Only the Dead Know Burbank

by Bradford Tatum

  Der Spielzeugmacher. The Toymaker. It was my movie, there in multiple refraction. The image of our film setting in the morning damp waiting for the sun to seal it. And then for people, real average people, to go and see it. The Toymaker at the Marmorhaus. Not even being dead could dull the thrill of that moment on that empty morning street.

  Volker slipped from the tenement of my chest and congealed to near solidity. I could see the pale tubes of his fingers yearning for the substance to touch the wet surface of the freshly hung poster, his eyes lit up as if by a million birthday candles, smiling hard.

  “We’ve done it,” he whispered aloud, not bothering with the private acoustics of my skull. “My God, child, we have done it.”

  Film is born in emulsion, cured in brine much like amniotic fluid. But it can claim passage through myriad canals. It is an orphan born of a thousand mothers and no father.

  THE REVIEWS WERE GOOD. THAT MUCH I REMEMBER. A CRISP JOURNAL hitting a desk like the report of a cap gun and Zann smiling fresh from his coffee and tooth powder, pointing only to a headline that read, “The Toymaker: A Perfect Parable of Our Times.”

  Lichtbild-Bühne called it a “paean to the national angst, sure to find purchase among those haters of Death with an appetite for grim fantasy.”

  Der Film was a bit more tepid in its praise, calling it “a film confident in its ability to inoculate the lurid seeking public against lesser horrors.”

  Film criticism was in its infancy then. Writing duties trickled down to third editorial assistants whose usual bailiwick was correcting syntax in theatrical reviews. Much ink was spilled in service to the struggle meant to define a criteria for film, and so it was not uncommon for these reviews to devolve into personal tirades and petty airings. It was an historical moment for us. For the first time, words were not subject to imperial censorship. So it is not difficult to understand why these pens were often as easily aroused as adolescent erections. The new freedom made horny little boys of our somber journalists, little boys slipping for the first time between the slippery sheets of a new republic.

  “They’re calling it an antiwar film,” I said, looking up from the paper. “They say it’s the ‘viewing duty of every freedom-loving German to witness again the caustic fruits of unchecked hubris and fanaticism.’ What are they talking about? It’s about a sad little man trying to protect his daughter.”

  “Who cares what they say?” Zann chuckled. “They like it. People will see it. If the anti-Wilhelmian slant bothers you, there are several others who think you made a pro-military, anti-disarmament film.” He tossed a crumpled handbill to the desk.

  “Der Stürmer? Isn’t this an SA publication?” I asked.

  “Yes”—Zann grinned—“and those adenoidal little brown shirts are screaming your praises on every street corner. They say the creature’s a ‘clarion call for the immediate mechanization of the military.’ The murder of the crone a ‘prescriptive tribute to the manipulative tentacles of the Jewish banking cabals.’”

  “That’s awful.”

  “You can’t buy press like that, my child.”

  “But the SA,” I said.

  “Listen to me, my little treasure. The only time you have to start worrying is when they stop screaming.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Tanzi Fluke trolled the Jägerstrasse at midday in a wedding frock flecked with raspberry jam intended to simulate congealed blood. She walked alone, although the street is full of her. A pig is snug to her full breast, spit foaming on its triangular jaws. She calls the pig “republic” and the breast “the people.” That evening greasepaint will hollow her eyes to re-create the effect of high sun. The pig will play itself.

  It had been an open invitation offered by the blond pimp, an invitation to see this Fräulein Fluke when the “mood so moved us.” He had told us where she performed and what she could be had for, introduced us to the schlepper who would guide us through the reeking maze of the Friedrichstadt slum where her Nachtlokal, or nightspot, could be found.

  It was easy to forget I was unchaperoned, so present was Volker’s presence. Easy to forget I was sealed up in this child’s body. Years had passed, but I remained changeless. I was forced to gaze into mirrors and see my budding breasts shunted by the blight of my death. My high forehead slightly hypercephalic. Blocky teeth. And a voice that would never descend from its peak. A whole menagerie of transitional forms that mocked eternity. And so Volker had explained with a mocking lilt, Where do you think this Tanzi Fluke plies her trade, child? You think she collects tickets at a kiddy park? Or hawks peppermint sticks on the Hauptallee? She shakes her ass for cash in the pits where the parents go. You must be clever and show a second self if you ever want to inspire anything more than pats on the head and warning stares.

