Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright Page 6

  “Your opera souvenirs?”

  “Yes, these are some of the high points of my musical life. I treasure them, and…” He paused dramatically. “I have a new one.” He reached into the briefcase at his feet and withdrew a large dagger.

  Katja carried the frying pan to the table and scooped the contents onto their plates “Oh, my. That is impressive. It’s even made out of metal. What opera is it from?”

  “Verdi’s Macbeth. Yesterday evening was the last performance. It’s an old production and they don’t plan to do it again, so I convinced the prop department to let me have this. What do you think?” He handed the weapon across the table to her.

  Katja held the dagger up in front of her. Its pommel was coated with some sort of reflective green paint and its metal blade tapered to a mean point. She tapped it lightly on the table. “I thought they were supposed to use collapsing blades on these stage daggers, or wood. Someone could get hurt.”

  “No one gets stabbed with this one. It’s from the scene where Macbeth sings about a dagger hovering in front of him. The prop people made it so that it would reflect light even on a dark set. It’s quite a moment on stage.”

  “Vati, you get so excited about the melodrama of opera. Meanwhile, all over Germany, real drama’s going on, but you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Of course I don’t. I can’t do anything about all those real dramas. I’m a musician. I have nothing to say about politics.”

  Katja didn’t respond. Was she any different, after all, making a propaganda film without really thinking about its influence—simply to further her own career? The thought troubled her, so she let the subject drop.

  They ate in comfortable silence, attending to the music. It had been that way since Gerda Sommer died. Dinner in relative silence, as if out of respect to her. But this time Katja sensed another absence. What would it be like to have Rudi and Peter at supper? Or Frederica Brandt?

  Would she ever feel the sense of family again? She had been hoping for that with Dietrich, though at the moment, the image of sitting in a quaint Bavarian kitchen with his parents seemed less appealing than the memory of vodka coffee with Jews, Communists, and homosexuals.

  Chapter Eight

  Peter answered the door with a needle and thread in one hand. “Hello, Katja dear. Rudi is just finishing some pictures, and I was doing the mending. Rudi goes through socks like a mountain climber,” he said with feigned despair as he led her into the living room.

  Rudi was just emerging from the corner he had made into a darkroom. He greeted Katja while drying his hands on a cloth. They were lovely hands, she noticed. Unusual for a man. Someone with hands like that could do only gentle things, creative things. It fit that he was a photographer. He drew her toward the sofa.

  “Frau Riefenstahl said we’ll be coordinating press releases to the venues that will be airing the documentary in May. Is that right?” she asked as she sat down.

  “Yes, that’s the plan. And this…” He indicated the living room. “This will be her Press Office.”

  Katja let her glance sweep around the room. With a third of it curtained off into a darkroom, and the other third a dining area, the Press Office amounted to the sofa and coffee table. “I love it,” she said with sincerity. “Until we get famous, this will be fine.”

  “Glad you like it.” He crossed his legs and made a little tent with his pretty hands. So, here’s how we’ll proceed. I’ve got a set of my best photos from Triumph des Willens. Using those, you’ll write clever and inspiring texts to market the film. Frau Riefenstahl will choose her favorites from among those, and we’ll send them off to the venues. It will be a challenge, though. Your descriptive material mustn’t sound like something from the Ministry of Propaganda.”

  “Yes, I know. Art, not propaganda. But doesn’t the Führer want it to be propaganda?”

  “Of course he does. But we’re going to let Frau Riefenstahl ski that slalom herself. From our side, we’ll promote the film as a work in its own right.”

  “I agree. No politics. So, show me your photos, and I’ll jot down a few artistic remarks.”

  The morning passed quickly as they discussed the merits of each photograph, and within three hours and two cups of coffee, they had a substantial folio of material to present. A little after twelve, Rudi looked at his watch.

  “I think we need to stop. I don’t want to rush you out of here, but I’m meeting with Yevgeny Khaldei again to photograph Goebbels giving a speech at the exhibit on The German Woman.” Rumors have been circulating about how the Nazis want to regulate marriage, but this will be the first time we’ve heard it from the dwarf’s own mouth.”

