I haven’t told you about my parents, Kapriel. They loved me for the longest time. They still love me from where they are now, no doubt about it. You don’t know the first thing about my hometown, I’m sure. I’m from Königsberg. In East Prussia. Just try talking about East Prussia with a German, Kapriel. They know precious little about it. “It used to be part of Germany,” is about the best you’ll get. Most will tell you all they know about Königsberg is the meatballs, Königsberger Klopse. My father was from over there, from Cranz, on the shores of the Curonian Spit. Do you know of it? He was the one who wanted me to be called Magdalena. It was a common name in our family, he said. The Bergs always had to have at least one living Magdalena. But I can tell by your eyes that you couldn’t even place East Prussia on a map. The Baltic Sea? Lithuania? Ring any bells? Poland? Whatever do they teach you at school in Canada? Do you at least know where you are today? I’m talking about old Poland, not the country that the Russian tanks pushed westward in 1945. East Prussia was Germany on the Baltic Sea. Today it’s Russia. Three million Germans lived in that little country for centuries, beside the Masurian Lakes, in Königsberg, and on the shores of the Baltic Sea. Perhaps it looks like a country you already know beside the sea. To the north. In East Prussia, Kapriel, it’s one beautiful beach after another. Two long strips of land jut out into the Baltic: the Curonian Spit to the east and the Vistula Spit to the west. The two strips of sand are three hundred metres wide and at least one hundred kilometres long; between them there are two narrow stretches of fresh water that freeze over in winter. The peninsula’s sand dunes are like mountains. They shift slowly in the wind. Between those two enormous sand dunes, Kapriel, there are wonderful pine forests, where deer run wild. I saw them when I was small! My mother came from Königsberg. She was a real Prussian and learned French at school. “Every young girl should be able to speak French,” she’d tell me. I think she must have met the Kaiser himself when she was a child. The Prussian emperors were crowned in Königsberg, did you know that? That’s where I was born. On Schrötterstraße, not too far from the zoo. I remember the old city of Königsberg well. My father helped run a theatre there. He was an entrepreneur, too, and he owned two cinemas. When I was fourteen, in 1934, he announced to my mother he’d been transferred to the Reich’s capital in Berlin. Well, not exactly transferred… He’d been taken on by Kraft durch Freude, ever heard of it? No? Kraft durch Freude was a big group of German workers from the Deutsche Arbeitsfront. Kraft durch Freude, or Strength through Joy, became the world’s biggest entertainment provider in the 1930s. The world’s biggest, Kapriel. We like to say that all the time in Germany: the world’s biggest. We love excess. The world’s biggest book fair, the best beer in the universe, the most terrifying dictator in history, the mother of all orchestras, the war to end all wars. German excess, all of it. Kraft durch Freude. The Germans called it KdF, three letters that were synonymous with vacations, theatre, music, and Mediterranean cruises. Every worker in Germany could pay in each month, and in return enjoy discount travel across the Reich. Prussians would travel by train to the Alps, while Bavarians went to swim in the Baltic Sea. It was Germany’s first organized vacations. But KdF was much more too… My father, for example, was one of the first Prussians from Königsberg to travel thanks to KdF: he was sent to the Salzburg Festival in 1934. It was a dream come true for a man who loved music like he did. I also travelled a lot thanks to Strength through Joy, but first I have to tell you how we arrived in Berlin. My mother was far from enamoured with the city. I think it frightened her a little. She found the people impolite and poorly educated, and she had no patience for the communist plebs running loose in the streets. My father had a hard time persuading her to move there. She had her conditions. Funnily enough, it wasn’t the promise of a huge apartment or nights out at the opera that made Mama change her mind, it was the assassination of Röhm in 1934. Nothing disgusted or frightened her more than disorder. Even though she was far from a fan of Adolf Hitler, to her mind Röhm’s death brought an end to the chaos. And Berlin was such a violent city that Mama was frightened for herself and for me. “I don’t want to go to Berlin, it’s full of communists,” she’d told Papa. Most people in Königsberg, it must be said, backed the Führer. I was fourteen and didn’t know much about what was going on. Papa had told me, with a gleam in his eye, about the Reich’s capital, its three opera houses, its theatres, its cabarets, and the Berlin lifestyle. But Mama wouldn’t hear of it. “You won’t have me living among Bolsheviks, Alfred!” Then came the Night of the Long Knives in summer 1934. Ever hear of it? No? Ach… Gott! And you were planning on marrying a German girl, Kapriel?

I’ll spare you the details. Back then, I knew nothing at all about the Night of the Long Knives; that kind of thing didn’t interest me in the slightest. All I know is that in September 1934, my mother agreed to move to Berlin. Papa was overjoyed. “You’ll love it, you’ll see,” he told me. Because I was a little afraid. Afraid for Mama, because she didn’t have a strong constitution. She became diabetic after I was born. She always needed looking after. As a very little girl, I learned to read her blood sugar level just by looking at her face. You can laugh, but it works! It was obvious: a little too much sugar would have killed her. Papa told me early on all the food we weren’t allowed to keep at home: diabetics sometimes wake up starving and will wolf down anything they can get their hands on, only to fall into a coma! It’s awfully dangerous. We never had desserts or candy in the house, in Königsberg or in Berlin.

A week before the move, Mama asked how I planned to say my goodbyes to Königsberg. All I wanted was to visit the zoo one last time. It was right beside where we lived. So Mama and her sister, my Tante Clara, took me to the zoo one last time one Saturday morning in October. Königsberg Zoo was one of the best in Europe. I could spend hours gazing at the zebras, passing them cabbage leaves through the bars. They were right beside the giraffes. Tante Clara was sad. She only had the one sister; in fact, I think we were all she had. And we were leaving. She had been a music teacher at a school.

“My little Magda, come back and see me during the holidays. We’ll go to the beach in Cranz every day, if you like,” she told me at Königsberg station before kissing me for the last time. Tante Clara wasn’t married yet. She met Wolfgang later. We called him Onkel Wolfie. I think they got married about a year after we left Königsberg. It wasn’t before, I’m sure of that. I was to meet the bastard soon enough. Poor Tante Clara! She deserved better than that disgusting animal, that bigot, that satyr! Forgive me, Kapriel, I’m getting carried away. You’re an uncomplicated soul: you like your stories in chronological order. I should really tell you things as they happened. It’s easier that way. But I can’t help myself: Wolfgang Hinz was a pig!

As I was saying, before we left for Berlin, Mama had set out her conditions. First, we were to live in Charlottenburg, nowhere else. “It’s Charlottenburg or nothing, Alfred,” she told Papa. Mama was a real Königsberg bourgeoise. My grandparents owned a shipyard and they were distinctly unimpressed when their daughter married the son of a forester from Cranz, even if he had studied literature and music.

