The Pretender

by Mary Morrissy

Franziska’s eyes travelled up to the first-floor balcony, strung like a latticed necklace between the marbled necks of fluted columns. Her eyes soared in the cathedral height, up further still, two floors, then three and more, which receded up into a vaulted glassy distance. All around there was a sense of urgent bustle. White-gloved bellboys ornate in red and gold, guardians of the lifts, drew back their accordion grids to reveal what looked to Franziska like gilded birdcages. She and Doris paused for a moment as the crowds streamed round them, and the island they formed on the polished floor. Franziska could hear the shushing swish of skirts, the click of canes and soles on wood, vague snatches of small talk – a silk cravat, no, no, my dear, that would not do at all, ten marks, well I never!, this way, I said, this way – the railway station calls of the lift attendants, and somewhere in the midst of that the tinny music of an organ grinder floating in off the street. And yet, despite the crowd, a sort of hush pervaded, the quiet ooze of commerce, the mercantile discretion of the rich.

  ‘Second floor,’ a bellboy called in a voice barely broken, ‘haberdashery.’

  ‘That’s us,’ Doris cried.

  The Ladies’ Department was also on the second floor and Doris could not pass it by without a visit. She sidled up to mannequin displays, calling loudly to Franziska, ‘Oh, look at this!’

  She lingered by glass cases of gloves; she fondled a ballgown of French silk.

  ‘You would need to save for months to buy any of these,’ Franziska complained to Doris.

  ‘I know, I know, but these will give you ideas. We’ll buy the fabric at Jandorf’s and go to a dressmaker. That’s what Louise and I do, and can you tell the difference?’ She twirled around the shopfloor, her pink cotton dress with the daisy sprig floating about her.

  ‘Fräulein Hackerl upstairs takes a down payment. That way you can dress like a princess on half nothing.’

  Haberdashery was a world in miniature. Everything was under glass, as if even the smallest pin was a treasure worth protecting.

  ‘They’re afraid girls like us will come in and rob the place,’ Doris remarked under her breath as they trailed around the display cases, which housed pins and stays, spools of thread, spare bobbins in serried trays. Even the lengths of ribbon and the cards of lace were trapped beneath a pane of glass on the main counter, behind which an elderly and very idle shop assistant stood contemplating her fingernails.

  ‘Ladies,’ she said tightly as they approached. She was a blowsy woman with stiff, coiffed hair and a tight shelf for a bosom. ‘May I be of assistance?’

  ‘We’re looking for Herr Fröhlich,’ Doris said.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, looking Doris and Franziska up and down. ‘I see. Well, I’m afraid Herr Fröhlich always takes his lunch at this hour. He leaves me in charge. Perhaps I can be of service? Unless’, she added, ‘your visit is of a social nature?’

  ‘Please inform him that Fräulein Wingender and Fräulein Schanzkowska called,’ Doris said sniffily.

  ‘Snob,’ she muttered under her breath as they turned to leave.

  Franziska was relieved he was not there. She was happy just to wander around and see Herr Fröhlich’s world, the trinkets behind glass, the rows of ribbons, the cards of stays and trims, the needle pouches, the silvery thimbles. So small, so neat, so ordered. She felt a rush of pity for him, remembering the largeness of his ambition and imagining him here in the midst of all these small shiny things. The city had diminished Herr Fröhlich even more than it had her.

  ‘It’s no job for a man, is it, really?’ Doris mused. ‘That’s what Fritz says.’

  Fritz was the bad company Doris was keeping and of whom Frau Wingender so disapproved. A lathe operator at the plant, he was large and noisy in his affections. He would sweep Doris up in his arms – when they met after the dayshift at the gates – and squeeze her so hard that it made Franziska breathless just to watch. But she did not trust Fritz. His brutish good looks, his size; his rough humour made her wary.

  ‘Fritz says isn’t it strange that Herr Fröhlich hasn’t volunteered,’ Doris said as they stepped out onto the Alexanderplatz.

  In the first rush to the recruiting offices, Fritz had been rejected. A bad chest.

  ‘Fritz says it’s criminal to wait to be asked when your country is at war,’ Doris continued.

  ‘The war will be over soon, won’t it?’ Franziska asked.

  ‘Fritz says the war would be over quicker if every fit man volunteered,’ Doris offered slyly.

