Marlene: A Novel

by C. W. Gortner

“Yes. I’m afraid she’s very angry with me.”

  “Oh? She didn’t mention it. She said you’d accomplished everything required of you at the conservatory and it was time for you to return.” His voice softened. “I should have known.”

  I nodded, abruptly humiliated. I’d always liked my uncle, but I did not want to explain my sordid circumstances to him, though I sensed he’d understand.

  As if he felt my discomfort, he smiled. “Don’t worry, Liebchen. My sister is a good woman, but not a lenient one. And we’ve something in common, for she doesn’t approve of my Jolie. She’s so upset with me, she refuses to accept any money, though we’re doing better now than we have since the war. I still deposit her share in her account, though,” he said, winking. “I thought she must need it for your tuition and private classes.”

  I lowered my eyes lest he see how awful I felt. My mother had of course deprived herself to see to my needs. I mustn’t let the knowledge deter me. She had done it because she wanted me to emerge from the conservatory as a soloist, take my place on the great stage. She still did, hence my housekeeping arrangement with the Austrian. Her disappointment when she found out I lacked sufficent talent would only make her resent me more.

  He took me to lunch at the Café Bauer, my first decent meal since returning to Berlin. Over pork chops and mint-garnished potatoes that must have cost a fortune, he told me he’d met Jolie at a reception for Prince Wilhelm, the kaiser’s son, who’d stayed in Germany despite his father’s exile, as sought after by society as he’d ever been. The prince had introduced Madame Jolie to Uncle Willi, who was immediately smitten.

  “She was married at the time,” he explained. “To some American inventor promoting a carnival attraction called the Devil’s Wheel. She told me she didn’t love him anymore and we decided there was no time like the present to start our life together. She’s Polish. Very sensible. But she’s traveled all over the world, and you’d never know it.”

  I refrained from asking whether it was unclear that she was well traveled or Polish, though I could see why Mutti disapproved. A foreigner and a divorcée, living in the family home as the new Felsing matron. Mutti must have felt Oma turn over in her tomb.

  “She has an unusual name,” I said, sopping up the sauce on my plate with my bread and not caring that this, too, would have turned someone over in their tomb.

  “It’s her pet name. Her name is Martha Helene. But everyone calls her Jolie.”

  “Everyone?”

  He nodded, motioning to the waiter for the check. “We’re holding soirees again at the house, like the old days. Jolie loves the theater as much as I do; she also adores being a hostess. And while things are hardly the same, people still need to be entertained. She’s urged me to invest in a few productions—don’t tell your mother—and I still have my renter upstairs. He’s making quite a splash with his invention. After the war, the picture studios came calling, offering to patent his camera lenses for the kinos.”

  I sat upright. My eagerness must have shown on my face because after he paid the check, he gave me a sly look. “Shall I invite you to tea?”

  “Oh, yes. Please.”

  “Good. As my Jolie would say, no time like the present.”

  SHE WAS INDEED SOMETHING.

  A fine-boned woman with a piquant face, she wore chandelier earrings swinging from her earlobes, her hair was swathed in a turban, and her brows were plucked to fine arched lines. She also had the longest, reddest fingernails I’d ever seen. Her perfume enveloped me as she kissed both my cheeks in the French style; she smelled different from Oma, not like flowers, but as if she’d bathed in musky incense.

  “Darling Marlene.” A slight but detectable accent in her German betrayed her origins. Clearly, it wasn’t her provenance that was mysterious, but I was bewildered as to whether her well-traveled person might deceive, for she seemed to me entirely exotic. Perhaps her sensibility? She was dressed at home in midafternoon as if she were expecting royalty.

  “My Willi has told me so much about you. Sit here by me. I want to hear everything. I understand you’re a violinist—a graduate, no less, of the esteemed conservatory. How sublime,” she said. “You must be thrilled to be back in Berlin, with so much opportunity for musicians.”

  As I perched beside her on the sofa, now draped in patterned shawls, and she rang the bell for tea, I covertly surveyed the parlor. Her influence was everywhere. She’d replaced all the stiff lamp shades with fringed, tasseled adornments and removed the portrait of my great-grandfather Conrad Felsing, founder of the business, from above the fireplace. In its stead now hung an odd painting in muddy pigments of a square-faced, ugly harlequin.

