Berlin: A Novel

Afterwards she went into the bathroom to gargle and shower. Fredie handed her a towel. 'It's not that bad, girl.' He patted her bottom as if to mollify her. 'Noack can do us no end of good if you play along, so don't make such a fuss about it.'

'Why did you marry me?' she asked, painfully.

A long-standing fiancee with lots of different gentlemen friends no longer suits our sound and healthy German national mood. With these new bigwigs in charge you have to look moral to the outside world.'

She dressed in a light pullover, wide-legged, pale-grey flannel trousers and sandals. She looked at herself in the mirror, a pretty young married woman, fashionably dressed, with an ambitious husband and a home in a prime location. That was how any observer who didn't know better would see her. And you're nothing but a tart,' she spat at her reflection in the glass.

Fredie was in a deckchair on the terrace, reading the Lokalanzeiger. 'Fabulous!' he cried. 'There's a million and a half motorcars in the country now. Every forty-second German owns one. What do you think of a nice convertible?'

'What do you think of the S-Bahn?' She brought him down to earth. 'You could take it into town and get me some of this Erwin Kastner's books. From now on I'm one of his greatest fans.'

Astonishing what a bit of exercise against a birch tree will do,' he mocked her.

'One of these days I'll murder you, Fredie,' she replied equably.

Marlene had been reading a great deal lately She indiscriminately consumed everything written by Stefan Zweig. Hedwig Courths-Mahler, Theodor Fontane, Thea von Harbou and many more. The former owners of the house had left their library behind. She spent two days and half a night reading Erwin Kastner's The Family Visit, The Peep-Show and The Giraffe's Guide. They were satirical commentaries on modern life. Marlene sensed rather than understood that the author was knocking holes in grandiose facades.

On Tuesday she went into town, very much the chic Berliner, tall and slim, her blonde hair fashionably set. She noted admiring looks from men, and expertly parried several attempts to approach her. At Stiller's she bought a pair of shoes, and in the Wertheim department store some artificial silk stockings. At Aschingers she allowed herself a couple of sausages for lunch, and in the afternoon she went into the Romanesque Cafe near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.

There was a picture of the author on the dust jacket of one of his books, and she recognized him at once. Erwin Kastner was a dapper little man with wavy grey hair. There was nothing Bohemian about him; he looked more like a kindly public-school teacher in his neatly pressed suit. He was sitting at a little marble table with a dozen well-sharpened pencils in front of him, and a pad of lined writing paper which he was covering with spindly handwriting. Marlene watched him from the next table. Now and then he raised his head, as if searching in the distance for the next part of his story.

She waved to the waiter and gave him a book. 'Would you take that over to Dr Kastner, please?' The waiter did as she asked, and put The Family Visit in front of the writer, murmuring a few words and discreetly indicating Marlene. She had slipped a note inside the book: 'My name is Marlene Neubert. I specially like the character of Arnold Wagenfeldt. Could I ask you to sign this for me?'

Kastner wrote a few words in the book and handed it back to the waiter. 'For Marlene Neubert, from Arnold Wagenfeldt, who doesn't appear in this book,' she read. She had mixed up Erwin Kastner's Family Visit with The Giraffe's Guide.

This time he returned her glance. He had an amused expression on his face. She shrugged apologetically, and paid her bill. A man with neatly parted fair hair put down the newspaper holder containing the Vossischer Zeitung and followed her. She had noticed him before on the S-Bahn, on her way into town.

'I made contact with Kastner at the Romanesque,' she told Fredie that evening. 'But you know that already.'

'For Marlene Neubert, my enchanting young reader, from Erwin Kastner, September 1933,' was the inscription in the copy of The Giraffe's Guide that the waiter took over to Marlene's table next afternoon, asking, 'Dr Kastner would like to know if he can offer you a cup of tea.'

The writer rose courteously. He came up to Marlene's shoulders. 'This is very nice of you. Do sit down. Do you come here often?'

'Yesterday was the first time. I wanted to meet you.'

'Well, now you have. A China tea?'

'I'd rather have a coffee.'

And why did you want to meet me?'

Let's simply say that I like mature men.'

'Just like that?'

'I'll tell you tomorrow if you'll invite me round to your place. There are too many eavesdroppers here.'

'Will my collection of first editions do as an excuse? I live on Bayerischer Platz. At four o'clock?' He gave her his card.

That evening Marlene handed the card to Fredie. 'He's invited me to his place tomorrow.'

'Make yourself out to be an ardent Young Communist who wants to help her idol Talberg.'

'Kastner's no fool.'

'You'll soon get him where you want him, with your abilities in bed.'

'Don't you mind it when I sleep with other men?'

'No, why should I?' was his surprised answer.

Erwin Kastner made coffee in a kind of double glass balloon over a spirit flame. Marlene watched, fascinated, as the water rose in the device and the dark-brown brew flowed down again. A bachelor needs these little household gadgets,' her host told her, rather apologetically.

She pointed to the book-lined walls around them. Have you read all those?'

'Most of them. Do you take sugar?'

'Yes please. And how many books have you written?'

'Just under a dozen.'

'Is writing fun?'

'Hellish hard work. I avoid it as soon as I come up with a good excuse.

Sharpening pencils, for instance. I can spend a whole morning sharpening pencils and never get a line down on paper. Wonderful!'

She scrutinized him, not sure whether he was being serious. 'What are you writing at the moment?'

A children's book. I'm forbidden to write for adults now. I could always go to Austria. I'm told there are some very fine coffee houses in Vienna. But I'm attached to the Romanesque and this apartment of mine.'

A real children's book?'

'It's called Lucie the Snake, about an anaconda who escapes from the zoo. A class of schoolchildren protect her from the keepers' search parties.'

'The way you're protecting your friend?'

What friend?' he asked warily.

'Eddie Talberg the Communist leader. The Geheime Staatspolizei want to know where he's hiding.'

'You are either very clever or very stupid, my dear.'

Neither. I just don't want to send anyone to his doom, least of all myself.'

'Well, you can tell your masters that Talberg has been in Warsaw for a week, on his way to Moscow.'

'Spoilsport!' she complained, smiling.

How do you mean?'

'I wasn't supposed to worm that information out of you over a cup of coffee, I was meant to do it in bed:

He kissed her hand. 'Then you've been spared a disappointment, and I have acquired a charming fan. May I ask why you are working for our new masters?'

'No, you may not!' she said firmly. Anyway, I must go now.'

Dr Noack praised her. He had come to supper. 'Good work, even if Talberg has eluded us. You ought to give your wife her reward for that, Hauptsturmfiihrer.'

Fredie took Marlene on the carpet. Then he forced her between Noack's knees. She did what was expected of her.

It was a June morning, and Fredie was getting dressed: pale-grey worsted trousers, white shirt, blue cotton tie. Marlene handed him his lightweight, cream linen jacket. No one would have suspected that this elegant apparition in his mid-twenties was a member of the Gestapo.