The Empire of the Senses (42 page)

“Hold it, hold it,” intoned Frau Stauffer, the ballet mistress, all in
black save for a gleaming peacock broach. Vicki tried, but already her fingertips lightly touched the barre, a defeat. In front of her, Sabine, with her perfectly coiled bun, balanced easily.

In the next room, cymbals clashed followed by the beating of drums. Frau Stauffer winced, disdainful of the “expressionistic dance” occurring “over there,” as she called it, when it was only the next door down. In response to the drums, Leon played with more gusto. Sergey stretched on the floor in front of the mirrors, cradling his injured foot. He watched Vicki impassively, and she imagined all the things he faulted: her lack of turnout, her fallen arches, her not-quite-long-enough legs.

The music stopped. Frau Stauffer dictated the next combination, counting out the timing by tapping the floor with her lacquered cane. She wanted them to close on three with a strong finish in fifth position. Vicki half listened and leaned against the barre. She glanced out the window and stared into Geza’s face.

Startled, he backed away.

A stream of explanations reverberated through her:
It was bad luck. I must have gone there on the wrong days, and then I went away to Rindbach without saying so, and he probably thought he’d never see me again
.

He gestured for her to come outside. The class fell silent. Leon cracked his knuckles.

Frau Stauffer strode over to the window. “Do you know that man?”

Vicki nodded.

“I can’t hear you!”

“Yes, Frau Stauffer, I know him.”

Frau Stauffer pounded her cane into the floor. “I do not tolerate interruptions! Leon, please resume.”

Leon looked from Frau Stauffer to Vicki. Underneath his thick mustache, Vicki detected a small smile. His hands hovered above the piano keys.

“I’m sorry, Frau Stauffer,” Vicki blurted. She ran outside.

Self-conscious in her leather ballet slippers and tights, chiffon skirt and leotard, she crossed her arms over her chest, walking over to him.

Geza was more smartly turned out than she remembered. The
shabby dark overcoat was gone. Instead, he wore a Marengo cloth jacket paired with striped trousers.

He removed his hat. “I didn’t mean to disturb you—I was only passing by and suddenly I saw you dancing in the window. It is very surprising.”

“I’m so glad you were passing by,” Vicki said, pushing back her wide hair band. “I thought I would see you at the library.” Her voice carried a hint of suggestiveness, a voice reserved for flirting. “But then so many days passed.”

He nodded, distracted by one of the dancers smiling in the window. “I think your fellow colleague is watching. I’m not causing a disturbance?”

Through the window, buoyant staccato notes surged to the sound of Frau Stauffer’s cane thumping against the floor. “It’s really no disturbance.”

He put on his hat. “It was nice seeing you again, Vicki.”

“Wait.”

He paused in the middle of the street.

Did he not fancy her? Over the past weeks, she had allowed herself to believe the mere activity of thinking of him had brought them closer, when in reality, he was a stranger, as strange to her as any other man passing by just now. And here she was, having imagined scenarios in which they had kissed and courted and fallen in love. Her face burned from the thought of it, how misguided she’d been, how foolish.

He waited, shifting from one foot to the other, unwilling to convey even a trace of affection for her, as if any remnant of the afternoon they’d spent wandering through the city’s streets had been erased from his memory and she was a distant acquaintance, someone he’d fleetingly recall in a few months’ time, and after that, he would not think of her again.

She stood there, trying to think of something to say.

He nodded and walked away.

26

Inside his pockets, Geza clenched his fists, trying to appear calm, as if he didn’t care, as if walking away from her meant nothing, but it meant everything. He had fought the urge to hold her delicate hands, to kiss her, embrace her—instead, he had left Vicki standing in the middle of the street, her black chiffon skirt floating up with the wind. Vicki’s questioning stare, the disappointment clouding her face when he so casually said good-bye, burned through him. Walking swiftly, almost breaking into a run, Geza barely noticed the commotion on the streets—buses and motor cabs and trams jangled past. A drunken bowling team boarded an omnibus, shouting out their political views to anyone who would listen. Someone yelled back, “Damn Bolshies!” Half a block up, the sound of screeching brakes and metal against metal signaled a car crash. Who cares? Geza thought. He slowed down, trying to calm his racing pulse. But his heart accelerated when her image rose up before him again, her long white neck, the shape of her breasts visible through the pale green leotard, the way she’d tied her hair back with that thick headband, a slash of red against the dark strands. He shook his head. I have to forget her, he thought. Impossible!

