5
From downstairs, loud voices interrupted by boisterous laughter. Gerlinde pulled the pillow over her head to muffle them and squeezed her eyes shut as if it would help. They could never talk quietly, the Amis. For some inexplicable reason, they could only communicate by yelling.
Another burst of laughter – a woman’s voice.
Alert at once, Gerlinde was on her feet, listening closely next to the door. Like a sharp knife through warm butter, that familiar voice cut right through her strained nerves. Gerlinde pulled the door open and listened breathlessly. No, it couldn’t be.
Shivering against the morning draft – the temperature had plummeted the night before and fogged the windows this morning – Gerlinde stepped onto the landing. The wooden railing was freshly waxed and cool to the touch. She leaned over it, staring intently at the white marble of the grand hall downstairs. To be sure, there they stood: Morris, several of his men, Tadek, some unfamiliar fellow in civilian clothes and… Margot.
Margarete Gräfin von Steinhoff, the celebrated cinematographer and journalist; Promi’s (as the Reich Propaganda Ministerium was dubbed by the Berliners) former mouthpiece, supposedly executed by the Gestapo at the end of the war and yet very much alive and with a healthy tan, laughing at something Morris had just said.
Margot, with her signature burgundy nail polish and inevitable slacks, at which prim-and-proper Reich wives invariably threw sideways, disapproving glances. Not that it bothered Margot in the slightest. A feministic fashion statement? Gerlinde recalled her throwing her head back – just as she did now – and laughing at something Dr. Goebbels had said concerning them. Herr Minister, have you tried climbing countless platforms, on which the cameras are mounted, in a skirt? Gerlinde also remembered how she held her breath in admiration. From her early childhood, she’d been taught by her mother that girls and women in the Reich ought to be seen and never heard; Margot not only made sure that her voice and opinion – quite radical at times – was heard, she certainly made all of those uniformed men listen to it.
Gerlinde’s fingers clutched at the railing. More memories rushed in, agonizingly painful and tenderly melancholic at the same time.
Margot, with her signature camera hanging off her neck, squatting down next to young Gerlinde in one of the new Reich Chancellery’s halls. It was a New Year’s reception – or was it Christmas? Gerlinde only remembered the Tree and Reichsmarschall Göring turning to one of the children gathered around him and asking the child what that child wished to be when grown-up? And then, suddenly, a somewhat disappointed and dismissive, oh, you’re a girl. Reichsmarschall was not interested in her aspirations any longer. He was already smiling at the young boy and promising him that if he served the Reich faithfully enough, he would make a fine Feldmarschall and, who knew, perhaps a Reichsmarschall himself one day.
For some reason she couldn’t quite comprehend – she sharply felt the very injustice of this scene – Gerlinde backed away from her mother who was too absorbed in the conversation with another Reich wife, away from that room and hid behind the tall column in one of the corridors, deserted and smelling faintly of floor wax. It was there that Margot discovered her. She didn’t like crowds either, the photographer had confessed with the grin of a conspirator, wiped Gerlinde’s tears with the sleeve of her silk blouse – sorry, pet, I don’t carry handkerchiefs – and told her something outrageously rebellious that Gerlinde never thought possible for anyone to say, not in this building at any rate.
“You’re crying because that fat Arschloch Göring said that a girl can’t become a Reichsmarschall, or anything else for that matter, except mother or wife? That’s an utterly ridiculous reason to cry. Sod him.”
Gerlinde’s eyes flew open. She stared at Margot in horror.
“Sod him and his opinion,” Margot repeated, gravely and deliberately. In her dark eyes, defiant light shone. She looked like a witch with her dark hair, bloody-red lips, and black eyes; a heretic, who comes at night and steals children. Curiously enough, Gerlinde discovered that she wanted for Margot to steal her and take her away to her witch-kingdom, where everything was upside down and where little girls like herself could command armies. “He’s not the master of the universe. And you,” her finger, with its burgundy nail, pressed against Gerlinde’s chest, against her wildly beating heart, “you can be whatever you want, pet. And no one, not Reichsmarschall, not the Führer, not God himself can tell you otherwise. I want you to remember it.”
Margot. The woman who never carried handkerchiefs because she never cried.
Margot. The woman, whom Gerlinde so desperately wished to be her mother, instead of Mathilde, who rarely acted like one anyway.
“Margot!” The name tore off Gerlinde’s trembling lips and she charged down the stairs, not caring a curse of what the Amis would make of it all.
Her mother would have stopped her at once with an outstretched arm in front of her. Now, go back upstairs and come down slowly and like a proper lady should. Margot only opened her arms and scooped Gerlinde into the tightest of embraces.
“Now, now, pet! What’s with the tears?” Margot was stroking her hair and kissing her wet cheeks with great emotion. “I thought you’d be glad to see me.”
“I am! Oh, I am!” Gerlinde managed between the sobs and buried her face on Margot’s shoulder once again.
She didn’t even care about Morris, who observed the unraveling scene with the greatest of interest, whatever doubtful benefit there was in inviting a former Promi member under his roof for him. To Gerlinde, Margot represented something dearly missed and familiar, a safe refuge in the ocean of hostility. Whatever Morris’s reasons were for allowing her here, Gerlinde was infinitely grateful to him.
Margot
