Shadows of Berlin

12.

La Muse du Rouge

“I want a cigarette.”

“Too bad.”

The studio is a high-­ceilinged space bathed in daylight on the top floor of the villa. The year is 1932. No one knows it yet, but the German Republic is staggering through its final months of existence. Meanwhile, Angelika Rosen, aged nineteen years, poses in the nude for nine marks an hour. Straight-­backed, a hand combed into the thick red mane of hair that cascades over her shoulders, this is the first time she has been naked in front of a woman whom she does not know. This is the first time she has been naked and on display. An artist’s model.

It felt daring in the beginning, answering an advertisement in the newspaper. Life model sought. It felt good to hurt Tatte and Mamme, especially Tatte, in this way by putting his daughter’s body on display, even if they were completely unaware of what she was doing. She knew that she was hurting them, and that was enough. But after the initial exhilaration, the hours passed, and the excitement drained. She began to feel stiff from keeping to a single position, and her mind began to wander into a void. “I’m bored,” she announces.

“You are paid to pose, not talk,” the artist tells her.

A moment passes.

“How much longer?”

“Until I say.”

Another moment. But it’s too much. “I’m dying for a cigarette,” she groans.

“Contemplate the suffering of women,” says the artist. The artist, whose name is Morgenstern. Frau Lavinia Morgenstern-­Landau. Aged thirty or more. Hair bobbed. Her painter’s gaze dark-­eyed and concentrated. She stands at her easel working on a very tall canvas. Her fingers are paint-­stained; her smock is paint-­stained. She paints from a warm palette. Cadmium red, alizarin crimson, cadmium orange, yellow ochre, burnt umber. A tall bank of windows keeps the room awash with light. A table is cluttered with the paraphernalia of the painterly craft, and a fat yellow cat lies dozing at the artist’s feet as she studies her model, then puts her brush to work.

There’s something mysterious that Lavinia is searching for in her painting of this girl. This little Jewish meydl from the Prenzlauer Berg. Cette belle créature rouge. Perhaps it’s the essence of human beauty? Could she be searching for such a thing as that? Or perhaps it’s simply the mystery of her own art. Her quest to capture that which cannot be captured. The flatheaded brush roughs up the edge of a shadow that outlines the warmth of the painted flesh.

There’s a noise of a door from behind, and a confident baritone voice bursts in the air like a cannon shell. “Shalom! My brilliant sister!”

She frowns but does not turn even as she listens to her brother’s footsteps approach. “And so, he arrives,” she replies. “Shalom, little brother.”

Fritz steps up behind the artist at work, a stylish bamboo cane in hand, and kisses her cheerfully on the temple. As usual, he is impeccably clothed and coiffed. Dressed in a coal-­black Rudolf Hertzog suit and a diamond stickpin in his cravat. He scrutinizes his sister’s canvas with interest and, as is his custom, offers his opinion unsolicited. “Stunning but disturbing. Just what I want to see,” he announces.

Lavinia still dabs at the canvas. “Tell Herr Möller you have a painting for him. All he must do is spend a king’s ransom to obtain it.”

“That’s what I always tell him, Lavinia. He’ll pay, don’t worry. He’s entranced by your work.”

A laugh or a grunt. It’s hard to tell which. “Yes. ‘Stunning but disturbing,’” she confirms.

“And speaking of both. Won’t you introduce me?”

Lavinia looks up and frowns as she sees her brother drowsily eyeing her model. “Fräulein Rosen. My brother, Fritz Landau. Who is married,” she reminds.

Now Angelika has regained an interest in posing. Aware of the power of her beauty, she unblushingly casts a smoky-­eyed look at this man. Fritz is obviously captivated.

“Enchantée,” he offers.

“If you’re going to stay, then allow the girl to put on some clothes,” the artist suggests, but Fritz certainly doesn’t wish to interrupt.

“No, no, I won’t stay,” he insists, his gaze hanging languidly. “The last thing I’d wish is to disrupt the artistic process.”

In response, the girl draws a long, lazy breath that causes her breast to heave slowly before she expels it. “I would murder for a cigarette, Herr Landau,” she announces.

Fritz grins, but he defers to his sister. “Lavinia? May I be permitted?”

