The Blind Side of the Heart (22 page)

I love you girls, Fanny assured them one morning as they sat on her veranda round the low table, which had a tiled top painted with pale roses, drinking tea and nibbling little sticks of ginger. The veranda was full of the scent of bergamot. Fanny drank her tea with a great deal of sugar and no milk. Every morning a plate of poppyseed cake stood on the table, but Helene had never tasted it; she felt shy of reaching over the table uninvited and helping herself to a piece. Fanny’s lover must still be in bed – in the boudoir, Fanny liked to say. Or at least one of her lovers. Recently a new one had frequently visited the apartment, tall, fair-haired Erich. Like Bernard, he was a few immaterial years younger than Fanny. She didn’t seem to have chosen between the two of them, but they were seldom both her guests at the same time. Also like Bernard, Erich usually slept until midday, but while Bernard spent the rest of the day betting on horses and watching the trotting races, tall blond Erich frequented the Grünewald tennis courts, and now in winter the indoor courts. Once he had asked Helene if she would like to go with him. He had waited to invite her until a moment came when Fanny wasn’t around, and he had put his hand on the back of her neck so suddenly and with such passion that she had been afraid of coming across Erich ever since. It was true that in front of Fanny he took not the slightest notice of her, but his glances fell on her all the more avidly when Fanny’s back was turned. Today the veranda windows were clouded with condensation; the heating was still full on in the apartment, and February snow lay on the trees and rooftops.

The door opened and the housemaid Otta brought in a tray with a pot of freshly brewed tea. From Ceylon, said Otta, placing the tray on the table. She put a silver cover over the pot to keep it hot, and left.

I do love you girls, whispered Fanny again. Her black poodle, who answered to the name of Cleo – Fanny pronounced it in the English way and said it was short for Cleopatra – wagged her short tail, a soft ball of hair. Cleo’s coat shone as she looked attentively from one young woman to another. When Fanny threw the dog a little piece of poppyseed cake, Cleo snapped it up without looking at her, as if she weren’t waiting for something sweet at all, but was giving all her attention to the girls’ conversation. Fanny dabbed at her nose with her handkerchief; she blew her nose a lot, and not just in winter.

Oh, my poor nose is all inflamed again, she whispered, lost in thought as she stared at her knees, like my mind in general. But children, I do love you.

Leontine was perched on the wooden arm of Martha’s chair, jiggling her toes impatiently. Martha had met Leontine again in summer, and since then they had seen each other daily. These days Leontine was spending the night at the ground-floor apartment in Achenbachstrasse more and more often.

My friend says they have only one vacancy. They’re looking for an experienced nurse. That’s Martha. Fanny made a sympathetic little moue in Helene’s direction and batted her eyelashes, to show Helene that she was genuinely sorry. Helene, dear, something else will very soon turn up for you too, sweetheart.

Martha was to start work next week at the Jewish Hospital in Exerzierstrasse, in the north of the city. Fanny had an admirer who was medical director of the ward for the terminally ill. Fanny said he was old and randy, and had described the post as might have been expected of him. The nurse was to be between twenty and thirty. Just like Martha. Yes, the applicant must be the right age, he only liked women of that age, which was why his admiration for Fanny had faded slightly over the last few years. It was difficult to find staff for the terminal ward because of all the incurable illnesses and dying patients, so the management would prefer an older nurse. Well, of course twenty-six was far from old, but all the same Martha had more experience than Helene, didn’t she?

Helene tried to look content with that. Martha couldn’t suppress a yawn. She was still wearing the silk dressing gown that her aunt had recently passed on to her.

Leontine nodded on Martha’s behalf. Absolutely right, no one’s Martha’s equal in emptying and filling things, cleaning up the patients and soothing them, feeding them and applying dressings.

And you’ll learn the right prayers, won’t you? Fanny meant it seriously. She took Martha to synagogue with her on high days and holidays, but even at home Martha had not been very diligent over saying her prayers in St Peter’s Cathedral.

