Authors: C. W. Gortner
It was the first allusion she’d made to the catastrophe, the first time I could recall her revealing a vulnerability that made her question her unswerving belief in the proper order.
“It happened,” I said softly, “because we let it happen.”
She sighed again. “I suppose that’s as reasonable an explanation as any.” She twined her fingers together; she still wore her wedding band, though it now hung loose on her knuckle, like someone else’s memento. “Your uncle Willi is dead.”
I gasped. “No. How? When?”
“Must be over a year now. A heart attack, poor man. Like your father. One minute he was at the store, doing whatever he could to keep it afloat—business was hopeless, like everything else, and his insistence on retaining that imperial patent on the wall didn’t help—and the next, he dropped dead. A mercy. He never liked the situation. Toward the end, he was selling engagement rings at a discount to Wehrmacht officers who wanted to marry their girlfriends before they went to die at the front. I had him buried in the Wilmersdorf chapel. He would have liked the service, I think, though no one we knew was there. You were gone, and Liesel—”
She caught herself, looking sidelong at me before she went on: “He bequeathed everything to me in his will. It isn’t much. The store was heavily damaged by the bombings. But whatever is left will be yours and your sister’s when I’m gone. If the Russians don’t take it first.”
“Mutti, let’s not talk about this now.” I started to reach for her hand, overcome by sorrow that my beloved uncle, with his fancy mustache and elegance, was no more. “It’s not necessary. You are tired and—”
“No.” She grasped my fingers. “Listen to me. I am an old woman who has seen too much. I don’t want to live in a world where I don’t exist, where the country I love, that I’ve called my home, no longer exists. It’s not a tragedy. Not like what has happened. It is God’s will. We live as best we can, and if we’re lucky, we die in our own bed. So many have not had that privilege. But you mustn’t let our name disappear. You must fight for what
remains. You are our heir. You alone can save what we fought for so long to build.”
“Mutti.” My voice quavered. “I’m an actress. I’m not anyone.”
“You’re more than that. You are my daughter. My child. You are not Liesel; you have proved that much. I want you to promise that no matter what, you’ll do everything you can to restore our name. We—we did not do this,” she whispered. “We are not responsible. We are good Germans. Some of us have always been good Germans.”
Her eyes and voice were fervent. It had been eating at her, consuming her strength, this terrible guilt and fear that we’d be held culpable for the actions of a madman. I wanted to tell her what I’d seen in Bergen-Belsen, what the world was now seeing—the evidence that even if we’d not personally drawn up the lists or herded them onto the trains like cattle, we were still to blame because we had done nothing to stop it. We had turned away and refused to look.
But I held back. She was indeed an old woman now. Not the dragon anymore, not the mother I’d fought and rebelled against, her demands too stringent to include in my life. She was a survivor, who had earned the right to dictate her own epitaph.
I nodded. “I promise I will do whatever I can.”
“Good.” Her fingers unraveled from mine. “I must rest awhile. Are you staying long?”
“As long as you need me,” I said. “Or as long as the army will let me.”
She smiled vaguely, motioning to a rickety credenza. “There are some calling cards for you. A few of your fellow students from that academy and friends who didn’t leave or were taken away. They’ve been coming by, wanting to know if you are really alive.”
I started, turning to look at where she pointed before returning my bewildered gaze to her. “But you . . . I thought they told you I was dead.”
“They did.” She harrumphed. “But who could believe anything those criminals said? I suspected you might not be. You always were stubborn. I preferred to think you were dead until you came to me. I wasn’t certain you would. These days, it’s easier not to hope.”
She retreated to the lone bedroom, clicking the warped door shut.
Alone on the sofa, I let tears slip down my cheeks. So much time lost, so much we could have shared, if only we’d found common ground. The war had taken everything from her.
But it had brought us together.
T
hey came on rickety bicycles and on foot, haggard and swathed in an assortment of mismatched clothes—frayed scarves, moth-holed caps, and ill-fitting coats that barely protected against the chill. November had fallen upon Berlin like a fist. It would be another long winter and few in the city had the means to withstand it. There was a shortage of everything: food, fuel for transport, kerosene, coal, and apparel. While the Allies haggled over the nation’s fate, those who had withstood the Nazis and the resultant reprisals now faced rampant hunger and destitution.