Mama also wanted me to go to the finest schools in Berlin, and those schools were in Charlottenburg. “I want her to learn French and English. A respectable young lady must speak French.” Mama got her every wish. I even learned French. But what made her happiest of all, I think, was the apartment Papa found in Charlottenburg. When he came to pick us up at the railway station in the car—he already had a car—Mama looked out at the noisy, filthy streets of Berlin, completely discouraged. I’m quite sure that Papa made a point of taking the Kurfürstendamm so that Mama could see our new neighbourhood in all its glory. The apartment was in a big house on Schillerstraße, not too far from the new opera, the Deutsches Opernhaus, which had been the Charlottenburger Opernhaus before that. “See? You’re right beside the opera house, Waldtraut. It couldn’t be better.” We drove past the opera house so that Mama could see. She didn’t even look, she was so exhausted from the trip. Papa had bought an enormous bourgeois apartment. Eight big rooms and some furniture left behind by the previous owners. They must have left in a hurry: they hadn’t even taken the piano. It wasn’t until much later that a neighbour told me the apartment we lived in had been confiscated from a Jewish family that had had to flee Germany. Papa must have known. Mama, too, but they didn’t tell me a thing. I wouldn’t have understood anyway.

Mama was enchanted. “Why Alfred, an apartment like this must have cost you millions!” Papa had got a very good price, he said. “It’s unbelievable,” Mama laughed. “We should have come to live here sooner!”

It’s true that the little house in Königsberg was no match for the palace Papa had just bought. We weren’t the only newcomers to the building. There were three other apartments with new owners, one of them a colleague of Papa’s at Kraft durch Freude, a man by the name of Nowak. I was a little sad all the same. In Königsberg, we’d had a yard with a little shed, where I raised animals. I’d had a little dog, rabbits, and even three ducks one summer. In Charlottenburg, we were on the second floor: there was no way we could have rabbits, not even a cat. Mama found me a place at Sophie-Charlotte-Schule the first week. She didn’t want to send me anywhere else than a school for girls that taught foreign languages, Latin, Greek, and all the humanities. The principal gave me a funny look, I remember, because I still had my East Prussian accent. It must have been quite strong: she said something about how important it was to speak good German. And it was there on that October day in 1934 that I first encountered the idea of being in love.

The principal escorted me to the classroom when Mama left.

“Your group has a French class now. Do you speak French, Magdalena?”

“Naturellement,” I replied.

It was true. I’d taken French lessons in Königsberg, but Sophie-Charlotte-Schule catered to the daughters of Berlin’s finest families. Some spoke French fluently. I got there before the class started. It took less than two minutes for the other students to begin tormenting me. “So are you a boy or a girl then?” “Looks like a boy with long hair.” Those Berlin girls were unbearable. Yes, I looked like a boy. A real tomboy. Not ugly, but very masculine. And I wasn’t blonde. Not being blonde at fourteen was a calamity! Then it happened. She walked in: Mademoiselle Jacques. As she came in, the students rose as one until she told us to sit back down. It came as a complete surprise to me. Teachers in Königsberg would all bark “Heil Hitler!” as they came in, but Mademoiselle Jacques made do with a simple “Bonjour Mesdemoiselles.” Until that point, I’d had German teachers teaching me French. They would cut up their consonants into little cubes, iff you know vat I mean. Mademoiselle Jacques pronounced every word the way I’d imagined the French must speak. She was a real lady. For the longest time, I thought she was French. She was, in fact, German, descended from the Huguenots, but given her name and occupation I took her to be French.

The word Mesdemoiselles hadn’t finished rolling off her tongue and I already knew she’d land me in all kinds of trouble. With the first consonant of Mesdemoiselles, when Mademoiselle Jacques’ lips came together to send the rest of the word off on its delightful way, angels hidden I don’t know where in the classroom fell silent. Her -elles struck me square in the face like a summer breeze coming in off the Baltic Sea. Yes, Kapriel, the charm of foreign-language teachers is as innocent as it is apocalyptic. And don’t they know it!

Mademoiselle Jacques—I’ll remember to my dying day, and even beyond—was wearing a long grey skirt, an ivory blouse, and a navy blue jacket made of the same material as her skirt. Her thick head of hair was tied back in a bun, just above which she wore an amber barrette. When I saw it, I thought she must be from Königsberg, because when I was that age I thought all the world’s amber came from Königsberg. The tiny piece of my homeland she was wearing in her hair might as well have been a tiara.

When she turned around to write on the board, my gaze got lost in the spiral of her chignon. I fell straight into it that day in October 1934, never to re-emerge. I’m still trapped in there to this day. The other day, while you were telling me you’d fallen head over heels at the Goethe-Institut in Toronto the moment Claudia opened her mouth, the same wave of dumbfounded joy washed over me again. I couldn’t even hear what you were saying. It was as if I was fourteen again. Then Mademoiselle Jacques asked me to stand up and introduce myself to the class in French. A few hurtful girls laughed at my faltering French.

Mademoiselle Jacques smiled. “You can sit down, Mademoiselle Berg. Welcome to Berlin. Can you tell us which part of the Reich you’re from?”

She must have known already and just wanted to hear my French. And there I was, standing like Marie Antoinette before the people of France, about to lose my head.

“My name is Magdalena Berg. I’m from East Prussia, from Königsberg. Königsberg is a German city by the Baltic Sea. The Pregel River runs through it…”

Tante Clara had taught me how to say that much in French. Then I fainted. I fell hard, like a sack of potatoes. When I woke up, Mademoiselle Jacques was on the floor beside me. My head was on her lap. She was touching me, Kapriel! The angel was actually touching me! Other teachers came in to help, along with the principal.

“Ach! It’s the little girl from Königsberg. What’s gotten into her?” I heard. They called my mother since we had a telephone at home. My father was high up in Kraft durch Freude, you see. Mama arrived with the maid to bring me home.

“She must be exhausted!” Mama declared.

She thought the 500-kilometre train journey from Königsberg must have taken its toll on me, or maybe the noise of the city was driving me crazy, or I don’t know what else. But the beautiful Mademoiselle Jacques had quite simply knocked me on my back. But what could I say? How could I explain such a thing? It had never happened to me before, it was like no symptom I’d ever had, it was at once menacing, marvellous, and lethal. At any rate, Mama ordered complete rest for one week, which seemed like an eternity. I had to put up a fight to be allowed to open the French books we had at home. That’s when I became truly infected, that’s when, in the half-light of my bedroom, I began to daydream about Mademoiselle Jacques, her bun, and her—at least to my mind—oh-so-French lips.

Mama had kept all her French schoolbooks from Königsberg. The moving crates were barely emptied and I already had my nose buried in books on French literature. In bed, I’d fill my head with subjunctives, perfect tenses, and past participle agreements. I went about it methodically, but I still allowed myself flights of fancy into books that were too advanced for me. I was like a smooth-cheeked cabin boy at the helm of a ship that was too big for him.

“You’ll kill yourself studying,” Mama shouted. “You need your rest!”

Mama was always shouting. Papa was always off with KdF. In the Alps, by the sea, Munich. He used to travel all around the Reich with Germans on holiday.

