectator only. She never ever showed, not even her knickers, although the boys got roun
d that one by simply lifting up her skirt. Silke, on the other hand, was happy to give the boys a look any time they wanted. She couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.
Thus, as the months went by, a strong bond formed between the four youngsters, a bond separate to their school friends and their individual lives. They were the Saturday Club, a secret society of which only the four of them were aware and which none other could join. Many solemn oaths and secret vows were taken, binding each of them always to be loyal to the club and to each other. It is true that the bit about loyalty to each other was often broken by internal feuding, particularly by the girls, who made a habit of crossing their fingers behind their backs when swearing, whispering ‘except Dagmar’ or ‘not including Silke’ under their breath. But nonetheless the friendship in the Saturday Club was real. Paulus, Otto, Dagmar and Silke were a true gang of four.
Of course the boys saw far more of Silke than they did of Dagmar, and in her innocence Silke fondly imagined that this made her the insider of the two girls, that there was an elite gang within a gang. The opposite was the case. Dagmar’s absence lent her mystery, which in combination with her effortless superiority simply made her all the more fascinating. Silke could never quite understand how the meaner and more snooty and more indifferent Dagmar behaved towards the boys, the more they seemed to like her. Whereas her own eagerness to please just led to her being taken for granted or, worse still, ignored.
It was to be two years before the three Friedrichshain members of the Saturday Club bumped into their elegant Kurfürstendamm comrade on anything other than their name day. It happened at Lake Wannsee during an inter-school swimming gala. These were the Weimar years of increasing egalitarianism, and expensive private schools like Dagmar’s occasionally found themselves competing in sporting competitions with their state-supported rivals.
Paulus and Otto were sitting about on the beautiful banks of the swimming lake when they spotted Dagmar laughing with her friends quite close by. They decided not to make themselves known, partly out of shyness, there being so many other posh girls with her, but also from the sheer unfamiliarity of seeing her outside their usual haunts. Instead they were content to watch, fascinated to see their long-legged friend in her bathing costume, and in some strange, half-understood way enjoying the spectacle.