The Glimmer Palace (13 page)

As she stood in the near dark, surrounded on all sides by yew trees and moss-covered brick, every vein throbbed with unfamiliar energy, every nerve jangled. Even at that early hour, even under a blanket of snow, the city hummed and buzzed, its locomotions revolving quicker and quicker, its hammers hammering faster and faster. It was Berlin. It was a city with an appetite for energy, for thrill, for sex. How could it not fail to affect you?

Otto looked down at her and for a moment he was tempted. The only woman he had slept with was his landlady, when he was woozy with wine on payday. But then he looked again and saw that Lilly’s large gray eyes hadn’t turned opaque like so many girls her age; she didn’t know men. Or the damage they could do to her.

“I have to go, Little Sister,” he said. “Or I’ll be late for work.”

“Don’t you believe me?” she said.

“Of course I do,” he replied. “And you should believe it too. Remember, nothing less than a house on a lake.”

A tram was approaching on the street. Otto blew her a kiss, jumped down, and climbed aboard.

Later that morning, snow was still falling, and the world was so quiet it seemed to be holding its breath. Lilly lay in bed and listened to the muffled clatter of a coal cart. When she was sure she would not, could not sleep, she reached down and picked up her crumpled gray orphanage dress. The dog rose had wilted and lost most of its petals but it was still pinned tight.

In her pocket was the corner of newspaper Otto had drawn on— and something else, something bulky. And then she remembered: tingle-tangle cards, a dozen of them at least. She glanced through them. Masha, Sophia, Marlena. Hanne. She looked again. Wearing a huge hat festooned with roses was Hanne Schmidt, her Hanne Schmidt, gazing over a barely clad shoulder. The name of a tingle-tangle on the Tauentzienstrasse was on the back: The Blue Cat.

At breakfast, Lilly served porridge and poured tea for the younger children. Everything, superficially, seemed the same as before, the stewed black tea in its huge black pot and the vat of porridge with a raw potato stirred in to soak up the salt. But the room was darker; a wooden fence had been erected around the orphanage by a team of workmen. Architects and builders came and went freely through the main entrance.The month of notice was almost over. But she had found Hanne when she had almost given up looking. Finally she had found her.

“Who’d like sugar?” she asked them all. “Today it’s allowed.” rom the street, The Blue Cat looked so dark inside that most

people assumed it was shut. Behind a nondescript marine-blue shop front, long purple drapes hung across frosted windows. It was the kind of place that opened early and closed only when the very last customer was so inebriated he had to be carried out. It was, in short, a fairly typical lower-class establishment. The drinks were diluted with tap water, the girls were all either under eighteen or over forty-five, and the entertainment was organized by a Bulgarian who played the clarinet and the piano, sometimes at the same time.

The Blue Cat was always quiet in the early evening. Most of the regular clientele were home with their families or eating boiled beef and noodles in one of the many steamed-up restaurants on the Tauentzienstrasse. As Lilly waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark, a couple of men glanced over at her. But when they saw she did not greet them with a willing smile or a flash of ankle, they turned back to their drinks or tried to catch the eye of the endlessly obliging waitress instead. Lilly stood at the bar and studied the ceiling until the waitress had finished serving. And then, only when she had swiped the counter with a dirty rag, lit a cigarette, and poured herself a glass of ale did she nod in Lilly’s direction.

“The manager’s not hiring,” the waitress said. “Come back in a week. And next time, use the back door.”

“I’m not looking for a job,” Lilly said. “I’m looking for Hanne Schmidt. I think . . . she works here.”

The waitress’s eyes narrowed.

“And who are you?” she asked.

“I’m . . . I’m her sister.”

“Friend” didn’t seem appropriate somehow. The waitress let out two streams of cigarette smoke through her nose. She looked Lilly up and down and then raised her eyebrows.

“Really,” she said.

Lilly was directed to a door behind a curtain and then to a row of cramped clapboard cubicles beyond.

“And tell your sister that she’s ten minutes late for her shift already,” the waitress said.

Hanne Schmidt, tingle-tangle artist, was putting on her makeup. She wore a ratty old dressing gown and a hairnet. She was drawing on her eyebrows with a black pencil. One was finished and one was not, giving her an expression of ironic perplexity. She wasn’t particularly surprised to see her former friend from the orphanage standing behind her in the low light of The Blue Cat’s changing rooms. She had been expecting her. She was surprised only that she hadn’t come sooner.