For me, it was clear that happiness could only come through learning French. Mama was overjoyed by this sudden enthusiasm for foreign languages. I had been a mediocre student in Königsberg, a tad undisciplined, more interested in trips out to sea and along the Curonian Spit with Papa Alfred than mathematics and subjunctives.

“It’s the Charlottenburg air,” Mama would say, seeing me go over my French conjugations again and again.

Mama had played the piano since she was little. When orders dried up and her parents were forced to sell the shipyard in 1930, it fell to Papa to indulge her fondness for grand pianos and music teachers. Music costs a fortune, Kapriel. You should know.

One night in December 1934 when Papa was off travelling and Mama was feeling unwell, I used the time to myself to plaster the apartment in pieces of paper, labelling every piece of furniture, every item, in French. There were dozens of them: la table, la chaise, la fenêtre, la fourchette, le plancher, le portrait, le téléphone, le piano… Everything got its own piece of paper. The following morning at breakfast, Mama thought she’d lost her mind.

“What are these French words doing all over the house?”

“They’re for Mademoiselle Jacques.”

Mama had a good sense of humour. She cut out a piece of paper, wrote something on it, and put it on my head: die Gans. The goose! When she wasn’t feeling poorly, Mama could be very funny. Because of Mademoiselle Jacques—or thanks to her, I’m not sure which—I quickly became the hardest-working student in French class. You see, Kapriel, French to me was not a language that was spoken by real people. Sure, I knew it was spoken in France, but France was a distant, abstract idea. French was the language Mademoiselle Jacques spoke. If she had taught Sanskrit, I’d have learned Sanskrit. But Mademoiselle Jacques was only the beginning of my “emotional” problems. Much worse was to come.

When she realized my infatuation with the French language, Mama imagined I might also have a talent for music. At last I was beginning to take an interest in things proper young girls should enjoy. In her mind, I should work on my gifts. In December 1934, Mama told me she had come to a decision.

“Have you noticed, Magda, that nearly all the girls in your class play an instrument?”

“No.”

Which was true. I hadn’t noticed. Did Mademoiselle Jacques play an instrument? That was the question she should have asked.

“They do, Magda. They all take piano lessons.”

“I don’t like the piano.”

“I know, darling. But you’ll have to either choose another instrument or learn to sing. I don’t want you to get left behind. Music is good for a girl: it shows her feminine side. And Papa can well afford it.”

“Can you sing in French?”

“Ah! It’s clearly an obsession with you! Of course! It’s more difficult than in German, but there are songs in French, lots of them. Wait a moment… What’s he called? I’ve forgotten his name, but I still have the book in the piano bench…”

“Will you teach me to sing?”

“No, no. We’ll find you a nice singing teacher right here in Charlottenburg, and you’ll learn all about singing. It will change your life, believe me!”

“Change my life how?”

“You’ll see the world differently. And the world will see you differently too. People adore people who can sing. Everyone knows that. It’s so easy to fall in love with a beautiful voice that hits all the right notes.”

She didn’t need to say another word.

“Can we go now? Before lunch?”

Mama laughed. Back in 1934, she still laughed a little. Much less than in Königsberg, but still every now and then, whenever I said something like that. She hadn’t started to hide herself away in her bedroom yet.

She began looking for a singing teacher there and then. It wasn’t hard. Papa was an important man at KdF, and KdF was an extraordinary outlet for artists, musicians especially. One of the things my father did was manage all the shows put on by KdF. They didn’t just organize trips, oh no! They put on operas and sold cut-price concert tickets to Germans. So all he had to do was ask at the opera. Three days later, Mama came to pick me up outside Sophie-Charlotte-Schule. I was still woozy after French class.

“I found you a singing teacher! We’re going right away! You’ll see. She’s very nice. I met her this morning.”

We had to take the subway from the Deutsches Opernhaus to Nollendorfplatz. I’d never taken the subway before. The train went in and out of the ground, showing me flashes of Berlin, fascinating places I was about to discover. Remember that at that age I wasn’t allowed to walk around as I pleased. Mama would never have agreed. Plus, I would have been scared to, and with good reason. Berlin wasn’t safe.

Bülowstraße. That’s where my singing teacher lived. As I rode the subway, my mind was filled with daydreams, nothing unusual for a fourteen-year-old girl. They came in three main flavours, with the occasional variation. But they were always more or less the same. Those images haunted me in my sleep and in my every waking moment too.

First dream: I’m walking with Mademoiselle Jacques at Königsberg Zoo. We’re the only visitors. I bribe the zookeeper to get my hands on the key to the zebra pen. Mademoiselle Jacques and I walk up to the animals and they’re not at all frightened. Mademoiselle Jacques is astounded to see what a talented animal trainer I am. I whisper into a zebra’s ear. After a few minutes, it lets Mademoiselle Jacques climb onto its back. The two prance about, Mademoiselle Jacques’ laughter echoing around the zebra pen. Later she and I gallop through the streets of Königsberg as people wave at us. End of the first dream.

Second dream: A concert hall. Mama is on stage, sitting at a piano. I’m in a blue dress, standing before the audience. Mama launches into the opening bars. The French words flow out of my mouth like caresses, straight into the third row, where Mademoiselle Jacques sits smiling up at me blissfully. The finale is grandiose, ethereal. Before Mama even gets to the final bars, the applause brings the house down. Mademoiselle Jacques is crying with joy. End of the second dream.

Third dream: A boat. Mademoiselle Jacques and I are sailing silently along the Curonian Spit. An elk watches us from the shore. She talks about Goethe and explains the subjunctive to me. I reply by citing an excerpt from Werther: “A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I enjoy with my whole heart.” Mademoiselle Jacques looks delighted and shields her eyes from the sun as it sets over the Baltic Sea. End of the third dream.

What I didn’t know that afternoon, as Mama told me to hurry along Bülowstraße, was that two new characters were about to join the cast of my daydreams.

“Here it is!” Mama announced, pointing to a big door. “Her name is Terese Bleibtreu!”

(Michel, Bleibtreu means “stay true”—a funny name for a singing teacher.)

We went up three floors. Mama was out of breath. Behind the door, we could hear someone playing the piano, then a boy singing Semplicetta tortorella, the Nicolai Vaccai ariettas. No one came to open the door so we walked on in. There was a long hallway with a few chairs obviously set out for visitors. The boy’s voice now reached us more clearly.

“I think he’s a baritone. Nice isn’t it, Magda?”

“Yes, very nice.”

It’s difficult to describe a voice, Kapriel; it’s easier to explain the impact it has, the images it evokes within us. The boy’s voice entered my head right at the moment the image of the zebra at Königsberg Zoo was passing through for the thousandth time. It was a well-rounded sound, big as the sea, but as fragile as the breeze. The boy was only a beginner, even I could tell. We heard Frau Bleibtreu interrupt him: “Watch the note, Ludwig!” His name was Ludwig. Mama smiled a little. To Prussians like us, the name “Ludwig” is a little… how should I put this? Bavarian. He started singing again. A very simple arietta about a turtledove, Mama explained. “Tante Clara used to sing it too, in the early days.” Ludwig’s disembodied voice swept through the hallway.