It was his day off, but he yearned for the methodical work of laying bricks alongside the other men, losing himself in their banter about the subway strike, a demanding fiancée, where to buy the best Polish vodka, how the wet weather was coming. Geza saw the boardinghouse in the distance, the institutional redbrick building with its dark hallways, families packed into rooms, women bickering over a stolen pot, a misbehaving child. Already bracing himself for the smoky cacophony of all those poor disgruntled refugees, Geza hoped for a shred of quiet, a corner to think, to sort out his predicament.

He thought he could slip into his room unnoticed—it was nearly dinnertime, and the bedroom was vacant. The Mizurskies, the family he shared the room with, were preparing their evening meal in the hallway at the gas burner and little range. Semolina with beets and sour cream. Or potato leek soup with a few chunks of meat swimming in it. Oftentimes, they would save him some, though they barely had enough to feed themselves. Geza always declined, saying he had eaten, even if his stomach felt raw with hunger, because they had children, two boys with light hair who appeared underfed and a little dirty—the wax that accumulated inside their ears reminded Geza of crystalized honey.

As he was about to slip into his room, the lieutenant lumbered down the hallway, signaling to Geza. Lieutenant Barinov, an émigré from the Russian Revolution, an old czarist officer who in the predawn hours, after a night of heavy drinking, would wander the halls mumbling under his breath,
What has become of the czar, the Little Father? The House of Romanov? I once kissed the hand of Alexandra Feodorovna—such a milky white hand, as soft and fragrant as a flower. A hand that could only belong to an empress!
Half-asleep, Geza would overhear him whispering to another world, now lost. Having fought in the Russo-Japanese War and the Great War, the lieutenant confused battles, dates, names, and places, but it didn’t matter. After dinner, Geza listened to his stories and sat with him in the slipshod library, where Lieutenant Barinov read his Russian newspapers and drank late into the night. Although his German was nearly perfect, the lieutenant preferred speaking Russian to Geza. It brought him back to the old country, before the revolution shattered everything he knew. When he drank too much, which was often, he’d rail at the Bolsheviks, how they couldn’t possibly last much longer, that such a revolution was insanity, tearing the epaulettes from officers’ uniforms and shooting decent men like animals in the mud. It sickened him to remember. During these rants, the lieutenant would grow more and more agitated, sweating, cursing, pacing the library as if he could slay one thousand Reds with the pointedness of his speech. Still wearing his tattered officer’s uniform, he would stroke the front of it, his hands caressing the tarnished brass buttons. Geza listened with sympathy, interjecting how he also did not trust the new regime; the
promises sounded too grand, the powerful always had something else in mind. They couldn’t possibly want the peasants to succeed. “The rich win in the end, and that is the way of history,” Geza would conclude.

But tonight, Geza didn’t want to talk politics. The lieutenant waved his newspaper in the air as if conducting the Imperial Music Choir at the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic. “Geza!” he shouted. “Where have you been, my son?” Geza welcomed the term of endearment—he knew the lieutenant had lost his sons to the revolution.

He walked up to Geza, gripped his shoulder. From what Geza could tell, the lieutenant had been drinking, his light eyes glassy and rimmed with red. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” he joked.

Geza shook his head and mumbled that he’d been out in the city. Cooking smells—sizzling oil, chopped onions, smoke—filled the hall, turning his stomach.

The lieutenant gripped Geza’s shoulder harder. “No, no. Something’s eating at you. Come. Let’s talk in the library.”

They sat in front of the unlit fireplace, but there was no need to light it—the room felt overly warm, stuffy even. Someone had left a half-empty bowl of peanuts on the coffee table. They were the only ones here except for a few children who had somehow managed to escape dinnertime. The children played in the corner building an imaginary fort, instinctively keeping their voices low.

The lieutenant shelled a few peanuts. “I know. From the look on your face, it can only mean one thing.”

Geza smiled weakly.

“A woman. You’re thinking about a woman,” the lieutenant said, gesturing for Geza to eat the peanuts.

“All right,” Geza said, popping one into his mouth.

“And the problem is,” the lieutenant continued, his hand diving back into the peanut bowl, “you love her, but you don’t know if she loves you, or she loves you, but you don’t have enough money.” He paused, crunching down on a peanut. “It’s the same the world over.”

Geza shrugged reluctantly.

“Oh, come now,” the lieutenant said. “Have some schnapps with me.”

The combination of the strong apricot liquor, the heated room, the children quietly playing relaxed Geza and he slowly began to explain his situation. He loved Vicki Perlmutter—he knew this from the moment he saw her last March, but he had known her father during the war. Her father had had an affair with his aunt Leah, and this affair produced a son still living in Mitau. “Before I left Mitau, Leah gave me a letter for Lev. About their son, I assume. She made me promise to find Lev, give him the letter, but if I give Lev the letter, I bring back the past, with all its complications. And then Vicki would hate me, for ruining her family, for opening up this secret. Lev seemed happy when I saw him—he was walking with Vicki, and they were laughing over something. He already has a family. He doesn’t need another one.”