“Are my brothers behaving themselves?” she asked.

Lilly nodded. She couldn’t speak.

“I made them these. I meant to send them . . . months ago.” Hanne pulled a paper bag from under her mirror. Inside were three hats and three pairs of mittens, all knitted with scarlet wool.

“Tell them to be good boys and to keep warm,” she said. “And tell them that I’ll come and get them very soon. Now be a dear and let me finish.”

Lilly watched as Hanne Schmidt drew in the other eyebrow. She saw that, apart from the makeup, she didn’t appear to have changed at all: she had the same pale hair and circled eyes, the same frail arms, which she wrapped herself up with. But as she observed her, Lilly began to notice subtle differences: a waist so tiny that she must have pulled her corset laces quite brutally tight; a red mark, a burn maybe, on her arm; and something else, something newly sober in her manner.

In fact, in the six months since she had been expelled from the orphanage, Hanne had been engaged to a Greek millionaire who had given her diamonds one night, only to take them back the next; her heart had been broken by a soldier who had sworn undying love on the carousel at the Luna Park and broken her nose on the ghost train; and she had to leave the family she had been boarding with when the father came into The Blue Cat “accidentally.” And so she had taken the only place she could find with no notice, a damp little room in a run-down pension in Kreuzberg. In six short months, she was beginning to suspect that she was the kind of person who attracted terrible luck, unstable people, and unwanted advances. And she was right. Her time at St. Francis Xavier’s seemed to belong to another, kinder life.

“Well, sit down,” she said to Lilly’s reflection in the mirror. “And take your coat off.”

Lilly laid her coat on the back of the chair and sat down. Hanne guffawed. She threw her hand across her mouth and for an instant she was the same old Hanne, the one whose eyes glimmered in the dark of the dormitory.

“What are you wearing?” she asked.

Lilly’s face fell. Her skin prickled. She was wearing a dress that had come to the orphanage in a bundle of donations. It was thick green serge with a high lace collar, a little girl’s dress, the only thing that would fit her. She stared at the floor, at the mouse hole in the skirting.

“I’m sorry. Are you in trouble? Is that it?” she asked. “I know a lady.”

Lilly was suddenly furious.

“Hanne, I’ve been looking for you,” she said. “For months. I thought you were dead. I found your card in the gutter. . . .”

“But I’m fine,” she replied with a smile. “As you can see.You needn’t have worried.”

Lilly took a deep breath.

“And I have some bad news,” she said.

Hanne turned back to her reflection. Lilly caught her eye as she lined it with kohl. And in that single second she saw that makeup couldn’t disguise her apprehension. Whatever it was—and Hanne could think of a dozen awful things that could have happened—she did not want to know, not then, not yet.

It was at that precise moment that the Bulgarian shouted out Hanne’s name round the curtain. She took a deep breath and turned.

“Then stay,” she said as she took Lilly’s face in her hands. “Stay and tell me after.” And with one cool kiss on the cheek, she was gone.

“I knew a man with a great big . . .
Dick was his name. . . .
And I could say that he hung
With the crowd like the best of them
Forget the rest of them
My great big Dick had a great big . . .
Heart. . . .”

Hanne barely moved onstage. The hat from the photograph was on her head, her shoulders were bare, and she wore a short pink frilly dress, a pair of suspenders, and pale pink striped stockings. At first her voice was a mere whisper. And while her body appeared moribund, her knee twitched at twice the tempo of the song. At her side, the Bulgarian was pumping out the tune on an old piano with a huge grin pasted on his face. A trickle of sweat fell down his cheek. He threw Hanne a look, his eyes wide, his teeth bared. Hanne’s face blanched beneath her powder and her voice trailed away. She looked out at the audience and spotted Lilly. And then something seemed to click.The knee stopped vibrating. Hanne narrowed her kohl-rimmed eyes, she stuck out her somewhat meager chest, and she formed her mouth into a perfect O. The Bulgarian whooped. Hanne winked and began to sway her narrow hips. And then, with her chipped tooth and her low voice, she started to sing again.

