The Empire of the Senses (30 page)

The door opened into a dingy yellow kitchen that smelled of fried fish and chopped onions. Franz took in the surroundings; the open shelves for plates, the oilcloth covering the table, the cheap glass vase
engraved with flowers, the magazine
Die Dame
flung onto the seat of the chair. A sharp disappointment overwhelmed him when a woman emerged from behind the curtain separating the kitchen from the bedroom. She wore a slip dress and a silk robe over it. A string of fake pearls. A look of acknowledgment passed between the woman and the boy before he disappeared behind the curtain.

She sat down at the kitchen table and offered Franz a cigarette.

He stood behind the chair, gripping its frame. “I don’t smoke.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She was clearly the boy’s mother—the same auburn hair, freckles on the bridge of her nose, thin lips. Although he would have preferred the boy and was still recovering from feeling somewhat tricked, she wasn’t bad looking—a little heavy in the hips, but her hair had a pleasing copper sheen to it, her hands white and delicate, fingernails clean.

She sighed and pulled the magazine from the chair. “Take a seat.”

Franz sat down and folded his hands on the table. He heard a door open and close, and wondered if the boy had left.

She offered him sugar cookies arranged neatly on a chipped plate. He took one, bit into it.

She threw up her hands, her bracelets clanging together. “It’s been hard since my husband died. I used to hang around Frankfurter Allee, near the railroad station, but it’s easier with my son”—she hesitated—“lending a helping hand.” She took a long drag and laughed bitterly. “We look after each other, in a way.”

“How did your husband die, if I may ask?”

She pursed her lips. “Curiosity—that’s what hooks men. We barely get by these days.” She tapped the long column of gray ash into the ashtray. “So. What would you like?”

Franz rubbed his forehead, considering the question. He didn’t know. He was still thinking about the boy, his long limbs, the way he’d smiled at him on the street with his open laughing face, hair in his eyes, that youthful dart around the corner as Franz followed closely behind, blood racing.

She continued, “I did hairdressing before he died. Respectable
work.” She sighed again, her freckled chest heaving. “You want to know how he died? He came back from the war in one piece. Two years later, crossing the street, a truck ran over him.”

Behind her, the curtain rippled. Franz wondered if the boy stood on the other side, listening.

Her bed had already been turned down in anticipation. She’d put garnet-colored lampshades on the lamps to give off the impression of warmth. She bent over to roll down her silk stockings. Her backside, large, white, and gleaming, sickened him. A great deal of slack skin. When she sat up, her cheeks were flushed. Is this, Franz thought, what Wolf rushes off to on Thursday afternoons? What he boasts of? A waste of human energy. A shame. How he desecrates himself.

Franz told her to turn around. She nodded, and he gripped her fragile copper hair, some of the strands breaking off between his fingers. The back of her neck was thick and smelled of cigarettes. She grasped the brass bed frame, cried out a little, but she knew how to endure a certain amount of brutality. And yet, she probably didn’t expect this from him—he seemed like a polite boy from a good family, wanting to know what regiment her husband had served in during the war. Franz dug his fingernails into her back and gripped her arm tightly. She would bruise from this.

Afterward, Franz threw a few crumpled bills onto the bedspread, which had been kicked down to the bottom of the bed. The woman lay on her side, her hand on her stomach. She watched him dress with dull gray eyes. He had exerted himself and it showed. He smoothed back his hair, wiped off his face with a towel he found lying by the freestanding sink. When he left the room, she tucked her chin into her chest and closed her eyes.

The boy was waiting for Franz in the kitchen. He started to cajole him into handing over more money, but Franz shoved him off, banging the front door behind him. As he descended the stairs, he heard a teakettle boiling, emitting a high-pitched whine.

“You’re late,” Marthe whispered, removing his linen blazer in the marble entry hall. His arms effortlessly slid out of the silk-lined sleeves. She folded it over, smoothing down the jacket with affection.

Franz pinched her cheek. “Have they started?”

“Your mother insisted on waiting.”

“What’s for dinner? Anything good?”

“Oysters to start. Pea soup. Pike.”

Franz wrinkled his nose. “Dessert?”

Marthe smiled. “Raspberry tart with marzipan icing.”

“Delicious,” Franz said, pinching her cheek again.

