I was having breakfast alone. The General and Frau Keith always took coffee and rolls in their apartment, Christoph had gone to work, and Kaspar was presumably asleep.
Meier had obviously not made up his mind about me. Meier was confused by people without titles that fixed their status: Herr General, Frau General, Herr Oberleutnant, Herr Fähnrich - that was Kaspar, although I now suspected that Kaspar never actually received the ensign's commission before his world collapsed - bur how was Meier supposed to behave toward plain Mister Ellis, as he had been told to call me
As he poured the coffee I decided this might be the moment to follow Bobby's instructions, but I needed an envelope and couldn't think of the German word. The mail was on a silver tray. I pointed and tried to explain.
Meier shook his head. Leider keine Post für Mister Ellis.
No, not mail for me, I want this ... an envelope.
"Ein couvert?"
Right, couvert. A French word, after all.
Meier disappeared and returned a moment later with a stiff white envelope engraved with the Keith family crest. I took a five-dollar bill from my wallet, slipped it into the envelope and handed the envelope to Meier." For the household." I waved vaguely in the direction of the pantry.
Meier understood immediately, but he wasn't sure if he should take it.
"This is between you and me, Meier. A secret. Not for the family. The times are hard, and I eat a lot. You can take it."
Meier looked at me again, nodded, took the envelope, stuffed it into his inside pocket - and bowed, just a quick little bow. No change of expression.
The doorbell rang. Meier frowned and left the room. I drank my coffee and listened to voices in the hall.
Meier reappeared.
A man to see Mister Ellis. Not "ein Herr", a gentleman, but "ein Mann". He had a letter. Meier handed me another stiff white envelope. No family crest. No. 7, Pariser Platz, Berlin N.W., addressed by hand to: Herr Ellis, bei Herrn Generalmajor a.D. Keith, Knausstrasse 10, Berlin-Grunewald.
I could read the address, but when I opened the envelope I saw that the whole letter was written with a pen in German script; I had to ask Meier to read it. Apparently nobody had done that before, and it seemed to please him. He produced a pince-nez polished it with a handkerchief, put it on, took the letter, cleared his throat, and read with surprising vivacity:
Very honored Herr Ellis,
I must write in German but hope that Lieutenant Keith will translate. This letter introduces my pupil Herrn Fritz Falke. Although Herr Falke's subjects and style of work differ greatly from my own, I believe him to be one of the most gifted young artists in Berlin. I would highly recommend him as an instructor.
With best wishes for a fruitful relationship I am
Sincerely yours,
Max Liebermann
"Max Liebermann?" repeated Meier, visibly impressed. "That is one of our greatest painters! "
"Well, you'd better ask Herr Falke to come in."
Meier cleared his throat again.
"What's the matter, Meier?"
"The man is to be received in the dining room?"
"Something wrong with that?"
Meier examined his gloves. "Visitors are received in the salon, Mister Ellis."
"All right, we'll receive him in the salon." I got up and followed Meier out of the dining room, down the dark hall and into what Americans would have called the parlor.
"Mister Ellis," announced Meier, as he opened the door and then shut it behind my back.
At the other end of the room a stocky blond man was examining the photographs of Death's Head Hussars. He wore a leather jacket over a shiny blue suit, and a white shirt with a necktie, he had placed his workman's cap and a large brown folder on the sofa.
"Good day, Herr Falke," I said in German. "I have read your letter from Professor Liebermann."
"Oh, you speak German?" A friendly gold-toothed grin and a strong, calloused handshake. A round red face. Broad shoulders. He seemed uncomfortable in the Sunday suit and the necktie. He was sweating a little.
Did I want to see examples of his work? He began to open the folder. I was embarrassed: why should a professional artist show me samples of his work? But I looked at them as he spread them across the couch - and I was amazed.
