The Kingdom of Shadows (9 page)

Behind himself, Wilson heard the soft clatter of the film projector, muffled by the wall with its small inset window. Wise knew how to run the equipment himself, from his days scrabbling around, doing everything in the shabby movie-houses his father had left him. The chair next to Wilson’s creaked as Wise sat down beside him.

The screen had filled with light, shadow and form. Faces. Wilson watched, and listened to them speaking. His fatigue was deeper than he’d thought – he couldn’t understand a word they were saying.

He leaned his head toward Wise. “What the hell is this?”

“It’s a German movie.” Wise continued to gaze straight ahead at the screen. “Somebody shipped it to me.”

“Who?”

“Beats me.” The studio head shrugged. “I’ve got some contacts at the UFA studios over there. One of them must have smuggled out this print and sent it to me. I was watching it when all this other bullshit happened.”

“Great.” Wilson shook his head. “Probably some goddamn Nazi propaganda. That’s all they do over there anymore.” He’d had gone along with Wise to one of the first fundraiser parties for the Hollywood League Against Nazism. Melvyn Douglas had just gotten back from Europe, with a pile of production stills showing greasy-bearded rabbis and hook-nosed war profiteers leering at blonde Teutonic virgins, all the simple-minded caricatures that Goebbels’ pet filmmakers specialized in. He didn’t have the same aesthetic standards as his boss, but the sheer crappiness of stuff like that had put a sour taste in his mouth anyway. He didn’t care for any kind of cardboard characters, let alone ones with the word
kike
smeared across them. How could somebody like David Wise – Weiss, actually; that had been his grandfather’s name – watch this kind of crap?

“Shh.” Wise raised his hand and pointed. “This is what I wanted you to see.”

The dialogue had stopped for a moment. On the screen was a dirty city street, tiny little shops with signs in German; probably somewhere in Berlin, Wilson figured. A girl in a shabby coat and a cloche hat walked slowly down the street, looking into the shop windows.

The camera moved in for a tight close-up, the girl’s face mirrored faintly in the window glass. Her gold hair spilled from under the edges of the cloche.

“God, she’s lovely.” Wise leaned forward, gazing avidly at the screen.

She looked young, maybe twenty at the most – and she was beautiful, Wilson admitted to himself. Her hair looked like spun white gold. But there was something more in her face and eyes, more than mere beauty. A sadness, loss made eloquent in this silence. Wilson watched as the woman laid her fingertips against the glass. That mute, untouchable element, he knew, made her even lovelier.

“Who is she?”

Wise didn’t take his gaze away from the screen. “Um, Marie – no, Marte something. I’ve got it written down somewhere. There weren’t any credits on this print, so I had to send a cable to find out.”

The name meant nothing to Wilson. There were plenty of beautiful women, in movies made here and all over Europe. This one might be special; he had no way of knowing.

He glanced over at Wise. The film producer, the owner of the studio, gazed raptly at the screen, his eyes caught in this waking dream. The shifting light played over Wise’s face, as though he had become part of that other, more real world.

Don’t
 – Wilson stopped himself from reaching out and touching Wise’s arm.
Don’t; it’s not true, it’s just a movie. You don’t know who she really is 
–

But he could see that it was already too late. He watched the other man, watching the image on the screen, a face of loveliness and sadness, light and shadow.

BERLIN

1939

   The glories of our blood and state

   Are shadows, not substantial things;

   There is no armour against fate,

   Death lays his icy hand on kings . . .

      – James Shirley (1596 - 1666),
Dirge,
from

         
The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses

NINE

“
Herr Reichsminister 
–” The functionary, a little man with sleek-polished hair, made a bow. “This is one of our honored guests tonight.
Herr
David Wise – from America.”

With a champagne glass cradled in her hand, Marte watched as the
Reichsminister für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda
nodded in greeting. She stood close to him, closer now than she would have if the
Reichminister
’s wife were still at the reception. But after giving Marte a hard, knowing gaze,
Frau
Goebbels had given her apologies and gone home to look after their brood of golden-haired children. Which allowed her husband the freedom to drape his arm around Marte’s shoulders – left bare by the ballgown that the studio’s costume department had given her – and shepherd her through Berlin’s political and cinematic elite.

“It is, of course, a pleasure to meet you,
Herr
Wise.” Joseph spoke in the low, courtly voice with which she had already become familiar. “I assure you that I know very well the films of the Wise Studios. Excellent work. You must be proud to have been the producer of such . . . how to say? . . . such visual epics.”