“Franz, don’t,” she said, suppressing a laugh. He’d done that since he was little. But Josephine disapproved of such familiarity.

“Is that you finally?” Josephine called from the dining room.

He hesitated to answer.

She appeared at the end of the hallway, a slim apparition in navy silk, the hemline hitting below her knee. She walked toward him, already inspecting. Between her forefinger and thumb, she held the corner of her linen napkin, as if she hadn’t the time to leave it on the table. “Where have you been?”

“I’ll just wash up first, Mother.”

“Leave him be,” Lev called from the dining room, followed by a cough.

He started for the bathroom off the hallway.

“Wait.” She touched his shoulder. “You’re winded.”

“It was crowded getting home.”

She gazed at him, her eyes wide and gleaming. “Why are you late?” She cupped his chin. “You smell of cabbage.”

Franz gently removed her hand from his face. “The tram was full of stenographers. Rush hour.” He smiled. “Everyone coming home.”

The dining room blazed with light; the crystal chandelier hanging over the table and the lit candles flickering over the china and the glittery hairpin fixed in Vicki’s dark hair made Franz squint. She’d cut off her
hair yesterday—he thought it looked ugly. Vicki was talking about dancing; she was always talking about dancing. She wanted the radio on during dinner because that’s when Radio Berlin broadcast her favorite jazz bands, but Josephine refused, saying music shouldn’t be consumed as if standing at some lunch counter wolfing down a gherkin. It required patience, concentration. “That atonal noise you love—I wouldn’t even call it music.”

“It’s called jazz, thank you very much.” Vicki dissected her fish quickly, separating out the tiny white bones from the flesh. She did everything quickly, hardly ever still, unless Franz found her splayed on the couch after one of her dances in the early evening, her shoes kicked off, her feet up on the armrest, her toes curling and uncurling, encased in silk stockings. Then she would speak low and soft, staring dreamily into the brocaded wallpaper as if a pattern existed there that only she could see.

“It’s Negro music,” Franz said, taking a sip of water. “Primitive and frenetic.” His hands felt dirty even though he had cleaned them thoroughly in the bathroom. That woman stuck on his skin—he wouldn’t feel clean until standing under the shower for at least ten minutes, the water scalding hot. Afterward, he would use a nailbrush, dislodging any debris from her that might have gotten stuck. Her thick neck, the cigarette smell—he revisited this as he reached for the butter encased in a rectangle of porcelain.

Josephine anticipated this and handed him the butter dish. “Here.” Her fingertips felt cool and soft.

“Thank you, Mutti.”
The mind is a terrible master but a wonderful servant
—was that it? Franz wondered. Or had Wolf said,
The mind is a terrible servant but a wonderful master?

Franz had taken the tram three extra stops just to recover from the nausea washing over him. He dragged himself home, inhaling the cool air, holding it in his lungs, releasing his breath slowly, trying to exorcize himself of the grimy apartment, the boy’s sly smile, the way she’d tapped the long column of ash into the ashtray.

“You can’t possibly reduce Erno Rapee down to that. He’s a brilliant jazz symphonist. If you’d turn on the radio right now, you’d hear
for yourself.” Vicki banged her glass on the table. A little water spilled, discoloring the linen tablecloth.

“Vicki, please,” Josephine said without looking up from her plate.

“Well, it’s not primitive! Jazz is not created by merely playing a syncopated two/two bar. It is full of complex rhythm, harmonic precision, auditory and modulatory richness.”

“You’re only repeating what Herr Laban says.”

Vicki rolled her eyes at Franz.

He stared at her and then said the barrette in her hair looked cheap.

Vicki touched it. “It’s not.”

Marthe cleared the soup bowls. She hesitated, glancing over Franz’s shoulder. “You’re not hungry?”

He held up his bowl. “Too much lunch.” His stomach clenched and unclenched. All he could get down was water, possibly some clear broth, but the pea soup, heavy with cream, stuck in his throat.

“He should come home for lunch, like a civilized person. Otherwise, the digestion suffers,” Josephine said, shaking her head.

Vicki threw down her napkin. “Can we please turn on the radio?”

Lev smiled at his daughter. “I agree with your mother. Jazz and its accompanying dances have lost that nostalgic sweeping grace from before the war. These new dances are hollow, mechanical, too fast and feverish …” He paused, searching for the right words. “And yet there’s something liberating and free there too.” He sat back in his chair, glancing at Josephine. “We used to waltz.”

