`Thirty marks, not bad for a start.' Fredie was pleased. 'One of the tens is for you, one for me, the rest for our payments. What will you do with your money?'
Lene was quick at sums. 'Save nine-seventy, buy thirty-pfennigs worth of ground beef with the rest.'
A little more Beluga. my dear?' Eulenfels dipped the silver spoon into the crystal bowl and piled gleaming grey caviar on Marlene's plate.
'Thank you, Ferdinand.' The downy fair hair on her bare arms shimmered seductively in the candlelight. Eighteen-year-old Marlene smiled at him. She knew the effect she had on men.
'Do you know, they're making a talkie of Dr Mann's novel! That raises an interesting question of copyright, since the movie is based on a book. I shall have to discuss it with our legal experts. The actors will speak and sing just like actors on stage. By the way, the leading lady is called Marlene, like you.'
Ferdinand Eulenfels liked delivering little monologues on subjects related to his profession as a publisher. He owned the most important newspapers and magazines of Berlin, but his real love was books. His authors included several great names and many lesser ones. Eulenfels had invented the idea of the 'One-Mark Book', and was very successful in selling works of light entertainment.
Marlene looked out of the window. Moonlight glittered on the snowladen trees. The publisher's hunting lodge lay an hour's drive east of Berlin. Eulenfels used it for discreet rendezvous. She had stumbled into his arms at the press ball at the Esplanade, spilling a little champagne on his starched shirt-front, a scene cleverly staged by Fredie. His mature widows were a thing of the past; he now devoted himself entirely to promoting his protegee. He had taught her to speak educated German and eat properly with a knife and fork. Marlene was a good pupil, and lapsed into the language of Riibenstrasse only when she was upset or taken by surprise. French and English were on her educational programme too, and her pretty, youthful looks did the rest.
She quickly understood what was wanted by her clients, rich men in the prime of life who paid generously for the satisfaction of their usually modest desires. Fredie used those desires to finance their apartment in the new Westend district and good clothes for both of them. 'You don't get anywhere without white tie and tails these days,' he had said.
'You mean actors can really speak and sing on screen?' Marlene asked Eulenfels in amazement.
'Yes, indeed. Although I don't really know what the point of it is.' Eulenfels poured more champagne.
'Let's drink this next door.' She picked up her glass and went into the bedroom. When he joined her she had taken off her dress and was standing in her diaphanous lingerie.
'Enchanting.' He kissed her hand. She emptied her glass in a single draught and flung it recklessly into the flickering flames on the hearth. He kissed her shoulder, and she began to breathe heavily. That excited him, something she'd known ever since they first had sex. The rest was routine. She let him do as he liked and uttered little sobs and cries, giving the sixtyyear-old man the impression that he was an overpoweringly wonderful lover. It was all over after ten minutes.
As she was leaving he gave her a paperback with a red cover. 'Vicki Baum's latest novel. Do tell me what you think of it.' He escorted her through the snow to the high-built, chestnut-brown Mercedes. The driving seat of the old-fashioned car was exposed to the elements. The chauffeur closed the passenger door and got behind the wheel. Marlene, looking through the glass pane from the comfortable warmth of the back, saw the heavy fabric of his coat, the turned-up collar, the gloves and earmuffs under the peaked cap as they drove through the winter night to Berlin. On the way she opened the book, and a hundred-mark note fell out.
'You must be absolutely frozen. Come in with me and get warm,' she said to the chauffeur when they had reached the apartment.
'That's very kind of you, miss, but it's getting late.'
'Oh, come on.' She switched on the light. Fredie would be at some gentlemen's club or other, hunting for potential clients. He always took photographs of his supposed ex-fiancee with him. She let her Persian lamb coat drop. Fredie had hired it from the Jewish furrier on Spittelmarkt. 'Take your coat off and I'll make you a hot grog.' When she came back with the steaming glasses, he was waiting bareheaded in his grey chauffeur's uniform and shiny black leather gaiters. He was of medium height, with a friendly, round, boyish face, a dimpled chin, and carefully combed, nutbrown hair. He was twenty-eight, she learned later.
Hesitantly, he sat down and blew on the hot drink 'You're very kind. Some of your sort are really stuck-up.' He reddened. 'Sorry, didn't mean it that way.'
'Oh, nonsense!' she said, lapsing into her old Riibenstrasse accent. 'It's no secret what I do. What's your name?'
It was Franz Giese, and he came from Breslau. He grinned. 'Same as most real Berliners.'
'I really wanted to be a cinema usherette,' she said apologetically, explaining herself. 'But as so often happens…' Giese nodded understandingly.
Keys clinked. Fredie appeared in a dinner jacket, the inevitable cigarette holder clamped between his teeth. He took in the scene at a glance. 'May I ask what this idyll is in aid of?'
'I brought him up for a moment to get warm.'
'Out.' Fredie jerked his thumb at the door. Franz Giese picked up his coat and cap in silence.
'You could have let him finish his grog,' Marlene complained.
Fredie came close to her. His face expressionless, he rammed his fist into her stomach, making her gasp for air. She writhed under the blow and collapsed into a chair, weeping soundlessly. It wasn't so much the pain — that soon died down — it was her sense of being utterly alone.
Crooking his forefinger, he raised her chin. 'I pick the guests you entertain, understand? How about the money?' She gave him the hundred-mark note from Eulenfels. He took a small notebook out of his pocket and entered the sum. 'Thirty for expenses, thirty-five for me, thirty-five for you.' He conscientiously kept accounts, although she never got to see her money. 'I'm managing it for you,' he replied when she asked about it.
'There's a Herr von Malsen coming to tea tomorrow. I hinted that you're a member of the impoverished aristocracy and very demanding. We can expect a couple of hundred.'
All she wanted was to creep away and forget it alclass="underline" Fredie, the men, everything about life in the fashionable Westend that was no better than the squalor of Ri benstrasse, just less honest. A thought suddenly went through her mind — Franz Giese is different.
Fredie smiled wryly. Then he pulled her down on the couch. She had no power to resist him. She tried to think of something to put her off, but there was no holding back the orgasm. Contemptuously, Fredie walked away from her.
Herr von Malsen was a wiry man, owner of a landed estate in West Pomerania, who politely asked her to keep her stockings on. Herr Nussbaum was an asthmatic liqueurs distiller from Kopenick who wanted to be called dirty names. Dr Bernheimer was a Potsdam lawyer who liked to be called Sonja as he was being laced into a corset. She fulfilled all their little wishes, and was generously rewarded.
There was a foreigner among her clients too. She had met him over tea in the Adlon. That trick had proved its worth a couple of times before. Fredie took her into the hotel lounge, then had a pageboy call him and hurried away. Marlene liked the atmosphere. Well-dressed men and women. English voices in the background. Snatches of conversation in French. A German gentleman asking the waiter for the London Times. A Swedish woman ordering cigarettes. Two Spaniards greeting each other effusively. Really elegant and international here, she thought, looking at it through Riibenstrasse eyes.
'My brother had to leave unexpectedly on business, and I don't have any money on me,' she told the waiter, loud enough for a solitary gentleman at the next table to hear her. The gentleman was an American, and immediately offered to pay the trifling sum. Marlene smiled in embarrassment. 'How can I thank you, sir?'