“You do know how boys look at you?” Bertha pressed on. “You’re almost nineteen, Lena. And most boys in the conservatory are desperate to take you out.”
I was aware of how they looked at me. Male students in the conservatory weren’t shy. I’d received my share of covert whistles and invitations to the dance hall. “Boys want to take out every girl,” I replied. “They’re always looking. I pay them no mind. I don’t want . . . complications.” My voice wavered. “Have you ever . . . done it?”
Bertha shook her head. “It’s not easy for us. How can we protect ourselves? Some boys will use prophylactics if they can get them, but it’s too risky. I am curious, though. Aren’t you?”
Was I? I wasn’t sure, or at least I hadn’t met a boy I liked enough. Perhaps I was indeed attracted to women? I enjoyed coaxing pleasure from my body with my fingers while Bertha snored. But surely that wasn’t unusual. The entire conversation made me wonder. Was there something wrong with me? Was this why I was different?
“I suppose I am curious,” I said warily.
“Well. Frau Arnoldi thinks you’re more than curious. She thinks you’re sleeping with Professor Reitz. She thinks you’re loose. And you have a way about you that doesn’t help.”
“Loose? I’ve never even had a boyfriend!”
Bertha gave me a look. “See? You flirt, you wear fancy clothes, but you’re not running about with boys. You therefore must have a man instead.”
“But it’s not true. My mother pays Professor Reitz for private lessons. I’d never be so reckless. You must believe me. He’s never made an improper gesture or remark to me.”
“Oh, I believe you. I believe you don’t notice. But if Frau Arnoldi said something, then something there must be. She said he gives you high marks. Are you improving so much? Maybe you should pay more attention the next time you go to see him.”
“If there is a next time,” I grumbled. “If Frau Arnoldi gets her way, I doubt it.”
Bertha sighed. “There’ll be a next time. How can there not be?”
II
I went to class every day and practiced every night. I avoided rambunctious gatherings at the house, sneaking cigarettes while leaning out my bedroom window. On the appointed Thursday of my private instruction, I dressed with such modesty that I thought I resembled a nun as I left the boardinghouse under Frau Arnoldi’s baleful stare to make my way to the conservatory, where, after daily sessions, select classrooms were reserved for private use.
As I passed other students en route to their own lessons, I thought again of how ridiculous it was that anyone could think I’d take up with the very man my mother had hired to instruct me. Yet when I entered the room to find him waiting, a lean figure with tousled dark hair and ascetic features, whose most marked characteristic was his limpid gray eyes, my breath faltered. Now that I knew what had been said about us, I couldn’t stop thinking about his hands—long and veined, his fingers as delicate as stems—as he watched me practice the Abel sonata he’d assigned, tapping the cadence on his trouser leg as he paced behind me, his head tilted to detect any errors.
“No.” His voice, gravelly from smoking, halted me. “Your finger is on the wrong string. Again. And slower this time. You needn’t rush through it.”
I resumed playing, stumbling over the first chords. Catching myself, I regained my equilibrium, hearing the sonata in my head, so that my hand on the bow and my hand on the fingerboard worked in tandem.
He did not stop me again. When I finished, lowering the instrument to await his critique, he stood silent for a long moment before he said, “You have been coming here for how long?”
“Almost a year, except during the Christmas and Easter breaks.”
“That long? Fräulein, much as it pains me, you are not improving.”
I felt a sudden drop in my stomach. “But I practice every day.”
“I know. And you are accomplished. You might eventually perform as part of an orchestra if you continue practicing. But as a soloist . . . I fear that’s out of the question.”
His eyes were fixed on me. I had to bite back a rush of tears. Of all the things I’d imagined might happen, this was not one of them. I had come to Weimar uncertain as to whether I could succeed, but then my desire to prove myself overcame my doubt. I wanted a life I chose, as Mutti said, and when I envisioned returning to Berlin without it, I couldn’t bear it. She would never forgive me or let me forget I’d failed, after everything she had done to get me here.