  “Do you like it?” she said. “The artist is Pablo Picasso. I bought that in Paris for a song. He’s going to be very famous: a Catalan with an unsurpassed eye for color and form. And for women.” She chuckled. “Quite an eye for the female figure, too.”

  The maid brought in the tea. With a lingering kiss on Jolie’s lips and a peck on mine, Uncle Willi said he had to return to the store. He said to me, “Remember. Don’t tell Josephine.”

  I nodded. If I ever breathed a word of this to my mother, she’d put me in my tomb.

  Jolie waved out the maid and poured the tea herself, which was also unusual. Oma wouldn’t have deigned to serve tea to the kaiser himself. “You haven’t said a word,” she said, offering a cup she’d heaped with sugar. “Do I disappoint?”

  “No,” I said. “Not at all, Frau Felsing—”

  “Frau!” She trilled with laughter. “Please. Call me Madame. Or Jolie, if you prefer. Frau Felsing makes me sound ancient.” She sipped her tea, her little finger crooked, displaying its lacquered nail. “I feared you might disapprove. Your mother certainly does. Oh, the way she stared at me when Willi introduced us.” She rolled her eyes with such dramatic aplomb, she reminded me of Henny Porten. “If looks could kill, I’d be dead as we speak. You have a sister, too, I believe. Elisabeth? Your Mutti refuses to let her set foot inside this house.”

  I gulped my tea, scalding my tongue.

  “Are you happy to be back?” she said.

  I started. “Happy, Madame?”

  “Why, yes.” She gave a shrug. “Your mother isn’t a happy woman, and when a woman is unhappy—well, she makes everyone else around her unhappy, too. It’s our curse. Once Eve took a bite of the forbidden fruit, she gave us the power to affect the world—for good or for evil.”

  “Mutti isn’t unhappy,” I replied, surprised to hear myself defending the very woman whom I longed to escape. “But she’s not very understanding, either.”

  “Alas. Those who condemn always live in fear. They deny their own hearts, for they would like to act as we do yet do not dare.”

  I was taken aback. She didn’t seem like someone given to musings. She had hidden depths; I understood now why Uncle Willi was smitten. She wasn’t German at all.

  “So.” Her smile revealed teeth yellowed by tea and slightly smudged with her red lipstick. “Tell me everything, my dear. I want us to be friends.”

  She was everything Mutti abhorred—a woman of the modern age, as loose with her mouth as her morals, having cast aside one husband to snag my uncle, and I told her everything. I couldn’t hold it back. There was something so novel about her, her attentive candor easing the knot in my chest as I related my trials in Weimar, skirting the details of my affair with Professor Reitz, but not my realization that I’d never fulfill my mother’s ambitions for me, and then of my return to find myself sold into servitude for lessons that couldn’t provide any benefit. “I can play the violin well enough,” I said. “I don’t need more lessons.”

  She sat in contemplative silence before she said, “Perhaps this new professor is indeed as renowned as your mother claims and can help you play even better.” She paused, gauging me. “But naturally, it makes no difference if you’re disinclined. I see no reason why you shouldn’t seek your own way. We do know theater managers who may hire you. But,” sh
e added, “the pay these days—I’m afraid it won’t be enough for you to move anywhere. Everyone in the theater is as poor as a rat. The show must go on, as they say, but it goes on rather frugally in Berlin.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll do anything.”

  “Except wax floors,” she replied. She smiled again. “I don’t blame you. You have the training, only . . .”

  “Only what?” I leaned over to her. “What else do I need?”

  She passed her gaze over me. “My dear, I do not wish to be insensitive.”

  I froze. Then, as understanding crept through me, I smoothed my rumpled wool skirt and muttered, “Mutti confiscated my clothes. She said I mustn’t make a spectacle of myself.”

  “Instead she does it for you by dressing you like a widow.” Jolie put her cup on its saucer. “You cannot possibly go on auditions like that. I’ve a few things I could lend you, a coat or two, at least. Your grandmother also left some dresses in the attic we might alter.” She snapped her fingers. “No time like the present. Allons-y! Let’s see what we can achieve.”

