“What was that all about?” Aubrey said.
“His paper has learned who’s in charge. Its reporters may chafe, but if they want to keep their jobs, and more importantly their necks…” The count trailed off.
Aubrey fidgeted uncomfortably.
“I’m not entirely on side with it, Aubrey. I want you to know that. I’ve always enjoyed a good piece of journalistic investigative work; just not when it was directed at me personally.”
“I understand.”
“Good. So, dinner?”
“I was going to retire early.”
“Nonsense. I feel like shrugging off these blues. The tragedy at the airfield has had me in a funk all day. I require your assistance in banishing it. I offer you a grand tour of Berlin, warts and all.” He held out his arm.
Aubrey slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow. “A girl can’t pass that up, now, can she?”
16
The crack of the whip startled Aubrey. She was feeling the benumbing effect of a succulent dinner of Norwegian crab legs paired with a crisp Riesling from the Rhineland, plus countless shots of schnapps. At first the count had been skeptical about her drinking prowess. Then a begrudging respect had grown. Now she seemed to be taking the lead in the matter. Helmut looked to be going down for the count, so to speak. Thankfully, this was their last stop for the evening. It had better be, she thought. Dawn was fast approaching.
The lazy jazz music of the subterranean Rathskeller he had taken her to at midnight had only added to the sleepy effects of the dinner. She had watched Helmut’s chin start to fall to his chest.
But when the woman, clad in a black leather vest and mid-thigh skirt complete with a twelve-foot-long bullwhip, walked onstage, things had picked up. She cracked the whip again, and a man was hurtled onto the stage from the wings. He was dressed in a sailor’s uniform and aped being as drunk as Aubrey and the count and the rest of the club-goers actually were. He crashed into the whipmaster, and she shoved him to the ground.
“Oh my,” Aubrey said.
Helmut came alive. “What have I missed?”
“Nothing yet,” Aubrey said.
When they’d pulled up to the building, Aubrey had been a little perturbed, even a little panicky. The streets were dark, and they had been surrounded by tall buildings whose business had shut down for the day. Then light had spilled from a cellar doorway in front of them and two people had stumbled out.
“What is this?” Aubrey had asked.
“A vestige of the old Weimar Republic,” the count had replied. “Come with me, back into time.”
Aubrey had read about nightclubs like these. New York, even at the height of Prohibition, with its speakeasies and flappers, had never seemed as wild as what was going on in Germany. So, when they’d entered the sunken denizen, she’d felt suddenly giddy. Helmut hadn’t lied: they had gone back in time. It was just as she’d pictured it. Though try as she might, she could never have pictured the erogenous act that was presently occurring on stage. She turned away and blushed.
Another crack of the whip.
“I’m sorry, my dear. You are offended.”
“No, it’s just not the sort of thing I’m used to seeing.”
The woman with the whip had proceeded to undress the drunken sailor and handcuff him to a chair.
“Surely this isn’t allowed?” she said uneasily. “What if it this place gets raided?”
“My dear, in Germany there are arrestable people, all manner of them, and those who are un-arrestable. For the time being, at least, I am one of the latter.”
Her eyes had grown accustomed to the smoky scene long ago, but she had avoided looking around at the other patrons. She gave a quick glance at them now; there were no brownshirts in attendance. She imagined that rowdy group confined its hijinks to barracks and beer halls. There were no elite SS either; maybe they had their real-life torture scenes playing out in their dungeons. There were two men in fedoras sitting at the back of the room, watching the whole scene without showing any emotion.
“Are those men back there Gestapo?” she said. “The ones with the hats.”
The count saw who she was referring to and laughed.
“No, Aubrey, they are the oldest queer couple in Berlin. This is the only refuge left to them, I suppose. Live and let live, at least in the dark alleyways and basements of the past.”
The act concluded with a brief showing of all of the man’s attributes; Aubrey’s face grew red with embarrassment. Then a woman with a python wrapped around her neck came on stage to raucous applause. She sang with a deep falsetto, and after a while Aubrey clued into the real gender of the singer. Next, a black man at the piano sang in flawless French, a mournful tune about the good old days and a long-lost love. Then the black-clad woman came back with her whip; this time she stepped out into the audience, tantalizing and flirting and teasing both men and women.
She grabbed the count by the tie, and Aubrey thought he was going to be pulled on stage. But then the dominatrix turned her attentions to her, running her hand delicately across Aubrey’s face and down her bosom. Aubrey sat there rock still, as scared as the rabbits that she knew must be fed to the python. Thankfully, the woman moved on to another table.
“She’s something, isn’t she? You should have seen her in her heyday,” the count said when they were back in the Benz.
Safely ensconced in the confines of the big Mercedes, with the thick velvet curtain pulled across the partition, the count finally pulled Aubrey into his arms. She did not resist.
17
Aubrey woke up in a sea of silk pillows and sheets and a thick duvet. She lay in the
