The Glimmer Palace (30 page)

One night Lilly woke up suddenly and sat up.The room was filled with an artificial glow. Hanne was standing at the stove, making tea.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“It’s midnight,” Hanne replied. “I couldn’t sleep.They’ve switched on the streetlights for the first time in years.”

But even as she spoke, the filaments outside began to sputter and the globes that held them began to turn from orange to deep pink as one by one they lost their charge, until the only light left in the room was the pale blue flicker of the gas ring.

“For a few hours, anyway,” Hanne added.

That winter there was a subconscious accord to assume a kind of collective blindness: you ignored the street fighting, you avoided the eyes of the starving or the crippled or the insane, and you did not contemplate the future, not even for a second. Instead, you found something to look forward to, something inconsequential, and you focused on it alone: the promise of a romantic interlude, for example, or a trip to the cinema or a skinned rabbit to turn into stew. Even Christmas, a festival that had so recently been infused with melancholy, grew and grew in people’s imagination until it became all they could think about, all they could dream about, all they existed for.

And so, on that afternoon in December 1918, stalls had been set up on Potsdamer Platz selling indoor fireworks, gingerbread, and tinsel. For the first time since 1914, Christmas displays appeared in shop windows. Right in the middle of the square, propped up in a bright red metal bucket, was a small fir tree decorated with paper chains, colored glass balls, and a string of blinking electric lights.

Middle-aged men walked with a young woman on each arm, grandparents clung tightly to the hands of bright-eyed children, and the occasional sailor or revolutionary, with a strip of red cotton tied around his coat sleeve, strolled slowly from window to window, from painted snow scenes to piles of cakes and biscuits made out of clay, as if the last four years had never happened. A hurdy-gurdy player played “Deutschland über Alles.” A group of schoolchildren sang Christmas carols. It was well below freezing and the slush in the gutters had frozen again but nobody seemed to notice. What manufactured magic there was—and it was more than just a sprinkling—was there to be treasured.

The German Bank was on the corner of Potsdamer Platz. Just as Lilly and Hanne reached the main doors, the sky darkened and sleet and icy rain began to hit the pavements. Everyone ran to find shelter in shops, in cafés, and under the wide canopy of the gingerbread stall. But nobody else climbed the three stone stairs to the wide dry porch of the bank.

Two armed doormen guarded the doors. One of them was about to grab Lilly’s arm as she passed, to tell the girls that they had no business there, that soliciting was not permitted, that it was a bank, not a waiting room for the weather. But before he had even set his hand on her, Lilly turned and stared at him with such a look that he stood back and let her pass.

If you had seen a photograph of Lidi, as she was soon to be known, on that day, at that hour, at that minute on Potsdamer Platz, you would not have recognized her. She was almost eighteen. At that point her face was still unaware of itself. Her eyes, those half-moons of silver gray, were downcast and red-rimmed from the cold. Her chin, a chin that her co-star in
The Forbidden Depths
was to call the Helen of Troy of chins in an interview in 1924, was wrapped in a blue knitted muffler. Her lips—which, when sculpted in wax by the resident sculptor at the Movieland Wax Museum, were recorded as the most perfect pair of lips of any actress—were chapped and bitten. Her hands might have suggested what she was to become, hands that, though blistered and roughened, were full of language and expression. But without gloves or mittens, they were pushed down deep in her pockets and clenched tight against the cold. No, it was her carriage, the way she held herself, that made the doorman of the German Bank change his mind in an instant. In a city, a country, that had been crushed, she still looked decisively resolute.

On Potsdamer Platz, the sleet kept falling and eventually turned to hail. It collected in the dips of awnings and in the brims of hats. It rapped against automobile windshields and iced up the mirrors on an approaching omnibus. But it was warm inside the bank. A couple of large cast-iron radiators rattled beneath the window and a pile of logs smoldered in the fireplace in the manager’s office. The teller was in his late teens. His face was pockmarked with acne but his gaze was steady. He wore a Boy Scout badge on his lapel.

“Can you change some money?” Hanne asked.

He nodded and held up his hands.

