'By having a drink with me.' After that he invited her to dinner and champagne in his suite. 'I'm sure you won't mind staying a little longer?' He pushed a hundred-dollar note under her glass.
She laughed. 'How did you know what I do?'
'I saw your companion disappear into one of the telephone cabins, and he was called away straight afterwards. It wasn't difficult to guess the rest — which suits me down to the ground. I'm new to Berlin, and the only woman I've met so far is the cleaning lady at my office.'
His name was Frank Saunders, and he was a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune. 'He spoke quite good German. Which was, not least, what got me the job here. Darn interesting city, your Berlin. Especially in the present situation. Do you think this Herr Hitler will win the election?'
'Can't you ask me something easier?'
'You're not interested in politics?'
'Not a bit. You?'
'Only professionally. Privately, what I love is beautiful women and horse racing, like most of us men from Kentucky. I like to lay a few bets. How do you feel about coming to Hoppegarten with me?'
'Maybe…'
He was thirty, and had a boxer's nose. 'Lowered my guard for a split second during the university championships at Yale. That was my reward.'
Frank Saunders was a sportsman, good figure, nice smelling. He was uninhibited in bed and put his mind to what he was doing. 'It's real fun with you,' he said appreciatively. 'I'm moving into my new apartment next week. Will you visit me?' He wrote the address down for her.
From then on they met regularly. Marlene liked the uncomplicated American. Fredie liked the flow of dollars. He even allowed her to go to the races with Saunders. She bought herself an elegant afternoon dress and an extravagant hat, and was delighted by all the beautiful people surrounding them and her good-looking companion in his grey flannels.
They played a little game which excited them both. 'That man in the bowler hat there is a client of mine too. Guess what he does to me?' And she whispered an erotic fantasy in his ear. Another time it was a bony baroness with special tastes. After her, two stylish young cavalry lieutenants. 'Just imagine what those two want me to do…'
After the races, back in his apartment, they released their pent-up excitement. It was like a spring storm. He was the first client with whom she felt anything at all, and the first man she liked talking to afterwards.
Then there was Dr Friedhelm Noack, always clad in a black jacket, dovegrey waistcoat and striped trousers, his hair meticulously parted, wearing a silver tie. Noack was a senior civil servant in the Prussian Interior Ministry, but liked to be addressed as Major. 'So he made it all the way to paymaster in the war, but never mind, let's not dash his illusions.' Fredie always knew how to deal with people.
Dr Noack came every Thursday. He would drop into an armchair, groaning, and she would kneel in front of him and unbutton him. It was always quite hard work, but eventually he would come, and then leave looking satisfied. This would have been pure routine if she hadn't been required to service him for free, on Fredie's instructions. We don't take money from a friend of the Party,' Fredie had told her. Marlene had not the faintest idea which Party Dr Noack had befriended.
Fredie didn't beat her any more; he had understood the nature of his power over her. He fixed her appointments, and she kept them. Her bank account was growing, at least on paper. He generously allowed her more money for her parents, which she sent them by special messenger.
At around three in the morning one Sunday, Wilhelm Kuhle, unemployed, turned on the gas tap in his one-room apartment in Riibenstrasse, because Pohl and two strong assistants were going to evict him in a few hours' time. He died according to plan, but Marlene's parents and two little brothers would have liked to live a little longer. Gas fumes had passed through the cracks of the partition wall between the apartments.
The funeral was on the last Monday in January 1933. Fredie had anticipated that the newspapers would send reporters, because of all the publicity given to the tragedy, so he had Marlene dress in some old clothes he'd bought from a second-hand dealer. That way she wouldn't be conspicuous, and wouldn't have to answer any questions. On the Monday evening she wore silk stockings and pearls. Herr Eulenfels had invited her to his hunting lodge.
Franz Giese came to fetch her. He was waiting with his cap on by the door of the new Pullman limousine. His leather gaiters gleamed. Marlene shook hands. 'Hi, how's things?'
'Oh, not too bad. Can't complain.' He got behind the wheel.
She pushed the glass partition aside. 'Well, at least you're not exposed to the elements now.' He swallowed, as if he wanted to say something. Anything wrong?' she encouraged him.
'Don't know.' He started the car.
'Oh, come on. We've known each other long enough.'
'You mustn't be angry.'
'How could anyone be angry with you, Herr Giese?'
He seemed to be concentrating hard on the road ahead. Then he came out with it. 'I've got an apartment in Schoneberg. All nice and neat. Would you visit me there some time? I'll pay. Just like Herr Eulenfels.'
'But I'm extremely expensive. Can't do it under a hundred and fifty,' she said, lapsing into her old Berlin accent as she tried to put him off.
He pulled over and stopped the car. Face grave, he counted sixteen notes out of his wallet. He handed the banknotes to her in the back of the car. A hundred and fifty marks. And ten extra for the taxi. What about Sunday evening? Here's my address.' He gave her a piece of paper.
Fredie was never home before one on a Sunday. 'Comradeship evening,' he told her. Marlene had no idea what that meant.
'Sunday evening. Yes, all right.' She put the money and the piece of paper in her handbag.
At Nollendorffplatz he turned round. 'It'll take us a bit longer today. They closed off Unter den Linden and the Government area for the torchlight procession. It's for the new Reich Chancellor.'
Marlene wasn't interested in Reich Chancellors. She looked at Giese's back, the stiff white collar, the grey cloth of the chauffeur's uniform, on which the neon signs cast patches of coloured light as they passed by. She saw his face in the mirror. No different from the others after all, she thought.
After midnight she was another two hundred marks richer. She had drunk a little too much of Eulenfels's 1926 Ruinart Pere & Fils, and on the way home sang a selection from the Comedian Harmonists.
Fredie went through her handbag as usual. 'Three hundred and sixty? Did something special for Herr Eulenfels, did you?' She was too tipsy to answer.
At nine in the morning she went out to buy breakfast rolls. There was a lively discussion going on at the baker's. The man's right. He's not letting those foreigners intimidate him. You wait and see, he'll soon see off that disgraceful Treaty of Versailles.' Korff a retired teacher who lived next door, looked triumphantly around the room.
'Yes, and you just wait — Herr Hitler will soon be locking up everyone whose nose he doesn't care for, like mine,' said the man next to him, Louis Silberstein, flautist in the philharmonic. You can read all about it in his ghastly tome Mein Kampf. I'm moving to Weingartner at the Vienna Opera. Small white loaf, please.'
'He wants to send Hindenburg into well-earned retirement and bring the Kaiser back,' said the baker's wife knowledgeably. 'Well, we'll be getting the right people to lead us at last.'
'You mean those aristocratic idiots with their von and zu titles?' mocked Anita Kolbe, a sculptress who lived in Westendallee. 'Heads like wood all the way through. It comes from all those family trees.'