Two Brothers

Renewed Acquaintance Berlin, 1923

OUTSIDE IN THE street Frieda ran for a tram and nearly got herself run over in the process. City traffic was getting out of control.

Wolfgang said it was just ‘mechanized Dada’. It was his joke. He said that Surrealism had become so ubiquitous that even Berlin drivers were challenging structure and form.

However, as the mother of two wilful toddlers, Frieda did not find the situation funny at all. She had in fact spent several chilly Saturday mornings standing outside the U-Bahn station collecting signatures for a petition of complaint to the local council, but had so far heard nothing back. The newspapers said that there were plans to install Berlin’s first traffic lights in Potsdamer Platz along the lines of what had been developed in New York. But Frieda reckoned that no such refinement was likely to reach the less glamorous streets of Friedrichshain in the near or even distant future.

Two tram changes later she was in her old childhood district of Moabit where her parents still lived and where she was to meet them on the steps of the Arminius Markthalle on Jonasstrasse.

Frieda was always happy to visit the Arminius with its great arched red and yellow brick entrance. It had been built in 1891, nine years before she was born, and had always been a part of her life. An enormous, noisy, frantic, bustling Aladdin’s cave of a building in which it always seemed to Frieda that every magical and wonderful thing on earth could be found.

She had wandered its great steel arched aisles through all the weekends of her growing up. First, pushed in a pram, and then holding on to her mother’s hand. After that, giggling and gossiping with school friends, and finally shyly with boys. It had been at the Arminius that Frieda had first met Wolfgang. He had been busking for pfennigs during the starvation winter of 1918 and she had given him a bite of a piece of dried beef jerky her mother had managed to find for her lunch.

And now she was back, as if she’d come full circle, except that this time it was her parents who were holding her hand.

It was towards the end of the shopping trip that Frieda quite unexpectedly bumped into Karlsruhen. It was the first time she had laid eyes on her ex-employer since her final day as his model when he had assaulted her in his studio, and Frieda was startled to see the depths to which he had sunk. For Karlsruhen was not at the market to shop but to sell. He and his wife had set up a little stall in amongst the junk dealers at the back of the great hall from which they were trying to unload his previously valuable works.

It was a chastening sight. Both Karlsruhen and his wife looked thin and haggard. The skin of the sculptor’s previously fat jowls hung in creases from his face. Neither of them had overcoats and they were clearly feeling the cold. Despite it being summer the hall was draughty.

Karlsruhen and Frieda caught each other’s eye but did not acknowledge it. Frieda certainly had no wish to renew their acquaintance and he clearly felt the same way.

Unfortunately Herr Tauber had also spotted the stall and was pushing his loaded shopping cart straight for it.

‘Look at this, Mother,’ he called to his wife. ‘This stuff’s very good, proper art, not like this modern nonsense. Come along, Frieda! Bring the purse, I think I might buy something.’

Frieda had no choice but to hurry after her father, who was already introducing himself to a somewhat alarmed-looking Karlsruhen.

‘Tauber. Police Captain Konstantin Tauber at your service. I think your work is very fine, sir. Very fine indeed.’

Now Karlsruhen looked genuinely worried, clearly wondering whether Frieda had decided finally to make a complaint about what had happened. It made her angry because she had always felt that she should have reported him, and had only not done so because it would have simply been one word against another and could have done no good. Now, however, she found herself in the position of having to set her attacker’s mind at rest for fear that he would blurt out some lie and an awful scene would ensue.

‘Hello, Herr Karlsruhen,’ she said, ‘it’s been a while, hasn’t it? This is my father and mother. Don’t be alarmed,’ she added, as if making a joke, ‘he’s not on duty.’

Frieda forced herself to smile pleasantly. There was nothing to be gained from confronting him now, a year later, and she had nothing but sympathy for the man’s wife.

‘Goodness gracious, Frieda,’ Herr Tauber said. ‘Do you two know each other?’

Karlsruhen clearly wished they’d all go away but had no option but to introduce himself.

‘Your daughter used to model for me,’ he explained.

Frau Tauber had been inspecting one of the figurines and nearly dropped it.

‘Goodness!’ she exclaimed. ‘Modelled? For these?’

Every single statuette displayed on the table was of a naked girl. Frau Tauber’s expression hovered somewhere between astonishment and horror.

‘Yes,’ Frieda said brightly, ‘didn’t I ever tell you?’

‘You told us that you were modelling,’ her mother replied, ‘but not…’

‘This is me,’ Frieda said, picking up one of the figures. ‘It’s a good likeness, don’t you think?’

Herr Tauber took it from her and then immediately handed it on to his wife, clearly feeling that even holding the thing was somehow inappropriate.

‘You mean, you posed for it?’ he said. ‘Completely naked?’

‘Yes, Dad. Don’t you like it? You did before.’

‘It is a Rhinemaiden,’ Karlsruhen said grumpily, taking it back from Frau Tauber. ‘Of course they’re naked.’

‘Yes, a Jewish Rhinemaiden,’ Frieda said, giving Karlsruhen a hard stare, suddenly fed up with tiptoeing around the man. ‘Think of that? What would Herr Wagner have said?’

‘Nonsense, Frieda!’ her father exclaimed. ‘A German’s a German. I have two French bullet wounds in my thigh that say my daughter has as much right to cavort in the damned Rhine as anyone. Isn’t that right, Herr Karlsruhen? She makes a splendid nymph!’

Karlsruhen admitted that she did and since the Taubers did not seem to be moving on he was forced to introduce his wife. Frieda shook the woman’s hand feeling most uncomfortable, not merely because of the unpleasant secret she shared with the woman’s husband, but also because of the reduced circumstances to which Frau Karlsruhen had fallen. She couldn’t help but suspect that the person who would suffer most from Karlsruhen’s wounded pride was his wife.

Herr Tauber, having got over the initial shock of encountering a naked depiction of his daughter, had decided that in fact he was rather proud that Frieda had inspired such fine German art. He thoroughly approved of Karlsruhen’s style and subject matter.

‘Had you been posing for one of these idiot pornographers our imbecile arts establishment insists on lionizing, then I should have been concerned, but this is the art of a patriot and gentleman. Herr Karlsruhen, I salute you.’

Herr Tauber shook Karlsruhen vigorously by the hand, utterly oblivious to the horrible irony of his description of the man, and the crackling undercurrents flowing between the artist and his daughter.

‘In fact, my dear,’ Herr Tauber said, turning to his wife, ‘I really do think we must have this! After all, it’s not every girl who gets to be a Rhinemaiden. And I’m happy to go without my bottle of schnapps this month to get it too.’

Karlsruhen scowled at this graphic illustration of the current value of his work.

‘It’s bronze and the plinth is marble,’ he said sulkily, but his wife had already taken Tauber’s money.

‘For you, my dear,’ Tauber said, making a flourishing gesture and handing it over to Frieda. ‘I’m sure Herr Karlsruhen will admit that it is not quite as beautiful as its model but it’s a fine piece of work nonetheless and I am proud to make you a present of it.’

Frieda suspected that Karlsruhen would admit no such thing, but the sculptor merely continued to scowl and said nothing.