“Can’t you teach me to be better?” I said. “My mother wants me to be a musician, and—”
He interrupted me. “I know your Mutti has placed much hope in you. You don’t want to disappoint, but it would be dishonest to give false assurance. Indeed, I shouldn’t even be taking her money. No amount of instruction can create talent where there is none. You are a good violinist but not a superb one. You never will be.”
To my horror, a single tear leaked out. Setting aside the violin and averting my face, I rummaged in my skirt pocket for a handkerchief. “Here,” he said.
As I dabbed my eyes with his handkerchief, I detected a strong scent of tobacco, mingled with tweed and something indefinable, like musk. Was this what a man smelled like?
“But you—you gave me high marks,” I said, my voice wavering. “You reported that I was improving. Why would you say that?”
“I . . . I thought—” He cut himself short. And then I saw it: that look, which Bertha had told me to watch for. His eyes lingered on me for a moment too long before he tore his gaze away, as if he’d been scalded. “You know why,” he said, and he moved across the room from me, staking his meager distance.
Frau Arnoldi thinks you’re sleeping with Professor Reitz. She thinks you’re loose.
Anger flared in me. “I don’t know why you would lie. If I cannot play the violin for a living, I cannot stay here. It’s too expensive, a waste. I’ll have to go back home to Berlin.”
He did not turn to me, but his shoulders hunched about his neck, prepared for the blow. Just as I started to step toward him, he whispered, “I don’t want to lose you. That is why I lied.”
I went still. He gave an arid chuckle. “I am a fool. I think . . . I am in love with you.”
Hearing these words slammed something shut inside me, and the blow of it knocked something else open. I didn’t believe it, not entirely. He had falsified my grade report to keep me here; he was married, with children. Germany was poor. Even influential professors had to pay their bills. If he thought he was in love, he was a coward. I was his student, a girl half his age, who could cause his ruin. He must have heard the rumors about us. He’d tried to refute them by hiding his desire under fake praise, while pocketing my mother’s money. It was a terrible, craven deceit, and suddenly I wanted to test his sincerity.
“You love me, so you lied,” I said, extending his handkerchief. “How cruel.”
He stepped backward again. “I know. You must hate me.”
I should. I should hate him enough to go straight to the dean and report him. He was not honorable. But I didn’t move, for now I saw the secret power I had over him—a power that had lurked all this time inside me. He had crushed my ability to fulfill my dream but I had invaded his. And in that instant, I decided to throw caution aside, toss it upon the wreckage of my aspirations. I did it out of frustration and out of spite; and to avenge myself, to ensure that everything was so thoroughly ravaged, he would never forget me. If I could never become a master violinist, if he stole that hope from me, I would take this from him.
I reached for his hand, shoving the handkerchief into it. “I don’t hate you,” I said, and I did not let go of his fingers. “I don’t know why, but I don’t.”
He froze. “Do you . . . do you think you might care for me?”
I considered him. “Why don’t you kiss me and find out?”
HE LOCKED THE CLASSROOM DOOR and flung himself at me, bruising my lips, his moans guttural as his hands, those veined hands w
ith their tapered fingers, snaked under my dress until he found my hidden place and I let out a startled gasp. It was unlike anything I had felt before, those foreign fingertips dipping inside me, and while I wanted to remain unmoved, in control, I heard myself groan and my hips arched up against him. Animal ardor took over. I was doing exactly what people said I had done, and the savage realization of it was undeniable.
He laid me on the floor next to my violin case. He didn’t remove his jacket, shirt, or tie; he was so flustered, he merely pushed down his pants and fiddled with something he had pulled from his pocket, a rubbery thing he slipped onto his engorged penis. He murmured, “I don’t want to hurt you,” and I replied, “You won’t.”
He thrust inside me. Fiery pain lanced my gut. It snagged my breath and it burned but I welcomed it. It was my punishment and reward; it was what I deserved. He bucked hard and his breath came fast. Then he suddenly shuddered, making me clench my teeth against my cry as he yanked out and grappled with his French letter, spilling seed on my thigh.
