The Glimmer Palace (23 page)

“A deal?” the woman offered. “It’s Eva. My name, in case you forgot.”

The jam had cleared. The tram finally trundled past. All that was left of the horse was a large black stain on the cobbles. Finally, Lilly met Eva’s eye.

“I’d say it was the least you could do after last time,” Eva said.

And then Lilly remembered: She’d left suddenly, without thanking them or saying good-bye. Their maid knew; their maid could tell by the reddened chafe of her hands and the cast of her eye that she was not, as they had assumed by her dress, one of them.

But the war had changed everything.The social boundaries, which had seemed so watertight at the time, had become permeable. Lilly inclined her head, the tiniest nod.

“Wonderful. We’ll have to walk, I’m afraid. No more gas for the car.”

Eva took Lilly’s arm and folded it over her own, as if it was a natural thing, as if she did it every day. Nobody had touched Lilly like this for months. She had been jostled, pushed, shoved, and elbowed but never treated gently or affectionately. Instinctively, however, she pulled away.

“I have to be back before ten,” she said. “I mustn’t be late.”

The hostel had a strict curfew. There were, Lilly had been informed, a dozen women turned away every night, a dozen women who would and could take her place. And Lilly believed it. During that winter the first corpses started to appear on the streets. At first it was children and old people. But more recently she had seen girls her age. She could not lose her bunk.

Eva Mauritz had been on the tram on the way to the park when the horse had collapsed and died, blocking the road and forcing her, like the rest of the passengers, to climb off and investigate. She recognized the dark-haired schoolgirl immediately. She was thin but not hunched, skeletal and yet not pinched. Her face had been hollowed down to the bone, but it made her gray eyes seem bigger and more prominent in her face. In fact, she was even more striking than she had been on the day they had run her over two years earlier. Although she had grown a few inches, it wasn’t just a new maturity: there was something both vulnerable and strong in her that Eva had not noticed before, a translucency of spirit but an opaqueness of will. Poverty, Eva ruminated, seemed to suit her. And she wondered what terrible misfortune had befallen her.

The cherry trees were in blossom early that year, and pale pink blew in gusts over the off-duty soldiers who slept on park benches and around the ankles of the widows who solicited on the corners. It was a clear, cold day with an endless blue sky and just the occasional race of white cloud.

“Underwear,” said Eva. “Blossoms always remind me of thousands of tiny pairs of bloomers.”

And she laughed again, a free, easy laugh. As if it didn’t matter what anyone else thought; she was funny, she knew she was. The sun was on her face. The parks were still full of flowers despite the fact that there was no one employed to tend them. It was the kind of day where you could pretend that all was well, that all would be fine in the end.

It took an hour to walk to Steglitz. By the time they reached the apartment block, Lilly was exhausted; she had no energy to spare, few calories to burn. Inside, the apartment looked much sparser than she remembered. Some of the furniture had been chopped up for fuel and the rest was covered up with dust sheets. Eva explained that she often slept on a divan next to the fire in the kitchen.

“There’s only me,” Eva explained. “And it’s warmer this way.”

Eva had lost her maids, her cook, and most of her friends. People did not stay on in Berlin if they could help it. People did not want to fight for food or pay black-market prices if they had people they could stay with in the country. Her father, who had remarried, insisted that she come and live with him on his estate. Eva accepted but then postponed and kept postponing until he stopped inviting her. She could not bear the provinces, she said, the gossip and the rumors. But most of all, she couldn’t bear the new wife.

Eva brewed coffee with a mixture made from ground walnut shells. It was bitter and black, but at least it was hot.

“Is your brother all right?” Lilly asked. “It’s Stefan, isn’t it?”

“He’s stationed in France, next to a river called the Somme,” Eva said. “He says it’s rather beautiful, all rolling hills and meadows.”

The uhlan. Lilly had often wondered what had become of the handsome young uhlan. With their red and blue uniforms and plumed hats, they had been easy to spot in the first few months of the war and sustained heavy losses. By Christmas, what few were left had been issued new brown uniforms and guns instead of lances. They were uhlans now in name only.