You must remember this was I922; nobody outside Germany had heard of Fritz Falke. I may have been the first American to see those savage caricatures in charcoal and in pencil: the fat cigar-smoking profiteers, the ugly naked whores on their laps, the starving, begging children . . . and I didn't see the worst ones that morning, because Falke knew perfectly well what sort of household he was visiting, so he only brought a few samples, comparatively mild ones. He didn't bring the pig-faced army officers with their Iron Crosses, he didn't bring the killers with jackboots and machine guns and swastikas painted on their helmets - but I saw them later. That morning he showed me mostly portrait studies, grim and realistic faces of factory workers, bartenders, circus performers, and he showed me a few luscious almost pornographic haIf-undressed girls, done in oil and in watercolor.
He was clearly a skilIful and original craftsman, and of course I asked how we could arrange lessons. How much would he charge?
He shrugged. I must tell you I have never given lessons. Let us see how it goes."
Where would we work?
"Have you a studio here?"
"No", I said. And I didn't see any way to work with Falke in the Villa Keith. Should I rent a studio somewhere?
He shook his head. "Come to my place. It is small and crowded and in another part of town, but we will begin there and see how it goes. You can always rent a studio later."
The district of Neukölln was in the southwest of the city, on the other side of Tempelhof, the old parade grounds being turned into an airport. The district of Neukölln was a maze of six-story tenement houses.
We got off the trolley and walked through dark narrow streets. By American standards these buildings were not high, but they looked as gray and grim as fortresses; people called them Mietskasernen - rental barracks.
We entered the first courtyard of one of these buildings: overflowing garbage containers, a coal pile, ragged little boys kicking a soccer ball around, laundry dangling from dozens of lines that crisscrossed from the windows above our heads. The cement stairwell reeked of urine and cooking cabbages. As we climbed, the sounds of human life climbed with us: people shouting at each other, doors slamming, children crying, dogs barking ...we climbed and we climbed. "Only three more flights," Falke assured me." We have better light at the top."
He hadn't said much during the trip. Had I been in the War? I told him I had. He nodded. He had been, also. No further discussion. Had I had painting lessons? I told him about my year at the Beaux Arts. He nodded again. "I envy you."
I asked about his studies with Max Liebermann.
"A wonderful old man. A giant. Oh, how he dislikes my pictures! He comes from the upper bourgeoisie, he does not like to look at the things I see, the things I paint, he finds them disgusting ... but just the same, he believes I have talent, he knows my life is difficult, he tries to help....A wonderful man."
Panting, we arrived at the sixth-floor landing and he produced a bunch of keys, but as he began to insert one into the keyhole of the first door, the door opened from the inside: a plump, handsome, smiling woman of forty or so, dressed only in a loose bathrobe, and a very small boy, dressed in shorts and a sweater. "Well, that didn't take long -" she began in German, but Falke hastily made introductions: "Frau Bauer - our Mutti Bauer, my little son Ferdinand, we call him Ferdi - Mr. Ellis the American painter, Mr. Ellis speaks fluent German!"
I shook hands with the woman, tried to shake hands with the little boy, who grabbed for the woman's leg ... Mutti Bauer? This wasn't his wife? I was shown into what looked like a combined kitchen bathroom - a coal stove, a sink and a laundry tub, a wooden table with wooden chairs, cooking utensils, towels....
"I think we will go directly into the studio - which is also my bedroom," said Falke, opening the door to another, rather dark ,
/ 8 2
room that seemed to have nothing but beds in it, but Frau Bauer lunged forward to stop him. "ähh, Fritz, the girls are still asleep!"
"Well, for God's sake, it is high noon," said Falke, but he lowered his voice. "We have to get into the studio to work."
"Just go through quietly, then, and shut the door."
I followed Falke into the darkness. Cigarette smoke and perfume.
The curtain was closed, but in the light from the open door I saw two beds and a small cot. One of the beds contained two young women, sleeping with their backs to each other. I only caught a glimpse, because Falke opened another door and waved me into a third room, a bright and sunlit corner room, smelling of paint and turpentine. He closed the door behind us.
