Marlene by C. W. Gortner

They deny their own hearts, for they would like to act as we do yet do not dare.”
    I was taken aback. She didn’t seem like someone given to musings. She had hidden depths; I understood now why Uncle Willi was smitten. She wasn’t German at all.
    “So.” Her smile revealed teeth yellowed by tea and slightly smudged with her red lipstick. “Tell me everything, my dear. I want us to be friends.”
    She was everything Mutti abhorred—a woman of the modern age, as loose with her mouth as her morals, having cast aside one husband to snag my uncle, and I told her everything. I couldn’t hold it back. There was something so novel about her, her attentive candor easing the knot in my chest as I related my trials in Weimar, skirting the details of my affair with Professor Reitz, but not my realization that I’d never fulfill my mother’s ambitions for me, and then of my return to find myself sold into servitude for lessons that couldn’t provide any benefit. “I can play the violin well enough,” I said. “I don’t need more lessons.”
    She sat in contemplative silence before she said, “Perhaps this new professor is indeed as renowned as your mother claims and can help you play even better.” She paused, gauging me. “But naturally, it makes no difference if you’re disinclined. I see no reason why you shouldn’t seek your own way. We do know theater managers who may hire you. But,” she added, “the pay these days—I’m afraid it won’t be enough for you to move anywhere. Everyone in the theater is as poor as a rat. The show must go on, as they say, but it goes on rather frugally in Berlin.”
    “It doesn’t matter. I’ll do anything.”
    “Except wax floors,” she replied. She smiled again. “I don’t blame you. You have the training, only . . .”
    “Only what?” I leaned over to her. “What else do I need?”
    She passed her gaze over me. “My dear, I do not wish to be insensitive.”
    I froze. Then, as understanding crept through me, I smoothed my rumpled wool skirt and muttered, “Mutti confiscated my clothes. She said I mustn’t make a spectacle of myself.”
    “Instead she does it for you by dressing you like a widow.” Jolie put her cup on its saucer. “You cannot possibly go on auditions like that. I’ve a few things I could lend you, a coat or two, at least. Your grandmother also left some dresses in the attic we might alter.” She snapped her fingers. “No time like the present. Allons-y! Let’s see what we can achieve.”

III
    I t became my new secret.
    I agreed to lessons with the Austrian professor, who proved as cantankerous as he was renowned, scrubbing his floors after practice because, as Jolie advised, I could refine my skill for auditions. But after three hours of practice and two hours of cleaning his cluttered flat, I went to my uncle’s home, where Jolie had me try on the new dresses she’d had made for me.
    Oma’s discarded remnants were too outdated, she had pronounced. Impossible to alter styles that had gone out before the war. Instead, she inveigled Willi, who could deny her nothing, for money to have new attire made, though when I first beheld these lovely dresses with their drooping necklines and daringly high hems, I could barely fit into them.
    “You’re too fat,” Jolie said. She did not fear insensitivity now. “Whatever your mother is feeding you, you must eat less. A Rubenesque figure is fine for the museum, but not for fashion. I had these made in your proper size. You’ll have to diet until you can wear them.”
    Dejected but determined, prompted by her discreet use of pincers to pluck what she called my “jungle brow” and a discreet rinse on my hair to “highlight its fairness, as blondes are always popular,” I set myself to a diet that nearly had me fainting as I plied the violin and the old professorbanged his cane. “No, no,” he declaimed, as intolerant as any Weimar relic. “Do you intend to play the violin or carve meat? You