  Fritz says a lot of things, Franziska thought.

  ‘Fritz says he’s a nancy boy,’ she whispered, though they were in the middle of a crowded street, amidst the screech of tram brakes.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just look how he earns a living, Fritz says, selling fripperies to women while real men are at the Front. And all he thinks about are his big plans. America indeed!’

  Fritz says, Fritz says. Franziska knew what Fritz was. An angry man who couldn’t hold his drink or his temper.

  ‘Fritz has a brother, you know,’ Doris said, slipping her arm through Franziska’s, ‘maybe when you have your dress made up we can all go out together?’

  Franziska smiled and nodded, succumbing to Doris’s conciliatory gaiety. She warmed to her friend’s engaging directness so at odds with her own labyrinthine secrecy. But she was not going to consort with a tool-fitter, not even to please Doris.

  They bought Franziska’s fabric in Jandorf’s. It was not at all as impressive as Tietz’s; here there were no bellboys or carpets, but crooked parquetry and unruly queues and a functional clatter in place of a gilded hush. But that did not deter Doris from ordering the assistant to fetch down bolts of cotton and cheviot, serge and poplin from the highest corners. She had a hunter’s appetite for the task at hand. She fingered everything and compared endlessly, doing quick calculations in her head. In the end Franziska chose a blood-red velveteen which brooded and glinted depending on the light and felt to the touch like goose-down. And even though she had to hand over half her week’s wages, she felt somehow armed against adversity walking out of Jandorf’s swinging a brown paper package with the makings of a fine dress.

  ELSBETHA HACKERL WAS a thin, pinched woman of indeterminate age – definitely too old to get married now, Doris asserted, as they knocked on the shabby door of Apartment 307. The Hackerls lived directly above the Wingenders, so when they were admitted it was like walking into a replica of the flat below, the same pattern of interconnecting rooms, a small scullery, one bedroom. Fräulein Hackerl used the equivalent of Herr Fröhlich’s room to work in; the window gave onto the street and she had placed her treadle machine facing it so that she sat as she worked in a bath of dusty light. Her bedridden mother, installed like a gimlet-eyed raptor on a divan in the adjoining room with the doors flung open, ruled her life, though Elsbetha spent most of her day with her back turned to her.

  ‘Red,’ the old lady scoffed when Franziska and Doris unfurled the prized material. ‘A whore’s colour.’

  ‘You must excuse my mother,’ Elsbetha Hackerl said in a low, urgent voice. ‘Being an invalid has made her irritable.’

  But, according to Doris, even in full health, Frau Hackerl had been cranky and sour.

  ‘Crimson is a very fashionable colour this season,’ Elsbetha said loudly for her mother’s benefit.

  Frau Hackerl snorted and rapped her cane on the floor loudly. The stick was used when she needed to attract her harried daughter’s attention, but the old lady also used it as a conversational tool. Elsbetha cleared a space on the window ledge for Doris to sit, sweeping up several unfinished pieces embroidered with large tacking stitches – the raglan sleeve of a brown linen jacket, a bias cut of a grey flannel skirt. Hanging from the shutters, around the mantel mirror, from picture frames and even from the gas-light bracket, other clothes skulked in various states of undress. A faint breeze through the window – opened a crack at the bottom – rustled through the room, fussing at the thin patterns lying on the table like cr
ushed paper lanterns.

  ‘Now,’ Elsbetha said, stepping back to take Franziska in. ‘What style were you thinking of?’

  ‘Something with a Robespierre collar and French cuffs,’ Doris commanded, ‘and a five-piece skirt with a pleat each side. Franziska should make the most of her height, don’t you think?’

  Doris, a diminutive four foot eleven, considered the rest of the world tall.

  ‘Indeed, Fräulein,’ Elsbetha said gravely, ‘you have quite a regal bearing.’

  ‘Clearing length,’ Doris went on, ‘and we’ve bought Belgian lace for the chemisette.’

  Fräulein Hackerl set to with the measuring tape.

  ‘You have an hourglass figure, Fräulein Schanzkowska, what a trim waist!’

  The seamstress swathed the velveteen around Franziska’s face.

  ‘Yes,’ she said approvingly, ‘this will be most becoming on you.’

  She laid the velveteen down next to the spidery lace.

  ‘Come back to me next week,’ she said, ‘it should be ready for a first fitting.’

