A War of Flowers (2014) (10 page)

Clara clicked along the road, saw the crowd and crossed to the eastern side of the Wilhelmstrasse, where the buildings cast welcome blocks of shade. The windows of the Propaganda Ministry, known
to everyone as the Promi, had been opened and the faint clatter of typewriters could be heard, compiling the daily stream of orders and directives which reminded the nation’s newspapers about
the atrocities of the Czechs or reprimanded them for printing unhappy horoscopes. It was an oppressive, airless day. Not a whisper of breeze flickered the leaves on the linden trees. It was the
kind of day to be in Berlin’s great park, the Tiergarten, or farther out, walking by the Grunewald lakes or sunbathing on the silver sand of the Strandbad Wannsee, but sunbathing was the last
thing on Clara’s mind as she made her way back towards her apartment, a few streets beyond Nollendorfplatz. She had more important things to contemplate.

The more Clara pondered Eva Braun, the more she realized how little she knew about her. No more than a handful of facts. Eva came from Munich, where Hitler had first encountered her working in
the shop of Heinrich Hoffmann, his official photographer. She was much younger than him, no more than twenty-six, Clara thought, but still the Führer considered her a pleasant enough companion
for the opera and excursions to the Berghof, his retreat in the Obersalzberg mountains. Eva Braun came to Berlin sometimes, but Clara had never even glimpsed her. Magda Goebbels had dismissed her
as silly, ill-educated and provincial and Emmy Goering said she liked cheap jewellery and perfume. To Clara, the more astonishing question was what such a young, and apparently ordinary, girl could
have in common with a man like Hitler. How she could bear to be brushed from the public record, because Hitler had proclaimed himself married to the nation? And now Clara had been asked to get
close to her. She had no idea how she would even meet the girl, let alone get to know her. It was a mission which seemed as fraught and difficult as scaling the cliffs of the Obersalzberg
itself.

Turning into Winterfeldtstrasse, Clara quickly scanned the street. This kind of automatic scrutiny came as second nature to her now, one of a number of little habits like memorizing the
numberplates of cars parked outside her apartment or counting the pedestrians she passed. Her impulse was to note anything unfamiliar, but today the long, leafy street of residential blocks,
including her own ochre-painted nineteenth-century building with its heavy wooden front door, looked the same as ever. The only changes she detected were an advertisement for Leni
Riefenstahl’s latest film
Festival of Beauty
, featuring three young women in swimming costumes, that had been erected on a hoarding at the end of the road next to a poster in which
Berlin’s top illusionist Alois Kassner posed menacingly over a nubile brunette with the slogan
Kassner makes a girl vanish!
And there was a brand new swastika flag hanging on the pole
outside the apartment door.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

Entering the dim hallway, and noting as always the single missing tile in the chipped chequerboard floor, Clara heard the familiar greeting from the cubicle of Rudi, the Blockwart.

‘Heil Hitler! Fräulein Vine!’

Rudi, a fanatical old Nazi with a leathery complexion and a clutch of brown teeth, was in charge of the maintenance and care-taking of the apartment. His spine was severely bent from scoliosis,
but he was still able to dart swiftly from his cubicle like some barnacled sea creature scuttling from its hole. Despite his inauspicious appearance, Rudi was a perfect example of the way that the
Nazis managed to keep Berlin’s four million residents under control while they were behind closed doors. The old man maintained a relentless scrutiny of the residents of the block, and
reported the slightest deviation from proper behaviour to the authorities. Even activities not in themselves illegal could still suggest potential criminality to Rudi’s luridly suspicious
mind. Excessive typewriting might imply the production of resistance pamphlets, and tantalizing cooking smells could mean the resident had been benefiting from black market food. Recently, Clara
suspected that the arrest of Herr Kaufmann, the shy bachelor who worked as a fiction reader at Ullstein publishers and occupied the apartment adjoining hers, had been prompted by a denunciation
from Rudi about his visits from young men. The vast majority of arrests for homosexuality came from local informers. Herr Kaufmann might no longer be there, but the suspicion of his homosexuality
lingered like a stain and the other residents grew more cautious of Rudi’s all-encompassing gaze.