  III

  It became my new secret.

  I agreed to lessons with the Austrian professor, who proved as cantankerous as he was renowned, scrubbing his floors after practice because, as Jolie advised, I could refine my skill for auditions. But after three hours of practice and two hours of cleaning his cluttered flat, I went to my uncle’s home, where Jolie had me try on the new dresses she’d had made for me.

  Oma’s discarded remnants were too outdated, she had pronounced. Impossible to alter styles that had gone out before the war. Instead, she inveigled Willi, who could deny her nothing, for money to have new attire made, though when I first beheld these lovely dresses with their drooping necklines and daringly high hems, I could barely fit into them.

  “You’re too fat,” Jolie said. She did not fear insensitivity now. “Whatever your mother is feeding you, you must eat less. A Rubenesque figure is fine for the museum, but not for fashion. I had these made in your proper size. You’ll have to diet until you can wear them.”

  Dejected but determined, prompted by her discreet use of pincers to pluck what she called my “jungle brow” and a discreet rinse on my hair to “highlight its fairness, as blondes are always popular,” I set myself to a diet that nearly had me fainting as I plied the violin and the old professor banged his cane. “No, no,” he declaimed, as intolerant as any Weimar relic. “Do you intend to play the violin or carve meat? You wield that bow like a cleaver. Softly, softly. It’s an extension of your wrist, not a butchering utensil.”

  He honed my skill—not as much as I wanted, but it was better than before. Just as Jolie improved my appearance, while I deprived my body until the day came when I finally fit into my new clothes and Mutti grumbled over supper, “You look different. Have you been doing something to your hair?”

  “I cut it shorter,” I said, “for the violin. So it wouldn’t . . . get into my eyes.” I lowered my face as I spoke, lest she also decided to inspect my noticeably thinner cheeks and eyebrows. She didn’t. She was too exhausted from work; she retired like a farmer’s wife at sunset, leaving me and Liesel to wash the dishes and tidy up before bed.

  My sister wasn’t so myopic. “You’ve been visiting that woman, haven’t you?” she said, so unexpectedly I almost dropped the plate I was drying. “Uncle Willi’s guest. She’s teaching you things. You pick at your food like a bird and your eyebrows are plucked. And you’ve not only cut your hair but also dyed it.”

  “Wife. She is Willi’s wife.” I squared my shoulders. “Are you going to tell on me?”

  “No.” She arranged the dishes in the cupboard; Mutti liked everything in order. “But she’s bound to find out, Lena. And when she does . . .”

  “I’ll be gone. I’m applying for a job as a musician. As soon as I can, I’ll get my own room.”

  She gave me a skeptical look. “On a musician’s pay?”

  She was right. Jolie had warned me. In fact, she’d offered to let me move into the house with her and Uncle Willi, but as much as I’d fallen prey to her influence, I couldn’t go that far. If I left Mutti to move in with them, she’d disown me. It was enough that I contrived to deceive her. She’d be enraged if she found out I was going to auditions beyond the exclusive Kurfürstendamm Boulevard near the Behrenstrasse, where the trees strung with candelabra and the elegant facades of department stores gave way to a tawdry labyrinth of cheap theaters, kinos, and neon-lit cafés, as well as raucous cabarets, music halls, and other disreputable venues.

  The auditions were excruciating. There were more unemployed musicians in Berlin than I’d supposed, my Weimar training and Uncle Willi’s reference vanishing like smoke in the air as hundreds rallied to the job calls. Their desperation only made the theater managers haggle for the cheapest rate. Male musicians, regardless of their talent, always won. A woman in an orchestra was rare, unless one took into account the growing infamy of the Girl Kabarets, where women performed onstage, in the orchestra, and behind the scenes after the show. But just as I resisted moving into Uncle Willi’s house, I resisted the lure of the cabaret because Mutti’s rules, inculcated in me since childhood, were not so easily disregarded. A musician, yes. A performer in a band in an off-boulevard establishment—never.