  “That sounds fascinating. Would I be in the way if I joined you?”

  “Not at all. You’re welcome to come along. Yevgeny is photographing for TASS and I’m doing it for my personal archives. It starts at two this afternoon.”

  “That’s perfect. I’ll have plenty of time afterward to drop off our notes and photos at the studio. Frau Riefenstahl’s overwhelmed with editing right now and won’t even look at them until tomorrow.” Katja stood up and moved toward the door. “All right, then. Women’s Exhibit just before two.”

  *

  Rudi and Yevgeny stood just outside the exhibition hall as Katja arrived and the doors to the hall opened. As the crowd flowed in, journalists took up strategic places with their cameras and microphones. Yevgeny went along the side wall as close to the podium as possible with a microphone and bulky recording machine hanging on a strap over his shoulder. Rudi took a series of photographs of the Reichsminister when he entered, then remained at the rear with Katja.

  “German women. German men,” Joseph Goebbels sang out over the buzzing crowd.

  Katja glanced around at the audience. All in civilian clothes, they were very different from the uniformed audiences at the party rallies. These were “polite” Germans, women and men one met all over Berlin, who claimed to be apolitical. But Magda Goebbels, the model National Socialist woman par excellence, sat in the front row.

  Did she know about her husband’s flirtations?

  Katja moved her eyes along the rows from head to head, first row, second row, third row. Ah, there, at the far end of the fourth row, the familiar sweep of Frederica’s not-quite-blond hair. She chuckled inwardly. It seemed slightly sordid for a man to lecture on the role of women to an audience containing both his wife and his next conquest.

  Goebbels’ opening remarks had passed right over her, but now his voice penetrated the fog of her thoughts.

  Although men make history, women make the boys who are the men who make history. You know that the National Socialist movement has kept women out of politics, but that is not because we do not respect them. It is because we respect them too much.

  Katja shifted uncomfortably. The words could have come from Dietrich or his mother. But perhaps the Reichsminister could justify that view more effectively than Dietrich had.

  Looking back over Germany’s decline, we come to the frightening conclusion that the less German men were willing to act manly in public life, the more women attempted to fill the role of men. Yes, the feminization of men always leads to the masculinization of women. An age in which the values of hardness and determination have been forgotten, it should be no surprise that men have lost their authority to women.

  Was it true? Katja asked herself. Had Dietrich’s gentle nature made her too aggressive in the pursuit of her own goals? It was a troubling thought.

  The first, best, and most suitable place for the women is in the family, and her most glorious duty is to give children to her people and nation, and thus guarantee the immortality of the race.

  Katja’s thoughts wandered back to Nuremberg to a warm Bavarian kitchen and a room filled with Hitlerjugend memorabilia. Was that her duty, to live in that room, waiting to be impregnated? So far, by choosing the days to allow sex, she had managed to prevent that, but marriage would presumably end her right to do so. She glanced
toward the back of Frederica’s head and wondered what she was thinking.

  German women have begun to see they are not happier being given more rights and fewer duties. They now realize that the right to be elected to public office at the expense of the right to life and motherhood is not a good trade. The German birthrate is declining precipitously and we must halt this impoverishment of our blood. The liberal attitude toward the family and the child is responsible for Germany’s rapid decline. Germany has a great mission in the world and calls upon German women to let their sons join in the reawakening of the nation.

  He gave a signal and some dozen Hitlerjugend came along the rows of listeners and handed out a flyer. Katja took one as a lad passed by. It was a diagram of racial purity, with colored bubbles—clear, quarter black, half black, and full black, next to various “marriages” with tags labeling them “encouraged,” “permitted,” and “forbidden.” She looked back toward the podium for explanation.

  This is the beginning of a new German woman, who proudly and freely chooses motherhood to save the race. It goes without saying that women must bear children only of their own race, and that racial mixing is mongrelizing. The diagram we have passed around to you is a clarification of our thinking. Let it be your guide and reminder.

