Marlene: A Novel

by C. W. Gortner

  “It makes you look like a transvestite,” said Gerda. “You don’t need to do whatever she says. Camilla isn’t beautiful. You are.”

  But beauty wasn’t enough. Beauty had me cramping and limping about like an invalid from dancing every night in the revue. “I have to get into the academy,” I told Gerda. “It’s my only chance. If I don’t start acting soon, I might break a leg. And then,” I added, “you’ll have to shoot me like a lame mare and carve me up to feed Oskar and Fannie.”

  She selected exacting roles for me to rehearse. She was erudite, demanding that I learn parts from Shakespeare and Goethe. I wasn’t convinced the roles suited me, but I painstakingly memorized every line and endured staccato corrections from my drama instructor, who informed me that I had a lisp and no presence to play Desdemona.

  “You’re very pretty,” he said, “but you have no discernible talent.”

  I’d heard similar sentiments before; by now, I was immune to them. I might have no talent and might never acquire it, but this was the road I’d chosen and I was not going to stop until every theater in Berlin shut its door in my face.

  Shortly before my twenty-second birthday, I auditioned for the Reinhardt academy. Not for Max Reinhardt himself, who lived in Austria and directed his Berlin establishments through intermediaries, but for a committee headed by his academy director, Herr Held. Gerda had chosen a speech from Goethe’s Faust, the role of the virginal Gretchen. Camilla scoffed. “So antiquated. It’s not Marlene at all,” and Gerda exploded in a rare outburst—“What do you know about who she is?”—forcing me to make an uneasy peace between them.

  On the appointed day, I took my position on the stage before the committee. Avoiding their inscrutable stares, I flung myself into my part. “Ah, look down. Thou rich in sorrow’s crown. With the grace of thy face, upon the woe on which I drown.” Dropping to my knees in grief, as I’d rehearsed innumerable times in my room with Gerda, I failed to realize the stage was made of wood in a cavernous auditorium until the sound of my knees striking the boards resounded. I faltered, fighting to stay in character as I cried, “And cruel smart, Thou needest—”

  A seat cushion flew through the air, landing inches from me. Horror flooded my entire being when Herr Held drawled, “Thou also needest a pillow, we think.”

  The committee snickered. I choked out the next three lines and fled the auditorium.

  Gerda waited in the reception area; she was leaving for Munich that night. I came to a halt before her, biting back my anguish. She lifted her gaze past me and whispered, “Marlene.”

  I looked over my shoulder. Herr Held stood in the auditorium doorway. “Fräulein Dietrich,” he said. “That was absolutely the worst incarnation of Gretchen in Faust that this academy has ever had the dishonor to witness.”

  I wanted to die. It was over. Finished. Not only had I failed my audition, for which I’d scraped, toiled, and defied my own mother, but just as she’d warned, I’d made a fool of myself.

  “But,” Herr Held went on, “these show promise.” He brandished two of the photographs I’d included with my curriculum, listing my revue experience, modeling jobs, voice and drama lessons. “Be here next week at seven A.M. You are accepted—on a strictly temporary basis.”

  He turned on his heel, disappearing back into the auditorium.

  Pressing her lips together to keep from shouting in joy, Gerda clasped my hand. “See?”

  “Yes,” I replied, and for the first time I believed it. “Now, I have a chance.”

  V

  Fräulein Dietrich, if you insist on arriving late, do refrain from coming at all. This isn’t an after-hours cabaret where you can make an entrance whenever you please.”

  Herr Held’s reprimand caused my fellow students in the academy to gloat as I flung my coat and bag onto the nearest chair, yanked off my cloche, and ran a hand through my short curls as I made my way to the stage. I hated being late, but the toll of nightly performances and matinees with the revue, coupled with the demands of class, had begun to exhaust me. I’d overslept again, waking with a jolt to the cats mewling for breakfast, as Gerda had returned to Hannover for another two-week assignment. I’d had no time to bathe, throwing on my clothes and applying lipstick before I fed the cats and flew out of the boardinghouse to catch the tram.