Though Clara was rarely able to avoid Rudi, she always ensured that she was carrying something in both hands so she didn’t have to return the
Führergruss.
That day she had a
rolled-up magazine in one hand and her handbag in the other.

‘Is that mail for me?’

She might just as well have asked what was in it too, given that Rudi had almost certainly had a look. If ever her letters escaped the attentions of the censors, which was unlikely, they faced a
second censor in the person of Rudi. Clara knew he would not hesitate to steam her post open if he thought it contained anything incriminating.

‘By the way, we have a new resident in the block. A Herr Engel. A very pleasant gentleman. He has the apartment next to yours.’

‘So Herr Kaufmann’s not expected back?’

Rudi gave her a look which signalled that Herr Kaufmann would be as welcome as a case of typhoid if and when he ever made it out of the camp. Accepting her letters, Clara ascended in the rickety
elevator to the top floor, closed the door of her apartment behind her and felt her whole body relax.

This apartment was her refuge, the place where she tried to instil a sense of security that was so lacking in the city outside. She had laid thick rugs on the floor and painted the walls a
soothing pale grey. Even in the heat of a stifling summer, it was cool. The narrow hall opened into a wide space, lined on one side with bookcases and on the other a large mirror reflected back the
light from the window which looked over the crooked roofs towards Nollendorfplatz. There was a desk with a wobbly leg, a gramophone and a red velvet armchair, with a new English novel that her
sister had sent her,
Rebecca
, lying invitingly open beside a pile of scripts. On the mantelpiece a signed photograph of the entire cast of
Es leuchten die Sterne,
Clara’s most
recent film, stood beside a picture of her late mother, and one of Erich aged six. At the times when she felt almost resigned to being alone, this place was her solace, as familiar to her as the
face of an old friend. Even the air in the apartment was distilled with the fragrances that spelt comfort; from the row of herbs on the kitchen windowsill to the bowl of apples on the table and the
tang of the tar melting on the asphalt outside.

Putting on the kettle and sitting at the kitchen table, she took out of her bag the identity cards she carried at all times. The grey, standard identity document certifying that she was Clara
Vine, born 1907, with her fingerprint and photograph and the purple stamp of the Ministry of the Interior. The other was a red cardboard document with an eagle on the cover and inside an Aryan
certificate, the
Ariernachweis,
confirming that Fräulein Clara Vine was a member of the Aryan race, possessing birth and baptismal records of her parents and grandparents and a
genealogy table in which the Jewish ancestry of her mother and grandmother was replaced with Christian blood. It was a forgery, produced not by the government race office but by an underground
printer in a basement in Wedding equipped with a variety of inks and papers, a knife and a set of stamps intricately carved from champagne corks. By day this man printed musical manuscripts and by
night he risked execution working for British Intelligence. This document, which Clara carried with her everywhere, was the last communication she had received from Leo Quinn. It was tattered now,
and dog-eared, but still essential. Her entire life in Germany, and her whole film career, depended on it. No one with Jewish blood could work in any part of the Reich Chamber of Culture, be it
film, radio, theatre or newspapers. Every time she handled that document she thought of Leo. His presence still lingered in her life, the image of him always at the edge of her thoughts. The
document, like the pale blue book of Rilke’s poems he had left her, was yet another way that he had made her who she was.

But Leo was gone now, resettled in England, no doubt with a pretty wife in tow. And Ralph Sommers, the man she had met the previous year, wanted her to forget him. ‘
Your work matters
more than personal happiness, Clara. It matters more than ever.
’ By work, he didn’t mean acting. Clara felt a sudden, painful shaft of longing and, sifting through her wallet,
extracted a couple of photographs, one of her brother Kenneth in school uniform – grey shorts, blazer and cap – eyes squinting into the sun, grubby legs almost visibly twitching with an
eagerness to escape, and the other of herself with Angela, three years older than Clara and far more beautiful. Where had it come from, the distance between them? They hadn’t always been
adversaries. As a child Clara had adored her, and Angela took her responsibilities in shepherding her younger sister seriously. She had taught her the piano and coaxed her at chess, giving up
hastily when Clara started to beat her. Angela directed Kenneth and Clara in the plays they staged for their parents, and it was Angela who taught her always to carry a handkerchief stuffed in her
left knicker leg, instructed her on applying foundation and eye shadow long before Clara was old enough to wear it, and who explained, albeit enigmatically, what happened on a girl’s wedding
night. Her description, though vague and couched in terms of Kenneth’s dogs, provided Clara with a lot more information than any of her friends had at the time.

