bread. It reminded her of a joke Lottie had told.
What’s the difference between India and Germany? In India one man, Gandhi, starves on behalf of millions. In Germany, millions starve on behalf of one man.
Lottie was the only woman who dared tell jokes in public, with a rich, full-throated, gurgling laugh. That was also against the rules, of course. Laughing was inelegant for women, according to the principal, Frau Mann. It implied criticism and did not befit a German woman. Smiling was a different matter—indeed, Faith and Beauty girls should always smile when a man addressed them—but laughing, well, the way Frau Mann talked, it was as though a healthy dose of female laughter could bring the whole edifice of the National Socialist Party crashing down.
“Are you eating that?”
Hilde Ziegler was eyeing Hedwig’s slice of rye bread, and Hedwig shrugged. She used to be hungry all the time. A hunger that filled her dreams with fat pork chops, chocolate, and cake with real cream and pastries made with butter, but since Lottie’s death, her appetite had disappeared.
She glanced out of the window to the woods at the far end of the garden. At the place Lottie was found, the police had erected arc lights, the kind you saw in film studios, bathing the area in a dazzling phosphorescent glow. But there was one secret that no amount of police spotlights were going to uncover.
Everyone in Germany kept a place in their mind, like a cellar in a house or an attic concealed by a study door, that nobody knew about. A place where they thought their own thoughts and examined their true feelings. And when Hedwig retreated to this place and shut the door behind her, what she mainly felt was guilt.
CHAPTER
8
E ven though he was standing in the shadows, Clara could feel his eyes on her. Calculating, malign, dangerous. Attempting, with the precision of an interrogator, to dissect her performance and separate pretense from reality. Analyzing every minute facial movement, every glance and gesture, to pounce on falsity and drag the truth from where she had concealed it.
Despite the heat of the stage lights, she shivered.
She was wearing a flimsy pink silk dress and spectacles and standing next to Heinz Rühmann on stage five of the Ufa studio—the very same soundstage on which Marlene Dietrich had only a decade earlier filmed
The Blue Angel
and Fritz Lang made
Metropolis.
Now, in contrast to those cinematic masterpieces, stage five was playing host to the final scene of
Liebe Streng Verboten
.
Love Strictly Forbidden
was pure, high-octane candyfloss for the eyes. The plot revolved around an ambitious mother who wanted to marry her daughter to the lord of the manor, while the daughter was in love with a lowly hotelier. It was a farcical procession of mistakes and confusions with a satisfyingly happy ending and just the kind of escapism Herr Doktor Goebbels prescribed to soothe a nation’s frazzled nerves.
In truth, Clara was glad that the film required a minimum of effort. Her visit to London and the news of Leo occupied all her thinking space. She felt stunned, as though she had left part of herself in England, and
Love Strictly Forbidden,
whose script had as much depth and sophistication as the back of a cornflakes packet, was the ideal vehicle to occupy her. The lovelorn secretary was a popular role in German cinema, and she had played it a number of times over the last few years, so it was easy to go through the motions. It helped that Heinz Rühmann, one of the biggest blond heartthrobs of German screen, was an old friend, so kissing him was no great hardship.
Yet even the most intimate of love scenes required an army of people in the studio: director, assistant director, crew, clapper board loader, piano player. Continuity girl, props manager, cameraman, and gaffer, and a makeup artist with brushes and palette primed for a last-minute touch-up. Boys with belts of tools hung from the cranes, and in distant glass cubicles sound
What’s the difference between India and Germany? In India one man, Gandhi, starves on behalf of millions. In Germany, millions starve on behalf of one man.
Lottie was the only woman who dared tell jokes in public, with a rich, full-throated, gurgling laugh. That was also against the rules, of course. Laughing was inelegant for women, according to the principal, Frau Mann. It implied criticism and did not befit a German woman. Smiling was a different matter—indeed, Faith and Beauty girls should always smile when a man addressed them—but laughing, well, the way Frau Mann talked, it was as though a healthy dose of female laughter could bring the whole edifice of the National Socialist Party crashing down.
“Are you eating that?”
Hilde Ziegler was eyeing Hedwig’s slice of rye bread, and Hedwig shrugged. She used to be hungry all the time. A hunger that filled her dreams with fat pork chops, chocolate, and cake with real cream and pastries made with butter, but since Lottie’s death, her appetite had disappeared.
She glanced out of the window to the woods at the far end of the garden. At the place Lottie was found, the police had erected arc lights, the kind you saw in film studios, bathing the area in a dazzling phosphorescent glow. But there was one secret that no amount of police spotlights were going to uncover.
Everyone in Germany kept a place in their mind, like a cellar in a house or an attic concealed by a study door, that nobody knew about. A place where they thought their own thoughts and examined their true feelings. And when Hedwig retreated to this place and shut the door behind her, what she mainly felt was guilt.
CHAPTER
8
E ven though he was standing in the shadows, Clara could feel his eyes on her. Calculating, malign, dangerous. Attempting, with the precision of an interrogator, to dissect her performance and separate pretense from reality. Analyzing every minute facial movement, every glance and gesture, to pounce on falsity and drag the truth from where she had concealed it.
Despite the heat of the stage lights, she shivered.
She was wearing a flimsy pink silk dress and spectacles and standing next to Heinz Rühmann on stage five of the Ufa studio—the very same soundstage on which Marlene Dietrich had only a decade earlier filmed
The Blue Angel
and Fritz Lang made
Metropolis.
Now, in contrast to those cinematic masterpieces, stage five was playing host to the final scene of
Liebe Streng Verboten
.
Love Strictly Forbidden
was pure, high-octane candyfloss for the eyes. The plot revolved around an ambitious mother who wanted to marry her daughter to the lord of the manor, while the daughter was in love with a lowly hotelier. It was a farcical procession of mistakes and confusions with a satisfyingly happy ending and just the kind of escapism Herr Doktor Goebbels prescribed to soothe a nation’s frazzled nerves.
In truth, Clara was glad that the film required a minimum of effort. Her visit to London and the news of Leo occupied all her thinking space. She felt stunned, as though she had left part of herself in England, and
Love Strictly Forbidden,
whose script had as much depth and sophistication as the back of a cornflakes packet, was the ideal vehicle to occupy her. The lovelorn secretary was a popular role in German cinema, and she had played it a number of times over the last few years, so it was easy to go through the motions. It helped that Heinz Rühmann, one of the biggest blond heartthrobs of German screen, was an old friend, so kissing him was no great hardship.
Yet even the most intimate of love scenes required an army of people in the studio: director, assistant director, crew, clapper board loader, piano player. Continuity girl, props manager, cameraman, and gaffer, and a makeup artist with brushes and palette primed for a last-minute touch-up. Boys with belts of tools hung from the cranes, and in distant glass cubicles sound
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