Lavinia, however, is a wall. “She can smoke when I’m finished with her,” she decrees.

“Then I should be going. I only wanted to confirm that you’ll be in Wannsee tomorrow.”

“Wannsee?”

“The Lieberman villa? The Akademie luncheon?”

“Is that really tomorrow?” Lavinia asks.

“It is. And, Sister, you must be there.”

“The only woman in the room.”

“I thought you considered that an honor.”

“I consider it a travesty. But fine. I’ll be there.”

“One o’clock,” says her brother with a smile. A smile he then raises to Lavinia’s model. “So very pleased to meet you, child. Lavinia, what did you say is this charming young woman’s name again?”

“Rosen, I said. Fräulein Rosen.”

The girl jumps in. “Angelika,” she declares.

“Of course,” Fritz agrees, still smiling. “A name for an angel.”

Afterward, when Fritz has taken his leave and Lavinia is soaking her brushes in glass jars of spirits, Angelika glares frowningly at the tarp covering the canvas. “Why can’t I see it?”

“It’s not finished, that’s why. Here,” Lavinia tells her. “Have your reward.” She lifts the copper lid of a box stained with fingerprints of paint. It’s filled with cigarettes. And when Angelika grabs one to smoke, Lavinia lights it for her with an equally paint-­stained table lighter. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” the artist tells her.

Expelling smoke. Eyes languid. “Do what?”

“Flirt with my brother.”

Angelika raises her eyebrows. “Was that what I was doing?” she asks. A question that ratchets up a sudden tension between them. It’s a certain magnetic force that has been powering their connection. An intimacy between artist and model? Or something more? Angelika does not move. She permits the tension to build, and then she breaks away. Scooping up the lazy yellow cat, she waltzes it across the room, calling it her precious treasure.

The Adlon. Berlin’s premier hotel. Let those nationalist thugs and Hitlerites pollute the dining room of the Kaiserhof if they must, the Adlon wouldn’t have them in to sweep the rugs. The Brandenburg Gate looms immensely through the windows as the liveried doorman and bellhops busy themselves with the arrivals of their guests from a stream of taxicabs rolling up to the granite curb. Only the top cut of people, of course, come to enjoy a final vestige of Kaiserliche glory that the Adlon proffers within its imperial walls. Fritz owns a garden villa in the Grunewald but keeps a suite here as a matter of course. The hanging chandeliers, the fine linen, the cathedral windows of the dining room provide the luxury that he feels comfortable with. A spot where the great and near-­great sit for luncheon. A string ensemble in tailcoats plays Mozart, the Quartet in D minor, as if they are spinning threads of gold.

Angelika’s hair is plaited in a crown, ladylike, and she is dressed in what’s obviously the best dress available to a girl from the inner courtyards of the Wilhelmine Ring. Their waiter is a stiff-­necked old soldier of the hotel, dressed in black cutaway and crisply pleated bib. “A brandy for the honored gentleman,” the Herr Ober announces as he serves the cognac. “And,” he adds with a certain spring to his tone, “a brandy for the gnädige Fräulein.” Even a staunch Adlon Prussian is not invulnerable to the desire she generates.

She touches Fritz’s hand as he ignites her cigarette with a gold lighter bearing a shell cameo. “What a pretty bauble,” she says.

“Alfred Dunhill,” Fritz reports.

“Is it valuable?”

He shrugs. Valuable? “Value is relative, I’ve learned.” He ignites his own cigarette screwed into a short black onyx holder. “You strike me as a person who appreciates value,” he observes. “Is that so?”

“My father runs a wholesale business in the Prenzlauer Berg. He sells buttons to garment makers. It costs him one pfennig to sell a button for two pfennigs. That’s all I understand about value, Herr Landau.” She says this and takes a sip from her snifter of cognac. “Besides, that isn’t really what you want to talk about. Is it?”

Fritz lifts his eyebrows. “Isn’t it?”

The girl shrugs but does not alter her gaze.

“You’re different now,” he observes.

“Am I really?”

“You’re better dressed. This lovely frock you’re wearing. The lovely pearl earrings.”

“Money buys things. Your sister paid me well to pose for her.”

“Nine marks an hour is what my sister pays when she uses a model,” he contradicts. “And in any case,” Fritz points out, “you’re no longer posing for my sister.”