  The girls onstage gave me malicious looks. Their barbed appraisal had stalked me for months, ever since I began my studies here. I ignored them, casting a quick smile at the young man playing the lead in the play. A rash of color spread across his face. I had no interest in him, but the girls did, and their thunderous expressions gave me satisfaction.

  Then I remembered the script in my bag. I’d been memorizing lines during intermissions at the revue; as I started back to the chair, Held snapped, “Where are you going now?”

  “My script—”

  “Yes?” He stepped before me, trim in his sleeveless pullover, pleated trousers, and knotted cravat. “You need your script to recite twelve lines?” His keen brown eyes bored into me. “We open in two weeks, fräulein. I should hope you know the role by now.”

  “Yes,” I said and nodded. “I do of course. But the blocking—”

  He stabbed his finger toward the stage. “Take your mark. And, fräulein,” he said as I hastened into position, “do not try my patience. Those fluttering lashes and saucy walk do not impress me. Save it for your revue. One more late arrival and you’ll be dismissed. This is the Reinhardt Academy. You are not indispensable.”

  “Yes, Herr Held,” I muttered, crumbling under his stare.

  The play was Wedekind’s controversial Pandora’s Box, which had been banned in 1904 after its scandalous premiere in Nuremberg. I had the supporting role of the vivacious trollop Ludmilla—one of the play’s best parts—and forgot my fatigue as rehearsal began, sauntering through my entrances and exits with my skirt hiked up and those hips that Herr Held disdained swaying until the girl playing Lulu, our besieged heroine, stomped her foot.

  “Marlene is upstaging me. Again. She always ignores her marks and upstages me.”

  From his seat in the front row, where he sat in absolute silence until we finished the run-through and he began delivering crushing criticism, Held said in a bored tone, “If she does, it’s because you let her. Rather than throw a tantrum, upstage her instead. You are the lead.”

  I preened. Then he turned to me. “Are you planning on picking up customers after the show? You sashayed through that second act like a streetwalker. Ludmilla might be a slut, but she’s also a practiced seductress, while the only thing you’re apt to seduce in your current performance is a drunk sailor. Do try to show some restraint.”

  And so it went, all afternoon, with the cast running through the play for hours, after which Held would re-direct, have us repeat every scene while ladling as much scorn as he could muster until everyone sagged in disillusionment under his poisonous contempt.

  “Two weeks,” he called out, as we slinked off the stage to collect our belongings. “We open in two weeks at the Kammerspiele Theater. Be grateful it holds less than two hundred seats. If you flop, at least you won’t have a thousand audience members throwing potato skins at you.”

  While the others trailed out, he said, “Fräulein Dietrich, a moment, if you please.”

  I paused warily. We’d never spoken alone. He was not given to confidences, or at least not with the female students. I’d caught him covetously surveying our male lead, however, and thought he might impart some private instruction after hours. Now as he crossed his arms at his chest, I said, “I’ll be good in the play. I’d never embarrass the academy by—”

  He lifted an eyebrow, bringing my assurances to a halt. “You will be good,” he said, as I crunched my hat in my hands. “You are perfect for the part. But you are not Ludmilla. Not yet.” He paused. “Sie müssen mehr ficken.”

  I gaped. “Excuse me?”

  “Do you not speak German? I said, you need to fuck more.” Reaching into his pocket, he extrac
ted his silver cigarette case. Flicking his lighter, he lit one, exhaling smoke. “In order to be Ludmilla, you must know what she feels, what she’s experienced, what she craves. For Ludmilla, sex is a weapon. The audience wants to despise her for it. You must make them pity her instead.”

  I couldn’t speak. Was he complimenting me?

  “If you do not,” he went on, in the same matter-of-fact tone, “you will fail. You are meant to play seductresses—women of no virtue who must redeem themselves. I’ve seen your modeling advertisements and photographs, I’ve also seen you at the revue. I know of what I speak. You cannot play innocents or tragediennes, though, like every ingénue, you are desperate to do so. Every girl dreams of being Anna Karenina, but girls like you are not made for it.”

  He had seen me at the revue? I’d never spotted him there, but then how could I, with the cloud of smoke in the air and hundreds of faces that coalesced into one leering visage? And I never lingered. Unlike the others, who made a point of circulating among the patrons to earn drugs or money on the side, I left through the side door to go home, as much as the extra cash might appeal.