  We were seated in the makeup room at well past midnight. I had memories of my last occasion with him in that room and was nervous. Nervous enough to sit curled on a makeup table, my knees dusted with stray powder. Not that my posture could protect me. But since the success of our last film, I’d hoped his view of me had changed. I hoped he saw me as something more than merely recreational.

  “What do you mean?” I said, my eyes scanning the tables for hard cylindrical objects just in case he had a relapse.

  What do I mean? he scoffed. You live among papier-mâché palaces and day-rate princes. Can’t you figure it out all on your own? He left my body then and sat in the chair opposite me. His image did not waver. It was as solid as he could manage, a viscosity much like dark blue ink. He wanted to impress his point, not haunt.

  “You mean I should dress up?”

  “So you do have a mind up there,” he said, poking a spectral finger through my temple. “But you must abandon your sex. Little girls never look smaller than from the height of mommy’s heels.”

  “I should dress as a boy?” My legs relaxed. There was no threat. It felt like we were peers. If not peers, then at least coconspirators.

  “We’ll give the suggestion of a gentleman. A top hat and coat. Perhaps a monocle. A mustache, of course, to veil those ridiculous teeth.”

  “I can’t possibly wear a mustache.”

  “Oh, you must. It’s the key to the ruse.”

  “It will tickle.”

  “Less than a bouncer’s fist, I assure you.”

  “But I’ll look ridiculous.”

  “And that’s why you’ll look like you belong.”

  It was a midget’s suit, a costume for a bit player, evening attire for a layer of business that gives depth to the frame but no real dimension. I had seen the suit lurking in the carnival shots of Caligari and tried to imagine the man who had worn it. I could sense the personality entirely, the sweat of excitement when he first put it on, which cooled to exertion as the day progressed. Then boredom. Turkish tobacco and the tear-shaped burn on the cuff where he might have fumbled for a match. The waxy stains at the cuffs where his fingers had worried, waiting to be noticed, waiting to fill the suit with more than just a cold ring of pomade at the collar. We found a beaver skin opera hat that Volker cocked over one of my eyes. Over the other he slid a monocle. My face he made up as a woman’s, hanging my lashes with heavy black fringe, rouging my lips and cheeks. “You’ll be no more noticed on the night streets of Berlin than a postman shuffling through his daily rounds,” he assured me. And he was right.

  The streets were gorged with creatures like me. Hot girls in sorority huddles. Line-boys made up like sailors. And willowy half-sexes with throats like long pours of cream in fabric that must have cost six months of salaries. All moved quietly to their chosen debaucheries as orderly as petty clerks in quests for daily bread. And I moved with the same measured intent, returning no glances, no proposals. Just another masquerading member of the predator class. The schlepper spotted me first, tipped my elbow as gently as a pot of afternoon tea. And I turned to him and shrank at the darkness of his smile, black from chewing opium tar, and doffed my hat. I felt my mustache slip, and I pressed two fingers t
here as if it were a habit of mine in times of anticipation. And he turned for me to follow. He led me down intestinal streets, back alleys, and open sewers where I had to mirror the careful algorithms of his steps to keep my shoes dry. Trade commenced in those dark crevices, one head seeking pleasure, the other only sustenance. And here was the religion of Berlin, sacrifice only in service to the appetite. A thousand crucifixions on the moon.

  We stopped on a quiet street. The only light seeped through the pane windows of what was once a funeral parlor. Crosses in flecked gold were on the glass, and arched in letters that once held the proprietor’s name was the word Totentanz. Death dance. Black wreaths flanked the double doors. They were made of painted thousand-mark notes, worthless now from the Great Inflation. And over the door, written with great skill, were the words Der Tod Trägt Seine Schuhe. Only Death Wears His Shoes.