“Per fuggir dal crudo artiglio vola in grembo al cacciator…”

Then something strange happened, a phenomenon that I still can’t explain to this day, Kapriel. My mind took flight, at the sound of Ludwig’s voice, from Königsberg Zoo to the concert hall and on to the Curonian Spit, and soon all three scenes were overwhelmed by the warm, round voice of a boy I hadn’t even set eyes on. His voice became a character in my waking dreams, a sonorous entity that permeated every last corner of my conscience. That voice was almost blue in colour; it quieted all the other sounds in my dreams. All I could hear now was Ludwig singing Semplicetta tortorella. And the voice enchanted Mademoiselle Jacques every bit as much as the galloping zebra and the sun setting over the Baltic Sea. “How beautiful, Magda,” she said in my dream. “How delightful.”

Ludwig’s lesson was almost over. Terese Bleibtreu reminded him what he was to prepare for their next lesson, then the door to the studio opened. It was Ludwig who saw us first.

“Heil Hitler!” he simpered, giving the Führer’s salute.

Mama rolled her eyes. “Heil Hitler,” she replied. Mama never said “Heil Hitler.” She repeated it if someone said it to her, but she never said it first.

Ludwig was out in the hallway now. Terese made the introductions. Ludwig was a… how should I put this? A very ethereal boy. If he hadn’t been wearing his Hitler Youth uniform and his hair had been longer, I might have taken him for a girl.

“Ludwig Bleibtreu,” he said by way of introduction.

He was her little brother! I’m not sure I could have put up with my own sister as a music teacher, but Ludwig and Terese seemed to get on like the very best of friends. My God, such Catholic names they both had now that I think about it. Not Berlin names at all! She must have been ten or twelve years older than him. You know, Kapriel, even if I’d met Ludwig on the sidewalk on my way out of the building, I’d still have known he was Terese’s brother. The boy was an exact, only slightly more masculine, version of his older sister. The world had just shifted beneath me. The boat Mademoiselle Jacques was sitting in began to take on water and sank to the bottom of the Baltic Sea. After his Hitler salute, he walked forward and peered at me hard, as though he thought he recognized me. Terese sensed her brother’s uneasiness.

“Ludwig is very tired. He didn’t hear you come in,” she said in a sing-song voice. Ludwig excused himself and left. Mama left me alone with the teacher and took her seat again in the hallway. Terese sat down at her grand piano. The room was a timeless place. The window looked out onto Bülowstraße, with distant conversations, the sound of traffic, and children’s cries occasionally drifting up. There were photographs on the walls of Terese on stage, in roles I didn’t recognize. In one corner, a mannequin dressed in feathers and a little bird, a real one this time, in a cage. Perhaps it had been caught by the man wearing the Papageno outfit, who knows?

“That’s Amadeus,” she said.

“What type of bird is it?”

“A Gouldian finch.”

“Where does it come from?”

“Australia. Queensland, I think. I can’t remember,” she tittered.

Terese Bleibtreu knew the provinces of Australia and the birds that lived in them. I was beginning to find her a bit odd. The exotic bird and the outdated surroundings created the impression that nothing was quite real. I remember wondering if you could travel to Australia with KdF. Probably. No doubt. I’d have to ask Papa. But why that look, Kapriel! Plenty of people used to have birds in their Berlin apartments. In fact… oh yes, I remember now.

“I have a bird!” Terese said, catching me staring at it. “But only a little one. Don’t worry, Magda…”

Don’t you find that funny, Kapriel? In German, when you say, “She has a bird” that means “She’s crazy.” That’s why it was funny. She meant she was only a little crazy. And soon I’d have proof.

Ludwig, the boy who had just left, was also a new student, she explained. He’d only been coming for three weeks.

“Ludwig is my little brother. He’s very talented! Perhaps you could sing a duet together.”

For the first lesson, Terese had me reproduce the notes she played on the piano, just to make sure I wasn’t tone-deaf. “Sehr gut!” she said each time. Then she had me lie on the floor to show me where the sound a singer produces comes from: the muscles down there that do all the work. She had me spend fifteen minutes doing arpeggios. She would sing a series of notes and I had to repeat them as accurately as possible. Sometimes she’d say “Nein! Hören Sie genau zu!” or “Jaaaaa! Genau!” depending on whether I managed it or not. Standing up, sitting down. A real workout. She touched me a lot, too. After an hour of that I was exhausted. Then Terese had Mama come in.

“I think we’ll be able to work together. She has an ear. Although, of course, we are starting from scratch, so…”

I stared at the Australian bird while Terese and Mama ironed out the details of my musical education. They decided on an hour’s singing lesson every Tuesday after school.

“But she can come and practice whenever she likes. My door is always open!”

I asked if I could have my lesson with Terese right after her brother Ludwig’s.

“Of course, but why, darling?” she asked. (She always called me darling.)

“Because I want to hear him sing before I start my lesson.”

Mama and Terese were tickled by my ingenuousness. They couldn’t begin to imagine the effect Ludwig’s voice had had on me. They didn’t realize I was still reeling from its timbre, and from the blue colour it seemed to give off.

From that moment on, Ludwig Bleibtreu invited himself into my daydreams. A dejected Mademoiselle Jacques upped and left for someone else’s. Ludwig took her place on the back of the Königsberg zebra. It was he who rowed the boat across the Baltic Sea, who waved to the elk watching us from the shore. On stage, it was the two of us who faced the audience side by side. Mademoiselle Jacques stormed out in a jealous rage and slammed the door behind her. His voice was the soundtrack to my every reverie.

Mama decided to walk home since we were in no rush. She was in fine form.

“And you’ve made such a nice little friend! You’ll have to start going to the opera. Papa will find us tickets. You’ll be able to sing Schubert with Tante Clara. She adores Schubert! Ach! Magda! You’ll also be able to sign up to…”

She was practically hysterisch now. She even insisted on taking me for tea on the Ku’Damm. It was December and cold after all. There were stars of David painted white on some of the store windows. I remember asking Mama about them.

“They’re all mad, Magda. But don’t repeat that to anyone. Papa could get into trouble.”

Until that moment, Kapriel, I hadn’t the faintest idea what was happening to Germany. I hadn’t paid much attention to it. But I’ve run out of Riesling. Hold on a second, there’s some in the kitchen.

(At this point, Michel, she got up to look for another bottle of Riesling in the kitchen. I think I heard her sobbing, but I’m not sure. It might have been the faucet or the plumbing. She came back with an open bottle of Riesling.)