“It was a beautiful time,” she said, fingering the long string of coral beads draped around her neck.

Lev stared into the flickering candlelight.

Vicki pushed back her chair. “There’s no life in a waltz!”

Franz grumbled, “The Charleston, the shimmy. You all look like dancing monkeys high on caffeine.”

Vicki laughed. “Excuse me, he who doesn’t take alcohol or coffee or cigarettes. You should—just once—come out, listen to the bands. But instead, you insist on spending all your time in your room, doing whatever you do. Or hanging around Wolf.”

“So?” Franz snapped.

She shrugged. “He’s a bit …”

Lev stood up. “Vicki, I’ll show you how to waltz. It’s tranquil—you have time to gaze into your partner’s eyes.”

Josephine threw up her hands. “We haven’t even finished with the second course.”

Lev motioned to Marthe. She turned on the radio, the dial skimming through news programs, the daily weather, horse races, until a Strauss waltz filtered into the dining room.

Josephine sighed, pushing away her plate.

Lev walked over to Vicki, taking her hand. “Put your arm here,” he instructed. “Tilt your head to the side, your gaze skimming just above my shoulder, as if you’re looking out into a grand vista.”

“A grand vista,” Vicki repeated sarcastically. “I see yellow walls. Butter yellow. Not very inspiring.”

They started waltzing around the table, Vicki trying to lead and Lev steering the small of her back. “Settle into the music.”

Vicki shook her head, erupting into laughter. “I can’t. It’s just too boring.”

“If you aren’t cycling, jumping rope, and having a love affair all at once it’s boring, isn’t it?”

Vicki shrugged.

Marthe popped her head into the dining room. “Shall I bring out coffee with the cake?”

“You barely ate,” Josephine whispered across the table.

“I’m really fine,” Franz said.

“Are we dancing or not dancing?” Lev asked.

“Dancing, dancing!” Vicki protested, and then she settled down, laying her cheek on Lev’s shoulder. He counted the time under his breath.

Josephine stood up in one long fluid motion.

Franz smiled weakly at his mother. She was coming over to inspect him again. “Darling,” she said, stroking his hair. “What’s troubling you?”

“Nothing,” he muttered, staring down at the navy trim scalloping the edge of the white plate.

Lev and Vicki finally stopped swirling around the table and sat down again.

She caressed his neck. “Are you upset over a girl?”

A girl. He’d been with two girls and each time he’d felt nothing of the hot rush other men described. Nothing but the mechanical motion of two bodies mashing up against each other, followed by the revolting closeness women thought you owed them afterward, the way they twirled their hair and stared at their nails and flung a stray leg over his. Both times, he’d left in a hurry, wishing he’d never done it, furious at his own inability to feel what others boasted of in graphic detail.

“A girl?” Vicki echoed. “Franz doesn’t even notice girls.”

He frowned, still staring down at his plate.

Lev grinned. “He’s very serious, wrapped up in his studies, and all the clubs. Cycling club. Fencing club. Reading club. Walking club. There’s a club for everything, as if it isn’t allowed to just go to the cinema or have a drink on one’s own anymore.”

“I heard there’s a club for people who’re third children,” Vicki said, stabbing a limp green bean with her fork.

His head pounded, the yellow walls claustrophobic whenever he looked up from his plate. The smell of the offensive pea soup still lingered, even though Marthe had cleared it. He stood up and said he had to excuse himself. When he left the room, he felt his mother’s eyes trailing his back with that pleading questioning look she reserved for him. It was intolerable, how she doted on him, but at the same time, when his head fell into her soft lap, and he let the sound of her voice wash over him as she told him bits and pieces of irreverent gossip, his body loosened, his jaw went slack, and the weight of his thoughts floated upward, toward the rise and fall of her breath.

He climbed the stairs, overhearing Lev tease Vicki about her figure. “So thin and athletic. You don’t have enough meat on you to waltz!”

They were always speaking so loudly, he thought. Almost yelling. While his mother was soft and quiet, the way a woman should be. His father only encouraged Vicki’s tendency to carry on with artists, smoking and drinking and dancing all night. And now she’d gone and cut off all her hair.