  After months of rejections that left me disconsolate, Uncle Willi intervened. He’d had lunch with the manager of a prospering chain of picture houses owned by the UFA—the Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft, a studio that had started by presenting short reels about the war and branched out into full productions, some of which featured my Weimar actress-idol, Henny Porten. The manager had complained of losing a violinist in one of his traveling orchestras that accompanied the films. The job, Uncle Willi assured me, was mine. UFA had no issue with hiring a woman, as I’d not be seen in the pit. But the pay was less than I’d heard theater managers offer, scarcely enough to put food in my mouth, much less get me out of Mutti’s flat.

  “I told you,” Jolie sighed. “You can always move in here with us. We’d be delighted to have you. Wouldn’t we, Willi dearest?”

  My uncle didn’t look delighted. Like me, he feared the wrath of the dragon, as I’d dubbed Mutti. “I’d have to consult with Josephine,” he said. “It would be the proper thing to do. She holds a share in the business. I wouldn’t want to cause her any more trouble.”

  “Of course,” I said, before Jolie could protest. “There’s no need. If I have the job, it’s a start.” I forced out a smile, though I felt wretched as I envisioned delivering the news to Mutti.

  She didn’t raise her voice. After I informed her that I’d accepted employment in a small orchestra accompanying the flickers, all she said was, “I see,” before she left for her work.

  Unnerved, thinking I should also have told her I was moving into the family residence, I saw Liesel glance at me. “You’d best start looking for that new room soon,” she said.

  I sighed. I should, indeed. Though how I’d manage it seemed as insurmountable as everything else.

  THE JOB WAS TEDIOUS. We had a set repertoire for each film that screened overhead, the music as trivial as the pictures themselves. I had to wonder why I’d been so entranced by Henny Porten. Watching her pantomime her way through convoluted plots six days a week, I thought her a rather poor actress. But she was famous everywhere she went, while I labored in a pit with other musicians who ogled me at intermission. I’d learned my lesson in Weimar. Despite numerous invitations, I declined. I needed the work and the pay, as Mutti’s pursed-lip response had turned out to be a percentage of my salary toward the rent, her punishment for what she deemed my willful rejection of a career as a concert soloist. The last thing I needed was a romantic mistake.

  Even if I’d had the courage to tell her I was never going to earn acclaim for my violin, I lacked the time and energy. The job took us to various UFA picture houses in Berlin, Frankfurt, and Munich, where the scenery might change but the dismal hotel rooms and the repertoire re
mained the same. I learned every piece of music by heart and knew every film by rote; I could play my violin, watch the picture above, and hike up the edges of my skirt to get a draft of air on my sweltering stocking-clad legs without missing a note.

  After four weeks in my employment, as I pulled on my coat one evening and prepared to trudge home with my violin in its now-battered case, the manager motioned me into his office. He slid an envelope across his desk. “Your final pay. I’m sorry, Fräulein Dietrich.”

  “You’re dismissing me?” I was stunned. “But why? You told me I was doing very well.”

  “You were. However, some of the others have complained.”

  “Complained?” I knew at once which ones—all those whose invitations I’d refused. “Why should any of them complain? I’ve not missed an engagement. In fact, I should be the one complaining, as several of them fail to start with the picture or play the wrong score.”

  “The legs.” He met my appalled stare. “They say you are too distracting. You pull up your skirt to show off your legs and confound them. It was a mistake to hire a woman.”

  Infuriated, I grabbed the envelope and stormed out, but by the time I was on the boulevard, I was nearly in tears. I’d been fired for my legs, when all I’d been trying to do was catch some relief before I roasted to death in that hellhole of a pit. Now I was unemployed, and when I thought of what Mutti would say, the triumph in her voice as she reminded me I should have kept to housekeeping and lessons until the appropriate opportunity presented itself—

  I dashed into the nearest café. I never bought myself anything. I would at least enjoy a decent meal with my own earnings before I handed over whatever was left to Frau Dragon.

  It was early evening, when anyone with anything to spend took to the streets. After ordering the most inexpensive meal on the fixed-price menu, balancing my violin case in one hand and beer mug in the other (yes, I would drink and let Mutti smell it on me), I searched the crowded interior for an empty seat. I spotted one in the corner, but the table was occupied by a dark-haired woman writing in a notebook, a coffee cup and overflowing ashtray at her side.