Ach! There were some very nice people in Berlin, let me tell you, Kapriel. The following Tuesday I took the subway by myself to my music lesson, running the rest of the way so as to be sure I’d hear Ludwig singing as I waited in the hallway. Memory does a poor job of recording voices. We forget their pitch, their colour. Words we remember, but memory never manages to bring a voice back to life. A voice needs to be there for us to pick it out among others. Voices are as tricky to describe as the taste of nutmeg or the feel of sand between your toes. All I can say is that that desire to hear Ludwig Bleibtreu’s voice again made every hour at Sophie-Charlotte-Schule interminable. Worried that he might finish early, I’d tear down the stairs at the Nollendorfplatz subway station and run flat out along Bülowstraße. You’ll never know Ludwig Bleibtreu’s voice, Kapriel. That is your misfortune, your tragedy, Kapriel.

I must have arrived an hour early. I didn’t want to miss a thing. I raced up the stairs to Terese Bleibtreu’s four at a time, on the tips of my toes so they wouldn’t hear me, frightened he’d stop singing at the sound of my footsteps. In my mind, I sung the arietta I’d practiced with Mama. “Semplicetta tortorella, che non vede il suo periglio…” Poor turtledove doesn’t see the danger… Truer words were never spoken!

I walked silently into Terese Bleibtreu’s hallway, hearing only Terese explaining something about the diaphragm. Then he sang, something different that time, another of Vaccai’s ariettas, the one they use to teach intervals of a fourth. “Lascia il lido, e il mare infido…” I closed my eyes and let Ludwig’s voice awaken dreams of being on a zebra’s back, in a rowboat, in a concert hall. Then Terese and Ludwig began laughing. I didn’t dare budge in case they realized I was there. I was an only child, you see. I didn’t know what having a brother or sister was like. To me, listening to Ludwig and Terese Bleibtreu giggling after singing class was akin to voyeurism. I hung on their every word. They were looking for a score. They sang a completely moronic song I didn’t know. Marlene Dietrich once sang it as a duet with a singer by the name of Claire Waldoff, Wenn die beste Freundin. They sang in unison; the words were very funny. Then Terese opened the door to find me there, waiting in the hallway.

“Whatever are you doing there? Why didn’t you knock?”

Terese was a little annoyed, as though I’d caught them red-handed. She reminded me I wasn’t to go around listening at doors. She even asked what I’d overheard. I didn’t know she’d been singing what the Nazis called “degenerate” music. I promised not to tell a soul, not so much to reassure her as to bring the three of us closer together. The pair of them fascinated me. I wanted to belong to them, to be their sister. And what can I say? Ludwig made me laugh! He was wearing his Hitler Youth uniform again.

Terese said goodbye to him and invited me in. Like the week before, he gave me the Hitler salute and stared hard at me. He didn’t say much. Then my lesson started.

“Magda, darling, let’s go!”

Terese was dangerously on form. After the warm-up, she asked me to sing Semplicetta tortorella at least fifteen times. Like all singing teachers, Terese was never satisfied. “Your tongue should be doing all the work, not your jaw!” and she held my jaw while I sang. It wasn’t easy. Then she had me say the Italian words with a cork between my teeth. Like this! Phew! At any rate…

“You’re as big as a barrel, Magda. You’re getting bigger like a toad. You’re a Zeppelin over Berlin. Big as the Reichstag! Ja… There you go.”

Then she suddenly stopped playing.

“What do you like to eat, Magda? What’s your favourite dish?”

“Caramel pudding!”

“Ach! The Führer loves that too! When you’re singing, think of caramel pudding. You’re a caramel pudding, Magda! Come on! And stop wagging your jaw, for heaven’s sake!”

At the end of the lesson, I opened the door to find Ludwig in the hallway. He’d been waiting there the whole lesson. He looked like someone who’d been caught stealing bread.

“Ach! You’re still there, my little Ludwig! You stayed behind to listen to Magda. You’re so charming, the two of you. You know my house is always open. You can come and go as you please. You can practice anytime I’m not giving a lesson.”

Listening to Terese Bleibtreu bless our union like that, I felt as though I was being admitted to an inner sanctum, being initiated into a mystery religion, joining a new family that was a far cry from my depressed mother, absent father, and the little brats at Sophie-Charlotte-Schule. It seemed as though I’d found my real family, the one I’d clearly been separated from at birth. As for Ludwig, I already knew from hearing his voice that, were he ever to die, my life on this earth would become one long painful, pitiful tale of woe, a gaping crater of solitude, a futile, sorrowful journey.

Ludwig followed me down the stairs.

“You have a lovely voice,” the little charmer told me.

No one but Tante Clara and Mama had ever complimented me. Oh, there was Mademoiselle Jacques who, even though she officially took me to be an idiot, would congratulate me on the progress I was making in French, but no boy had never praised me before. Ludwig and I decided to walk together. He lived near Nollendorfplatz. His sister Terese no longer lived with her parents and was now staying with an aunt, a woman who could sometimes be seen wandering around the apartment, interrupting lessons with her applause or an admiring “Schön!”. Like the idiot I was, I followed him, even though Mama was to pick me up from Terese’s.

“I have to go to my Hitler Youth meeting. It’s Tuesday.”

Standing outside the subway station, Ludwig told me he’d been allowed to take singing lessons only after striking a deal with his father. Ludwig didn’t like the other boys. His father had agreed to pay for the singing lessons, provided he join the Hitler Youth. His father must have been a real bundle of laughs.

“The other boys are as thick as two short planks,” Ludwig said.

“The girls aren’t any better,” I replied. “I go on Sundays and it’s to make Papa happy too. But it’s awful! A bunch of nincompoops. And those idiotic songs they make us sing!”

“I know, I know. We have the same ones. I prefer Schubert any day. What about you?”

“I don’t know much Schubert.”

“I want to learn Ständchen, that’s what I told Terese. Look, she gave me the score.”

“‘Leise flehen meine Lieder durch die Nacht zu dir.’ You’re going to sing it to a girl?”

“It’s written to a girl?”

“I think so. ‘…fürchte Holde nicht.’ Holde is his sweetheart.”

“I hadn’t thought about that.”

The words on the score seemed to be written for me. For me to sing them in Ludwig’s voice to Mademoiselle Jacques on a zebra. Although I didn’t really know anymore. I think Ludwig’s voice might have sent poor Mademoiselle Jacques packing for good. She hadn’t cut the mustard; I almost felt sorry for her.

We stayed outside the subway station for a good while, then Ludwig suddenly began to panic.

“Quick! Hide! Here come the baboons from my group!”

He dragged me behind a wall just as four young men came out of the station, all wearing the same uniform.

“It’s my Oberkameradschaftsführer, Kranz! He’s a real moron, but he might recognize me! They almost saw me! Quick, let’s get out of here!”

And so began my life with Ludwig Bleibtreu. Five years of poetry in motion. Five years of folie à deux. Five years of dizzying promises. We went to hide with the zebras at the zoo. Ludwig was achingly funny. He would get up on the benches and mimic Terese’s coloratura soprano, dishing out singing advice to passersby. “You over there! Stop moving your jaw! And you, sir! Your posture! Stand up straight like you’re hanging from a thread! And, remember, that’s a D on vola!”