In her mind she saw him in the drawing room with a cup of tea balanced on his knee. As far as she knew, they were winning the war. But if that was so, why didn’t they bring it to a close? How long did the kaiser think they could go on like this?

Lilly picked up the coffee with her thumb and forefinger, careful not to let the hot cup touch her palms. Eva was watching her, her face tilted into a question.

“Do you have any ointment?” she asked. “I have a few blisters.”

“Jesus Christ!” Eva whispered as she dabbed the blisters with salt water and iodine. But she could tell by Lilly’s expression that it was better not to ask how she got them or where.

“Didn’t you join the Red Cross?” Lilly asked.

“Got kicked out,” Eva said with a sideways smile. She didn’t explain, either.

By the time Lilly’s hands had been washed and dressed, it was dark outside. Eva lit a gas lamp and piled up the grate with coal.The room soon filled with heat. Lilly felt her whole body start to relax. She had joined the queue outside the baker’s at five that morning. She struggled to keep her eyes open.

“Don’t let me fall asleep,” she said.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” replied Eva.

When Lilly woke, for an instant she had no idea where she was. And then she saw Eva reading and remembered.

“What time is it?” Lilly said.

“It’s just gone eleven.”

Lilly leapt out of the chair and pulled on her coat.

“No,” she said. “Oh, no! Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“You looked so peaceful, I didn’t like to. Never mind. I was late every day for school. Didn’t do me any harm.”

“You don’t understand,” Lilly said with a hint of hysteria in her voice. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

“I’m sorry!” Eva replied in a voice that suggested that she was not. “What about the picture? And dinner? Your meat! Come back tomorrow and eat it. I’ll expect you at seven-thirty.”

It was several miles back to the hostel. Lilly ran most of the way. By the time she reached it, her bunk had been taken and her suitcase had been tagged and stored in the office.

“We have rules,” the warden told her. “I’m sorry.”

Lilly spent most of the night walking. Even in the middle of the night, the city streets were busy. Thousands of people got up in the dark to queue for food. Lilly joined a queue outside a bread shop and waited for four hours with the smell of fresh loaves in the air. There was none left by the time she reached the front, so she spent a week’s allowance on a couple of rock-hard rye rolls instead.

At seven-thirty exactly that evening, she rang Eva’s bell. No one answered. An old woman with a dog came out of the flat opposite.

“Are you expected?” she asked. Lilly nodded.

But she was aware that the woman was watching her, taking in her cheap boots and stained dress. She rang the bell again. Maybe Eva had assumed that Lilly would assume that the invitation was nothing more than a platitude. Or maybe she had changed her mind.The dog started to bark. The woman began to tap her keys against her palm. Lilly turned and started slowly down the steps. She had hidden her suitcase in the basement of the building. But now, with the woman watching her, she wouldn’t be able to retrieve it. Her situation was getting worse and worse. She had spent all day wandering in the park, lingering for hours over one cup of so-called coffee, taking a tram from one terminal to the other and back, and now she was so tired she couldn’t stop shivering. She would have to go to the hostel and wait until a bunk was free. That might take days, or even weeks. Her breath started to come quicker. Just walk, she told herself. But her feet were leaden and her head felt light.

Eva opened the door above, dressed only in a thin silk gown.

“Oh, it’s you. I was in the bath,” she explained. “I left the door on the latch. Didn’t you notice?”

Lilly stepped inside the apartment and closed the door behind her. Pools of water led from the front door to the bathroom. She listened as Eva climbed back into the water. And she realized that she had been slowly counting the hours, the minutes, the seconds, until this moment.

“I didn’t fancy horsemeat after all,” shouted Eva from the bathroom. “So I threw it away. I hope you like turnip?”

She threw away the meat? Was she mad? Lilly’s eyes filled with tears of both relief and sorrow: for the horse, for herself.

“I made it into a stew,” Eva said. “But I had no idea what I was doing.We were taught to draw and dance and play the piano and read poetry, but nothing practical. I can’t even darn a sock. Oh, and I had a little sausage that I added.” And then she laughed.

That night they ate sausages and turnip in broth. Although it was watery and the sausage was mostly gristle and fat, Lilly ate every last scraping. Eva produced a small pat of butter to go with Lilly’s rolls.