  He raised his gavel and brought it down smartly onto its pad. “I now declare this exhibition open.” At that moment, Magda Goebbels stood up and went to embrace her husband as he came from the podium. A carefully choreographed moment, Katja was sure, to illustrate the model German woman. Faithful, fervent, and fertile.

  Frederica did not move from her seat.

  Katja declined to visit the exhibit and noted that Leni Riefenstahl had not been invited for the opening speech. Obviously, as both ambitious and childless, she presented an embarrassingly attractive alternative to the National Socialist model.

  Katja glanced down at the “racial-purity” chart in her hand. Behind her, Yevgeny said, “Is disgusting, no?” He pointed to the column where a black Jewish bubble linked with a pure Aryan bubble was underscored and labeled “forbidden.”

  “We have some like that in Russia, but not so bad. But plan for women to have sons for homeland is same in Russia.”

  “Everyone wants me to have a baby,” Katja murmured.

  “I don’t, Katja, dear.” To her surprise, Rudi linked his arm into hers. “I just want you to be happy. So why don’t you ask her to lunch?”

  “Ask who to lunch?”

  “You’ve been staring at one person through the whole lecture, and it wasn’t Herr Reichsminister.”

  “I wasn’t staring at anyone,” Katja insisted.

  Rudi didn’t argue, only touched her shoulder. “Ask her to lunch.”

  Chapter Nine

  The usual SS stood guard at the Ministry for Propaganda and Education, but Katja’s papers identifying her as assistant to Leni Riefenstahl got her past the first phalanx. Confronted inside by two more guards, she told half the truth, that she had no appointment but that she was in the process of preparing the documentary of the party congress. She did not need to bother Dr. Goebbels himself, but only one of his assistants, Frederica Brandt.

  Obligingly, the guard departed without question to seek the requested person while the other guard remained at his post. She waited some fifteen minutes, feeling more and more foolish. She had rehearsed what she was going to say, but now it sounded like complete nonsense. People simply did not—

  “What a surprise.” A familiar voice pulled her out of the squalor of her doubts.

  Frederica looked stunning. In fact, she was dressed much the same as she had been at the Women’s Exhibition, in a skirt and matching jacket of forest green. Her not-quite-blond hair was no better coiffed than before, but her smile, this time, was directed at Katja, not Joseph Goebbels. She leaned toward Katja and brushed a light kiss of greeting on her cheek.

  “I was in the middle of transcribing something and I can’t stay long, but I’m delighted to see you. How is everyone? Frau Riefenstahl? Sepp? Marti? The others?”

  “Sepp is on some other film project, and so is Marti. I never see any of them. Only Rudi. We were at the Women’s Exhibition the other day, in the back of the hall.”

  “Oh, I was there too. How could I have missed you?”

  “We left early. I’m sorry.” Katja regretted hurrying away now; they might have talked.

  “Um, what brings you to the ministry, then? The guard just said you had business related to the film.”

  Katja’s face grew warm; she was about to be caught in a lie and be humiliated. It felt a little like putting a gun to her own head. “Well, no. I was simply wondering if you were free on Sunday,” she blurted.

  “Free? What do you mean? Like to do something?”

  “Yes, to…um…go to the Tiergarten. There’s ice-skating, and we can drink hot wine afterward.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad.” Inwardly, Katja came crashing down. Yes, this is what humiliation felt like. “I should have known you’d be busy. It was just a thought,” she mumbled, looking away.

  “No, no. I’m not busy. It’s just that I can’t ice-skate. I hurt my ankle a few years ago doing just that, and I’ll never put on ice skates again. But what about the zoo? I heard there are new lion cubs. If that sounds appealing, I’m free after ten o’clock.”

  Katja jerked back from despair. “Oh, the zoo would be fun. Let’s say just after ten by the entrance.”