She sighed and turned at last to the thick, vanilla-coloured envelope, franked with the Big Ben logo of London Films which had come with her mail. Her fingers trembled slightly as she opened it.
The immensity of the task ahead of her was still daunting.

Inside was a card with a perfectly bland instruction.

Two days away! Clara’s heart sank. She had never expected it would be so soon.

She flicked quickly through the rest of the mail. There was a postcard from Vienna with a photograph of Ringstrasse and the suggestion of a drink the following day. The card carried no signature
but Clara instantly recognized the handwriting of Rupert Allingham, a British journalist who always dropped her postcards on his travels and never signed them. The other letter was a reminder from
her friend Sabine, manager of the Elizabeth Arden salon on the Ku’damm, to pay a visit. Across the bottom of the card she had scrawled:

‘
Please come soon, Fräulein Vine, it’s important.
’

What on earth could be important about a session at the beauty parlour? People in the world of fashion and beauty seemed incapable of getting their priorities right. As if the whole business of
creams and potions was anything other than utterly trivial at a time like this.

On the other hand, if she was attending an audition, it might be a good idea to arrive looking her best. And, as Clara never forgot, sexual allure was an essential weapon in her secret work.
Lipstick, mascara and perfume were all important items in the toolkit of a female spy, and her favourite lipstick, Elizabeth Arden’s Velvet Red, in its prettily engraved gold tube, was right
down to a stub. However much the Führer might hate cosmetics, the female citizens of the Reich liked them even more at a time when new clothes were hard to come by. Yet lipstick, like coffee
and butter and oranges, was getting scarcer and fresh supplies were difficult to find. On reflection, Clara resolved to visit the salon that afternoon.

Rosa Winter flinched and tried valiantly to shut her ears to the shrieking children in the adjacent room as she carried on with her typing. Secretarial duties were dull enough
without children being brought into the office to disrupt everything. When their mother had arrived that morning for her interview, hands clamped on the shoulders of her offspring – two boys
of around eight and ten years old – she had shrugged apologetically and Rosa had smiled and nodded towards the empty office next door. The boys had brought a board game with them, the mother
explained, which would keep them quiet for at least twenty minutes. Instead it was having the opposite effect. The game was the current craze,
Juden Raus
and it looked fairly normal –
in that it involved a dice and playing pieces in the shape of large pointed hats, with ‘Jewish’ faces on them – but in terms of the aggression it aroused it was more like a boxing
match than a board game and every few moments the boys punctuated the air with cries of victory and howls of dismay. Rosa was developing a splitting headache. It would be distracting at any time,
let alone at ten o’ clock in the morning.

She sighed. She liked children, indeed she often identified with them, but she had no intention of having any of her own. Not yet, at any rate, or for a good long time. That was something she
had never told anyone. It was not the sort of thing a twenty-five-year-old woman confessed in Germany in 1938, not out loud, not to friends, not even to her own parents. Not now, when children were
the chief justification of a woman’s existence and having more than four of them – being ‘kinderreich’ – was every woman’s ambition. Not when being voluntarily
childless was deemed ‘deliberately harmful to the German nation’, which sounded an awful lot like treason if you thought about it. And most of all, not if your workplace, this drab
office packed with filing cabinets and smelling of carbolic and unwashed clothes, happened to be the very epicentre of the family in Germany, a veritable shrine to the place of women as housewives
and mothers – the headquarters of the National Socialist Women’s League, the NS Frauenschaft. Whose leader, installed within close barking distance in the office next to Rosa’s,
was Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, universally known as the Führerin, the most important woman in the entire Reich.