  ‘That’s what she says to everybody,’ Frau Hackerl shouted, striking the floorboards with her cane.

  Elsbetha ignored her.

  ‘I said, that’s what she always says.’

  ‘We heard you, Mother!’ Fräulein Hackerl said loudly as she showed Franziska and Doris out.

  ‘She’s a little deaf,’ she confided, as if that might explain away her mother’s rudeness.

  ‘A little mad, more like,’ Doris muttered as Elsbetha Hackerl shut the door on them with a tight smile.

  As they made their way downstairs they could hear the rap of Frau Hackerl’s cane and her quavery voice calling for broth.

  They collided with Herr Fröhlich at the Wingenders’ door, which was, as usual, thrown open. Rosa Wingender liked to hear as much as possible of her neighbours’ doings and she hated being alone. In the evenings, if her girls or her current lodger weren’t at home, she would sit in the open doorway and engage in conversation with the passers-by. She could recognise people by their footsteps, and at night by their pauses and lurchings on the returns.

  Herr Fröhlich was out of breath, having taken the stairs two at a time. ‘Ah, ladies,’ he said, standing back to let them pass. ‘Going out?’

  Franziska was never sure of his tone. She wondered if she heard mockery in it, or was it merely the servile politeness that his work at Tietz’s required.

  ‘No, actually, coming in,’ Doris replied pertly. ‘We’ve been to the dressmaker’s upstairs. Franziska is getting something made up.’

  ‘For a special occasion?’ he enquired.

  ‘A lady, Herr Fröhlich, does not need a special occasion,’ Doris said and swept by him.

  Herr Fröhlich waited until Doris was out of sight, then he touched Franziska lightly on the forearm.

  ‘Would the special occasion have anything to do with our conversation the other night?’

  She had not given him an answer. She hadn’t had a chance.

  ‘Fräulein Hackerl says the dress will be ready next week,’ Franziska said meaningfully.

  He smiled broadly.

  How easy it was to please him, she thought, with a pang of remorse. For her, it would never be that uncomplicated.

  ‘Then I’ll have to pray that the seamstress is as good as her word.’

  It fitted perfectly, though it took closer to three weeks to be completed. Franziska stood in Elsbetha Hackerl’s chaotic workroom staring into the pedestal mirror which Elsbetha had pushed into the centre of the strewn floor. She gazed at herself long and hard. Perhaps it was the crushed pile of the velveteen, or the succulent colour, or the moth-busy light of Fräulein Hackerl’s room, but she felt transformed.

  ‘With this dress you should wear your hair up, Fräulein,’ Elsbetha said, holding Franziska’s heavy hair in a soft nest at her nape. The seamstress’s breast glistened; she used the front of her sober dress as a pincushion.

  ‘It’s so beautiful,’ Franziska whispered. She twirled slowly in front of the mirror.

  She wanted to embrace the dressmaker; she felt absurdly grateful to her. Elsbetha wrapped the dress in tissue paper and handed it to Franziska as carefully as if it were a baby. At the door she handed Elsbetha her first instalment. Fräulein Hackerl slipped the money into her apron pocket and put her fingers to her lips.

  ‘Another one paying on the never, never,’ her mother muttered from within.

  Franziska donned the dress the following Saturday. Doris was splayed on the bed wearing her nightgown and robe and leafing through the BZ am Mittag desultorily. The headlines lamented the Battle of the Marne, but Doris was more interested in reading the advertisements aloud – tango clubs on Kantstraße, Lunapark off the Ku’damm, which ‘every Berliner must visit at least once’ – or the sad, lurid accounts of the city’s victims.

  ‘Oh, listen to this one,’ she was saying. ‘Desperation drove Else Jupke, a 22-year-old woman from Wilhaus, to jump in the Spree River near the Schlütersteig. Boatmen came to her rescue and transported her to the hospital. She had recently arrived in Berlin to work as a buffet lady, but after only finding employment as a waitress and then losing her job, her apartment, and finally her money, grew tired of life.’

  Doris sighed loudly, sated with a luxuriant pity for a despair she would never know.

  I could be Else Jupke, Franziska almost said.