“I’ve been saving it,” she said. “I’ll cut you a large slice. It’ll go off if somebody doesn’t eat it soon. Go on. Have some.”

Lilly hesitated and then took the knife. She put the knife blade in her mouth, closed her eyes, and let the butter melt on her tongue. Few things would ever taste as good as that slice of yellow butter in Eva’s kitchen. The week before there had been riots in Wedding and Friedrichberg over the price of butter. Shopkeepers were tripling or even quadrupling the price. “You can’t afford butter?” one grocer was said to have quipped to the women in the queue. “Then spread shit on your bread.”

It wasn’t only the dairies that had their windows broken, it was the butchers too. Hundreds of women had started to protest on the streets to demand butter, bread, meat. But Lilly knew that Eva had no need to queue for food. She had money. And although all food was rationed, it was well known that shopkeepers weren’t averse to a little manipulation of the scales for “regular” customers. And there was always the black market.

“I queued for it,” Eva insisted. “Like everyone else.” But judging from the size of the slab and its freshness, Lilly knew that was unlikely.

It was already nine o’clock. She stood up and began to pull on her coat. If she hurried, she would reach the hostel before the curfew. She didn’t let herself think further than that.

“Why not stay here tonight?” Eva said. “I have plenty of room.”

As soon as Eva said it, Lilly realized that it was what she had been longing for.

“That’s very kind of you,” she replied. “But I can’t.”

Eva must have sensed that her reply lacked conviction. And so, to reinforce her invitation, she moved herself squarely in front of Lilly, blocking the doorway.

“You’re not leaving,” Eva said. “Listen, it’s not altruistic. It’s a purely selfish act. Since we dismissed the maid and Stefan went to France, I’ve been living in this huge place all on my own.”

“But you don’t know anything about me,” Lilly said.

“I don’t know what’s happened to you, Lilly,” she said. “It must have been bad, since you are still here, in the city, whereas everybody else left months ago. People like us should stick together.”

Lilly took a deep breath in, out, and in again. Should she tell Eva the truth: that she was not like her at all, that she had nothing, nowhere to go, that if she left she would probably have to spend another night on the streets? And yet, maybe, she told herself, they were more alike than she had first realized; her own father had been a baron. But why was Eva doing this?

“Stay,” Eva said. “Please?”

She reached out and touched Lilly very gently on the arm. Lilly glanced up and in an instant read her and knew what it was she wanted from her after all.

Eva Mauritz had discovered she liked girls one summer at the family estate when she was fourteen. Although her neighbor, a young officer with floppy blond hair and bad skin, swore his undying love for her at a midsummer party, she fell for the stable manager’s daughter, a spry sixteen-year-old who had kissed her in exchange for her pony and then promptly told everyone.The indignity took some time to fade, but the knowledge of her sexual orientation did not. She was expelled first from school and then from the young ladies’ division of the Red Cross for so-called inappropriate behavior.

Of course, she could have had no idea at that point that the latest in her series of ill-advised and rash invitations would inadvertently save Lilly’s life. A month later, there was an outbreak of typhus in the Catholic hostel and more than half of the women died. That night, however, as the fire lit up Lilly’s face and turned her lips a deep, dark red, Eva leaned over and kissed her, a firm kiss on the cheek, a sisterly, nonsexual kiss. But her hands shook and her heart was full of sparks.

“I’m so happy,” she said. “Aren’t you?”

A question hung in the air, unanswered. But it was not the one she had voiced.

Later, Lilly peeled off her clothes and climbed into a bath at Eva’s insistence. Her last bath had been in thirdhand water in a tin tub a month before. But here she lay with her whole body submerged, apart from the circle of her face, as steam curled up into the cold air. On the porcelain rim sat a dish with a bar of French soap. Lilly sat up, covered herself with lather, and scrubbed her hair, her skin, her feet, until she felt as if she had rubbed a whole layer of herself clean away. But even though her skin was raw and her body naked, she was still cocooned inside. She could sense Eva’s desire for her, but it left her untouched. Sooner or later Eva would sense her reticence and suspect she had been misled, but until then Lilly would offer what she had, even though she knew what she had would never be enough.