The lieutenant listened, his eyes bright and alert. Uncharacteristically, he didn’t interrupt Geza but only stopped him now and then to clarify a few details.

Geza leapt up out of his chair, pacing in front of the fireplace. “But you see, I’m on the horns of a dilemma. If I forget Vicki, then I’ve lost the most important thing there is—but if I pursue her, court her, and hopefully win her, then I’ll meet her father again, and this whole business with Leah will come tumbling out, which will hurt Vicki. I’m sure of it.”

“You might lose her then too.”

“Yes,” Geza said, with an exasperated sigh.

The lieutenant leaned back into his chair, the old wood creaking. “The only thing you know for certain is if you do nothing, you will lose her. As for the rest, you don’t know a thing. None of us do.” He clasped his veiny hands together, his eyes darkening.

Geza collapsed back into the chair. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right,” he snapped. “Can’t you see how much I’ve lost from doing nothing? From letting the world, with all its ugly machinations, decide my fate?”

Silence filled the room. The children stopped building their fort, startled by the lieutenant’s face—his usual flushed affable expression had evaporated and underneath was a hardened shell, cracked and wizened.

Geza nodded and stared down at the threadbare carpet. His ears burned. His head pounded. He knew what he had to do. “Thank you,” he murmured. “Thank you.”

27

His studies were suffering. Under the strain of various meetings as well as nighttime training activities, Franz often cut class and went home to sleep. He would slip through the backdoor of the kitchen, and if Marthe saw him, he pressed his hands together, as if in prayer, indicating that he was only going up to sleep, and please, if she would not disturb him. Between them grew a complicit understanding that she would not tell Josephine and Lev about how often he crept into his room and fell into bed. But this understanding followed the natural progression of how Marthe had always indulged him, allowing Franz to build forts in the garden with sheets from the linen closet, after which she would wash the dirty linens before Josephine could discover anything, or how he would shoot squirrels from a lookout point in the kitchen, even though she begged him to spare the poor creatures. Or how recently, she’d been cleaning his room and between the mattress and the box spring, she came upon his magazines. After stacking them into a neat pile, she put the mattress back in place. If his mother knew about the magazines—he shuddered thinking about it. Or anyone for that matter—but somehow the thought of Marthe knowing did not embarrass him because she carried on as before, even though he could tell from the neat little stack that she’d seen his stash. She was discreet, silent, and helpful—in short, everything a trusted housemaid should be.

He fell into bed, not bothering to change out of his trousers and dress shirt. His head pounded and his throat was parched, but he did not have the energy to ring for a carafe of water. The weak afternoon sun filtered into his room, and he curled onto his side, attempting to block out the light with his forearm.

He’d come home late last night after attending a dinner party in honor of Franz Pfeffer von Salomon, the
Oberste SA-Führung
, head of the SA, who was visiting from Munich. Recently, he and Wolf had joined the Berlin unit, known as the
Sturmbanne
. The SA itself was a large sprawling organization that Franz did not fully comprehend—it consisted of several formations known as
Gruppen
, within which were subordinate brigades that were divided into regiment-sized
Standarten. SA Standarten
were based in every major German city and were grouped into smaller units, known as
Stürme
, and Franz, from what he could deduce, had joined one. Twenty other young men comprised their unit. They wore brown shirts with the swastika band on the left forearm, a kepi cap, and matching brown pantaloons tucked into boots. Franz thought black looked smarter and more foreboding, which was what Benito Mussolini’s men wore. Directly upon admittance into their unit, Wolf was promoted to
Rottenführer
, lance corporal, three ranks above Franz, for having done nothing except hail from a military family; Franz was only a private. Lutz, the senior officer who commanded their unit, was already on familiar terms with Wolf, selecting him as his favorite, but Franz didn’t think much of Lutz—he’d been a bouncer at a nightclub, and before that had fought in the war but had been lightly wounded and never saw real combat. At least this is what the other men said. But during night raids on villages harboring itinerant Poles, Lutz never showed hesitation. He drove the Poles from their homes and their farms, beating them with his cudgel while lecturing his men on the primacy of the soil and its connection to German blood, how the German peasant, a lost heroic figure, had been impoverished by industrialist Jews and itinerant Slavs who had settled in the countryside, displacing the true German
volk
.