“This is a bank,” he said, “not a cake shop.”

He laughed and glanced around to see if anyone else had heard his joke. No one had. Hanne started to pull out the wads of cash from her canvas bag.There was so much of it that there was barely room on the polished brass counter.

The boy looked at the money in surprise. He had been expecting coins. The two young women gave no indication as to where the money had come from, but he had a good idea. One was fair, the other dark. His father, he strained to remember, was blond. He hadn’t seen him for three years and now accepted that he probably never would again. If only his mother would stop writing letters . . .

The pile kept on growing, its size quite at odds with his expectation. Very little of it was German currency. He took the bundles of banknotes they pushed through one by one and counted them. As he did so, Lilly noticed his nose wrinkle. The francs and guilders, the rubles and pounds were filthy; they were sour with sweat and stained with smears of blood and grease. For years these notes had been rolled up and stuffed in boots, under armpits, in the linings of helmets. Each note was scuffed with hundreds, maybe thousands of countings.They had been won and lost, squandered and saved, stolen and given away for a song, or a smile, or a quick grope in a doorway. And eventually they had found their way into Hanne’s purse.

“You want it all in marks?” the teller asked. “Why not dollars?”

“Because,” Hanne replied, “I am not going to America.”

The teller divided the money into four piles, shrugged, and pulled out a mechanical calculator. And then he counted out a stack of freshly printed notes, licking his fingers at regular intervals.

“Two thousand,” he said emphatically. “And sixty-five marks, twenty-three pfennigs.”

He patted the pile and then, after the smallest hesitation, pushed it through the slot. Hanne took the notes and laboriously counted them herself. And then she thanked him and stuffed them into her handbag.

“Good day,” the boy said. “Maybe you’ll buy me a drink?”

Hanne stared at him through the glass.

“Did we ever meet before?” she asked. “Were you in Ypres?”

The boy smiled and shook his head.

“I was in school right here in Berlin,” he said.

“Maybe it was your father,” she said as she snapped her handbag shut. “I never forget a face.”

The teller was suddenly filled with a flush of mixed emotion; his throat constricted, his eyes watered, his teeth clenched. The next customer came up to his window.

“Do you have dollars?” she asked. “Excuse me? Hello?”

“How many do you need?” he replied, his voice barely audible through the glass and the metal grating.

Hanne paused on the top step. A Russian café on the other side of the square was already packed, although it was only mid-afternoon. From within came the strains of a small band.

“Come on,” said Hanne. “I’m cold, let’s have some tea.”

The air inside the Café Josty was thick with cigarette smoke. While men in fur coats drank tiny cups of Russian tea, a couple of middle-aged ladies danced self-consciously on a wooden dance floor. Hanne led Lilly to a little table at the back. The waiter tried to suggest a place round the corner, a place more suited to their needs.

“Why?” Hanne asked him. “Do you think we’re tarts?”

Hanne’s gaze fixed on the waiter’s face. Only the faintest hint of red appeared on each cheek.

“I think we should go,” said Lilly.

Hanne pulled out ten marks and placed them beneath the sugar bowl.

“Bring us Champagne, the best you have,” she instructed him. “And cake.”

The waiter nodded and took the money.

They sat and waited. Neither removed her coat.The “Champagne” they were brought was lemonade laced with vodka.The “cake” tasted of frostbitten potato.The band in the corner started to play some jazz tunes, but with so much angst and sobriety that they were barely recognizable as jazz at all.

“Well, this is fancy,” Hanne said.

And then on the street outside they heard the now familiar sound of a mob approaching; the footfall was irregular as boots shuffled or limped along the cobbles and over the tram tracks; its voice was a shouting, chanting, singing swell, with the occasional low belly boom of a rifle fired into the air.

The band kept playing. The women kept dancing. The door burst open and a portly middle-aged man and his whippet-thin driver burst in.

“Bloody Spartacists,” the man exclaimed to everyone and no one. He shook out his umbrella, looked around, and then he saw Hanne.

The film producer had made a fortune during the war. What he imported, and where from, he wouldn’t say. He now had a Daimler and a house in Charlottenburg. He had also started making films about sexual health.

