Lilli herself was still in the corps de ballet, but that she would soon reach individual rôles was obvious if only her health stood the strain. I had learned about the essential points necessary in a ballerina from a former famous one and was convinced that Lilli had all that was needed, plus ambition and infinite patience. Here in Berlin she stood little chance, for ballet was merely a subsidiary part of the opera. I had told her about the Sadlers Wells Ballet which would soon be coming to Germany, and had planned to take her to see them.
I went alone to the matinée. The Faune came first, and it was the first time I had seen it danced. The orchestra seemed unfamiliar with Debussy’s music. They had probably not been allowed to play it under the rigid Nazi regime, but Lilli was right about the boy—he was promising.
A new Spanish ballet followed this, and it was then that I saw Lilli stumble, recover herself, then collapse in a heap. Her partner’s quickness and cleverness in picking her up and bearing her off as if in the abandonment of the dance prevented anyone from realising that she had actually collapsed. She did not reappear, and after the ballet ended I went round backstage to inquire for her. She had just come out of a long faint, and the group of dancers around were concerned, wanting to fetch a doctor, but Lilli was protesting vehemently that she was all right, that by the time the doctor arrived she would be safely at home. Doctors had no cars, or petrol, and were lucky if the Russians had left them a bicycle for their rounds.
She looked so ill that I was alarmed too, and begged her to let me take her to one of my several women doctor friends. She protested quite hysterically, saying that if I could possibly give her a lift home she would be perfectly all right. Her friend Susi was looking after her and promised to help her to dress, for she was still in the Spanish costume which had so enchanted her.
The stage manager told me that his girls were constantly fainting now. It was hard for them, but life was hard for everyone these days and they must be thankful to get their weekly salary still, when so many actresses were out of work. The opera was playing to packed houses every night—the Allies being a most appreciative audience.
Lilli was dressed by this time, and I took her home with me. She accepted a cup of tea but would not eat anything. She sat very still and quiet in a chair just as she had done on her previous visit when she had come to pose for me and I had seen that she was too exhausted. She watched John playing with the puppies. He was throwing a ball across the room and the two ridiculous creatures raced madly to get it, each trying to push the other away. It was Whiskey who invariably got the ball—he was much bigger and stronger than Soda.
“The male always gets the best of it,” she observed sadly.
I thought that in Germany it had certainly always been so, but now things were changing.
“Mutti is always looking at every youth she sees, hoping that it will be Fritz,” she said. “He still means far more to her than Ursi and I do, in spite of all he has done.”
John, who had hurt himself, came running to me for comfort and I took him on my lap and cuddled him. She looked at us with a strange expression in her lovely eyes. They were so dark a violet blue today that they seemed almost black. When I put him down I saw that two tears were running slowly down her cheeks. I knew that something more than the faint was troubling her but did not like to question her, for it was evident that she was in no state to answer.
She said, with a long weary sigh, “How lovely it is to be in a nice chair—I am so very tired.”
She lay there utterly exhausted. Her pallor was alarming. I gave her a pair of ballet shoes which had come from Brussels. When I found that the first pair had fitted so well I had ordered a second pair through some Belgian friends there. She was delighted—quite speechless with pleasure as she fingered them. They were to her the tools of her trade, as were my brushes, paints and canvas to me. German artists had none of these things now.
She had confided to me that she longed more than anything else to dance the rôle of Giselle. It is the most exacting of rôles, requiring not only great technical skill but considerable acting ability as well as plain staying power. I told her it was one of my favourite ballets, and one which we do not perform very often in England.
At the house Frau Altmann plied me with questions about the matinee. She had declined my invitation to accompany me, having been quite shocked at the idea of attending a theatre so soon after her husband’s death. She had made me feel that I was ignorant of social etiquette to have even suggested such a thing. In spite of the convulsions and ravages of war there were apparently still rigid rules about etiquette.
Lilli had insisted that we did not tell her mother she had fainted. She was looking a little better now. I had slipped some brandy in her tea. Frau Altmann, however, was too wrapped up in her own grief to have noticed. I thought that she ought to be told—that it would be a good thing to shake her from her apathy by pointing out the growing fragility of this little daughter of hers, to force her to realise that if something was not done about Lilli’s health she would soon be following her father to the grave.
I did not do it. Lilli had begged me not to, and it was, after all, none of my business. Frau Altmann might have resented it very much. But I did mention it to Stampie who was himself worried about Lilli. He was, I knew, meeting Ursula and her friend Joe that evening and he promised to speak to her.
Ursula, however, had disgusted him when she had arrived with Joe at Sophie’s that night. They were both more than half seas over, said Stampie, and their flagrant necking in public had embarrassed Stampie, who, although anything but a prude, had, as he pointed out to me, definite standards.
Lilli, Ursula had insisted, was perfectly all right. She had always looked like a dying angel from childhood and everyone had petted and made a fuss of her because of this look. Lilli got the best out of life, and gave precious little herself. She was, in her sister’s opinion, rather a fraud. That pale complexion and paler hair giving her the air of being, as the Americans said, “out of this world.” She was in fact, said her sister spitefully, no saint although their mother thought her one, and their father had always doted on her.