I rolled about laughing. Then he sang Semplicetta tortorella to the zebras, like in my dream. Do you know Max Raabe, the singer? No? Well, he looked like him. A graceful blond cherub who wouldn’t hurt a fly but had cutthroat charm.

Ludwig wore a little cross on a gold chain around his neck. His aunt, the very devout Bavarian that Terese lived with, had given it to him the day his father forced him to join the Hitler Youth. “At last have that under your uniform,” she’d said. No one has ever made me laugh as much as Ludwig Bleibtreu. No one will ever pay me more attention than Ludwig Bleibtreu did. No one will ever look at me the way Ludwig Bleibtreu looked at me. My little angel in a uniform that was too big for him. As blond as the wheat in East Prussia. A true German, I’m telling you: wearing an idiotic uniform, his auntie’s cross around his neck, but give him the choice and all he wanted to do was sing. A true German. A Bleibtreu. And he moved with all the grace of Mademoiselle Jacques. Ach! That boy! Forgive me, Kapriel. I need a tissue.

I got home at six thirty that evening, lips blue with cold. Papa and Mama were frightened half to death.

“Where on earth were you? We looked for you everywhere, you little nitwit!” Papa roared, slapping me twice. Papa Alfred hit me twice a year. Since it was already December and he’d spared me on account of the move to Berlin, he gave me two good slaps I wouldn’t forget in a hurry, once with the palm, once with the back of his hand. But he wasn’t angry for long. I was even allowed to have supper with them once Mama had calmed him down. Ludwig got a thrashing from his father; Kranz the baboon had told him his son hadn’t been at Hitler Youth. They had no way of knowing that by beating us, our fathers helped forge a bond stronger than steel between the two of us. Ludwig and I understood with each blow just how much we meant to each other. The first six months of 1935 we spent almost entirely at Terese Bleibtreu’s. By then we were having our lessons together. Two hours straight. Ludwig’s sister had no objections, but Mama couldn’t find out.

“As long as you keep applying yourselves! You’re here to work!”

I celebrated my fifteenth birthday at Terese Bleibtreu’s. Ludwig too, two weeks later. We told our parents we wanted to practice our singing.

“But you can practice here. We have a piano, after all. I can even accompany you!” Mama protested.

“It’s better at Terese’s. She helps us.”

It was a terrible lie. Terese let us hide in the next room while her students practiced. The little room had two armchairs and a table with framed photographs on it. Photos of Terese. One big photograph, I remember, showed her with a gentleman sitting at a piano. He was in five of the photos.

“Her fiancé,” Ludwig whispered.

It felt as though Terese was committing adultery.

To my mind, Terese, Ludwig, and I formed a single emotional entity with no room for a fourth person.

Hidden away behind the door in our little boudoir, Ludwig and I listened to Terese give her lessons. All kinds of people came and went, from professional singers at the Deutsches Opernhaus in search of technical advice and amateur chorists from the Reich’s railway choirs to beginners like us and men in their thirties who would sometimes forget their manners between two scales. I remember one particular gentleman from Wittenbergplatz… The poor man would begin to stutter every time he walked into Terese’s parlour. I couldn’t look at Ludwig the whole time he was there, otherwise I’d have burst out laughing.

“T… Te… Ter… Teres… Terese… You are th-th-the v-v-very p-p-picture of r-r-radiance it-itself,” the poor man would stutter. Shurbaum, I think his name was.

“Don’t make me blush, Herr Schurbaum,” she tittered. “Shall we begin?”

Herr Schurbaum had a very pleasant basso cantante. Like the sacristan in Tosca. Or Sarastro in The Magic Flute. Terese was radiant, it was true. And Ludwig and I would hear all those voices, all the advice she gave. Terese would come see us after every lesson. We’d talk technique, colour, timbre, the pieces that her students were singing. I remember the tenor who sang Cavaradossi at the Deutsches Opernhaus. He’d also come to see her. We called him “the goat” because he’d put tremors and vibratos absolutely everywhere.

“Nein! Nein! Kein Vibrato!” Terese would shout, enraged.

I think it was there in Terese Bleibtreu’s boudoir that the first challenge was laid down. The first tests, I should say. I think I mentioned, Kapriel, that Ludwig wore a little cross around his neck. The gold shone in the half-light where we were hidden. Sometimes I’d take it between my fingers and caress the smooth metal. His date of birth was engraved on the back, along with his initials. L. B. 13.12.20.

Gold has always fascinated me, Kapriel. “Solidified light raised from a subterranean world,” that’s what Karl Marx wrote! It was October 1935. Ludwig set me my first mission. Kapriel, you must promise me you’ll tell no one. The missions… Ach!

“Do you like my cross, Magda?”

“Yes, it’s pretty.”

“Do you want it?”

“No! It’s yours!”

“Admit it. You want it.”

“I do, but it’s yours. It even has your initials engraved on the back.”

“It’s yours.”

“But I don’t want it.” (I was lying. I wanted that cross as badly as Hitler wanted war.)

Ludwig had taken off the chain and was dangling the little cross in front of me. We had to whisper while the tenor wailed Und es blitzten die Sterne. Like your brother, only in German. That’s right: he was singing Tosca in German. Ludwig waved his little cross under my nose.

“I’ll give it to you on one condition.”

“What condition?” (I was curious.)

“You’ll have to pass a test.”

That’s when the missions started. Childish games that quickly spiralled out of control. The first one was simple. I didn’t have to bring back the Golden Fleece, just Mademoiselle Jacques’ barrette. Ludwig knew all about her, my every feeling for her. He hadn’t even met her, but he told me he loved her just as much as I did.

“If you love her, then I love her too,” he said.

You have to admit he was good!

Steal Mademoiselle Jacques’ barrette. Gott im Himmel! A little silver barrette she wore with a long piece of amber on top.

One day, I was with Ludwig on Schillerstraße and we bumped into Mademoiselle Jacques. Well, she didn’t see us, but Ludwig had noticed her amber hair clip. I had to wait for the right moment. Don’t get me wrong, Kapriel. I’ve never been a believer and even if I had been, I wouldn’t have walked around with a cross hanging from my neck! It was a piece of Ludwig I was after, something that had touched his skin. I don’t believe in God, but I do believe that every object has a memory of its own.

It wasn’t easy. I had to get Papa’s help. And guess how? Thanks to Tosca! You’ll like this story, Kapriel! You already know that Papa worked for KdF, that he had opera tickets for the workers. In the fall of 1935, that October, he got tickets to Tosca at the Berlin Staatsoper for Mama’s birthday. Mama had already taken me to The Magic Flute and other Mozart operas, but she thought I was too young for Puccini. I remember them arguing about it. Papa insisted I go.

“What harm do you think Tosca’s going to do her?”

“All that violence. Come on, Alfred. You know very well what happens in the second act. There’s a torture scene, then Tosca stabs Scarpia to death. It’s a story for adults. Plus, she’ll be bored. Mozart is what she should be listening to at her age. Mozart trains the ear without corrupting the soul! It’s nice of you, Alfred, but I won’t go. I get nightmares every time I see that jealous woman throwing herself to her death at the end of the opera.”