  “You live with a woman,” he said, startling me again. “I saw you with her after your audition. I have no problem with it, if that’s what you prefer. But women do not fuck like men. Ludmilla is not a lesbian.” He went quiet, staring at me.

  I deposited my squashed hat and bag back on the chair. As I started to undo my coat, he laughed. “Don’t insult me. You are not to my taste.” As I felt embarrassment redden my cheeks, he added, “But you are to others’. Half the men in this academy, I should think, and certainly those louts who attend your revue. You don’t lack for admirers. What you lack is incentive.”

  He was atrocious. Imagining what Mutti might have said had she overheard this exchange, I replied coldly, “Are you suggesting I should turn tricks like a whore?”

  “You are a whore.” He dropped his cigarette onto the wood floor, squashing it with his heel. “All of us who perform for a living are whores. We take the public’s money to entertain them for a predetermined length of time. We pretend to be who they want us to be, to help them forget their sad lives and make ourselves feel loved. We fuck them for applause. When you think about it, it’s not any different from what whores do.”

  A burst of laughter suddenly escaped me. “I suppose not, if you put it that way.”

  “There is no other way to put it.” His smile was reptilian. “Consider this a private lesson in the realities of our profession. Fuck the audience and they will adore you. Lie to them and all you’ll earn is their disdain. No one wants to know they’re being lied to. The trick, as it were, is to make them believe you are sincere, even when you are not.”

  He turned away. Gathering my hat and bag, I hurried out of the rehearsal hall into the violet night. I knew I should be horrified.

  I was not.

  WHEN I REACHED THE BOARDINGHOUSE LATE, having missed the tram and the omnibus in succession, Trude came out from her parlor. “Where have you been? It’s your night off from the revue, isn’t it? Gerda told me. She’s telephoned twice already.”

  “She has?” I resisted a roll of my eyes. She now called several times every week, from Munich or Hannover or wherever she happened to be, never mind that Trude’s telephone line was so fraught with static, we could barely hear each other. “Did she leave a message?”

  “She said she’d try back later. She wanted me to tell you when you got home to stay here and wait for her call.” Trude gave me an anxious smile. “She worries about you.”

  “Yes.” I forced out a smile. “She certainly does.”

  As I climbed the stairs to my room, anger curdled inside me. Gerda was being impossible. She’d become obsessed with the thought that I’d seek out Camilla, reiterating her reminder that success took time and I would reap the rewards if I was patient. I’d submitted to her adage to go to work, rehearsal, voice and drama classes, and return home. But I felt as if I had exchanged one mother for another, and I did not appreciate it. As Oskar now wound between my ankles and Fannie watched balefully from the bed, our cozy room felt intolerable, a cramped space echoing Herr Held’s words back to me.

  The trick, as it were, is to make them believe you are sincere, even when you are not.

  I crumbled stale sausage into the cat dishes, cleaned out the litter box, and then stood smoking at the window, staring into the lamp-lit darkness, hearing the electric clatter of passing trams and the din of talk and tableware from the restaurant at the corner.

  The room grew still, submerged in gloom. The cats retreated under the bed, as if they sensed my brooding mood. “Enough,” I whispered aloud. “I’ve had enough.”

  I had tried to do it Gerda’s way. Instead of reward, I’d learned today that I needed something I hadn’t thought I lacked. My bedding of Reitz and those clumsy boys in Weimar couldn’t count; I couldn’t possibly find inspiration in those dismal affairs.

  But there was someone who could help me. Someone in this very boardinghouse, no matter that if she found out, Gerda would throw a fit.

  Evading all thoughts of Gerda or her reaction, I went downstairs and knocked on Camilla’s door. It might be late, but it was still early for her. If she had the night off from work like me, she’d be home, getting ready for her late-night jaunt.

  After several minutes passed, during which I banged again and then started to turn away, the door cracked open. She stood on the threshold in her black negligee, which was so transparent I could discern her long, slim body outlined within it.

  “Marlene. Have you locked yourself out of your room again?”

