David Gillham - City of Women

Fräulein Kretchmar arrives, clapping her hands together like the village schoolmistress. “Come, come! No time for frivolous chitchat. To work!” she scolds the roomful of women. “Think of our troops fighting the Bolsheviks. They have no time to waste with such twaddle, and neither do we!”

Sigrid adjusts her chair and removes the hood from her typewriter, easing herself into her standard position in front of the keys. Then, from across the room, she gets a seductively conspiratorial wink from a dusky-eyed brunette. This is Renate Hochwilde, the closest thing she has to a friend here, or anywhere else, for that matter. During their midday break, she recounts the tale of Frau Remki’s outburst. Renate shakes her head and sighs. “She’s a goner.” They are sitting outside in the grass above the Waterloo Ufer on the lower bank of the canal.

“Her husband was in the last war. He was decorated,” Sigrid tells her. “An Iron Cross, First Class.”

But Renate only shakes her head. “Makes no difference. The last war? That’s ancient history. It’s this war that counts. And you don’t lose your mind like that without consequences.” She says this and stretches her back languidly. Dark, luxurious curls. Feline eyes. A well-built body. Men go insane for her. “You can be sure that somebody has already rung up the gentlemen of the Gestapo.”

Sigrid shrugs. “Certainly,” she must agree, “that’s the likelihood.”

“So keep your distance, is my advice. That’s what I’d do.”

“It’s what we all do.”

“And is that so bad? To look out for yourself? Besides, what exactly should you be doing that you’re not?”

Shaking her head, Sigrid digs into her rucksack. “I don’t know. Nothing. There’s nothing I can do, I suppose.”

“And what should you feel obliged to do, anyway? Did you know this woman so well?”

“I helped her with shopping a few times. That sort of thing.” The morning has produced a flaccid sunshine, but it’s revitalizing after the hours under the fluorescent lamps of the patent office. Sigrid is happy to feel even this weak sunlight on her face. She closes her eyes to it. “It’s my mother-in-law who’s known her for ages.”

“Ah. Dear Mother Schröder,” Renate pronounces archly. “And is she rushing off to plead this crazy woman’s case?”

“Not as of this morning.”

“No, I would think not. For once the old gorgon can give you a lesson worth learning. Are you still fighting with her?”

“Always.”

Renate produces a cucumber from her bag and bites into it. “I don’t know how you stand it,” she says, chewing. “I think if I had to live with my mother-in-law under the same roof, there’d be blood on the floor within a week. Hers or mine, I’m not sure. The funny thing is that Oskar feels precisely the same way about her.” Oskar is Renate’s husband, a driver for a staff officer posted in France. Supposedly, he is aware of his wife’s myriad trysts, but makes no objections. “He doesn’t care,” she insists. “He has a wife whose picture he can show about. He adores the children, and I’m sure he gets plenty of what he needs from those pretty mademoiselles.”

Stretching like a cat, Renate purrs over the thought of her latest bedmate. “Oh, he’s very appealing . Very fierce eyes , ” she says. “Older, you know. Younger is hard to find these days. But still with the body of an athlete. And, of course, fabulous under the sheets.”

“Um-hmm.” Sigrid nods. “Well. Aren’t all your conquests?”

“I suppose,” Renate replies airily. “But I like this one. He’s polite.”

“You mean he holds the door for you?”

“I mean, he’s not simply interested in his pleasure.”

“How virtuous. What’s he do?” she asks. “For a living, that is.”

Renate takes another bite from her cucumber and chews dutifully. “I’m not sure, really. He has a firm of some sort in the Potsdamer Platz. But we don’t talk much about it, as you might imagine. In fact, we hardly talk at all.”

“Married?’

Renate shrugs. Who cares? “Shipped off to the country with the kinder , where it’s safe. The family abode is in Zehlendorf, but he keeps a cozy little flat off the Potsdamer Platz. For business ,” she says.

Sigrid smiles, but as she watches the wands of the willow tree float on the canal’s marble green surface, the smile wanes. She treasures Renate but is frightened by her as well. Frightened by all that desire, the bottomless hunger. “Should I envy you?” she asks.

“Envy?” Her eyebrows rise. “Why?”

“Why? You have no fear of your own appetites .”

To which Renate replies with a laugh. “Well, in truth, it is I who should envy you . Isn’t it? All that self-control.”

Tell me something no one else knows.

On the bus ride home, Sigrid stares through the window. Stares into the past stowed inside her head.

There is nothing to tell , he’d answered. I have no secrets .

She divided her life into two sides of a mirror. On one side of the mirror was her true life with Kaspar and his mother, which felt false. Every morning, she left the flat with Kaspar, as he was off to his work at the bank. They traveled together as far as the Nollendorfplatz, at which point he would give her a pat on the arm and wish her a pleasant day. Her part-time job at the patent office was not as rewarding as she pretended, but it gave her an excuse to be absent from her mother-in-law’s flat in the afternoons when she was asked to work “extra hours” for the war effort. Who wasn’t working extra hours now, anyway? And when that excuse wore thin, there were always the films. A matinee with a friend from the office. Renate Hochwilde is her name. She’s one of the other stenographers. Her husband’s just been called up , Sigrid would explain. I think she’s lonely. Mother Schröder would frown at the idea of such excursions when there was plenty of cleaning to do, but then she frowned at everything. And Sigrid took over washing the supper dishes so that her mother-in-law could sit and listen to the wireless. Rosita Serrano’s cool, clear voice singing “La Paloma.” She would scrub the skillet and think of the sound of Egon’s voice. The heat of his breath on her skin.

On the opposite side of the mirror was the life that felt true. A rendezvous in front of the cinema. Then off to the cramped one-room flat, belonging to a “friend.” The stairs creaked forlornly on their way up, and the hall smelled of failing plumbing and hardship. This had become their routine. But when she asked him her question— A friend? What kind of friend?— the answer was None of Her Business: the name of a land so much more vast than the simple boundaries of a hardscrabble district in eastern Berlin. He still listened to her when she talked, but now she suspected he was simply using her talk to camouflage his silence.

Outside, the air was frigid. Inside, they had generated their own heat. The windowpanes were smeared with condensation. From the knot of blankets she gazed at him as he lit his cigarette, dragged in the smoke, and then exhaled it sloppily. She liked to see him stand naked so casually. Kaspar was different. He never undressed in front of her. And after their business in bed was concluded, he redressed under the covers, before slumping over to his side and collapsing into sleep. Kaspar would never allow her to gape at his ass, standing by a window. He would never turn and show her his member, hanging at rest.

“You look thoughtful,” he told her.

“Just thinking about how far away you are from the bed.”