The Girl Behind The Curtain (Hidden Women) (15 page)

He saw the Buddha on the plinth by the window. Its smiling face had drawn his attention. It was resting on a pile of books. A pile of diaries to be precise. And there it was. Right in the middle.

Like the ultimate cat burglar, Silvio slid his prize out of the tower by replacing it with another almost identical volume. He flicked through the first few pages. It was the right one. The words brought tears to his eyes just as they had done when he saw them for the first time more than ten years earlier, when he had found the book on the floor next to Marco’s bed on the terrible day when they thought they might have lost him for ever.

There must be no repeat of that day. Silvio was determined. He put the book into a carrier bag and slipped out of the secret office, leaving it almost exactly as he had found it.

Chapter 18

Berlin, last October

The day after I sent Marco that email telling him enough was enough and he was a self-indulgent idiot, I was surprised to note that I felt a little better. A little lighter in the heart.

I went with Clare and Harry to the recreation of the Boom Boom Club to celebrate Clare’s birthday. Deep as I was into Kitty’s diaries, I couldn’t wait to see the place where she had found her great love. At least, I couldn’t wait to see the club’s reincarnation. I wondered what Kitty would have thought. Would it seem authentic?

There was quite a crowd outside waiting to go in when we arrived. The punters had made a real effort. I felt as though I hadn’t tried hard enough, in my jeans. But Harry told me not to worry. He said he needed some dowdy females – aka me and Clare – to properly set off his peacock perfection. Harry grumbled at the long wait to get in but I was quite happy to stand in the queue for a while. The glass poster-cabinet outside the entrance contained some very interesting posters, which appeared to date from the club’s first life. I was delighted to see them and hoped for a picture of Kitty. There was none, alas, but the redheaded siren on one of the posters could only be Marlene. It was a striking portrait. Her feminine coiffure was offset by a tremendously square jaw. She might have been carved by Epstein. I pointed the poster out to Clare and told her about the diary connection. I also told her about my increasing suspicion that Herr Schmidt had not in fact found the diaries in the ruins of a hotel.

‘It’s a hell of a coincidence, isn’t it? Him being a Schmidt and her falling for one. The Prenzlauer Berg connection. And all that stuff about his eyes! Herr Schmidt’s eyes are a very strange blue. Kitty is always writing about Otto’s blue eyes.’

‘Schmidt’s an incredibly common name,’ Clare pointed out. ‘Besides, if he is the guy in the diary, wouldn’t he know where to find its owner? Wouldn’t he have told you he knew her?’

‘Maybe you’re right,’ I said. ‘He would have told me. It would be strange not to.’

Clare agreed.

We had reached the head of the queue and were greeted by the door staff: a bouncer as big as a tower block and a diminutive transvestite dressed as a dominatrix in lots of black leather and fishnet. She looked us up and down and for one awful moment, I thought she wasn’t going to let us in. Then she uttered the damning phrase ‘You’ll do’ and the velvet rope was moved aside. We were in.

There were eight of us altogether and we had a table near the stage. We ordered champagne. Clare, who knew about such things, pronounced it awful. We drank it all the same.

The club quickly filled up and the band took their places. You could feel the excitement crackling in the air as the audience settled in their seats and began a slow handclap to encourage the swift raising of the curtain. When the curtains finally parted, the applause was riotous.

The show was opened by a fabulous mistress of ceremonies, who called herself Marlene, in tribute to the original. She was almost eight feet tall in her heels and had her red hair arranged on top of her head in the style that I imagined when Kitty described Marlene’s do as ‘profiteroles’. To get the audience warmed up, she did a little act of her own. She sang some old favourites from the film
Cabaret
, mixed in with some Lady Gaga. Her act was accompanied by a small troupe of dancers, who were every bit as good as you would have expected to see behind Madonna or Beyoncé. They were all dressed the same and wore identical wigs. It was hard to tell whether they were girls or boys, but they were definitely beautiful.

The amateurs who took to the stage that night were a mixed bunch, just as they had been in Kitty’s day. Cross-dressing was a popular theme. Harry looked rather underdressed compared to some of the other guys. I had never seen such flamboyant or beautiful transvestites. There were no comedy-act trannies here; every one of them was as elegant and beautiful as the dancers at the Crazy Horse.

‘You’ve got some competition tonight,’ Clare told Harry.

Not just from the other trannies, it turned out. After we had watched five men dressed as variations on Sally Bowles, the MC announced that it was time for something different.

‘Something good,’ she added. The audience roared. ‘Let’s have Anna!’

A young girl stood up.

I recognised her at once. It was Anna Fischer, my English-language student. I’d had no idea that she would be at the club that night. The mistress of ceremonies asked her what she was going to be singing. She said she was going to sing Tim Buckley’s ‘Song to the Siren’.

Clare nodded her approval. ‘Great song.’

I agreed. I told Clare how I knew her.

‘And as usual,’ Anna added, ‘I’m going to dedicate it to my sister. I wish she could be here tonight. I miss her every day.’

The mistress of ceremonies squeezed Anna’s shoulder and they shared a look that suggested the dedicatee had been special to both of them. The MC stepped down and let Anna take the stage. She climbed onto a high stool with her guitar and began to play.

Anna was amazing. Petite as she was and slightly scruffy, I never would have guessed that she was in possession of such an amazing voice. The nature of the song did not require that she belt out the lyrics, but she managed to reach every corner of the room while giving the impression that she had barely raised her voice above a whisper. She had the room in the palm of her hand. There was not a murmur as we watched with due reverence, definitely none of the heckling that had dogged the previous acts. A shiver passed through me at the magnificence of the sound she produced.

It was a wonderful song and she nailed it.

When she finished, it was a second before the applause started, as though everyone in the room was in shock. When I looked at Harry, he was actually wiping a tear from his eye.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how I’m supposed to follow that.’