  Despite her lack of apparel, her angular face was already made up, her lips like crimson slashes and her eyes heavy with shadow, predatory in their artificial perfection.

  “No. I . . . I was wondering . . . ?” My voice came to a nervous halt. For a moment, I saw myself through her eyes—gauche, tired from rushing about, dejected and clearly at loose ends.

  “Yes?” She set her hand high on her hip, displaying her lacquered red nails. Like Jolie, she cultivated long nails, though I always wondered how she maintained them while handling scripts and those dreadful costumes at the revue. My nails were blunt and splintered. Any attempt I made to grow them ended in disaster when I snagged them on a loose sequin or glued one to my headdress while affixing those endless missing plumes. “You were wondering . . . ?”

  “If I might go out with you tonight,” I said.

  Her mouth widened slightly, revealing a hint of teeth. “What a surprise,” she said, after a moment. “Didn’t Gerda telephone today? She must be frantic. All these out-of-town assignments of hers seem to be turning permanent. However will she protect you from so far away?”

  She could be vicious. Underneath that diffident exterior, her fangs were always bared.

  “She did call,” I replied. “But what does it matter? I have tonight to myself and . . .” This time, I deliberately let my voice fade. Explanations were superfluous, as Camilla well knew. Besides, I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of admitting I’d reached an impasse. As she herself had told me, the time had come to get on my knees. I just refused to admit it aloud.

  “So. It’s like that now, is it?” She stepped back, letting me edge in past her. “Have a drink. Or a sniff, if you prefer. I’ve plenty of both.”

  It looked as if a cyclone had ripped through her room, garments strewn everywhere, along with dirty stockings, feather boas, and crushed hats in haphazard piles beside overflowing ashtrays, soiled plates, and playbills from the revue trampled on the floor like dead moths. My hands itched with the urge to tidy up. How could she abide living in this sty?

  Doubt prickled me as I glanced at the compact mirror on her low table, its tarnished surface smeared with white dust. Gerda would be furious. She despised drugs, and cocaine coupled with alcohol was Camilla’s preferred mix. We’d both heard her stagger into the boardinghouse after her all-night debaucheries, raving like a lunatic, w
aking the entire house and obliging poor Trude to help her to bed. She invariably claimed amnesia when we saw her the next day, which may have been true, considering her consumption. I’d learned from witnessing her epic outbursts that such momentary pleasures had too many drawbacks.

  She now leaned over the mirror to inhale the powder. Blinking watery eyes, holding her head back so her mascara wouldn’t run, she drawled, “Were you thinking of going out with me dressed like that?”

  I glanced down at my flower-patterned dress. “No. I was hoping you might help me. I . . . I need to research my new part. I’m playing a prostitute and . . .” I made myself shrug.

  She eyed me, her irises dilated from the cocaine. “I can’t say I have anything that will fit you, Liebling. You’re so very robust these days.”

  Robust? I stared at her in disbelief. I’d been starving myself again to look more like Ludmilla. But then I remembered the cream cakes I bought on the sly, hoarding them under my coat and gorging on them in my room. And Trude kept bringing me slices of home-baked chocolate cake along with milk for the cats, insisting I must eat to keep up my strength.

  “Nothing?” I motioned at the heaps surrounding us. “In all this?”

  She shrugged. “Feel free to look. If you find something you like, try it on.” Rising from the chaise, she wandered through the curtain of colored beads separating her living quarters from her equally disordered bedroom. “I’ll just be a moment.”

  As she peeled off her negligee, giving me an eyeful of her taut form, on which not an ounce of extra flesh showed, I turned away to dig through the piles. I found a green silk blouse and a skirt with a high slit. Feeling her gaze through the beads as she slipped into one of her shapeless black gossamer frocks that nevertheless always fit her like a second skin, I undid my dress and slipped on the blouse and skirt. I couldn’t fasten the second button on the skirt at my waist (how could it possibly fit anyone larger than a child?) but then remembered a fox fur stole Jolie had loaned me for my auditions. I could drape the stole over my shoulders, pin the dangling tails with a brooch at my waist to hide the gap from the button and—