I was overjoyed to see them—these people whose faces I did not remember, acquaintances from our champagne-and-opium-infused heyday, when Berlin bloomed with postwar intoxication, the future unclear yet, had we only known it, full of misguided hope. Looking back as I greeted them and they filled Mutti’s apartment—she’d gone next door to stay the night with her widowed neighbor—whisking contraband Russian vodka and British gin from their pockets and settling on the sofa, the chairs, and the floor, I marveled at our lost innocence. We had believed we were invincible. We’d boozed, smoked, and slept with one another like pagans; but to see us now, a threadbare collection of pinched cheeks and bruised eyes, was to realize we’d experienced a time that would never come again—a
glorious pageant of protest and perversity, squashed under intolerance and coils of barbed wire.
Then Camilla Horn, my rival-friend from the boardinghouse, walked through the door.
I fell apart.
She engulfed me in her arms. She looked the same in her squirrel-trimmed coat and chic beret, bleached curls peeping out to frame her narrow, still arresting face, an unexpected vision from the past, though as she whispered, kissing my cheek, “Not so young anymore.”
“But more blond,” I said, wiping my tears. “Weren’t you a redhead?”
“You set the trend. I only copy it.” She swept her feline stare over the others, nodding to those she knew. “I need a drink.” One of the men, an actor I vaguely recalled from our Reinhardt days, rushed to pour vodka for her into one of the army-issue tin glasses.
“
Danke.
” As he flushed and backed away, she said to me, “I heard you were here, so I made a special trip from Vienna. How long has it been?”
“Too long.” Hooking my arm in hers, I drew her into a corner. “How did you . . . ?”
“Survive?” She downed her vodka. “Not easily. Certainly not like Leni.” She grimaced. “You know she made propaganda films for them?”
I nodded. “I saw one.
Triumph of the Will,
I think it was called.”
“Atrocious, wasn’t it? Like a bad DeMille epic. Leni always did tend to the garish.” She made an irritated sound. “She used inmates from detention centers as extras, then watched them being loaded onto the death trains to Poland. She escaped Berlin, but the Americans captured her as she fled over the Alps. They’re holding her for questioning, using her own propaganda to identify missing officials. I hope they hang her. She was fucking Goebbels, a miserable failed novelist, just as she failed as an actress. A party of losers. Who would have thought?”
I had to agree. Leni Riefenstahl deserved whatever was coming to her. She had not been an innocent caught up in the maelstrom; she had actively participated, helping to whip the maelstrom into murderous frenzy with her overwrought paeans to the Reich.
“Do you know anything about Gerda?” I asked, bracing myself. I’d not heard from her since our falling-out over the kidnapping threat. She’d taken her final paycheck, which I’d left as promised, and disappeared. I assumed she’d returned to Europe. Where else would she have gone?
“Not lately,” said Camilla. “Last I heard, she was in Austria. She wrote for a Viennese newspaper—Nazi approved of course. Guess she had to make a living. Then, because of her connection to you, she was hired by Goebbels to write a series of articles about your life in Hollywood. They weren’t exactly flattering, but they probably saved her.”
“Is she alive?” I said. “She wasn’t arrested or gone missing?”
“Not that I’m aware of. Word traveled fast when people were taken. Like I said, knowing you must have saved her. The Nazis may have declared you a traitor in public but in private they couldn’t get enough of you. Leni told me after she saw you in London, Goebbels was furious that you’d refused their offer. Hitler was a fan; he’d seen all your pictures, even those they banned, and he wanted to make you his mistress. Just think,” she said wryly. “You might have helped us win the war if only you’d agreed to come here and screw the führer.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, in gratitude that Gerda had survived. Then I looked at Camilla and said, “Will you tell her I asked about her if you see her?”
“Of course. But Gerda never liked our circle much, as you know. It’s unlikely I’ll run into her anytime soon.” She paused. “Do you want to know how I made it through?”
I assented, prepared for the worst. Those who were still here—despite their forlorn appearance, they must have done something. No one could be entirely without blame, if only for their silence. And Camilla had always been an opportunist.
