Pierre Frei - Berlin - A Novel

It was Franz Giese, and he came from Breslau. He grinned. 'Same as most real Berliners.'

'I really wanted to be a cinema usherette,' she said apologetically, explaining herself. 'But as so often happens…' Giese nodded understandingly.

Keys clinked. Fredie appeared in a dinner jacket, the inevitable cigarette holder clamped between his teeth. He took in the scene at a glance. 'May I ask what this idyll is in aid of?'

'I brought him up for a moment to get warm.'

'Out.' Fredie jerked his thumb at the door. Franz Giese picked up his coat and cap in silence.

'You could have let him finish his grog,' Marlene complained.

Fredie came close to her. His face expressionless, he rammed his fist into her stomach, making her gasp for air. She writhed under the blow and collapsed into a chair, weeping soundlessly. It wasn't so much the pain — that soon died down — it was her sense of being utterly alone.

Crooking his forefinger, he raised her chin. 'I pick the guests you entertain, understand? How about the money?' She gave him the hundred-mark note from Eulenfels. He took a small notebook out of his pocket and entered the sum. 'Thirty for expenses, thirty-five for me, thirty-five for you.' He conscientiously kept accounts, although she never got to see her money. 'I'm managing it for you,' he replied when she asked about it.

'There's a Herr von Malsen coming to tea tomorrow. I hinted that you're a member of the impoverished aristocracy and very demanding. We can expect a couple of hundred.'

All she wanted was to creep away and forget it all: Fredie, the men, everything about life in the fashionable Westend that was no better than the squalor of Ri benstrasse, just less honest. A thought suddenly went through her mind — Franz Giese is different.

Fredie smiled wryly. Then he pulled her down on the couch. She had no power to resist him. She tried to think of something to put her off, but there was no holding back the orgasm. Contemptuously, Fredie walked away from her.

Herr von Malsen was a wiry man, owner of a landed estate in West Pomerania, who politely asked her to keep her stockings on. Herr Nussbaum was an asthmatic liqueurs distiller from Kopenick who wanted to be called dirty names. Dr Bernheimer was a Potsdam lawyer who liked to be called Sonja as he was being laced into a corset. She fulfilled all their little wishes, and was generously rewarded.

There was a foreigner among her clients too. She had met him over tea in the Adlon. That trick had proved its worth a couple of times before. Fredie took her into the hotel lounge, then had a pageboy call him and hurried away. Marlene liked the atmosphere. Well-dressed men and women. English voices in the background. Snatches of conversation in French. A German gentleman asking the waiter for the London Times. A Swedish woman ordering cigarettes. Two Spaniards greeting each other effusively. Really elegant and international here, she thought, looking at it through Riibenstrasse eyes.

'My brother had to leave unexpectedly on business, and I don't have any money on me,' she told the waiter, loud enough for a solitary gentleman at the next table to hear her. The gentleman was an American, and immediately offered to pay the trifling sum. Marlene smiled in embarrassment. 'How can I thank you, sir?'

'By having a drink with me.' After that he invited her to dinner and champagne in his suite. 'I'm sure you won't mind staying a little longer?' He pushed a hundred-dollar note under her glass.

She laughed. 'How did you know what I do?'

'I saw your companion disappear into one of the telephone cabins, and he was called away straight afterwards. It wasn't difficult to guess the rest — which suits me down to the ground. I'm new to Berlin, and the only woman I've met so far is the cleaning lady at my office.'

His name was Frank Saunders, and he was a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune. 'He spoke quite good German. Which was, not least, what got me the job here. Darn interesting city, your Berlin. Especially in the present situation. Do you think this Herr Hitler will win the election?'

'Can't you ask me something easier?'

'You're not interested in politics?'

'Not a bit. You?'

'Only professionally. Privately, what I love is beautiful women and horse racing, like most of us men from Kentucky. I like to lay a few bets. How do you feel about coming to Hoppegarten with me?'

'Maybe…'

He was thirty, and had a boxer's nose. 'Lowered my guard for a split second during the university championships at Yale. That was my reward.'

Frank Saunders was a sportsman, good figure, nice smelling. He was uninhibited in bed and put his mind to what he was doing. 'It's real fun with you,' he said appreciatively. 'I'm moving into my new apartment next week. Will you visit me?' He wrote the address down for her.

From then on they met regularly. Marlene liked the uncomplicated American. Fredie liked the flow of dollars. He even allowed her to go to the races with Saunders. She bought herself an elegant afternoon dress and an extravagant hat, and was delighted by all the beautiful people surrounding them and her good-looking companion in his grey flannels.

They played a little game which excited them both. 'That man in the bowler hat there is a client of mine too. Guess what he does to me?' And she whispered an erotic fantasy in his ear. Another time it was a bony baroness with special tastes. After her, two stylish young cavalry lieutenants. 'Just imagine what those two want me to do…'

After the races, back in his apartment, they released their pent-up excitement. It was like a spring storm. He was the first client with whom she felt anything at all, and the first man she liked talking to afterwards.

Then there was Dr Friedhelm Noack, always clad in a black jacket, dovegrey waistcoat and striped trousers, his hair meticulously parted, wearing a silver tie. Noack was a senior civil servant in the Prussian Interior Ministry, but liked to be addressed as Major. 'So he made it all the way to paymaster in the war, but never mind, let's not dash his illusions.' Fredie always knew how to deal with people.

Dr Noack came every Thursday. He would drop into an armchair, groaning, and she would kneel in front of him and unbutton him. It was always quite hard work, but eventually he would come, and then leave looking satisfied. This would have been pure routine if she hadn't been required to service him for free, on Fredie's instructions. We don't take money from a friend of the Party,' Fredie had told her. Marlene had not the faintest idea which Party Dr Noack had befriended.

Fredie didn't beat her any more; he had understood the nature of his power over her. He fixed her appointments, and she kept them. Her bank account was growing, at least on paper. He generously allowed her more money for her parents, which she sent them by special messenger.

At around three in the morning one Sunday, Wilhelm Kuhle, unemployed, turned on the gas tap in his one-room apartment in Riibenstrasse, because Pohl and two strong assistants were going to evict him in a few hours' time. He died according to plan, but Marlene's parents and two little brothers would have liked to live a little longer. Gas fumes had passed through the cracks of the partition wall between the apartments.

The funeral was on the last Monday in January 1933. Fredie had anticipated that the newspapers would send reporters, because of all the publicity given to the tragedy, so he had Marlene dress in some old clothes he'd bought from a second-hand dealer. That way she wouldn't be conspicuous, and wouldn't have to answer any questions. On the Monday evening she wore silk stockings and pearls. Herr Eulenfels had invited her to his hunting lodge.

Franz Giese came to fetch her. He was waiting with his cap on by the door of the new Pullman limousine. His leather gaiters gleamed. Marlene shook hands. 'Hi, how's things?'