It began, innocently enough, with an accidental meeting of an old schoolmate, Elke Handfest, who had also been in her troop of Hitler Youth.
Before the war Elke was remembered by Hildegaard as plump, acned, and homely. Elke covered her physical misfortunes with a riotous sense of humor with which she played out the part of a buffoon. Her humor was a defense created out of sorrow, but proved of great value later.
Elke’s search for love taught her that, as a woman, there were things men wanted from her and many would overlook her appearance if she supplied the commodity liberally.
In the wild years of the war, Elke Handfest plunged from one affair to another. Although she looked quite presentable now, her humor had deepened to a morbid and scathing kind of self-damnation. She had been forced into sex for recognition; she had never received happiness from it. The more she tried to find its pleasure, the more it eluded her, the more it all became distasteful. And she drifted powerfully toward her own sex and began to find it fulfilling.
When the Amis dispossessed the Falkenstein family from their Dahlem home, chance placed them near where Elke lived with her aged and helpless parents.
At first meeting Elke was excited by Hilde’s beauty and encouraged a renewal of their friendship. Little by little, Elke revealed tangible evidences of good fortune.
“Elke! Where did you get this Ami cigarette?”
“Just enjoy it.”
“I insist on knowing.”
“Where does anyone get anything these days?”
The black market?”
“No. More of an exchange market.”
“Elke, stop teasing me. I’ve smelled your perfume and I’ve drunk real coffee and tasted real butter.”
“I have good friends. Perhaps some day I will introduce you to them.”
“Today.”
“You were always jealous of anyone having anyone or anything you didn’t.”
“It’s been so long, Elke.”
Maybe long enough, Elke thought. Maybe she is hungry enough to want these things. “I must think about it, Hilde. Why don’t we visit in a few days and I’ll let you know.”
Hildegaard thought of it too; she thought of little else ... cigarettes, coffee, silk underwear. Elke’s luxuries gnawed at her innards.
Elke, too, thought of little else. She appraised her own situation with murderous objectivity. She was neither as beautiful as Hilde nor even very pretty. The competition among women in Berlin was growing unbelievable. The first harbingers of winter pushed more and more out on the streets. Elke wondered how long she could last under the competition.
The physical beauty of Hilde thrilled her, but she knew she had to approach that with care. First, she had to let Hilde’s greed trap her. Then she would train Hilde carefully.
With a partner like Hildegaard Falkenstein and her own connections she could make her life last much longer. Her fulfillment with Hilde would come later.
“So, you are still interested in knowing my friends? “
“Yes.”
“It is a matter of taking dates with occupation soldiers.”
“You mean, sleep with them.”
Elke shrugged. “It is better than working on a rubble pile. Besides, I have my parents to keep alive.”
“Do you ... walk the streets?”
“Of course not. That is for the old hens. I have one of the best connections in Berlin to arrange my dates.”
Hildegaard pondered it for days. Elke Handfest lived well under the circumstances, better than her own struggling family, even with Uncle Ulrich’s help. A few times Hilde tried to work but found it dreary and impossible.
Elke’s proposition presented moral aspects against her teaching, but morality in such times was a flexible item. Almost everyone was doing something to live that they would not do in normal times. Hilde rationalized that having dates arranged with occupation soldiers was not the same as being a common whore. It even had a ring of respectability. And, if Elke did well, she could do better.
Hilde remembered her own experiences before the Mongol soldiers raped her. The first time she had sex, she was just fifteen. It was encouraged in Hitler Youth as not only honorable but a highly patriotic duty to bear a baby. Illegitimacy did not exist in the Third Reich. In this intense nationalistic atmosphere she and a boy, whose name and face she could hardly recall, decided to try it out with each other.
There was a week-long encampment of Hitler Youth in the Berlin State Forest on the Müggel Lake. They arranged a rendezvous in the woods in much the same way as dozens of other couples.
The boy was awkward and fumbling and caused her pain. He cried afterward because he had done so badly. All she got from it was disgust and anger. He was a stupid clod, like most men.
There was a second experience during the war when Hildegaard realized true womanhood. Berlin, before the big bombings, was a place of gaiety and excitement and a bit of madness. A young submarine officer on leave, named Sigi, pursued her with wild, heady abandon and made her forget the other unpleasant experience.
Hilde cared for him ... well, for a while, anyhow. When his leave was over and he returned to his submarine she forgot him almost completely ... at once. His whining letters annoyed her. Although she had enjoyed Sigi, the affair revealed to her many things. What Hilde craved from him most in those fifteen crazy days were those moments he was unable to restrain himself at the sight of her loveliness, when he lost control simply by touching her. The supreme thrill came when he was in a state of utter exhaustion and unable to function.
When Sigi left, Hilde decided that falling in love so intensely again was a bother and took too much out of her. She saw the example of her sister immersed in misery and pity with Dietrich Rascher, saw her tear herself to bits. No man was worth what Ernestine went through.
Hilde decided that the next affair would be approached with cold calculation with someone who could help her with her ambition to gain lazy comfort. Hilde was self-centered enough to deny herself the giving of love. She pampered her beauty for the right moment, and as a woman of twenty she was an enormously handsome woman in a classical German sense.
The horrors of Berlin told her that the old life was gone. The chances to fill her ambitions were also gone. In this tomb she could not understand how they could not be gone forever. Yet, her craving for things that Elke Handfest had attained began to overpower her.
When she saw Elke again, she said, straight-out, “I would like to try a date with you.”
Elke was pleased that Hildegaard had taken the first step. “I will see what can be arranged.”
“Of course, I would prefer an Ami officer.”
Elke laughed. “You will have to take what is arranged.”
“Do you mean ... I might have to accept a Russian?”
“Some of them are quite nice, Hilde. Being a beautiful creature does not mean everything. You must please the men you are with. If you don’t, you’ll wash out quickly.”
Elke tutored her on the rest of it Never tell a soldier your troubles. He doesn’t give a damn about your crippled mother or the hole you live in. Too many girls spend their evenings boring a man. A man wants a stupid, happy girl who can make love like an animal, laugh at his jokes, allow herself to be possessed. Don’t drink, Elke warned. A girl needs her wits; stupid girls drink. Forget modesty.
“And don’t fall in love, Hilde. But of course, you will never fall in love. You love yourself too much for that.”
“You need not worry about me, Elke,” she answered, both terrified and excited by it all.
The Paris Cabaret now stood in a cellar near Alexander Platz in Mitte Borough, Russian Sector, in the bashed-down heart of Berlin. Fritz Stumpf remained proprietor on a Russian license. Stumpf was wounded badly in the first days of the war. A crippled left arm returned him to Berlin for the duration.