The Girl Behind The Curtain (Hidden Women) (25 page)

‘You seem a bit preoccupied,’ said Clare when I met her the following day.

‘Thinking about work,’ I lied. How could I tell her that I was consumed with jealousy at the idea of a man I had never kissed sleeping with a woman I had never met?

So much of my life was in the past. With Kitty and Marco I spent my time moving between the Berlins of the 30s and the 90s. I asked Clare to tell me about her adventures in Internet dating to take my mind off all the ghosts. But though I tried to concentrate, I was constantly being pulled back into my own thoughts. I made an excuse to leave early.

An hour later, I was back with Marco again.

Venice, 1999

I stayed in Berlin for a whole extra week but eventually I had to go home. I promised Silke that it would not be long before I was back, however, and in the meantime we would write and perhaps even call.

As soon as I got back to Venice, I bumped into Gianni. He was in the café where we always used to go and hang out pretending to be ordinary Venetians. Or ‘peasants’ as we called them. We were not the kind of guys I’d like to have as friends now.

‘What happened to you?’ he asked. ‘Did you pick up some transvestite?’

‘I just wanted to get a better look at Berlin,’ I said. ‘Nothing wrong with that.’

‘Nothing wrong with it, sure. But when did you become such a culture vulture, Marco Donato? There had to be something else keeping you there. Come on. You can tell me. You’ve spent the past week in a German dungeon being flogged by a big-breasted dominatrix, haven’t you?’

‘Perhaps I have,’ I said. I wasn’t going to be drawn. But I have to admit I was relieved he didn’t seem to have considered the prospect that I had stayed in Berlin because of Silke. He had obviously believed me when I told him that I’d snuck out of her flat and left without leaving my number after our night at the Boom Boom.

Life in Venice continued as usual. I’d been seeing a girl for a few months and she seemed pleased that I was back from Germany and readily accepted my explanation that I wanted to see more of the city’s culture. She also readily accepted the gift I had picked up for her in the airport.

My girlfriend’s name was Katrina. She was what anyone who knew me back then would have described as ‘my type’. She was a model. She was tall and slim as a breadstick with long dark hair that swished behind her like the tail of some exotic pony. All the guys were envious of her. But the truth was I didn’t even want to kiss her. To stay as slim as she did, she starved herself most days and when she didn’t have the willpower to starve herself, she stuck her fingers down her throat and threw up. Every time I got anywhere near her, I was almost overcome by the smell, a combination of Dior’s Poison and the whiff of stomach acid. But she looked the part. She wore the right clothes and she went to the right places. My friends were impressed and that was good enough for me.

Or was it? I wasn’t sure any more.

I had been sincere when I said goodbye to Silke and told her I would be in touch. But I had been back a week and I hadn’t picked up the phone to call her. It wasn’t that I didn’t think of her – I thought about her often. I thought about her whenever I slung my arm round Katrina’s bony shoulders and she turned to me in a cloud of scent and sickness.

I don’t know why I didn’t tell Katrina I wasn’t interested. I suppose I was too worried about my image. A man like me just didn’t have a girlfriend like Silke. A man like me dated models like Katrina. Nothing less than physical perfection as validated by a full-page spread in Vogue. I didn’t have enough courage in my own desires to tell Gianni and the others that I wanted something different. To want something else was to refuse a whole cultural norm. It was to go against my upbringing.

But I couldn’t get Silke out of my mind and at last I did pick up the phone and call her. She took my call as though she had spoken to me only yesterday and she wasn’t in the least bit surprised to hear from me again. She was effortlessly cool. It made me want her even more.

I was going to London later that month. I asked her to join me there. If she could get a week off work and somehow arrange to get a passport quickly enough, I would pay her airfare. The following day she made a collect call to tell me that the time off was arranged and I should send her a ticket. She was overjoyed at the prospect of a trip to England. As she reminded me, it would be her first trip abroad.

As soon as I got that call, I was torn. I had wanted her to say yes. Of course I had. But then I began to worry again. What if that crazy week in Berlin was just a one-off? What if she got off the plane and I saw her as my friends saw her – a lumpy German girl with ugly clothes and stupid hair? And a face that had been sliced in two by Mother Nature and stitched back together by a butcher?

I toyed with the idea of pretending I hadn’t received her letter. There was no chance she’d just turn up; she couldn’t afford to fly to London to meet me if I didn’t pay for the ticket. But the feeling that I wanted to see her finally outweighed my fears. I sent her the ticket. I even paid for her to fly business class, which was something she would tease me about when we were face to face again. After that, I arranged a hire car. Not just any hire car. I used my father’s credit card to hire a red Ferrari.

And after I had taken that step, our next meeting could not come quickly enough. I couldn’t wait to see her. My plane arrived two hours before hers did and I waited at the airport, anxiously watching the new arrivals even before her plane had taken off from Germany.

When she finally appeared, she was just as I remembered, except that her hair was no longer green but a bright, cerulean blue. In her long blue dress, she was like a mermaid far from the sea. My siren. When she saw me waiting for her at the gate, her face broke into an enormous smile that told me I had made the right decision. We would have a great time together. I had no doubt. I was still smitten, though part of me had hoped I wouldn’t be.

The heart is an unruly beast. The person who invents a potion that allows us to fall in love only with the most ‘suitable’ other will make a fortune.

We didn’t go into London. I had been to the city before, so it was easy for me to tell her that I wanted to go somewhere neither of us had ever been. Wouldn’t it be more fun for us to discover something new together, making new memories only for us? That was why we were going to drive straight to the Lake District. In reality, I was still nervous that we might bump into someone I knew. Though Silke was more beautiful to me than the Venus di Milo, I noticed even as I carried her case through the airport that most of the attention she attracted was less admiring.