The moment afterward, he groaned. “Gott mich retten, you were a virgin.”
“No.” I cradled his face. “God has nothing to do with it. I wanted this.”
He bit his lip, looking between us to my splayed thighs. “How can you know what you want? You’re barely a woman.” But he kissed my mouth softly, so I tasted his salt and smoke. “I didn’t know,” he murmured. “I thought you were . . . more experienced.”
Had he done this before? I wanted to think not, but his surprise warned me that he probably had. I might be his first virgin but not his first seduction. Only, it felt as if I had ended up seducing him, which pleased me. I hadn’t lacked sufficient talent in this respect.
Heaving himself off me, he stuffed his rumpled shirt into his trousers and fastened his belt. He kept his eyes averted, ashamed. I sat up, put myself in order. When I stood, a wave of nausea swayed me; I felt blood in my underpants. My groin ached. I’d be sore for days.
“It’s unforgivable,” he said. He fished a cigarette out of his jacket, lighting it with quivering hands, although smoking was not allowed inside the school. “I am unforgivable.”
I regarded him pensively. I should be the one telling him this, yet apparently, he had enough guilt for both of us. And in truth, though painful, it hadn’t been entirely unpleasant. With some time and a proper bed, I might even like it. He wasn’t a raw boy making suggestive gestures; he wasn’t going to boast of his conquest to his friends. He had to be discreet. He had a reputation to protect. What we had just done could destroy him, even more than me. The secrecy of it, the conspiracy that united us, appealed. I’d finally had something that I had seized of my own free will. And, more practically, I could stay in Weimar under his tutelage. I could perfect my violin playing and he would keep falsifying my marks. I wouldn’t have to confess my failure to Mutti or return home to confront a future where I had no idea what to do.
“I wouldn’t mind if we did it again,” I told him as he reached down to hand me my violin case. He paused, startled, watching me take the case and move to the door. I could see by his expression that it was not what he’d anticipated. His voice had the ragged edge of someone who yearns for that which will do them harm. “I will resign, say I am ill, that I cannot teach anymore.”
I paused, my hand on the doorknob. “Why?”
“Because it is what I must do,” he cried. He looked desperate, as if he had only just realized the consequences of deflowering a girl on his classroom floor. I wanted to laugh at his contrition. How foolish he was. He could lie to me, to my mother, to his wife and the school at large, yet when he got what he wanted, he could only feel remorse. Like a child, I thought, who regrets breaking a cherished toy after he played with it too roughly.
“Don’t resign because of me.” I unlocked the door. “I’ll never tell.”
SO IT BEGAN.
His shame ran its course; overcome by desire, he resumed my private instruction. And at his home whenever his wife went away to visit relatives, he bedded me. He was tender; he had a musician’s sensitivity, easily stoked. He played me as if strings vibrated beneath my flesh and taught me more than he ever could in the classroom. I learned I was not different. I was like every other girl. I had the same sensations and urges, the same hunger. And without realizing it, I began to see the fragility he carried inside him like an old wound.
One time, he took up my violin—which had cost my mother 2,500 marks, a fortune that reproached me every time I locked it in its case and took him inside me—and he proceeded to coax from it a sonata of such pathos, such exquisite perfection, that he brought me to tears.
“You are a maestro,” I told him, clutching my hands to my chest.
He sighed. “No. I could have been. I loved this more than anything, but I gave it up—for marriage and respectability, for tenure and an income. I surrendered my soul.”
He reminded me of poems by Goethe, of the melancholy we kept tethered because we were German and must not reveal weakness. With his thick dark hair tangled about his lined brow, silvery threads glinting in its depths, his mournful eyes and downcast mouth, which suckled me like a boy at his mother’s teat—he was so beautiful, so anguished, I could not help but fall in love.
Or, what I thought must be love.
For he was right about one thing. I was still barely a woman.
III
Bertha suspected, and grilled me until I told her. The affair had emboldened me. I bobbed my hair, wore tighter sweaters, shortened my hems further, and rolled up my stockings. Forbidden sweets and cigarettes were no longer enough. I wanted to experience life beyond the boardinghouse and the conservatory, to explore Weimar itself, where under its stately veneer its boulevardier heart teemed with insouciance.