“Do you really want us to go see The Magic Flute again?”

“Alfred, you simply cannot take her. I forbid it. Puccini just isn’t suitable for a young girl who’s studying French and learning to sing like our Magda. She needs stories that are right for her age. I won’t even hear of her going to see Madame Butterfly!”

“I think I’ll leave it up to Magda, darling.”

“That’s right. You bring her to see Tosca. Just don’t be surprised if she ends up with blood on her hands!”

“For goodness’ sake, Waldtraut! Listening to Puccini won’t turn someone into a murderer!”

“Do what you like, Alfred. You always do anyway. All I can do now is keep quiet.”

I would often hear them arguing in their bedroom or the living room where I never went to sit with them. From that moment on, seeing that forbidden opera where passions were unleashed seemed to me my sole reason for living. Papa made me wait until Saturday, October 19. The entire Staatsoper had been booked by KdF. Papa even gave some opera tickets to Sophie-Charlotte-Schule, probably to get the principal on his side. The concert hall was almost full. I was in the orchestra seats with Papa. A wonderful place, Kapriel. Prettier than the Königsberg theatre, much prettier. There were speeches by people from Kraft durch Freude then the Hitler salute. The usual blah-blah before a show. The Führer generously ensures you have this and that and the other, the regime is pleased to offer you this performance of Tosca… Pfff! They stopped just short of claiming Hitler had written the score himself! Anyway, you’ll never guess what I saw no more than three rows in front of me, a familiar sight, glinting in the half-light… Mademoiselle Jacques’ barrette, neatly pinned to its owner’s hair! She must have been given one of the tickets Papa had left at the school.

The speeches finally ended and the curtain went up. I spent the whole first act thinking this was my chance, it was now or never. I barely paid any attention to what was happening on stage. D’Angelotti arriving, hiding when he sees Cavaradossi, then that sacristan idiot. Tosca at last coming into the church, shouting “Mario! Mario! Mario!” convinced she’ll catch him with another woman! You know, Kapriel, it’s a woman’s jealousy that brings the whole thing crashing down, that’s what Tosca’s all about. Had Tosca been a bit more sensible, none of it would ever have happened. It was through that flaw that Scarpia managed to worm his way into her heart. That’s what Papa told me. I needed to find a way to sidle up next to Mademoiselle Jacques. The first intermission came just after the Te Deum. When we came back from the bar, I noticed that the seats behind her were empty. The people sitting there had had enough after the first act!

“Papa, may I sit a little closer?”

“Of course, darling. No one will mind if the people have left.”

From that moment on, it all happened very quickly. Mademoiselle Jacques didn’t see me in the dark hall, and since Papa didn’t know any more about her than what Mama had told him, he had no way of knowing it was her. The barrette glistened in the darkness. But it was far from in the bag, Kapriel. Even if I’d managed to get the barrette out of her hair without attracting her attention, the people behind would have caught me red-handed and turned me in on the spot. Papa would have been disgraced! But it was Tosca who delivered the barrette into my lap, almost literally. Mademoiselle Jacques became more and more agitated during the second act. She jumped in her seat every time Cavaradossi let out a tortured cry. She buried her face in her hands as though it was she or her lover being tortured! She even wept during Vissi d’arte. I could have pinched her barrette while she sobbed, but someone would have seen me. Mama was right after all: Puccini does drive people to a life of crime! Ha! Ha! I was getting desperate. The second act was almost over. Tosca grabbed the knife from the table, ready to murder Scarpia, who had been going to rape her. It was the pact they had made: he’d let her leave with her lover Cavaradossi and in exchange she’d give herself to him. The ink on their safe conduct out of Rome was barely dry when she seized the knife and approached him. And that’s when the miracle happened. By the look of things, it was a folding knife that refused to give way at the right moment. Poor Scarpia took a knife to the stomach. Everyone thought he was acting; it wasn’t until the blood dripped down onto the stage that we understood what was going on.

People stood to get a better look, began to whisper. “He’s bleeding! He’s going to die,” a woman suddenly cried. “Quickly, a doctor!”

Men leaped up from the orchestra to come to Scarpia’s aid as he lay moaning in a pool of blood. The poor soprano who played Tosca had buried her head in her hands with shame; the musicians poked their heads up from the pit to watch the drama unfold. People began to shout. That was when she dropped to the floor. Mademoiselle Jacques couldn’t bear the sight of blood! She had stood up to look and fell straight back into my arms. She never knew it was me who had caught her.

The barrette was a cinch. It was in my pocket in a second. People were shouting and running about the hall. Someone had the presence of mind to close the curtain. Someone else gathered up Mademoiselle Jacques. “Let me help you, Miss.” I already had what I wanted. Papa and I went home. The next morning, it was all over the newspapers and the barrette was in my secret drawer.

“I told you, Alfred. I knew you were going to traumatize her.”

If Mama had known what still lay in store for me, she wouldn’t have raised so much as an eyebrow.

I couldn’t wait for my next singing lesson. When I got to Terese’s hallway, I admired the little barrette in the sunlight, then clipped it in my hair. It was the first thing Ludwig saw when I walked into the studio. He was speechless.

“What a pretty barrette, Magda!” Terese said.

Ludwig wore a wry smile, and his eyes were filled with disbelief. After our lesson, we walked along Bülowstraße.

“How did you pull it off?”

I told him everything. I exchanged the barrette for the gold cross and the deal was sealed. He must have told his parents he’d lost the cross. I don’t know what he did with the barrette. Maybe he gave it to his sister.

In February 1936, a new version of Tosca came to the Deutsches Opernhaus in Charlottenburg. I went to see it at least a dozen times. Three times with Ludwig, who was as intrigued as could be. It was always Papa who got me tickets. I think he did it just to annoy Mama. I can still see her feigning disinterest on her way out of the living room.

“I won’t go. Puccini isn’t music: it’s shouting. It’s not for me, thanks all the same, Alfred.”

Mama had her own tastes.

Ludwig wanted the cross back. Naturally. I was going to make sure he paid top price for it.

“You’ll have to serenade me.”

That was my price. And that’s what he did, the silly fool. It was one morning in June 1936. I’d had the cross for months. The sun was barely up when I heard Mama knocking at my door.

“Magda! Come at once!”

The living-room window was open. We could hear men grunting and exclaiming loudly. It sounded like they were moving something heavy and unwieldy. Their grunts mingled with shouts from people in our building. “What’s all that ruckus at this hour? People are trying to sleep here! I’m going to file a complaint.” Mama was all aflutter.

“Alfred, is it the Bolsheviks?”

Papa seemed to find the whole thing quite amusing. On the sidewalk right below our living-room window, three heavy-set men with mustaches were unloading a black, upright piano from a wood-panelled truck.

Who on earth, I wondered, still swimming in the fog of sleep, would have a piano delivered at six o’clock in the morning? The serenade had completely slipped my mind.