A small smile but without pleasure. That’s all she offers.

“What happened?” he wants to know.

A shrug, inhaling smoke. “You should ask her.”

“I did,” Fritz assures her.

“And?”

“And she said it was none of my business.”

“Ha,” says Angelika.

“But she’s wrong. It is my business. She is my business, in a quite literal sense. So I’m going to ask you again, Angelika. What happened between the two of you?”

The girl takes a gulp of cognac and frowns. “She broke her promise.”

“Promise?”

“She said she would send me to Feige-­Strassburger. To study fashion.”

“Did she really? Well, that’s a surprise.”

“I’m not lying.”

“I didn’t say you were. But then she changed her mind?” Fritz wonders.

“She broke her promise,” the girl repeats. “She was jealous.”

A sip of cognac. “That’s interesting to hear. Can you explain what you mean?”

The girl snorts a laugh. “Do I need to explain?” She can’t believe that she does. So all she says, with a crooked smile, is “She wanted me all to herself.”

Fritz sets down his glass and strokes the point of his Vandyke, as if to make a study of this woman in front of him. He may not be as artistically gifted as his sister, but he has a certain artistic instinct about people. He can recognize a true work of art. “What do you want?” he wonders aloud.

Angelika raises her eyebrows. “Want?”

“Yes. What does Fräulein Rosen want? From today?” Fritz asks. “From tomorrow? From life?”

“Oh. That’s simple,” she tells him. “I want freedom. Freedom to do whatever I please. Freedom to be whomever I choose. Freedom to be with whomever I choose,” she says. And then: “Your sister. She made a point of announcing that you are married.”

“I am,” he admits in an uncomplicated tone. “My wife lives in Frankfurt.”

“That’s far away for a wife.”

“She keeps her own home, and I keep mine. I send her a gift on her birthday. I believe last year it was a set of crystal sconces.”

“So this is a sport for you, then? Schtupping pretty girls who aren’t ashamed to take off their clothes for—­as you reminded me—­nine marks an hour.”

Fritz considers. “Is that what I’m doing, you think?” he asks. “Having sport?”

For a heavy moment, both hold the gaze of the other. Then comes an unwelcomed burst of noise from the street. A lorry roars across the Pariser Platz, bristling with hooked-­cross flags and hung with a banner exhorting Berliners to “Vote List 2!” Brownshirted storm troopers bellow their narrative through megaphones. “Germany Awake! Jews Perish!” they bawl, tossing armloads of hooked-­cross confetti into the wind.

But inside the Adlon’s dining room, the Schubert quintet continues without the musicians skipping a note, as Fritz and Angelika gaze grimly at the storm of tiny Hitlerite crosses blowing past the window in the lorry’s wake.

“Should we be frightened of them?” Angelika wonders aloud.

Fritz frowns at the window glass. “You mean as good Germans?” he asks. “Or as Jews?”

A certain tension defines Angelika’s silence. She waits for him to answer himself.

“We’d be foolish not to be cautious,” Fritz says. “But what can they do really other than act the bully? Von Hindenburg, that old fossil. He’ll never agree to the Viennese tramp as the Reich’s chancellor. It’s impossible. He despises the little paskudnyak.”

“I heard that he wanted to be an artist.”

“Who?”

“The paskudnyak. I heard he wanted to be a painter, but the academies wouldn’t have him.”

Fritz tosses a shrug. “I had heard he was a former paperhanger. But if he had artistic aspirations? Well. Too bad for him. And too bad for us if the impossible happens. Because it’s been my experience that there is no more embittered creature on the face of the earth than a failed artist.” He says this and then offers her a light smile. “Shall I order another brandy, Fräulein Rosen,” he suggests, “and we can put politics aside?”

The beautiful face changes again. She fastens her eyes on him. “She’ll be angry with me, if we do this. And she’ll be angry with you too.”

Fritz is reassuring. “Liebling, she’ll never need know.”

Morning arrives. The drapes are open in the bedroom of Fritz’s suite. Angelika stirs groggily. She blinks at the sunlight that stings her eyes. Then suddenly realizes she is not alone. There’s another presence filling the space at the end of the bed, and it’s not Fritz Landau. It’s a little girl. A little dark thing stationed at the foot of the bed gazing at her in silence.