Martha picked a stick of ginger out of the flower-shaped glass dish, crooked her little finger and nibbled the ginger stick. Over the last few months, Helene and Martha had often discussed their reluctance to be a burden on their aunt, living at her expense. They were enjoying life in the big apartment, but they would have liked to give Fanny some money for their board and also to have money of their own to spend. Accepting financial presents made them feel uncomfortable. There had turned out to be problems with the Breslau legacy. The rents didn’t come in regularly, and the agent who was supposed to be managing them hadn’t sent any news for months. Martha and Helene couldn’t bring themselves to ask their aunt for money to send home to Bautzen. When a letter arrived from Mariechen, appealing for help and saying she didn’t know where to turn for money to buy food for their mother, Helene had stolen into the larder and taken some provisions, which they sent by parcel post to Bautzen. At the same time Martha had abstracted one of Fanny’s gramophone records and taken it to the pawnbroker’s to exchange for some money. A loan was the way Martha and Helene had described it to each other, until one day Aunt Fanny asked casually if they knew what had become of her Richard Tauber record, which seemed to have disappeared. Helene had been overcome by a coughing fit so that they could avoid telling all to Fanny. Martha said at once that she had dropped it and it broke. She just hadn’t dared to tell her aunt, she said. False remorse? Martha’s look of wide-eyed innocence was astonishing, as always. Fanny proved magnanimous.

Martha and Helene had applied for posts at several hospitals over the last few months, but so far unsuccessfully. The whole city seemed to be looking for work, and those who did have a job wanted a better one with higher pay. If you had no job you did deals, but the sisters didn’t understand enough about that. People dropped hints about the black market, and bets, and how only pretty girls could sell their services for some things, at least at the revues. Fanny’s friend Lucinde worked in a revue, naked, as she said with relish, wearing nothing but her hair. Helene’s nursing certificates from Bautzen won her some admiration, but her age put the hospitals off, she was considered too young for a permanent nursing post in a hospital.

I’ll take the job. Martha put the nibbled ginger stick down on the rim of her saucer. She rested her head against Leontine and held her hand in front of her mouth. Fanny looked at Leontine and Martha, smiled, and ran her tongue first over her teeth and then over her lips.

I’m glad. But you know you are my guests – for ever, if you like. So far as I’m concerned you don’t have to work. You do know that, don’t you? Fanny looked round at them. She might have no husband and no parents any more, but obviously Fanny was still so rich, without anyone to share her fortune, that she had no financial worries. I wasn’t including Leontine, of course, said Fanny, but then who wouldn’t like to have a beautiful woman as a hospital doctor? When do you take your exams, Leontine?

In the autumn. I’m not hoping for too much – I’ll start with Professor Friedrich at the Charité Hospital. He may help me to get my further degree and my lecturer’s qualification.

Oh, you disappoint me, darling. I see you in a little doctor’s car, stopping outside my house with your medical bag. Why not aim for a big private practice – you could get young assistants to help you, men like Erich or Bernard?

Flattered, Leontine smiled. She had developed a curious flexibility in Berlin, she smiled more often, sometimes just with her eyes, and even her movements had become as graceful as a cat’s. Leontine rose and went round the table. She took Helene’s blonde braid in both hands, as if weighing it, then placed one hand on Helene’s head. Helene felt warm; there was nothing nicer than the sensation of Leontine’s hand on her head.

Private patients still don’t trust a woman doctor, said Leontine, raising her eyebrows with a rueful look. And I don’t have the necessary funds either.

Well, of course your assistants don’t need to be men; you could have woman assistants, Leontine. Like Martha and Helene. Fanny chuckled. I hear you’re married to some feeble-minded palaeontologist. One might think he had funds.

Lorenz, feeble-minded? Leontine’s eyes sparkled. Who says so? My dear husband wouldn’t feel at all confident about it if I set up in private practice. Now Leontine was laughing, the wry laughter they knew from the old days.

Surely he must be feeble-minded if he doesn’t notice that his wife fails to spend the night at home! Fanny’s tongue slid along her top row of teeth again, then licked her lips.

Lorenz is liberal on principle – and he’s lost interest in me anyway.

Fanny threw her poodle Cleo a morsel of poppyseed cake and poured herself a glass of brandy. Now her eye fell on Helene. Leontine says you can use a typewriter and do shorthand? Fanny’s nose was running, but she noticed too late. She only just managed to catch the trickle on her chin with her handkerchief. Didn’t you keep the accounts in your father’s printing works?