  “Perfect,” Frederica said softly, but then added more urgently, “Listen, I’m sorry I can’t stay here long. I’m doing a transcription and the deadline is in an hour. But I’ll see you on Sunday.” Frederica leaned near for a departing kiss and Katja felt the quick softness on her cheek. A faint whiff of perfume and Frederica was away, waving behind her while she hurried toward the stairs.

  As Katja all but danced down the stairs leading from the Ministry of Propaganda, she muttered to herself. “What are you doing?” But the other half of her was not listening.

  *

  Katja stepped off the Strassenbahn at the Tiergarten-Zoo stop a bit early. Even the leaden winter sky that seemed to suck color out of every object could not affect her. Neither did the bitter cold, though on her own, she would never have considered wandering around the zoo. The ice-skating she had suggested was intended to be short-lived, with them ending up huddled together inside a warm café.

  But even in the cold zoo, they’d have the morning all to themselves, with no one listening, and they could still end up in a warm café. She realized suddenly that for the past two years, she had spent such intimate time only with Dietrich. The zoo meeting felt faintly like betrayal.

  The zoo entrance had changed little since her last childhood visit. Even the kiosk a few dozen meters down the street was still selling newspapers and sweets, and she remembered the lemon drops her father always bought for her there before they visited the animals. For years, she had associated the zoo with the taste of lemon candy.

  The entry fee was a bit higher, which was no surprise after twenty years, and as she passed through the gate, she looked at her watch. She was prepared to wait but then saw Frederica at the distant kiosk and wondered, with slight amusement if she was buying lemon drops. Katja watched, bafflingly happy, as Frederica approached. She wore a long gray coat, nearly shapeless, over slacks. Brown shoes laced up to the ankle gave her a faintly British-explorer look.

  “Oh, There you are,” she called, the steam of her breath wafting upward. They embraced quickly, their cold cheeks touching.

  “It looks like we’re the only ones here. I suppose the children don’t want to come out in this weather.”

  “Very smart of them.” Frederica laughed. “I hope you don’t mind. If it gets too cold, we can leave.” Dropping her still-folded newspaper into a bin, she took hold of Katja’s arm and drew her along in a slow stroll.

  “So, how are you? Are you getting on with Frau Riefenstahl?”

&nbs
p; Even through two layers of coat sleeve, Katja felt Frederica’s warmth. Chatting came easier. “She’s working like a dog, twelve, fourteen hours a day. I don’t envy her the fame one bit. She’s got the success or failure of the whole project hanging over her head. Sometimes she even sleeps in the studio,” Katja poured out in a stream.

  “The devil’s a hard taskmaster,” Frederica said enigmatically, and the subject fizzled out.

  They strolled, unhurried, becoming comfortable together. “I like the zoo,” Katja volunteered. “I don’t know why I don’t come here more often.”

  “I love it too. It’s a little like humanity in microcosm, and you can find most of our vices and virtues in one species or another. They act out our urges and tell us a lot about ourselves.”

  “You mean like when monkeys throw feces?” Katja teased.

  “Well, yes. I’ve seen a few exchanges of verbal feces in my life. Haven’t you?”

  Katja chuckled. “Yes, but now I’m going to have that image in my mind the next time I hear a political speech attacking our enemies.”

  “I have it all the time,” Frederica said, turning them both toward the Gorilla House.

  The double doors to the building effectively blocked the icy air, and the temperature inside was pleasant. In the first cage, two gorillas squatted lethargically in their cages, scratching themselves like old men. They gazed at them with slight curiosity, as if waiting to be engaged in conversation.

  “Gorillas look at you with so much understanding,” Katja said. “You can’t help but wonder what they’re thinking.”

  “A bit like men,” Frederica muttered.

  Katja giggled. “Except, we know what men want.” Then, after a moment’s thought, she said, “It is amazing, isn’t it, how they simplify things.” I mean, I just heard Dr. Goebbels speak about the role of women in Germany, and while I could see he had a point about keeping Germany strong, the whole baby program depressed me. I mean, I don’t want to live like Magda Goebbels, being subject to her husband’s sexual whims and existing to produce children for the Reich.”