  A battered suitcase filled with tiny treasures from home, buffeted on the street by the heedless crowd and the piercing wind. A small, down-at-heel creature, with mouse-brown hair which sticks out behind my ears. Giving off an untended air, the graceless neglect of the unloved. Serving behind the lunch counter in a uniform made for the girl who had the job before, a smaller, prettier girl. Hurrying home with the smell of wurst and onion clinging to me, the faint whiff of the slaughterhouse. If I were a shopgirl or one of those new-fangled typing machine operators, I might get more respect, or a certain kind of notice. But Fischer’s is a cheap place, where the customers are more interested in the size of the portions than the looks of the serving girls. They leave tips for a hearty meal, but not for a pleasing smile. And one day I arrive at work, late again since rising early is a problem. It is cold in the lodgings. In bed with my coat thrown over the thin blankets is often the only warmth and comfort there is. It is a long tram ride, the Number 6, which often sails by full to the gills and leaves me standing on the kerb. And when I arrive, Frau Fischer calls me over.

  ‘Else, you’re late again.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘No buts, late once too often. You just don’t have the right attitude. You’re a lazy girl, there’s something slovenly about you. Something not quite right. I shall have to let you go.’

  ‘Trying it on for size?’ Doris asked, looking up from the crumpled newsprint.

  Else turns towards the street and slowly fades …

  ‘What?’

  ‘The dress,’ Doris prompted impatiently. Sometimes she thought Franziska too queer for words. She would fall into a strange, distracted mood as if she could hear voices that no one else could hear.

  ‘No,’ Franziska said boldly, ‘I’m going out, actually.’

  ‘Really?’ Doris sat up abruptly, abandoning her previous languor. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  She peered up suspiciously as Franziska, head bowed, buttoned the dress at the neck and cuffs.

  ‘Who is it? It’s someone from the factory, isn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Louise? Louise?’ Doris yelled. ‘Come in here quick.’

  She felt in need of reinforcements. Louise was more adept at worming information out of Franziska. In rare moments of reflection – usually after a row with Fritz – Doris worried that she was too game, too direct. Louise ambled in from the kitchen. ‘What is it, Dor?’ she asked lazily. She had been steeped in a novelette, a penny dreadful, and resented being yanked away from it.

  ‘Sissy here has been holding out on us.’


  Sissy, Sissy.

  ‘Go on, Sissy, tell us who it is!’

  Something snapped within. That name, calling her back.

  ‘Don’t call me Sissy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t call me Sissy,’ she repeated.

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘Just don’t,’ Franziska said evenly. ‘It’s a child’s name. I won’t answer to a child’s name.’

  Doris’s teasing gaiety evaporated and she fell into a crestfallen silence. Even Louise backed away, startled by Franziska’s menacing tone. A look of puzzled shock passed between the sisters. Franziska saw it in the foxed mirror as she gathered her hair back just as Fräulein Hackerl had suggested. She had not meant to be so cold; sometimes she did not know what came over her. Doris had meant no harm, Doris was her friend. Without Doris she might still be walking the streets of Berlin. Without Doris she would never have met Herr Fröhlich. But the wave of cold, despising anger which had swept over her could annihilate all of that in one instant. An old memory stirred.

  ‘You really want to know who I’m meeting tonight?’ she asked, speaking to Doris’s reflection in the mirror.

  ‘Yes, yes, do tell!’ Doris crawled on all fours to the edge of the bed. She was like a puppy, Franziska thought, a playful and forgetful puppy.

  ‘It’s Hans,’ Franziska said slowly, savouring the moment. It was the first time she had uttered his name.

  ‘Hans who?’ Doris asked blankly.

  ‘Our Hans, you know!’

  ‘Hans Fröhlich?’ Doris asked incredulously.

  Franziska nodded.

  ‘Well I never!’ Doris looked agape.

  ‘Aren’t you the dark horse?’ Louise added admiringly.

  ‘How do I look?’ Franziska asked, turning away from the mirror.

  Doris answered by embracing her. Franziska clung to her, trying to garner some of her friend’s sweetness and warmth, so as to dispel the icy chill which had gripped her only moments before. She knew the consequences of allowing that cold fury to take hold.

  Frau Wingender could not hide her disapproval as Franziska waited in the kitchen for Herr Fröhlich, while Doris fussed with her hair. She had lent Franziska her black panne velvet hat and was busily setting a pin into Franziska’s hair to hold it in place. Frau Wingender sat glumly at the table nursing her first drink of the evening.