Helene diffidently shrugged her shoulders. It seemed so long ago that she’d done these things. Her old life had retreated into the distance; she didn’t like to think about it. She practised not remembering – that, she had recently whispered to a young man making up to her at a party, was the only way to hold on to youth. And she had looked at him so innocently that the young man had to take her seriously and wanted to agree with her.

Helene had spent most of the last few months in Berlin reading in Fanny’s library, going for walks and facing up to her private worries about Martha. She seldom let Martha out of her sight, although she admired the fearlessness with which Martha and Leontine smuggled themselves into every louche club in Bülowstrasse. Helene hated the nights when she was woken by the moans of her sister and her sister’s friend. She never felt lonelier than there in her narrow bed, although it was less than a metre away from the equally narrow bed where Martha and Leontine were panting for breath. Sometimes they giggled, sometimes they stopped, whispered and wondered out loud, so that Helene was bound to hear it, whether they had woken her up with their whispers. Then again there were the sounds of kissing, the sighs, particularly Martha’s, and the rustling of the bedclothes. Sometimes Helene thought she could almost feel the warmth radiating from their bodies.

You know my friend Clemens the pharmacist – he’s looking for a girl to help him, someone who can use a typewriter, a pretty girl who’d be nice to the customers. I could ask him.

That’s her all over, said Leontine, stroking Helene’s hair.

You’re discreet, aren’t you? Martha wrinkled her brow doubtfully.

That’s her all over too, repeated Leontine, still stroking Helene’s hair.

Pharmacists keep secrets. Fanny was not exactly whispering, but murmuring in her velvety voice. Mine, Bernard’s, Lucinde’s, half the city’s secrets.

Helene didn’t know what to say in reply. Unlike Martha, she had not managed to win Fanny’s affection and confidence. They had been living with their aunt for almost a year now, Fanny passed on her clothes to them and introduced them to her circle of friends, but it seemed as if she thought Helene a naïve child and would do all she could to ensure that didn’t change. Sometimes Helene thought she detected a kind of reserve towards her in Fanny. She discussed certain things only with Martha, whether they were to do with clothes or society gossip. Helene had seldom felt as much aware of the nine years’ age difference between herself and Martha as she did in their aunt’s presence. Usually all the doors on the ground floor stood open, but when Fanny called Martha into a room with her she often closed the door, and Helene guessed that behind it her little round box with the tiny spoon and the white powder was coming out, something she shared only with Martha and no one else. Then Helene would stand on tiptoe, listening, and hear her sniffing and sighing, and at those moments, when she stood on tiptoe with her cold feet in a dark corridor, with only the pendulum of the white English grandfather clock and its golden dial to keep her company, she was sorry she had come to Berlin with Martha. Fanny had never once asked if Helene would like to go out with them in the evening.

Only when Leontine and Martha visited the now rather faded Luna Park was Helene allowed to go too. The girls went in the old artificial wave pool there – the waves were generated only by the wind now – and splashed about, taking no notice of the gentlemen, both young and older, who strolled around the rim of the basin to watch them. The artificial wave pool was nicknamed the Nymphs’ Basin and the Tarts’ Aquarium in the city, which seemed to the girls poor ways of expressing the lively interest shown by the young and old gentlemen. The girls liked the waves and the slide into the lake, and paid for their own entrance. Didn’t that mean the male spectators had no right to regard themselves as pimps and potential customers?

I’ll tell you girls something: this is a small city. The world thinks it’s large because it’s such a beautiful soap bubble in our imagination. Fanny lit one of her English cigars and tilted her head back. Each fantastic bubble stretches, grows bigger, brighter, more fragile. Is it falling? Fanny drew on the thin cigar. Is it rising? Fanny puffed little smoke rings. Is it coming down? Fanny was enjoying her flight of fancy, but then her smile disappeared. Well, Helene, if you can keep secrets the pharmacist would appreciate that. So would I. I’ll ask him about the job. Fanny nodded as if to confirm her words and encourage herself. She drained the final drop of brandy from her small glass and dabbed her nose carefully with her handkerchief. A tear ran from the corner of her eye. Oh, dear children, how I love you. You do know that you don’t need to work, don’t you? Why should you be any worse off than Erich and Bernard? Stay with me, fill my home and my heart, she said, visibly moved. By her own loneliness, Helene wondered, or by the idea of her generous heart? Fanny blew her nose and caressed Cleo’s muzzle.