Stampie came away with the impression that Ursula was at heart rather jealous of her younger sister, and under the influence of Joe’s drinks had rather let her tongue run away with her. She was normally a good-natured girl, generous to a fault.
I could understand Ursula’s feelings. She had been obliged to give up her musical training to keep the home going. While she was doing household chores and ruining her hands Lilli had been able to continue in her profession because the opera was in such demand that dancers could still earn a living.
Jealousy and envy were, I was finding, characteristic traits in many Germans. To get someone into trouble was a feather in one’s cap. Children were encouraged to report each other, and were rewarded for it. Lotte had told me about this, as had Dr Annemarie. It was not merely a Nazi innovation to encourage children to spy on each other and their neighbours.
The petty jealousies and spite among the German staffs of many British homes astonished us, and the ensuing trouble was apt to make one overlook the many good qualities in them—their punctuality, their diligence, their honesty and their complete devotion to the family for whom they were working. British children were being left in the care of German women for weeks while their parents were away in the Zone, and I never heard of one case in which the German failed in her duty and care of the children.
If Stampie was disgusted that Ursula was drinking too much and getting hard-boiled, her mother was far more so. Yet from where did Frau Altmann think that the money for the daily necessities of life was coming? With prices still at a fantastic level, the simplest standard of life cost a fortune.
Ursula had conceived the very sensible idea of making a pair of slacks for herself out of some old trousers of her father’s. Every woman in Berlin seemed to have been wearing her husband’s trousers this winter for warmth, and Ursula and Lilli both neede
d some. Frau Altmann was genuinely horrified at the idea. The trousers were to be kept for Kurt and Fritz. Both would surely return one day and would need them. She had never dreamed that a daughter of hers could ever want to be seen in men’s trousers. It was shameful and disgusting. She hated the slacks which German women had worn during the war, and this idea of wearing her husband’s trousers was revolting to her.
A few days later, Ursula appeared in a pair of well-cut slacks, and when questioned said bluntly that they had been given her by a man.
Frau Altmann was bitter about this when I met her at a friend’s house one afternoon. She had been giving a German lesson to three British wives. What did I think of the trousers? Wasn’t it disgusting?
I said I thought it was a matter of necessity for many. They hadn’t got any warm clothes left, and to see the missing husbands’ warm trousers hanging in the cupboards waiting for the moths was too much.
She said flatly, “But you British ladies don’t wear them.”
We did, but it wasn’t worth while explaining to her that having lived in them during the war we were glad to get out of them.
I asked how the lessons were going. Very well indeed. Had the ladies expressed themselves as satisfied with her teaching? I assured her that they were very pleased, and that there were several children wanting a small class formed for German—would she care to take them on? She would. It was better to be busy. One didn’t think so much.
She was, I thought, less passive than when I had first met her, her face having less acceptance of fate in it. She was beginning to wake up to some new facts which she was having to learn in a very hard school.
XVII
HAD my mind not been taken up with John during the next fortnight, the story of Lilli might have been different, for I was determined to do something about her. She lay on my conscience—perhaps because I felt such an affinity with her. She was driven by some force to dance just as I was to paint, and tired or not she went on striving. Her frailty touched some chord every time I saw her—just as her dancing moved me emotionally. I had decided to have her to lunch when John was at school and to ask her to let me send her to a sanatorium in the Black Forest about which I had been told.
Just as I was planning this, however, John fell while playing shipwreck with his little friends. He only fell off our own table and the cut he sustained on his head was very slight. Knowing that cuts and abrasions did not heal in Berlin now, because of either the infected dust of the ruins or our poor diet, I took him at once to our M.O., who assured me that it was nothing. But the next day he was ill, with a temperature which rose rapidly while his head began to swell. It is unnecessary to go into all the trouble we had with the M.O., whose negligence almost cost John his life, but the outcome was that we had to rush the child to the Spandau Military Hospital where a very clever and attentive young lieutenant in the R.A.M.C. told us that we had only just brought him in time, and began pumping penicillin into John, who was unconscious with a temperature of nearly 105.
He saved John’s life—or as he said, the penicillin did. We were forbidden to consult German doctors and dentists, and although both Dr Gaupp and Dr Annemarie had offered to get him into their children’s hospital, I could not accept. We lived under Military orders and were reminded of it frequently. These two were quite wonderful in their constant inquiries, advice, and offers of help, as were many Germans at this terrible time. A letter brought to me from Frau Altmann told me that she was positive that John would recover—that she was praying for him—that God would not let my child die, because of all the little ones I was helping to save. All the Germans told me this. It seemed extraordinary to me that they could believe this after seeing so many innocent children die every day now. But they did believe it, and were overjoyed when I was able to tell them that he was off the danger list and would soon be home again.
Stampie, who had shared our terrible anxiety and who had taken us on that nightmare journey to Spandau in a snowstorm with John wrapped up in blankets, unconscious in his father’s arms, was quite overcome at the news. There were tears in his eyes as he said, “I don’t mind telling you I went on a blind last night—I was that upset about the little chap—if anything had happened to him I’d have shot that M.O.”