“Well, in case you’re wondering,” she said, “I never fucked one. I should have; it might have made things more tolerable. Instead, I was arrested twice, first for refusing to salute some SS pig and then on suspicion of working for the resistance. I wasn’t a spy, so they convicted me of traveling without a permit. I spent three months at the women’s prison in Vechta.”
She shrugged. “It could have been worse. I could have been Leni. I knew they’d be watching me, so when I was released, I went to Italy and made a few pictures there. Now I’m back and looking for work. Not that there’s any to be found. Vienna is no better off than Berlin or Rome. The world may have gone up in flames, but unemployed actresses are as plentiful as ever.”
Relief flooded me. “I can’t believe you’re here,” I said, as she thrust out her glass and her hovering admirer hastened to refill it. “After all this time, I thought—”
Her ironic laugh cut me off. “You never thought of me. You were too busy being famous. I understand. Life goes on. We leave some behind.” She paused. “Still married to Rudi?”
“Yes. He’s living in New York with our daughter.”
Her smile widened. “He was quite the prize. I hated you for that.”
I chose not to tell her that the prize wasn’t all he’d been made out to be. As we sat together reminiscing, I learned that others we had known were missing and presumed dead.
“Trude died of a stroke,” Camilla said. “She never saw the worst of it. But Karl Huszár-Puffy, remember him, who played the publican in
The Blue Angel
? And Gerron, who played the magician: both sent to the camps. And the girls of Das Silhouette went to Dachau. That’s where they sent all the degenerates. So much talent,” she mused. “We’ll never be the same.”
Fury gripped me. Friends and colleagues, the most vibrant and daring, who’d infused Berlin with her sparkle—gone. I might have suffered the same, had I not gone abroad. Or perhaps later, if I’d returned to Berlin. Hitler’s admiration had not precluded killing his own.
Biting back futile tears, I turned to regard our companions, lubricated on cheap alcohol and engaged in fierce debate. “We’ll become something different,” I said vehemently, as if I was trying to convince myself. “Nothing can stop artists from creating.”
“When there’s no other choice, what else can we do?” Camilla reached for the vodka. “I certainly intend to keep on acting. We’ve hit the bottom of the heap—and this bottle, too, by the looks of it—so we must start over. Germany is a phoenix. She will rise from the ashes.”
I gave her a contemplative look. “Will she?”
“We can always hope.” She clinked her glass against mine. “To absent friends.”
I proceeded to get drunk. At one point, someone cited a producer I’d known from the Nelson revue, who was now staging an Allied-approved version of Weill’s
The Threepenny Opera,
and I shot to my feet, sloshing gin as I cried out, “I’ll buy a theater. I’ll repair it, and Camilla and I will star in a revival of
Two Bow Ties
. Everyone here will have a job!”
Everyone there applauded. Only, when I swerved to Camilla, she regarded me archly and demurred, saying, “Aren’t we rather long in the tooth to play showgirls?”
Gulping down the rest of my drink, I staggered into the kitchenette to prepare
Ersatzkaffee,
offering up my carton of American cigarettes and doling out advice on how all of us, together, could re-create the acerbic joy of our Weimar days until most of them passed out.
Although she’d imbibed more than me, Camilla remained sober. When I escorted her to the door to say good night, she abruptly pressed her gin-soaked lips to mine. Then she pulled away with a sly look. “We never did get our chance together. I hated you for that, too.”
“Stay, then.” I caressed her wrist. “Mutti is sleeping next door. Stay with me tonight.”
“Oh, no. We’re also rather long in the tooth for that. Let it remain something you never wanted and something I can always desire. We’ve too little left to sacrifice our regrets.”
I never saw her again.
But as she tugged up her collar and vanished into the night, I knew she would live. She would continue to survive. A woman like her could never be defeated.
She was one of our good Germans.
THE FOLLOWING WEEK
while I undertook a short military tour outside Berlin, Mutti died. It was November 6, a few days before her sixty-ninth
birthday. As with Uncle Willi and my father, her heart stopped. It was sudden. Painless. As she would have said, it was God’s will.
The Wilmersdorf cemetery where she’d laid my uncle to rest had been destroyed, so in an adjacent lot covered in slush and cinders, I had a hole dug and buried her in a makeshift coffin built from discarded school desks. Several GIs volunteered to assist me; as they lowered her into her grave, in my grief I thought of what Camilla had said.