  I thought for a moment of The Toymaker’s poster, of our own cobbled Death (fate or mere symmetry?), when the schlepper reached toward the door and tapped a quick code that made the paper wreaths rustle. The doors digested this for a beat and then creaked open, spilling wicked light at my feet. I dipped a finger and thumb into my vest pocket to fish out a tip. The schlepper’s grubby hands were already sticky upon mine and wrestled the notes from me with a proprietary sneer as he ran into the night.

  There was a girl in the doorway now, in immaculate mourning attire. She was a few years my senior, with white chalked cheeks and blacked eyes. She bowed to me and I thought to curtsy but bowed as well. I stepped past her, toward a crop of black candles that guttered in three dense rows on gold stands. Below these stands were rows of shoes on stone shelves. Each pair neatly partnered. The girl waited for me to remove my shoes, then motioned for me to cross my arms over my chest. As I did, she gently pushed me backward into the waiting hands of four more girls. They were dressed in shiny mourning black. Pretty pallbearers. They held me prostrate while one girl gently removed my monocle and another placed two pennies on my eyes and I felt myself pulled through the cool sweep of a heavy velvet drape. I could sense a brighter light that leaked past the poor seal of the coins on my eyes. I was tipped to my feet and the coins fell before I could catch them. But I did not bother. The establishment had correctly predicted delight and not scrambling greed.

  The room must have been the parlor’s chapel at one time, for the shadows spat up a few ecclesiastical elements. High-backed chairs that could have held deacons were arranged around tables shaped like coffins. Upon each table was a silver dish that held an icy liquid. Pearls of condensation obscured the deeply chased crosses etched on them. And in the dishes were stiff petals, white roses, like chips of ice. Pinspots were the only light, directed harshly onto these bowls of white petals. So in the deep dusk only the fingers of the patrons could be seen as they reached into these bowls and bit with the crisp report of breaking glass. It was quiet in there, but not silent. For there was a feeling so pervasive it seemed capable of sound, a low, soothing hum of never mind, of being swept away on some numbing current. I jarred my senses after I was seated and placed a petal in my mouth. I willed it to heat. And there was such a startling redundancy I gave a small cry. These petals, brined in a solution of chloral hydrate ether, re-created perfectly the cold slipping down of death. The icy caress that soothed to a near stop of the heart and lungs. The soft velvet black that crested and threatened to shunt the lights of the eyes. Whomever was responsible had access to secrets denied the living. Volker left me through my wide and impressed eyes and wafted to an empty chair at my table, smirking as he vaguely congealed.

  “Questions, yes,” he whispered. “But first the show.” Had he been here before?

  The pin lights dimmed to a thrumming of harp strings, a circular twining of treacle chords too mawkish to be an authentic overture to any serious heaven. And we all sat there in the dark as the strings grouped into silly concentric harmonies building to a gold spot that bathed a small stage. Four Negro musicians as somber as snakes lifted brass instruments to their mouths. A cymbal was struck, and a slow, limping New Orleans–style dirge squeezed out of their gold flanges.

  Up the aisle came a cortege of all-naked girls, pale as birch, the nappy rugs of their pubic patches trimmed into the symbols of international currency. On their shoulders was a casket covered in black patent leather and this they carried to the dance floor in the center of the room and placed on two gunmetal sawhorses. They turned toward the audience and began a solemn shimmy, and I could see they wore only sheer knee-high stockings beneath their ululating nipples. A drum roll silenced the brass and the girls fell to a single knee. At the crash of a cymbal, the lid of the coffin blew open and a flurry of deutschemarks fluttered over the crowd like locusts blackening a field of barley. And out of the maw of the box rose up the most spectacular woman I had ever seen. She wore a black leather mask that hid her features, but her body was of such perfect fluid proportion it was impossible to imagine her clothed.

