Lene climbed back into the daylight that filtered grudgingly into the four back yards of the five-storey tenement at 17 Ri benstrasse. The yards were evil-smelling playgrounds for rickety children and stout rats. A football goal had been marked out in the second yard, and at the age of six Marlene had dived for balls there like a boy. She kept them out most of the time.
Each yard measured twenty-eight square metres, laid down in the building regulations of 1874 as the minimum size for horse-drawn fire engines to turn. Now, in 1926, the Berlin firefighting service had long since been motorized, and a start had been made on building pleasant housing estates for workers in Britz and Zehlendorf. But these were not available for the likes of the Kaschkes.
Alfred Neubert was leaning against the wall in the passageway between the third and fourth back yards. He wore a suit, collar and tie, which in itself amounted to a challenge to this wretched environment. He nodded to her. 'Hello, Lene, how's things?'
'You back, are you?' It was a long time since she'd seen Fredie, but she recognized him at once, in spite of his stylish moustache. Fredie was nineteen, dark and good-looking, and at the age of thirteen had realized that there was only one way out of Riibenstrasse. He had embarked on his career in the urinals of Alexanderplatz, and continued it in the Tiergarten, where he would go behind the bushes with real gentlemen. The second porter at the Bristol Hotel finally recruited him as a pageboy. The head porter rented out the hotel pageboys to male guests.
A rich Englishman took a fancy to the pretty boy. His mentor travelled the world with him for two years, and then left him for a handsome Moroccan boy in Mogador, abandoning him without a penny. Walking by night and day, Fredie followed the couple to Marrakesh. There he beat up the pederast in cold blood and took his travel funds, all of two hundred pounds sterling. Lord Trevelyan sent to London for more money rather than going to the authorities.
Once back in Berlin, the thief paid his loot, over four thousand Reichsmarks, into a dozen different savings accounts. Besides the money, he had acquired a knowledge of English and French, good manners, and a deep and abiding hatred of men like Lord Trevelyan.
'Just dropped in to see my mother.' Fredie had shaken off the accent of RUbenstrasse and now spoke the Prussian-tinged German of the Berlin upper classes. 'What about you? Still being nice to Pohl?'
'Got anything against it?' Lene spoke in the Berlin working-class dialect that had once been natural to Fredie too.
Against your being such a fool?' Fredie dug his thumb and forefinger into his waistcoat pocket and brought out a silver one-mark coin. To Lene it was a fortune. 'Here, that's your bus fare. Take the bus from Turmstrasse to Kantstrasse. You get out there and turn right. Weimarerstrasse is on the first corner. Turn right into it. Number 28, back of the building, third floor left, name of Wilke. Ring three times and I'll open the door. Got it?'
'I'm not daft.'
'Come on Tuesday afternoon.' She didn't ask what he wanted her to come for, so overwhelmed was she by this invitation into a different world.
She didn't break into the money, although she was tempted by the thought of riding on the bus for the very first time in her life, preferably on the top deck. Even climbing the spiral stairs to get up there would have been an adventure. But she remained steadfast. She set off on foot at two on Tuesday. She had put on the white lace scarf that Grandmother Mine had left her, the most precious thing she possessed.
She would have walked the long distance faster but for the shop windows, which held displays that were increasingly lavish with every step she went further west. A milliner was showing the most extravagant creations. In RUbenstrasse, such a display would have set off angry protests. Marlene counted thirty different models of ladies' shoes in the window next to the milliner's. She compared them ruefully with her shapeless, oldfashioned button boots. They had belonged to her mother's sister Auntie Rosa, who died of tuberculosis.
She couldn't tear herself away from the display in a butcher's shop. A mountain of ground beef lay on a silver platter, its red appetizingly speckled with white fat, and garnished with onion rings inside which little mounds of plump capers nestled, seasoned with ground pepper and salt crystals. A round loaf of rye bread and a bottle of brown Botzow lager completed this handsome still life. An enticing message in black writing on a celluloid tag stuck into the meat read '30 pfennigs a portion'. Lene tightened her grip firmly around her one-mark coin.
The window of Hefter's contained a lavish platter of sliced meats, surrounded by cans of other delicacies. Next to it, rich and yellow, lay a sphere of butter: you could tell it was freshly made from the pattern left by the butter pats. Lene knew only the unpleasant-smelling margarine brought from the corner shop where thin, blue, skimmed milk dripped from a tap. Her mother gave this milk to her younger son. Her breasts had dried up when she was suckling Lene.
Outside the cinema on one street corner, colourful posters and glossy stills from movies lured customers in. The film now showing was called The Sheikh, starring Rudolph Valentino, who looked unbelievably handsome. Two usherettes were chatting outside the door. Lene gazed in wonder at their red uniforms trimmed with gold braid. She'd like to be an usherette too. You could see the movies for free all the time, she thought.
At four o'clock she turned into Kantstrasse, and then right into Weimarerstrasse at the next corner. Number 28 was a four-storey building with an ornate facade and pot plants in the tall bay windows. The entrance hall was all marble and crystal, the brass of the folding grille over the lift gleamed. The back of the building wasn't so grand, but compared to Number 17 Riibenstrasse it was dreamy.
She rang the doorbell on the third floor beside the nameplate saying 'Wilke' three times. Fredie opened the door. He was wearing a long, silk dressing gown and smoking a Turkish cigarette in an almost equally long holder. 'Oh wow, you're pretty posh these days!' Lene couldn't help exclaiming.
'Come in.' His room was at the very back of the building. 'Here, sit down.' He pushed a chair in her direction. A Black Forest gateau covered with chocolate stood on the table. Whipped cream was piled above the rim of the dish beside it. 'Help yourself.' Fredie poured sweet wine into small glasses. She drank too fast and it went down the wrong way.
He watched with amusement as she devoured huge mouthfuls of gateau and heaped spoonfuls of cream. After the third helping he took her plate away. 'Otherwise you'll be throwing up on me in bed,' he said in a matter-offact tone. You can have more afterwards. Now, get undressed and wash.' There was a washstand in a niche and a longish, curved sort of basin beside it. 'What's that for?' Fredie poured warm water into the basin from a jug. 'That's for underneath you,' he told her. 'But not just yet.'
Five minutes later she climbed into bed with him. It seemed to her a perfectly fair arrangement, after he had given her so much cake and whipped cream, and the promise of more to come. All she ever got from Herr Pohl was a little longer to pay the rent. Fredie pulled the covers off and looked her up and down.
'You're very pretty,' he said, pleased, as his fingers slipped over her skin. A wonderful feeling went through her as the tip of his tongue made the tiny bud of her clitoris burst into flower. Little sighs rose in the air, culminating in a cry of delight.
That afternoon, young as she was, she experienced what most women didn't even venture to dream of. That was nice!' she said breathlessly as she tucked into more Black Forest gateau and whipped cream.
So for the first time in all those years, Lene rebelled when she was told, 'You go off to Herr Pohl now.'