I wanted to protect her from the people who stared at her. It started in the airport. By the time we got to that stupid red Ferrari in the car park, I was stiff with the tension of glaring at everyone who gawped at my dear girl. I was angry on her behalf, but I noted that I was also slightly angry with her.

It was three in the morning and I was tired of translating. I put the diary down again. Was I beginning to hate Marco or was I just jealous? A cottage in the Lake District was another of the romantic clichés to which I had once aspired. Marco had taken her. He’d taken Silke. He would almost certainly never take me.

Silvio had made a mistake in sending me this diary. Unless he wanted me to give up all hope.

I should send it back. I didn’t have the stomach to read about a romantic weekend. Especially not when I knew it couldn’t have a happy ending and yet the repercussions of it still reached into my life. For Silke had to be the girl who had died in the car crash, didn’t she?

Chapter 32

Friday 13th October 1933

Dear Diary,

There was another incident on the street two nights ago. A gang of Brownshirts turned up at the Beluga Bar just after it opened. They watched the whole show and had plenty to drink before they went to the office backstage and beat the theatre manager to a pulp. Their justification? They said he was supplying young girls – very young girls – for sex. It isn’t true. There’s never been even the slightest whiff of that sort of behaviour about the Beluga. And the Brownshirts were not so bothered about morality that they didn’t make off with the club’s takings and several bottles of whisky.

Otto spoke to Gerd about it and Gerd assured him that kind of behaviour is not acceptable in the SA and that if the story were to be confirmed to him by an official source, he would make sure the perpetrators were punished. But then Gerd spoke darkly about the likes of the Beluga Bar’s manager doing well to keep a low profile in any case and perhaps even think about closing down. The rowdy SA boys were reflecting a growing public opinion, he claimed. People were concerned about the morality of the clubs along the Ku’damm.

‘You should tell your boss the same,’ Gerd told Otto. ‘Things are going to be very different around here soon.’

Otto is convinced that Gerd’s pronouncement was in fact a veiled hint that the Boom Boom will be next, so we have made a plan. Last night, after the show ended and we were all in the empty bar, eating supper and complaining about the evening’s amateurs, Otto asked if he might address us all just for a moment. He looked so very serious that we all grew quiet without question and let him take the floor.

‘Ladies and gentlemen.’ He included Marlene and Isadora in the ‘ladies’. ‘None of us can have failed to notice that the atmosphere in this part of town has been getting rather strained. Marlene has already felt how ugly things are getting and we all know what happened backstage at the Beluga Bar two nights ago. I’ve worked here for three years now. I’ve seen rowdy punters and we’ve all met men so scared of their feelings for beautiful creatures like Marlene and Isadora that they can only express their awe with their fists, but this is different. There’s been a shift in political feeling. Maybe even public feeling. There’s a sense that we’re not so welcome any more.’

Marlene nodded in agreement.

‘As some of you know, to my great bewilderment and embarrassment, my younger brother Gerd is a member of the Sturmabteilung. In fact, he’s quite the rising star. I spoke to him last night about this spate of beatings and he denied that it is SA policy. But he said we should know that Germany is changing, and some of those things we love most about Berlin may not be tolerated for too much longer.’

‘Tolerated by whom?’ Isadora asked.

‘By the Party,’ said Marlene. ‘The bloody Party. Just lay it out for us, Otto. We know you’re only the messenger.’

‘Well, my brother, who is “only the messenger” for the Party, is of course referring to clubs like this. He’s referring to men dressed as women, girls who like girls and boys who like boys. He’s referring to anyone who might exchange their sexual favours for money. He’s referring to foreigners.’

Otto looked at me. I felt my heart skip and not in the usual good way.

‘He’s referring especially to Jews,’ said Schluter.

My mind went back to that awful day in April when the SA boys barred the doors to every Jewish business on the street.

Otto continued, ‘According to my brother, there is no official policy regarding the “cleansing” of our streets here in the Ku’damm, but there’s no doubt he was letting me know that, unofficially, the club’s days are numbered.’

‘We can’t shut down!’ said Isadora. ‘We’ve been here for years and we make people happy. Why should we give in to the small-minded pricks?’

‘Because they’re small-minded pricks with big fists,’ said Marlene.

‘I’m not suggesting we shut the club down,’ Otto continued. ‘But I do think we need to be prepared. No one should keep any valuables here. And we need to start thinking about an escape route should we find ourselves under attack. Schluter, is there any way out of this building except by the front door and the door on to the alley?’

‘Of course not,’ Isadora interrupted but Schluter silenced him.

‘Actually, there is. Through the cellar. Behind the wine racks, there is a passageway. It leads from the cellar beneath this club into the cellar of the Paradise Hotel. From there, you can get into the cellar of the department store and from there into the U-Bahn tunnel. From the U-Bahn, you can get to Timbuktu if you’re so inclined.’

‘This is good news,’ said Otto. ‘Schluter, you’re going to need to move those wine racks so we can get around them quickly, but they need to be placed in such a way that the passageway is still hidden should someone follow us down.’

‘We can sort that out right now,’ said Schluter.

‘So we have our escape route. What we need to work out now is how we will signal the need to escape. The SA waited until the show was over to beat up the guys at the Beluga. They don’t want the general public seeing what they’re up to. We need to let each other know that the bastards are in the house without alerting them to the fact that we’re on to it. Handily, they usually wear their uniforms.’

‘So we could just ban people in uniform,’ I suggested.

‘I don’t think that’s going to work.’

‘We all need to agree on a song that signals that trouble is brewing. Any one of us can call it. For example, Marlene, maybe you’ll be on stage and you’ll see something going on at the back of the room. When that happens, you can say, “For my next song” and, while we play the song we’ve agreed on, everyone backstage can be getting ready to go.’