“Well, that’s the official line anyway,” he said with a wink.

“And what are you doing?” he asked. “Still singing in a tingle-tangle?”

“Oh, no,” Hanne replied. “I’m an actress now.”

The film producer didn’t even blink twice.

“Everyone I meet in this city is an actress,” he said. “Or a cabaret performer, or a singer, or a dancer.”

“And you?” He looked at Lilly. “I bet you’re an actress too.”

He gave Hanne his card, finished off their “Champagne,” and ordered more, and more again. Outside, the Spartacists had passed on their way to the Reichstag. Ebert was being held hostage by a group of sailors.

“Call me,” the film producer said as he was leaving. “Reverse the charges.”

He did not, however, leave any money for the bill.

Then came the sound of marching: regular, real marching. The band stopped playing and the waiter put down his dish towel. Lilly and Hanne left another ten marks, drained their glasses, and hurried out. It was a division of the army, a few on horseback, most on foot, soldiers come home from the front to be demobbed. They still wore steel helmets, and some had limp bunches of flowers attached to their tunics, their helmets, or their rifles.

The streets were glassy from the winter rain. Across the square, a couple of damp red streamers still hung from balconies. A few bystanders clapped as the men passed. Some sobbed. Most simply watched in silence as the defeated platoons and regiments, their boots still caked with mud, their eyes empty with exhaustion, walked in the direction of the barracks.

“Come on,” said Hanne.

“Not yet,” replied Lilly.

And she examined every face, one by one, until they had passed by.

“I know it’s pointless,” said Lilly. “And I still can’t help it.”

As the soldiers were about to reach the far side of the square, however, a small group of factory workers came around the corner and started to walk directly across their path. An officer raised his arm and commanded his troops to stop. A man at the head of the factory workers, a man in a dirty apron with a bayonet slung over his shoulder and a red band around his arm, sauntered up to the officer. And then with one swift move, he tore the silver epaulet from the officer’s uniform and threw it on the ground, leaving a small patch of blue wool of a particularly vivid color.

“Haven’t you heard?” he shouted so everyone could hear. “All insignia have been abolished!”

The factory workers cheered. The officer’s expression did not change. He stooped down and picked up his insignia, raised his arm, and commanded his soldiers to march on.The factory workers stood aside. Less than half of his regiment followed. The rest seemed to melt away into the side streets, alleys, or doorways, their uniforms already unbuttoned, all evidence of their military rank, all their useless decorations, their medals, and their insignia stuffed deep into their worn pockets.

The shooting broke out about ten minutes later. A grenade was thrown into a gutter and exploded next to a flower cart, filling the air with the smell of saltpeter and pollen. Hanne and Lilly ran for the underground station at the corner of the
Platz
. A few people clustered at the bottom of the stairs, not sure whether to continue Christmas shopping or come back another day. But down in the U-Bahn, everything felt strangely calm. The ticket booth lady took their money and handed out their tickets without a word.There were no delays, no cancellations to the timetable, no rerouting.

Trains in both directions were packed with people. Occasionally, as the train rattled under the city, the distant pounding of artillery could be heard above. But the atmosphere down there was restrained, with both shoppers and demonstrators giving up their seats to the elderly and studiously avoiding each other’s eyes.

It was only when they surfaced at Zoo that Hanne complained that her arm hurt from holding her bag so tightly. Lilly’s head ached from the “Champagne.” They were both damp with sweat yet shivering when they reached the main door of their hotel, and both, though they could not say it out loud, were filled with relief.

On the last night of the old year, the sky was lit up with gunfire and fireworks. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between the two. Lilly and Hanne sat in the dark at the window.

“To 1919,” Hanne whispered. “It can’t be any worse. And happy birthday, Lilly.”

In the distance they could see figures running over the rooftops. Half the city, it was said, was controlled by the Spartacists, the other by the Freikorps, the government’s troops. A machine gun was fired down into a street nearby and a man cried out. And then there was silence—not the opaque silence of sleepers or empty rooms but the transparent silence of insomniacs and the wakeful, a silence that listened to itself.