As it was, Harry more than held his own on the stage. I think that after the intensity of Anna’s song, the audience was glad of a moment of levity. The song Harry had chosen – ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’ – was an old favourite. He dedicated it to Clare. And his dancing was superb. When the mistress of ceremonies decided the evening’s winner – she had announced that they would be chosen on the loudness of the cheers – she declared Harry joint second with a Liza Minnelli impressionist. Anna was the winner by a long way. Apparently, she was the winner pretty much every week. She proudly accepted the envelope containing the fifty-euro prize. I felt very happy to see her talent rewarded.

Before we left the club that evening, I sought Anna out.

‘You didn’t say you were a singer as well as a photographer,’ I said.

Anna shrugged. ‘Runs in the family. My mother sings and my sister was way better than both of us.’

I noticed the past tense but didn’t pick her up on it. I was sure I would hear more in our conversation class. And now her friends wanted her to join them. Among them was the guy she had kissed under the street-lamp. He was obviously besotted and could hardly wait to spirit her off.

Anna embraced me and followed her man back into the crowd.

Back in my room, I looked for ‘Song to the Siren’ on YouTube and found a version by Elisabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins. I’d heard it before that night but didn’t know it well. Listening to the lyrics more closely, I couldn’t help but think about Marco. The singer asks whether they should give in to the siren’s song and face an inevitable fate. The imagery of water and death was perfect for a Venetian recluse. And there was such love and longing in Fraser’s voice.

The song inspired me to pick up a pen. I started to write a letter but I knew I wouldn’t send it. After a while, I put my pen down again and picked up Kitty Hazleton’s diary. I fell asleep with her diary in my hands.

The song must have affected me even more than I knew. I dreamed I was in Venice again, but this time I was not in the city itself; I was way out on the lagoon, near the Isola di San Michele, the cemetery island. I was standing at the prow of a gondola but there was no gondolier to help me steer it. I looked behind me to the felce, with its black velvet curtains. The boat was decked for a funeral, but there was no body to be seen.

As I stood there, with no oar, unable to take the boat in any direction, it drifted closer to the island on the tide. It was night-time, but a full moon reflected on the still water made it bright. There were no lights on San Michele. Its monastery made a shadow so dark, it seemed like a hole in the sky.

I stood there for what seemed like a long time, helpless to do anything as the boat drifted closer to the shore. I had a feeling of foreboding and yet, at the same time, I wasn’t really afraid. The lagoon was all but silent. There was just the sound of the water lapping against my boat. The gentle rocking was calming. It was lulling me.

I was close enough to smell the scent of the cypress trees on the island when I made my decision. I thought I heard someone call out to me.

I took a deep breath and dived into the water.

The water of the lagoon was far deeper than I had imagined. As soon as I was beneath the waves, the bottom seemed to fall further and further away. I followed it down, holding my breath, moving further from safety with every kick of my legs. Yet I was not afraid. I seemed to know that something was waiting for me, if I could just swim far enough.

I saw her white arms first, snaking out of the bottomless darkness, beckoning me closer still. I followed her semaphore. My cheeks were full and my lungs were bursting. I needed to breathe but I had to find her first.

Her face loomed out of the blackness, pale as the full moon in the sky above us. She was no fairytale mermaid. Her hair was not golden and long. She had no fish’s tail. She was not streamlined like an eel and when she reached out her arms to bring me to her, there was no flash of silver scales. She was an ordinary woman, white and blue because of the water. Her face was kind but serious. It was familiar though unknown. There was something else about it that I could not articulate right away. Her mouth was twisted upwards even though I knew she wasn’t smiling. Not yet.

As I stared, her cold hands wrapped themselves round my wrists and she pulled me to her. I floated above her, as though my body was still straining towards the light. Towards the air. With unusual strength she reeled me further in. My face hovered an inch away from hers. She looked into my eyes. Hers were dark, almost black, like a seal’s. I could not tear my gaze away.

She was singing ‘Song to the Siren’.

I could no longer resist. She enfolded me in her arms. She pressed her body against mine, like a greedy lover who would not be refused. Her hands roamed all over me. Her soft breasts seem to melt into my own. She wrapped her legs round me to hold me tighter still.

I struggled to get away but she pressed her lips to mine and forced them open with her tongue. I was too weak to stop her. She held the back of my head so that I could not pull away. My whole head was full of her. Her kiss had such power and determination in it, there was nothing I could do but acquiesce. And when I did . . .

Suddenly, I was able to take a breath. She pulled away for a moment and I emptied my lungs of carbon dioxide, feeling the tremendous burning inside me subside at once. I could breathe again. Or else I was dead. I looked at her in astonishment. This time, she really was smiling. She released her hold on me and swam into the blue-black distance. As she disappeared, this time I did see the silvery flash of a sea-creature turning tail.

I looked up to the surface glittering way above me and started to swim towards it. I still had some living to do.

I sent Clare and Harry a text the next morning, thanking them for a great night on the tiles. ‘Weird dream,’ I wrote. ‘That champagne was strong stuff.’ Harry texted back immediately, accusing me of being a lightweight. I certainly felt a little jaded as I got ready to leave for the library.

Herr Schmidt was already up when I left the house. That morning he was playing Ravel. ‘Le Gibet’ from
Gaspard de la Nuit
. Beautiful but sad. His door was ajar. I considered knocking on it to tell him how much I appreciated his playing but he looked utterly lost in the music. His noble head nodded as he found the chords. I wondered what he had looked like as a young man. His profile was classical. I had seen his smile but rarely, but it was a generous sort of smile. As I watched him play, he lifted his left hand to wipe away a tear. He achieved this small act without missing a beat of the music. I decided not to disturb him after all.