  She stood before us, composed, while the patron’s eyes explored her. Then she commenced to wring her body into the most piteous contortions. There were not the usual hinges in her limbs and spine. Her bones were quicksilver and she poured herself into backbends and splits and handstands and flips with a dizzying fluidity. All the while the Negro band slogged on, flogging her with the sedulous, even shuffle of their tune.

  She finally worked her way to the top of her closed casket and stood bleached in a blue-white spot. There was a blast from a trumpet and the lights suddenly went black. A second blast and she stood in the spot covered in spiders, a writhing arachnid mass in female form. Another blast, and darkness. Then light, and snakes filled her shapely silhouette. Darkness again, and when the lights came up a second later she was dressed in a tight-fitting sheath sliced up to her hip. The orchestra launched into a hot jazz number, and as she began to jitter to the quicker beat, the lids of all the coffins that had served as tables blew open, the frigid rose petals shattering as they hit the floor. Out popped naked girls, their bodies blackened. White glistening bones painted upon them, they formed a primitive circle around the masked woman.

  The dance that ensued might have celebrated the first pagan feast of Samhain. The brass was ditched for drums, loud deep resonant drums, a chorus of gorged heartbeats that bleated and prodded the dancers into rhythmic squats and hunched backs. This was not a dance of white women, and the guttural shouts from the band were not the street sounds of Berlin. This was some Pliocene bacchanal where the survival of the species was becoming assured. Fingers flashed and the first flecks of blood fluttered to the warming skin. The band’s shouts stretched to shrieks. The old gods were among us. Blood flowed, smeared in brownish vermilion on jaws and chests and thighs. The lights began to flash, strobing to the frenzied beat, and the dance devolved to a feast. Glimpses of mouths and fists and teeth flickered past pupils the size of quarters. And in the flashes, Volker took on a solid aspect, his very real attention riveted to the re-created carnage before him. The skeletal girls swarmed the masked woman, heaping themselves upon her, bared teeth and talons hailing down in fury.

  Then the girls were still. Onstage was a tangle of cannibal props, painted femurs and rib cages, cooling to the steady tattoo of a single drum. The lights faded. Then the lights blared brightly and the jumble of bones was gone. The masked woman stood alone on the stage, naked. The applause was immediate.

  “My God,” I whispered. “How did she do it?”

  “Haven’t you guessed?” Volker grinned as I turned to catch his surly eye.

  The tables were righted and the dance floor cleared. The band launched into a rough Strauss that brought a few couples to the floor. A topless girl in sequined shorts and heels threaded her way through the recovering crowd pouring Sekt into short glasses she pulled from a leather belt she wore over one shoulder like a bandolier. Volker sipped from a glass she handed him and drank from the syrupy swill.

  “The Germans have no business with champagne.” Volker grinned again and asked
if I was ready to meet her.

  “Tanzi Fluke?” I asked.

  “Who else, child? Wasn’t she magnificent?”

  “Doubtless. But that woman we saw dance tonight is nothing like how you described the lead. She’s no country girl still rimmed with sunlight.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I have eyes, don’t I?”

  “Then perhaps you should widen your understanding of the effects of sunlight.”

  He nodded and I looked up at her approach. She was dressed in a simple red dressing gown, her mask still in place. She sat with an English cigarette in her lips and looked directly at Volker. But then she leaned forward, her eyes still upon him, the cold tip of her cigarette hovering in expectation. A flame appeared from the tip of his finger and I saw it curve with the intake of her breath. I must have looked foolish, gaping at this simple ceremony, for they both shared a conspiratorial glance and laughed.

  “Welcome back, darling,” she said, removing her mask.

  It was my mother’s face that smirked back at me, unchanged from her image on the postcard or even my last living memory of her. She dragged deep on her cigarette and her eyes squinted against the smoke.

  “I see you’ve flourished since my absence,” she said.

  I was immediately furious. I wanted to weep. I wanted to scream at her until her eyes bled. I wanted to fall into her arms. But I did nothing. I stood to leave, but she held me down with a pressure on my wrist. She peeled a loose tobacco leaf from her tongue and said, “Don’t be that way, darling. Look at the success you’ve become.”