“And who are you, Bissel?” Angelika wonders.

But the child’s answer is silence. She only stares.

Then footsteps arrive, but they don’t belong to Fritz Landau either.

“Rashka? Where have you gotten to?” a woman calls out in a voice that Angelika recognizes all too quickly.

“Shit,” she breathes. “You should go to your mummy now,” Angelika instructs the child urgently, scrambling to gather the satin bedclothes around her to cover her nakedness. “She’s calling for you.”

But little Rashka ignores Angelika’s instruction just as she ignores her mother’s call.

“Damn me, but you’re a stubborn one,” Angelika whispers. “Go on. Shoo.”

Too late, though, too late. The bedroom door creaks, and there she is. The artist. Rashka’s mummy, Lavinia Morgenstern-­Landau. “Rashka, what have you—­” the woman is in the middle of asking when she halts in her tracks at the sight of Angelika ensconced in her brother’s bed, obviously without a stitch under the sheets.

Angelika can only stare back at her.

At this point, Fritz manages to make his appearance. “Hello? Who’s here leaving my door standing open?” he’s calling as Lavinia seizes Rashka by the hand and drags her from the bedroom. Angelika can hear the short melodrama that follows.

“Lavinia? You simply disregard my privacy now? Appear uninvited without notice?”

“You must have it all, mustn’t you, Fritz! You must sully everything with your licentious appetites.”

“I beg your pardon? My what?”

“Is there nothing you won’t take from me? Nothing you won’t steal?”

“Well, that’s an interesting way to put it, chère sœur. What exactly have I stolen from you?”

Angelika exhales a breath. Selects a cigarette from the lovely teakwood box by the bedside and ignites it using the shiny sterling table lighter. The smoke from her cigarette balloons into the air. Beyond the bedroom, angry words are supplanted by angry footsteps in retreat, followed by the slam of a door. Angelika waits till Fritz reappears and leans against the threshold.

“Well, that was unfortunate,” he concludes.

Angelika draws in smoke and exhales it through her nostrils. “She looked wounded.”

Fritz only shrugs. “Of course she did. You’re her muse, Liebchen.”

“Her muse?” Why does it hurt her to hear this?

“Oh, yes,” Fritz assures her and gathers up the blankets covering her until flesh is exposed. “You,” he says, “are her muse du rouge.”

Two days pass. The artist at her easel, pursuing her work on the canvas. She’s attempting to finish the painting even though the dais is empty. Even though the subject is no longer posing. There is a certain leaden pain in her heart as she works, though it is a pain she has resigned herself to carrying. Since when is pain something new to the artist?

Frowning, she hears a door open behind her. “Rashka. I told you. You must leave Eema alone,” she calls to her daughter. But she does not turn until the fat yellow cat at her feet stands and runs to the intruder. Angelika scoops him up, slowly scratching the scuff of his neck as he begins to purr like a drill bit boring into wood.

“Am I your muse?” Angelika asks her. She is wearing hand-­stitched Ferragamo heels and a fashionably cut frock from Paul Kuhnen. Proof that Fritz Landau maintains his accounts in all the best shops and with all the best designers.

The artist does not speak a word at first, but her expression is a complex mixture of pain, shock, and relief. “You’ve cut your hair.”

“Yes.” Her long red tresses have been bobbed.

“Was that my brother’s suggestion?”

“No. Don’t be cross. I did it for you. I thought you might like me more modern.” The girl touches the straight line of bangs that frames the arch of her eyebrows. “Do you approve?”

Lavinia stares. “What choice have you given me?”

Angelika approaches the easel, cradling the cat in her arms, as she gazes with deep fascination at the painting. “Look,” she tells the feline. “I have been transformed. Little Gelika from the Kastanienallee has become a goddess,” she says with a quiet astonishment.

Lavinia pets the feline’s head. “She speaks like a slum girl,” she informs her cat. Is it possible to say this affectionately? Only then does the artist raise her head to meet the muse’s eyes, and there she lets them settle for a deep moment before returning her brush to the canvas. “Hurry,” she says. “Shed those glamour rags you’re wearing and take up your pose. Before I lose the light completely.”