"I'm sorry, it is inconvenient," he murmured. "It would be better to have the bedroom at the back, but the light is so much better with these two windows .. ."
He had arranged a small but comfortable studio: a wooden work table, a couple of chairs, an easel, bookshelves and a supply cupboard, a small coal stove, a bed (with a chamber pot underneath). ... The walls were covered with so many charcoal sketches that the sheets overlapped; the floor was stacked with canvases. One window looked directly into another tenement, but the other one provided a view down a long straight street toward the open fields of Tempelhof.
Fritz Falke sat down in one of the chairs and folded his arms across his chest and smiled at me. "All right, my friend, where do we begin?"
I found a clean white pad and a box of charcoal sticks, sat down at the side of the room and began to sketch a preliminary study for a portrait. For a long time neither of us said a word. It felt good to be doing this again, I was absorbed and at peace, I forgot where I was. I sat there and fixed my thoughts upon this man, this perfect stranger, and tried to get myself inside him. To do that right, I think you have to talk to the subject, but for a long time neither of us seemed to want to breach the silence. I worked.
Noises from the bedroom. Voices. The door opened, two girls dressed only in very short slips; sisters, with reddish chestnut hair and creamy skin. The older one had more generous proportions than were fashionable that year but her hair was bobbed short as a boy's; the younger one was slim as a boy - a boy with shoulder length hair. I recognized the models for Fritz Falke's more appetizing paintings.
They stared at me and giggled.
Fritz Falke turned around. "Put something on, you shameless trollops!",
The door closed. I couldn't contain my curiosity. "Who are they? "
"The one with the shape is my wife. Her name is Barbara. We call her Bärbel. The little one's her sister, Brigitte. We call her Baby."
"And Frau Bauer?"
"Is their mother. A widow. The man was killed in Flanders."
"But why were they both sleeping?"
"They work all night. A club in the Friedrichstrasse. They come home at daybreak sometimes, and I'm asleep in here, the mother and the boy are asleep in there, so they just share the other bed. Not convenient, butt here's nothing else to do."
The girls came in again, both wrapped in what looked like genuine kimonos. Bärbel's was black, with red flowers; Baby's was red, with black flowers.
Falke introduced us. They both wanted to try their English.
"Leave the man alone," said Falke. "He is doing his work."
Frau Bauer appeared, still wrapped in her bathrobe. "Is anybody hungry? We only have potatoes."
"Get some herrings," said Falke.
"Herrings? " cried Baby. "It isn't Sunday!"
"Potatoes will be fine for me -" I began.
"Baby, go down to the corner and get two nice herrings. And an onion," said Frau Bauer.
"Why do I have to go? It's her turn to go - AUUAHH!"
Her mother had snatched a long steel ruler from the table, and with one vicious whirring curve smacked it full force across the girl's rump. Baby ran out of the room, her mother behind her, and although the door was closed we could hear the shouting as Baby dressed.
For a few minutes everything was quiet. Bärbel took a pack of cigarettes from the jacket of her husband's pocket, lighted one and padded softly around the room, looking at me, looking at my drawing, looking out the windows, stretching her legs out of the kimono, stretching her neck, presenting her profile - consciously, possibly unconsciously - striking various paintable attitudes. Falke watched her, with the barest suggestion of a smile, the way one would watch a performing cat. I tried to keep my eyes on Falke's face, to catch something of this new expression.
Suddenly a bell began to ring; not a church bell, not an electric alarm bell, but a small bell that somebody was ringing by hand, something like the dinner bell our cook at home uses to call the family to the table.
Falke and Bärbel looked at each other. Frau Bauer burst into the room: "Police in the house!" She wrenched one of the windows open and leaned out. "No Grüne Minna? Then it can't be a raid." She ran out of the room again, and Bärbel after her. Falke sat motionless in his chair, so I just continued to work.
"What's a Grüne Minna?" I asked.
"Big police van. To carry people to prison."