During John’s convalescence I was kept busy trying to amuse and divert him, for the huge amount of penicillin had a depressing effect on him, and this combined with my classes at the Study Centre took all my time. Ursula came in and out with notes and messages from her mother, who found all kinds of tiny things to amuse the patient. Ursula said that she had found them all tucked away in a box of toys in their cellar.
The mother of the little Scottish boys, who was now a friend of mine and who came frequently to inquire for John, told me that she was worried about her little housemaid. The girl had gone to a certain address for what was ostensibly a small operation, but as she had refused all offers to get her into an accredited hospital my friend Sally feared that she might be going to undergo an abortion. She asked me if I would go and have a look at the place for her. She asked me because I spoke German and she did not. Stampie, who was at a loose end, having some unwanted leave, offered to go for me. It would be easier for him, he explained; he knew so many people in that area. Sally’s fears were well grounded. It was exactly the kind of place which she had expected it to be. It was run, apparently, by a sister of Sophie’s, who, as Stampie said grimly, probably supplied most of the clients—but that was not all. He had seen Lilli going in there. I said that he must have been mistaken. It was impossible. He insisted that it was Lilli—he would know her anywhere—few girls had either her very fair hair worn in a knot or her very slender build. She had been wearing her black coat and the little astrakhan cap—and was hurrying so much that she hadn’t noticed him.
“She must have been visiting a friend there,” I said, although it didn’t seem likely.
Ursula had said that Lilli was tired, but otherwise quite well when I had asked after her. They had been having a very heavy season, and Lilli was coming home later and later every night, said Ursula. I sent her some small luxuries with a note saying that I would come to fetch her for lunch as soon as John was off my hands, and I did not think any more of what Stampie had told me.
It was no longer quite so cold, every day the sun came out quite strongly. There was a sparkle and exhilaration in the air which were like wine. We went skating at our Blue and White Club and at the Study Centre where they had flooded the tennis courts.
Returning one afternoon from skating I found Ursula waiting for me. I had not seen her for a week owing to having been so occupied. She looked tired today, with shadows under her eyes, and told me at once that Lilli was very ill. They were trying to get her into hospital—could I please help? They thought it was an appendicitis which had turned to peritonitis, but they didn’t really know. I questioned her further, as she seemed so embarrassed and upset, and finally she blurted out that her sister was having an abortion.
At once I remembered what Stampie had told me about having seen Lilli going into that infamous house run by Sophie’s sister.
Ursula said that Lilli had been very quiet for some time now, but that as she was secretive by nature it had been useless to ask her what was wrong. Ursula had been positive that there was a man in Lilli’s life. Now she was really very ill—in a high fever and in terrible pain. I asked how long she had been ill. Only two days, said Ursula. Lilli had come home from the Opera House looking ghastly one night, had admitted that she was ill, and had gone at once to bed.
The two girls shared a room, and it was impossible for Lilli to hide from her sister what was happening to her. In the morning she could not get out of bed and was in a high fever.
Ursula had gone for their family doctor—the one who had done what he could for Herr Altmann. He had said that hospital was imperative at once. Ursula had come straight to me.
Frau Altmann did not seem to have taken in the cause of Lilli’s illness. She had c
oncluded that it was a ruptured appendix, but the doctor had informed her bluntly that there had been a deliberate abortion, and that it would probably be a police matter if they could find out who was responsible for it.
Ursula said that she had thought her mother would strike the doctor in her indignation and shock. She simply would not believe him. He seemed astounded that she knew nothing of her daughter’s state of health, saying that Lilli was extremely ill, quite apart from the abortion—he thought that she definitely had tuberculosis and that both lungs were affected.
“Mutti has been so wrapped up in her grief for Pappi and Fritz that she simply had no eyes for Lilli or me,” said Ursula bitterly.
I thought that no one had had time for Lilli, who must have been ill for a long time and who had never been robust. As to the other trouble, said Ursula, who would have imagined such a thing of the immaculate Lilli? There was, I observed, a certain satisfaction mixed with Ursula’s grief. The “good” little sister, who had always been held up to her as an example, was now in a shameful plight. I telephoned to the head doctor at a big women’s hospital which I was helping with linen and bandages. He promised a bed for Lilli, and also to get in touch with her doctor at once.
I asked Ursula if she had walked to me, and suggested that I came back with her and saw Lilli. She hesitated, and then said that Lilli had asked her to get me, but that Frau Altmann hadn’t liked it—and burst into tears. Stampie was away on leave, but I got a taxi from our British service and went with her to the house.
Frau Altmann greeted me with a face of stone. The doctor was with Lilli, she said. I went in, and he looked at the things I had brought with approval. He needed just those, he said; was I able to help him a little? He had been unable to get a nurse. I told him I had nursed during the war—and in a gynaecological ward part of the time. I could do as I was instructed. The hospital was sending an ambulance for Lilli in the afternoon, but she needed immediate attention.
The Dancing Bear Page 12