William Boyd - Sweet Caress

‘Amory. Look at me.’

‘I am looking at you.’

‘Are you sure you’re not in love with me?’

‘I’m sure. I’m not.’

‘Not even a little? A tiny bit?’

‘I’m very fond of you, Hanna. You’re a true friend.’

‘ Fond. How I hate that word.’

I remember a hot afternoon at Lake Motzen. Hanna worked for various magazines whose claim to celebrate an innocent naturism and good, healthy living barely concealed the real motive of their publication, namely that their pages contained many photographs of naked young men and boys — Das Freibad, Nur Natur, Extra Post des Eigenen , for example. These naked men and boys often preferred a woman photographer, so she was told, and she was regularly in demand during the summer months while people could sunbathe glorying in the Licht, Luft and Leben that the lakes and open spaces in and around Berlin offered. We travelled out to Lake Motzen to attend a meeting of the ‘League of Air Bathing’, Hanna having arranged for me to be paid as her assistant, something she happily did whenever she thought the magazine could afford it.

It was a day of clear unobstructed sunshine and what struck me most during these excursions was not the casual nudity, so much, as the extraordinary depth and hue of the suntans that these fair-haired Berliners sported. Their skins were so burned by the sun they looked Asiatic, basted and burnished with oil to help fry their bodies better. Hanna took her pictures as the men posed naked with discus or javelin, or dived into the lake, and the boys did callisthenic exercises. Meanwhile I reloaded Hanna’s cameras, marvelling at the unreal texture of these men’s coppery hides, as if they were some alien species or lost Amazonian tribe. There wasn’t the least frisson of eroticism, as far as I was concerned, contemplating these naked male bodies cavorting about the lakeside. It was the Berlin effect — it became ever harder to be shocked or affronted. However, I’ve never really enjoyed sunbathing since, I have to say.

I remember meeting Hanna’s mother and father. They came to the apartment for tea and cakes, a concerned, wealthy, bourgeois, faultlessly polite couple in their soft expensive clothes. Hanna was provocatively at her most garçonne -like, wearing co-respondent lace-up brogues, Oxford bags, a white short-sleeved shirt with a cerise bow tie, her hair oiled back from her forehead. When she strode out of the living room to make tea I saw her parents’ anguished, uncomprehending glance at each other. What had happened to little Hanna?

I remember going to Trudi’s flat, a bedsit in an old apartment block near Alexanderplatz. There had been a big street fight outside the synagogue on Kaiser-Strasse and workmen were wearily sweeping up the debris — placards, sticks, lumps of paving, broken glass. On Trudi’s door was her name, a handwritten scrap of paper pinned above the knocker: G. Fenstermacher. ‘Windowmaker’. Hanna found this very funny. Shamefully, I’d never thought of Trudi as having a surname — she was always a simple ‘Trudi’ to me. Hanna and I sat on her bed while Trudi took the only chair the room had to offer. She was much thinner and she confirmed she’d been away to have an abortion and there had been complications and a spell in hospital. Her mother was already caring for two of her children and had categorically refused to take on a third. ‘What choice did she give me?’ Trudi said, sulkily, resentfully. I handed over the 150 marks I had promised her and arranged to meet the following Saturday night at the Xanadu-Club for another session. She asked me for an extra hundred, saying she could take me to a very private place, very secret. I had Greville’s money by then so I paid up, very curious.

I SAT IN MY corner of the Xanadu-Club drinking Sekt and smoking, feeling very happy as I covertly clicked away with my handbag camera. It was late and some of the girls — who had also been drinking all night — did an impromptu striptease for the regulars who had lingered on. The men and the women — it had gone very heterosexual by this stage — chatted, kissed and fondled each other like lovers rather than prostitutes and paying customers, as if pleased to see each other and relishing this moment, snug and separated from the sexual commerce of the place for a few minutes, in a warm and friendly atmosphere. I was happy because I had nudity. I had half-naked Berlin prostitutes talking to each other, with their clients sitting alongside, looking on. All was well.

Trudi appeared in her hat and coat and signed off with Frau Amoureux.

‘We get a taxi,’ Trudi said.

We headed east, towards Lichtenberg, into long dark streets of old apartment buildings. I spotted a theatre and a sign that said Blumen-Strasse and then we turned down a narrow shadowy lane. I saw three other taxis ahead of us dropping off their passengers. We followed them through the usual damp, ill-lit courtyard and found a small queue of men filing in the door of an apartment, their hats pulled down, collars up. Trudi led me round to another door to the side where she rang a bell and a man looked out suspiciously. He had a pouchy, flushed face and a wide moustache. Trudi whispered a few words to him then turned to me.

‘You must give him fifty marks.’

‘But I just gave you a hundred.’

‘And I bring you to this place.’

I paid the man with the big moustache and we climbed a back stairway up one floor to a kitchen. There was a blackened tin range, a cold-water stone sink and a few shelves with pots and pans on them. There was another man standing there, reading a newspaper, naked apart from a towel tied around his waist. He looked up as we came in and I saw that he had a harelip, badly joined. He hugged and kissed Trudi and she introduced him.

‘This is Volker, my brother.’

We shook hands.

‘If you could give him some money that would be nice.’

I duly gave Volker fifty marks. Thank you, Greville.

‘What’s happening here?’ I asked.

Trudi led me cautiously to another door off the kitchen, opening it an inch or two. Peering through I could see a larger room, a sitting room, perhaps, transformed into a kind of crude theatre. Almost twenty men were already there, scattered about on the rows of chairs. Other men were arriving — prosperous men, so they looked to me as they removed their hats and coats and the place filled up. I saw silver hip flasks being passed around, cigarettes were lit, conversations were low and terse. The audience was facing a simple wooden bed with a headboard, made up with a pillow and sheets, lit by a standard lamp at each end. I began to understand why Trudi had called this a very private place, very secret.

I turned as I heard steps coming up the kitchen stairway. A young woman came in, bespectacled, wearing a tan camel coat and a velour hat with a bow on one side. She had a bony, angled face, her tiredness visible, and she looked as if she was returning from a day’s work at an office somewhere. She kissed Volker with familiarity and fished in her handbag, handing him what looked like a tube of toothpaste.

We were introduced — this was Franziska — and I gave her the obligatory fifty marks. I thought I recognised her as one of the girls from the Xanadu-Club. A whispered exchange with Trudi confirmed that this was true. So far I had spent 250 marks on this evening but I didn’t begrudge it — I had a feeling that whatever I was about to witness was going to be worthwhile. What I was more worried about was how much film remained in my camera — I had taken many photographs in the Xanadu-Club.

Big Moustache stuck his head round the door and asked if everyone was ready.