Four beers appeared on their table, and Berni passed one to Anita, receiving a slight nod in return. For the past few days she and Anita had been polite to each other, if stiff. Berni had begun sleeping on a pallet on the floor of the dining room. Yesterday Anita had taken her to the Silver Star, where Berni had done much better selling cigarettes. Shockingly, everyone there seemed to treat Anita as if she were normal; there were even others like her. Still, Berni found she could not help looking for the boy beneath the girl. Even now, as she watched Anita paint her lips Coty dark, she stared at the faint ghost of hair on her upper lip.
“How did you come to befriend Sonje?” Gerrit asked Berni, his arm interlaced with Sonje’s. Berni explained briefly why she had to leave St. Luisa’s.
Sonje tittered and said something about Berni’s moxie, but Gerrit shook his head. “Those nuns,” he said, “send the academy the girls they think worthy of joining the middle class. Your sister, with her defect, wouldn’t make the cut.”
“Enough politics for now,” said Sonje. Berni watched the stage. In St. Luisa’s she’d have slapped anyone who said “defect.”
Gerrit went on as the pianist completed her solo. “. . . defenders of capitalism are loath to allow proletarians a hint of social mobility. You should be proud you refused them.”
Should she? She missed her sister. Today she felt the sting of her absence more painfully than ever before. She tried to think what the girls at St. Luisa’s would be doing this evening. Bible story time with Sister Josephine; it seemed so distant from the Tingel-Tangel that it might have been happening on another continent.
Berni’s beer felt cold in her hand and in the pipes of her throat. She watched a stocky emcee appear at the corner of the stage, followed by a spotlight that adjusted itself a few times. “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s turn our attention to the mech-an-i-cal.”
Six young women chugged onstage in a little train, wearing military jackets and sheer hose. “We hear it everywhere—everything’s become too mechanical. Transportation. Communication. Even the act of love!”
The girls thrust out their hips to a drumbeat. Someone whistled.
The emcee tugged his bowtie. “My friends, Berlin is healthier than it’s ever been. Look at how productive we are. We make coal. Rubber. Steam!” Six little clouds of white smoke puffed up behind each girl’s rear end, and in unison, their eyes popped. The crowd laughed and clapped. Berni turned with mouth open to Anita, who shrugged as if to say she’d seen it before.
“Love in Berlin has become mech-an-i-cal, they say. But we know our city still has its beating heart.” Now each of the dancers ripped a panel off the chest of her military jacket, revealing six round left breasts.
Berni was enthralled. She couldn’t help it. Those breasts! Each a perfect sphere or cone, the faces above coldly beautiful, captivatingly stoic. She peered over her shoulder to see the crowd’s reaction through the dim smoky air, and jumped when she found Anita crouched behind her. “Tell Sonje I’m headed to a party.”
Berni glanced toward Sonje, who had her face tucked against Gerrit’s. “Why leave now?” she asked Anita. “The show’s just started.”
“I’m through with this tired old bit,” Anita said, and turned away with a flounce.
Berni took pulls of her beer, growing bored and embarrassed by her tablemates’ necking. By the end of the routine, the dancers were wearing very little. When finally Sonje resurfaced, she glanced toward the exit, then pulled Berni close. “Anita auditioned for this dance line once.” Around them, the crowd burst into applause. “You can see why she wasn’t chosen.”
The alcohol was beginning to make Berni feel dizzy, and very sorry for Anita. “I’ll just make sure she’s okay,” she said and stumbled out, bumping the backs of chairs as she went.
She found Anita standing on the curb, one bony arm flung out to hail cabs. “So,” she said, sucking the end of her cigarette. “You’d like to see the real Berlin.” She yanked Berni’s arm down when she tried to signal a car. “We want a cyclonette. Cheaper. Look for the cabs with three wheels.” Eventually they found one, and Anita gave the driver an address. They drove past the opera, then under the Brandenburg Gate, which glowed pale purple.
“Sonje likes to pretend she’s so modern sometimes, she and Gerrit looking at tits.”
Berni hadn’t heard Anita criticize Sonje before; it felt a bit titillating. “Well,” she said, to be contrary, “I thought the show was clever.”
“Clever? Come on, it’s a tit show.”
“It’s satire. A commentary on modern life.”
Anita snorted. “Satire. No matter how they try to dress up Girlkultur, my friend, it’s naked girls on a stage.”
Berni paused. Should she let on that she knew Anita had auditioned? “Look,” she said after a while. “I’m sorry I ran from you the other day. At the Medvedev.”
Anita shrugged, picking lint off her stockings. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t like it either, what I am.” They were almost to the other end of the Tiergarten now, and Anita’s expression lifted. She pointed toward a stately, darkened building. “But I won’t be this way for long. There’s the Institute for Sexual Science, have you heard of it?”
“They cure homophiles?”
“In a manner of speaking. They can make a man into a woman.”
Berni stared at her, nearly speechless. “You mean they’d—they’d cut it.”
“Snip, snip.” In the electric city glow Anita’s face went from soft and angelic to sharp and sly. “Then I’ll find a handsome Gerrit of my own. All I need is a Gerrit. I don’t have expensive taste, like Sonje. I don’t need someone like Herr Trommler to take care of me.”
“Herr Trommler?”
“Who do you think owns the Maybach? Not Sonje. Pretty women like Sonje always have a daddy. Trommler . . . ach. Picture a man the size of a Holstein steer.”
Berni had thought of Sonje as independent. The news of Trommler depressed her.
“We’ll get out here,” Anita called when they arrived at a row of tenements. At the door, she tugged on her skirt a few times, then rang a buzzer. Berni could hear the party before she reached the flat, could feel it through the soles of her shoes. Inside they were met with a blast of heat and dark. Perspiring people danced: men with women, men with men, women with women.
A man in bloomers mopped at the exotic rug, his hairy, pale thighs showing under the ruffles. “Anita!” he shouted over the music when he finished. He was dressed as a baby, in a bonnet, with a rattle and pacifier hanging around his neck.
“Max,” she purred, “I didn’t know we were to come in costume.” Her shoulder and chin seemed drawn to each other by magnets.
Max’s belly brushed Berni’s hip. “But you are in costume, dear. You’re Anita Berber.”
Berni thought the costume comment wouldn’t go over well, but Anita fluttered her false eyelashes, draping a long-fingered hand across her bony chest. “Max, I go by Anita Bourbon. Der Berber, may she rest in peace.”
“Who’s Anita Berber?” said Berni, and Max and Anita both squealed in disbelief.
“She was a famous nude dancer and actress,” Anita told Berni. “Taken from us too soon.”
“Some say of a sex accident, some of an overdose.” Max put his pacifier in his mouth.
Anita handed Berni a drink that sparkled and excused herself to talk to another man in a fox fur with claws. Berni stood by the wall, glad to have something in her hand. She watched Anita’s friend produce a vial from his purse, and from it he and Anita took a miniature spoon and put it in their noses.