"Do you have police here often?"
"Often enough. The tenants warn each other. But it was worse in the revolution, I can tell you. It wasn't the police then, it was the Freikorps. Wonderful fellows. I could tell you some stories!"
"Were you here then?"
Falke's expression changed. "Yes and no," he said, but before I could ask him what that meant, a rhythmic metallic tapping sound began to come from the empty coal stove in the corner. Tap-tap-tap. Pause. Tap-tap-tap. Pause.
"What's that?"
"That's the neighbors downstairs, banging on the chimney. Means the police are in our stairwell -" and Bärbel ran back into the studio: "They're coming up! Mutti's on the landing watching them."
We heard the apartment door slam, and then Frau Bauer returned, wildly brushing her hair with a long wooden hairbrush. "God damn it," she said through the bobby pins in her mouth, "I knew I should have gotten dressed-" Her face was pink with anger and excitement.
"Mutti, you think they're coming here?"
Frau Bauer nodded, glancing into Falke's mirror, pinning her thick hair away from her face, pulling the bathrobe into a less revealing arrangement. "It's only that pest from the School Administration again, that dried-up spinster making trouble. Bärbel, get back into bed and be asleep!"
"Why should l?"
Frau Bauer reached for the long ruler, and Bärbel dashed into the bedroom. At that moment another hard instrument was rapped against the apartment door.
"Polizei! Sofort aufmachen!"
I assumed that Falke would take over now, but I was wrong. Falke sat motionless in his chair. Frau Bauer cursed softly and went to open the door. Loud voices from the kitchen, and then a large policeman came stomping through the bedroom into the studio.
He wore black boots, a long greatcoat with silver buttons, a leather belt with a black automatic in a black holster, a nightstick, and the high shiny black leather shako of the regular Berlin Schutzpolizei; a calm-looking middle-aged man, probably a sergeant during the War. He looked at us carefully from the door.
Falke sat still in his chair and I continued to draw his portrait, thinking all this was quite different from the Beaux Arts.
The policeman unbuttoned the top buttons of his greatcoat and produced a notebook, which he now consulted. "Kaiser Friedrichstrasse No. 10, First Courtyard, Apartment 6A, Bauer, K.... You are Bauer?"
"No, Herr Wachtmeister, I am Falke, Fritz, son-in-law in residence. This gentleman is an American citizen, Mr. Ellis. He does not speak German. He is receiving painting lessons from me, as you see."
"Good afternoon, officer," I said in English. The policeman checked his list, apparently located Falke, Fritz, and walked heavily into the studio to inspect my work.
In the meantime, Frau Bauer was in the bedroom, engaged in a loud discussion with a formidable lady in a black cape, hornrimmed glasses, and a severe black hat. The lady was looking for Brigitte Bauer, and had opened the curtains to make sure that the indignant girl now getting out of bed was not Brigitte Bauer.
"Where is Brigitte?" The lady's voice was shrill.
"I have lust told you, Fräulein Opitz. I sent her to the library to get a copy of Faust-"
"Frau Bauer, I will not be trifled with. The Prussian School Administration will not be trifled with! -The girl was not in school again today, after all of our warnings ... and you tell me stories about Faust. How many copies of the Faust do you think there are in the school?"
Frau Bauer sat down on her bed. "Fräulein Opitz, what am I to do? The girl is sixteen -"
"Frau Bauer, I have here in my purse a copy of Brigitte's birth certificate from the Standesamt Berlin-Neukölln, which clearly shows the girl is fifteen ,as you very well know, and this fifteen-year-old girl is seen every night in the worst places on the Friedrichstrasse, we have written reports, Frau Bauer, and this will not continue!"
Frau Bauer had put her head in her hands and was sobbing now. "Fräulein Opitz, what can I do! This new world since the War, the young people today, they do what they want, they pay no attention to their mother, the father fell in Flanders, I'm all alone in the world, I have no position, I must live on the miserable pension -"
"Frau Bauer, please control yourself!"