The American shrugged off the compliment. “We try our best.” He stood taller than Goebbels, with dark, curling hair and only a slight Hebraic bump to his nose. Different from what Joseph had told her about Hollywood film producers. They were all supposed to be squat, swarthy, hook-nosed lechers, with cunning, leering stares. This one looked decent enough to have appeared in his own movies, perhaps as the lead actor’s kindhearted friend, something like that.

“You are a craftsman.” Joseph smiled. “There can be no higher tribute.”

“I guess I’m flattered. But . . . I don’t know. Films are . . .”

Marte sipped at the champagne as
Herr
Wise searched through his limited German vocabulary.

“
Szenen
,” he said at last. “Pictures. That’s all.”

“Ah,
aber am Anfang war das Wort 
– in the beginning was the word,
Herr
Wise.” Joseph’s thin-lipped smile grew wider. “Don’t you agree?”

“Maybe. I didn’t expect a National Socialist to quote Scripture, though.”

Joseph tilted his head back in amusement. “You do not know,
Herr
Wise – in my youth, I attended the seminary. I had wanted to become a priest. That was, of course, before I found a new faith to believe in. And entered politics.”

“Yes –” Wise nodded. “I’ve heard some things about that new faith. You’ve changed it to
am Anfang war die Tat
. The deed, the action.”

“Just so. And I would not have expected an American screenwriter to quote our Goethe.” The bright gaze grew sharper. “When you write a script,
Herr
Wise, when you first see that film inside your head – do you not start with an action? Something that happens, something that determines all that is to follow? That is why films are so important to people. They can see things happening. In that, there’s really no difference between the films made here, guided by National Socialist principles, and those you make in Hollywood. What is different here is that we are making a new world with them.
Die Tat
 – not
das Wort
.”

Herr
Wise seemed to be caught at a loss. To Marte, it appeared as if Joseph’s smooth words had overwhelmed the American visitor’s understanding of the language – as though again he had to take a few seconds to sort out the pieces he hadn’t caught immediately.

“Perhaps,” continued Joseph, “you would find it interesting to work here in Berlin.”

“What would I do?”

“Make films, of course. What else does a producer do? Perhaps the Wise Studios might appreciate a European partnership.”

Wise didn’t return the other man’s smile. “I’ve had partners before. Sometimes they work out.”

“Yes? Was there one in particular?”

“When I was a kid, back in Red Hook. I used to set up bare-knuckle matches for myself. Just to get something to eat. Won most of them. Another kid, this polack I was friends with, would hold the bets, and then we’d take our splits afterward.”

“Ah. But something happened, I take it? To break this . . . partnership?”

“Yeah.” Wise nodded. “I went the distance with a guy who stood a head taller, outweighed me by, I don’t know, maybe twenty pounds or so. The only reason I won the fight was that I was still standing at the end. When I got my eyes open again, I found that my partner had run off with the money, figuring I wasn’t going to make it to the other side. Took me two days to track the sonuvabitch down.”

“And did you get your money,
Herr
Wise? Your winnings?”

“Pretty much. But not without another fight.”

“Ah.” The
Reichsminister
regarded him with renewed appreciation. “You are indeed a man of more than
das Wort
. Tell me, was this early partner of yours also a Jew, such as yourself?”

“No.” A shake of the head. “I told you. He was Polish.”

“Ah, yes.” Joseph smiled again. “They are beasts. We have our own problems with them –”

“Your crowd seem to have problems with a lot of different kinds of people.”

Marte watched Joseph’s smile tighten. “The things that one hears in America,
Herr
Wise, should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt. But you have my apologies; I have let our conversation stray from the more pleasing matters of art. One of which we are fortunate to have here with us. May I present to you
Fraulein
Marte Helle?” Joseph tilted his head toward her. “A great future lies before her. She has appeared in but one film –
starred
, as I believe you Americans would say – but the praise her talents have received has been most gratifying to me.”

“It’s a pleasure, Miss Helle.” The American smiled and nodded at her, then turned his gaze back toward Joseph. “And you’re right, of course. When I saw her in
Die Prinzessin
 – that’s the movie you’re talking about? – I could see that she was a real find. A natural.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,
Herr
Wise.” Joseph frowned. “How could you have seen
Prinzessin
? The studio has not even yet released it to the theatres here in Germany. Nobody has watched it other than myself and a few other officials at the Propaganda Ministry.”