At my instigation, Bertha and I skipped classes and sneaked out with the boys to the beer gardens, the cafés, or local kinos. On sticky seats while the flickers played, I let the boys creep their hands down my dress to fondle my breasts—but no further. In my own way, I stayed faithful to Reitz, who knew how to avoid pregnancy. He used his French letters, made sure never to spill inside me, while the boys’ hot pleas and clumsy gropes betrayed that they had less experience than I did. I learned the new American dances, kicking up my heels in grimy saloons to blaring saxophones. And while I danced, smoked, and guzzled schnapps, the world transformed. The old order crumbled as a revolutionary artistic movement dubbed the Bauhaus ripped down our pastel mask to construct a sleek minimalist facade. A new constitution gave birth to our Weimar Republic, providing all the necessary oratory and none of the stability.
Yet in the midst of the upheaval, I remained careful. One mistake and I could find myself in trouble. Bertha warned me repeatedly that I risked disaster, consorting with a married professor, but I assured her I was taking precautions and had no illusions. While Reitz never mentioned his wife, except to cite whether she was at home, her very presence was an obstacle I could not breach. He also had a son and a daughter, I discovered from the pictures on his mantel, his son close to me in age; he rarely mentioned them, either, but his silence was enough. I had no idea if his marriage was happy or if he still loved his wife, but I knew it was not happy or loving enough. And he made it clear without ever saying it that I must make no demands of him.
For a while, it suited me. As he couldn’t see me every night, it left me plenty of time to do other things. I became enthralled by newfound friends rhapsodizing about the gaudy butterfly emerging from Berlin’s war-torn carapace, the many theaters, cabarets, and vaudeville halls sprouting amid destitution. Children were dying in droves from typhoid and starvation. Maimed veterans had found no reparations from the government and took to begging or selling contraband goods. Women who survived the war, but whose husbands or sons had not, peddled what they had, or if they were nimble enough, auditioned to be chorus girls. Germany was chaotic, riddled with poverty and crime, but every boy I kissed and every girl I met wanted to go to Berlin—but not to extol Handel,
Schiller, or Goethe. No, they longed to make abstract art, pen satires, parade down the streets and revel in freedom. It reminded me of Uncle Willi’s friends in the parlor, their exuberance and belief that art could heal all ills. Berlin was where art was being made, a beacon of hope to chase away the drudgery.
In Berlin, everyone thought they could become someone else.
But I feared returning there.
REITZ NEVER SOCIALIZED WITH ME. We conducted our liaison like our lessons—in private, with no attempt to plan beyond the next time. Eventually, I grew impatient. I wanted more, but more of what? I was reaching the end of my third term at the conservatory. Much as I wanted to avoid the thought, I couldn’t be a student forever. I had to start planning my future.
“Do you think I should move back to Berlin?” I asked him impulsively one night, smoking in bed after lovemaking. I’d begun smoking more with him, our ritual after sex, as he liked it and he could turn moody at times when we were done.
“Berlin?” He stood at the window, the tip of his cigarette glowing. “What do you expect to do there?” He sounded disinterested, as if I was making idle conversation, which only made me more impatient. Did he not care if I stayed or went? Perversity overcame me. After all these months, he still behaved as if we engaged in a transgression for which he could never atone.
“I don’t know,” I said with deliberate flippancy, to see if I could get a reaction out of him. “I’ll never be a concert soloist, but I can still play music. There’s so much opportunity. New musical halls and cabarets opening every day. I could do a violin duet or maybe sing.” Stubbing out my cigarette, I ran my hand through my tousled hair. Affecting a throaty tone like the chanteuses used in our local dives, I crooned, “‘We are different from the others who love in morality, wandering through a thousand wonders . . .’” I paused, watching him turn to me with a slight smile. “I have a nice voice, don’t you think? My friends tell me I sing very well.”
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