“If you want to tickle my fancy, take me down to Wannasee . . .

If you wanna see a little action, that’s the beach for me. . . .”

I can’t take them,” Hanne said. “It’s impossible.”

Lilly stared at Hanne in the mirror as she reapplied her lipstick. Her face was flushed and feverish.

“I could sneak them out,” Lilly suggested. “We’ve got a week exactly.You could find a place to live, for all of us. I could sell roses. At least we’d all be together. Hanne, I’m sure it could work.”

“You’re not listening,” Hanne repeated, pressing both lips onto a handkerchief, which she then used to dab her eyes. “I can’t take them. I can barely look after myself.”

“Hanne, you’re all they have,” Lilly said. “Couldn’t you take them for a little while?You’re old enough now.You’re fourteen.”

Hanne Schmidt drew a large breath and stared at her reflection.The makeup is a mask, she told herself, no one can read me. It had been her mantra in the years when she had sung for her father. It still worked.

“It’s impossible,” she said, and stood up.

Lilly stood up too. And then she took Hanne by both shoulders and shook her, just as the nurse had shaken her all those years before.

“Listen to me.They might be split up.”

For an instant, Hanne leaned into her grip. Lilly stared into her face, daring Hanne to look back at her. But when she did it was with complete impassivity.

“I have to work now,” she said quietly, pushing Lilly’s hands away. “Tell them I’ll send for them when I can.”

Hanne brushed past her as she made her way back into the bar. She picked up a tray and started to stalk around the room. As Lilly watched, she paused beside an elderly man, produced a postcard of herself in a bathing costume, and tried to sell it to him for one mark. He wasn’t interested.When he refused for a third time, she grabbed a glass of ale from his table and poured it over his head.

he Adoption Society was located in a large gray villa in Charlottenburg. It smelled of disinfectant and expensive scent, and was staffed entirely by the wives of high-ranking military men who gave of their time voluntarily. Their attitude was a curious mixture of benevolence and condescension, and they dealt out children to anyone who wanted them with little real regard for what happened to them afterward.The highlight for all concerned was organizing the annual fund-raising ball, which gave them a chance to feel saintly and dress up in the latest fashions.

Hanne’s brothers wore their red hats and mittens and would not take them off.They held one another’s hands and cuffs and arms, their legs and arms continually entwining. The eldest brother’s eyes restlessly scanned the room when they entered. The youngest brother walked with the bowlegged walk of the child who has wet himself.

They had been told they were going on holiday to the country but only pretended to believe it. They had each been given a cardboard tag with a number written on it and instructed to sit on a wooden bench in silence until they were chosen. They did not have long to wait: boys were the first to go.There were plenty of farms in the surrounding countryside that had lost their sons to the city and needed as many hands as possible to pull turnips from the frozen winter mud or tug at the engorged udders of their dairy herds.

Two ladies from The Adoption Society wearing rubber gloves and white coats inspected Hanne’s brothers for lice, fleas, and worms and then, when they were given the all-clear, gave them fresh sets of underwear and a new pair of shoes. The boys were predictably hard to separate, but the ladies from The Adoption Society had plenty of experience. Pulling hands apart and unlocking arms with sheer brute force, taking a good few blows and kicks in the process, they half dragged, half carried the boys out of the main hall and handed them over to their new guardians with a parcel containing a Bible and a loaf of black bread.

“I’ll pass on your addresses and Hanne will write,” Lilly had promised each one earlier. But in all the commotion, nobody had bothered to record them.

Later, Lilly stood on the stone steps with the cardboard suitcase that every orphan over the age of ten had been given. She, too, had been allocated a pair of ugly brown working shoes, a few sizes too big, which she had laced so tight the tongue creased. Can’t I take the boys? she had begged over and over. The ladies hadn’t even bothered to reply.

It had stopped snowing but the ground was icy underfoot. A woman was running across the road toward the villa, a woman in flimsy shoes and a large hat. A car hooted, the driver swore loudly, a bicycle swerved and almost hit her. As she came closer, Lilly realized that it wasn’t a woman at all but a girl dressed as one. It was Hanne Schmidt: Hanne, with her ripped stockings, chewed lips, and a kohlstreaked face.