Caroline Woods - The Cigarette Girl

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Why do we sabotage ourselves? I suppose we each had our reasons.” Sonje stood and flicked dust off her skirt. “I found Anita two years ago,” she said in a hardened voice, “unconscious under a nightclub table. Try to imagine how she’d react, hearing us discuss the opportunities we’ve had the luxury of throwing away.” When she left she closed the door to the bedroom, plunging Berni into darkness.

• • •

A few nights later Sonje took both of them to the Tingel-Tangel in Mitte to meet her lover, Gerrit. The air inside was thick with smoke, shot through with electric theater lights, but they soon found him at a round table close to the action. A girl performed a contortionist piano act onstage, back-bending over the keys.

“Pleased to meet you,” Gerrit said as he took Berni’s hand. Like Sonje, he used the du form. “Comradess Berni.”

“You as well,” Berni said, taking a seat. She wasn’t sure what to call him—Comrade? His peaked canvas cap sat on the table in front of him, and his shirt was coarsely woven. His face, however, had a raw smoothness suggesting a recent shave by a skilled barber, and his fair hair looked clean. Too well-groomed to be a real Communist, Berni thought, though his attractiveness certainly didn’t seem to bother Anita. She sat with her back to the stage, her lashes fluttering at him like fervent moths.

Today Anita had offered to lend Berni clothing in what seemed a peace offering of sorts: a skirt and Bemberg stockings made of rayon. “Much better than real silk for preventing foot odor,” she’d said. She looked slightly disappointed when Berni chose to borrow wool jodhpurs and a gray cloche hat from Sonje.

The men’s voices at the Medvedev echoed in Berni’s ears: another one . Did wearing trousers make her a Transvestit ? If so, she didn’t care. She’d had her fill of ugly dresses long ago.

Four beers appeared on their table, and Berni passed one to Anita, receiving a slight nod in return. For the past few days she and Anita had been polite to each other, if stiff. Berni had begun sleeping on a pallet on the floor of the dining room. Yesterday Anita had taken her to the Silver Star, where Berni had done much better selling cigarettes. Shockingly, everyone there seemed to treat Anita as if she were normal; there were even others like her. Still, Berni found she could not help looking for the boy beneath the girl. Even now, as she watched Anita paint her lips Coty dark, she stared at the faint ghost of hair on her upper lip.

“How did you come to befriend Sonje?” Gerrit asked Berni, his arm interlaced with Sonje’s. Berni explained briefly why she had to leave St. Luisa’s.

Sonje tittered and said something about Berni’s moxie, but Gerrit shook his head. “Those nuns,” he said, “send the academy the girls they think worthy of joining the middle class. Your sister, with her defect, wouldn’t make the cut.”

“Enough politics for now,” said Sonje. Berni watched the stage. In St. Luisa’s she’d have slapped anyone who said “defect.”

Gerrit went on as the pianist completed her solo. “. . . defenders of capitalism are loath to allow proletarians a hint of social mobility. You should be proud you refused them.”

Should she? She missed her sister. Today she felt the sting of her absence more painfully than ever before. She tried to think what the girls at St. Luisa’s would be doing this evening. Bible story time with Sister Josephine; it seemed so distant from the Tingel-Tangel that it might have been happening on another continent.

Berni’s beer felt cold in her hand and in the pipes of her throat. She watched a stocky emcee appear at the corner of the stage, followed by a spotlight that adjusted itself a few times. “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s turn our attention to the mech-an-i-cal.”

Six young women chugged onstage in a little train, wearing military jackets and sheer hose. “We hear it everywhere—everything’s become too mechanical. Transportation. Communication. Even the act of love!”

The girls thrust out their hips to a drumbeat. Someone whistled.

The emcee tugged his bowtie. “My friends, Berlin is healthier than it’s ever been. Look at how productive we are. We make coal. Rubber. Steam!” Six little clouds of white smoke puffed up behind each girl’s rear end, and in unison, their eyes popped. The crowd laughed and clapped. Berni turned with mouth open to Anita, who shrugged as if to say she’d seen it before.

“Love in Berlin has become mech-an-i-cal, they say. But we know our city still has its beating heart.” Now each of the dancers ripped a panel off the chest of her military jacket, revealing six round left breasts.

Berni was enthralled. She couldn’t help it. Those breasts! Each a perfect sphere or cone, the faces above coldly beautiful, captivatingly stoic. She peered over her shoulder to see the crowd’s reaction through the dim smoky air, and jumped when she found Anita crouched behind her. “Tell Sonje I’m headed to a party.”

Berni glanced toward Sonje, who had her face tucked against Gerrit’s. “Why leave now?” she asked Anita. “The show’s just started.”

“I’m through with this tired old bit,” Anita said, and turned away with a flounce.

Berni took pulls of her beer, growing bored and embarrassed by her tablemates’ necking. By the end of the routine, the dancers were wearing very little. When finally Sonje resurfaced, she glanced toward the exit, then pulled Berni close. “Anita auditioned for this dance line once.” Around them, the crowd burst into applause. “You can see why she wasn’t chosen.”

The alcohol was beginning to make Berni feel dizzy, and very sorry for Anita. “I’ll just make sure she’s okay,” she said and stumbled out, bumping the backs of chairs as she went.

She found Anita standing on the curb, one bony arm flung out to hail cabs. “So,” she said, sucking the end of her cigarette. “You’d like to see the real Berlin.” She yanked Berni’s arm down when she tried to signal a car. “We want a cyclonette. Cheaper. Look for the cabs with three wheels.” Eventually they found one, and Anita gave the driver an address. They drove past the opera, then under the Brandenburg Gate, which glowed pale purple.

“Sonje likes to pretend she’s so modern sometimes, she and Gerrit looking at tits.”

Berni hadn’t heard Anita criticize Sonje before; it felt a bit titillating. “Well,” she said, to be contrary, “I thought the show was clever.”

“Clever? Come on, it’s a tit show.”

“It’s satire. A commentary on modern life.”

Anita snorted. “Satire. No matter how they try to dress up Girlkultur , my friend, it’s naked girls on a stage.”

Berni paused. Should she let on that she knew Anita had auditioned? “Look,” she said after a while. “I’m sorry I ran from you the other day. At the Medvedev.”

Anita shrugged, picking lint off her stockings. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t like it either, what I am.” They were almost to the other end of the Tiergarten now, and Anita’s expression lifted. She pointed toward a stately, darkened building. “But I won’t be this way for long. There’s the Institute for Sexual Science, have you heard of it?”

“They cure homophiles?”

“In a manner of speaking. They can make a man into a woman.”

Berni stared at her, nearly speechless. “You mean they’d—they’d cut it.”

“Snip, snip.” In the electric city glow Anita’s face went from soft and angelic to sharp and sly. “Then I’ll find a handsome Gerrit of my own. All I need is a Gerrit. I don’t have expensive taste, like Sonje. I don’t need someone like Herr Trommler to take care of me.”