Instead of controlling herself, Frau Bauer began to howl, and her voice must have been audible in the innermost courtyard of Friedrichstrasse No.10.
"Oh God in heaven, what am I to do? l'm all alone in the world with my girls, the rent isn't paid, we have four potatoes in the cupboard -"
"This is absolutely the last warning, Frau Bauer!" Fräulein Opitz parried Frau Bauer's screams with low-pitched, sibilant tones. "If Brigitte is not in school tomorrow, if there are any more unexcused absences, I will bring you before the magistrate. And you know very well what that means: he can fine you, he can put you in jail - and he can put Brigitte into an institution where they will keep her in the classroom - and out of cabarets. "
Grimacing as if in pain, Fräulein 0pitz came into the studio. Her spectacles glittered.
"Herr Falke, as the man of the house, it seems to me that you have some responsibility in this matter."
Falke finally stood up and I did too..
"Fräulein, with respect, you know the girl's not mine, I'm only permitted to live and work here through the generosity of my esteemed mother-in-Iaw- "
"As the man of the house you stand in loco parentis."
"Oh, with greatest respect, Fräulein, I do not stand in loco parentis, I have made careful inquiry about the matter."
"I refuse to quibble with you about legal technicalities, Herr Falke! "Now Fräulein Opitz was shouting too. Frau Bauer had appeared at the door, her face streaked with tears, and Bärbel ,holding the littleboy in her arms. The studio was suddenly crowded and Fräulein Opitz obviously felt it.
"Who is this man?" she demanded, as if she wanted to change the subject.
Again, Falke explained that I was an American, I didn't speak German, I was taking lessons....
Fräulein Opitz stepped around the policeman and looked at the drawing I was working on. The others moved in behind her.
She looked at my drawing for a long moment, and then she glanced at the pictures on the walls - Fritz Falke's blazing, phantasmagoric shrieks of protest. "This gentleman is taking lessons from you, Herr Falke? I think it should be the other way around!"
Silence, and then Frau Bauer began to laugh.
PROLOGUE - THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 1922
I. HOW I GOT THERE
1. PARIS 1922
2. VERDUN 1916
3. IT'S STEALING MONEY, ISN'T IT
4. WHERE WERE YOU IN 1919?
5. RELIABLE TROOPS
6. AN ISLAND
7. BISMARCK FOUND THEM USEFUL
8. INTRODUCTIONS
9. THE LITTLE HOUSE
10. INDIAN CROSSES
11. ANOTHER PART OF TOWN
12. A VIEW OF THE GENDARMENMARKT
13. TWO FOR TEA
14. ON THE TOWN
15. A VIEW OF THE HAVEL
16. REIGEN
II. WHAT HAPPENED
17. THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 1922
18. MONDAY, JUNE 19, 1922
19. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 1922
20. FRIDAY, JUNE 23, 1922
21. SATURDAY, JUNE 24, 1922
22. WHAT HAPPENED?
III. THE WITCHES' SABBATH
23. SILENCE WITH VOICES
24. THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS
25. SAME SONGS, DIFFERENT SINGERS
26. THEY'RE ONLY GOING TO HIRE HIS VOICE
27. INFLATION WORKS IN DIFFERENT WAYS
28. SMALL CHANGE
29. WHY NOT PAINT LILI?
30. COLD WIND IN MAY
31. ROLLING THUNDER
32. WALDSTEIN'S VOICE
33. THE MATTER OF A DOWRY
34. A RUSSIAN WORD AND A GERMAN WORD
35. THE MARCH ON BERLIN
36. A PIG LOSES MONEY ALL THE TIME
37. THE ARTISTS' BALL
IV. STRIKE TWELVE ZEROs
38. AMYTAL DREAMS
39. LETTERS
40. PROFESSOR JAFFA'S PROGNOSIS
41. THE OTHER SUBJECT
42. ROLLING HOME