Then the truck left, and the three men with it. The piano was all alone on Schillerstraße, like it was waiting for a bus or something. People exchanged looks from their windows on either side of the street.

“I assure you we have nothing to do with this,” Papa said, keen to make sure the neighbours understood his mission to entertain the German people only went so far. Birds sang in the linden trees. A crazy woman shouted: “There must be a bomb inside! It’s gonna blow!”

“My goodness, Alfred!”

Mama was quivering with fear. But we were quickly reassured. Footsteps could be heard coming from Kaiser- Friedrich-Straße. Slow, deliberate footsteps. Everyone went quiet. From above, we could see a blonde lady making her way toward the piano. She was carrying a folding stool, which she set in front of the instrument. Then, raising her head, she looked up at us.

It was Terese, my singing teacher!

Her smile was sweet and gentle, her skin pale, like Ludwig’s. Even from a distance, we could see she had long hands. With a nod to her audience, she sat down on the stool and took a score out of a bag she was carrying on her shoulder.

“Don’t tell us you’re going to play Schubert!” someone shouted. And that’s exactly what she did.

“Alfred, it’s Schubert’s Ständchen!”

Mama still thought Papa was behind it all. It was the kind of thing he would have done. The woman played Schubert’s serenade for a minute. It was the piano version, so gentle that you fall in love with it the first time you listen to it. You want to hear it a second time, just to relive its thematic repetitions, just to revisit its nuances. Do you know it? Yes? Ach! At last something you know, Kapriel!

The people at the windows began to laugh. A woman sang the song’s first words: “Leise flehen meine Lieder…” in a faltering voice. Then Terese suddenly stopped playing. At the corner of Kaiser-Friedrich-Straße, exactly where Terese had appeared, stood Ludwig. Of course, I’d suspected from the very beginning that this was one of his schemes. But until the moment he appeared, I was torn between the hope of seeing him and the pain of having to part with the cross. My thoughts hadn’t yet turned to what my neighbours and parents might think of the whole thing. Unconsciously, I covered the little cross with my hands, as if to protect it. So, he was prepared to go that far… He stood beside the piano. Mama recognized him.

“Magda, it’s your singing teacher and her little brother. What’s his name again? Joseph?”

“Ludwig, Mama. His name is Ludwig Bleibtreu.”

And so Ludwig Bleibtreu sang Ständchen, looking up to my window from time to time. His voice echoed off the walls, rose up to the sky, filled the linden trees with fragrance, and charmed the sparrows who, I swear, Kapriel, went quiet the whole time he was singing. He delivered the second “jedes weiche Herz” with a vibrato that I can still hear to this day. They’d clearly been practicing. But who had agreed to deliver the piano to our doorstep so early in the morning and, more importantly, how were they planning on taking it back? He even held a flower in his hand, the silly boy! Every blind on Schillerstraße was open now. The rare drivers on Schillerstraße that morning stopped for a closer look.

Needless to say, fate had it that a journalist lived in the building opposite, a gentleman that Papa knew through KdF. The Arts section of the following day’s newspaper featured a photo of Terese on the piano and Ludwig singing beside her. The writer headlined the article “Bebend harr’ ich dir entgegen,” the words Schubert’s song ends on. “Trembling, I shall await thee here.” Since then, I’ve never been able to imagine love other than to that tune and those words. You know you’re in love the moment you walk up to someone trembling, I’d think to myself. And since I associated trembling with the freezing cold, having grown up in East Prussia, I associated love, that awful feeling, with the sumptuous winters of my native land. You’re the only one in Berlin who could know what I mean, Kapriel. You need to feel all the coldness of that music. I think it’s a song for the cold of heart. For people like us, Kapriel. I wait for you, trembling. Words to be sung in despair, one last cry from the heart, a petition of sorts. Do you follow me? It takes someone familiar with the body’s tremors, the inexplicable bumps and jolts of the nervous system, to understand Schubert. Did you know he died of syphilis? No, not Ludwig. Schubert. You did? At any rate, Mama was prostrate on the sofa, head in hands.

“Alfred, everyone’s watching us. Make him stop!”

“No, no! It’s too funny. We have to let him finish.”

Papa was helpless with laughter. I was trembling with barely contained anger. Not because the whole street was watching us, not because everyone would sing Ständchen as I walked down Schillerstraße for months to come, but because I was going to have to give him back the damned cross. It was out of my hands.

A crowd gathered around the piano below. Germans are morning people, as you know. And since he sang so well, they asked him three times to start over, then he sung a little Mozart until I went down to the sidewalk, after hurriedly getting dressed, my hair still in a state, to accept the stupid red rose with my left hand, slipping the cross into his pocket with my right. That was the rule. The cross had to be handed over as soon as the test was passed. No dithering, no haggling. Just the cross. I was furious. All of Charlottenburg applauded for ten minutes or three centuries, I can’t remember which. No more than three quarters of an hour after the show began, the same truck came by with the same strapping men. They loaded up the piano and left, this time with Terese and Ludwig holding on to the side of the truck with one hand and waving goodbye to their Schillerstraße audience with the other. His father no doubt punished him for requisitioning the truck for nothing more than a serenade. He probably beat him, like he did when he missed his Hitler Youth meetings. But it was too late. I’d grown fond of our little game. And if you think, Kapriel, that I’d seen it all with that piano arriving on Schillerstraße at six o’clock in the morning, you’ve got another think coming. I was about to perform any number of outrageous acts to get my hands on that cross. That was in the summer of 1936 in Berlin.

(At this point, Michel, she got up to go into the kitchen. I heard her turning on the taps to hide the sound of her sobbing. There was no doubt: she was in tears. Until then, I hadn’t quite thought her capable of tears, but she was definitely crying. She came back to the living room with a glass of water, keeping up her pretence right through to the end.)

Things with Mama were never the same after the serenade. On the one hand, Ludwig had charmed her beyond belief, probably more than he had charmed even me. On the other hand, she disapproved of such extravagance.

“Whatever will people think of you, Magda?”

“Let them say what they want, Waldtraut…”

Papa, on the other hand, had been moved by the whole incident. For the last few days of school, the girls, who had all heard one version or other of the story, no longer eyed me scornfully. I had become someone. When a boy sings Schubert for you, that makes you someone in other people’s eyes. That’s why you’ll never amount to anything, Kapriel. I’m joking, I’m joking!

August brought with it the Summer Olympics. Papa found a job for me as a hostess because I had a gift for languages. I welcomed foreign visitors and helped them find their way around Berlin, the venues, and Charlottenburg. I spoke French for close to a month with visitors from France and Belgium. If it hadn’t been destroyed in the air raids, I’d show you a photo of me in my Bund Deutscher Mädel uniform, Kapriel. The French had all sorts of questions: “Is the regime mistreating you?” or “Are you allowed to speak to Jews?” Questions I had no answer to. No one was mistreating me. I didn’t know any Jews. At least… Anyway. Of all the visitors, I think the French had the most questions. And they seemed to always know the answers already. Perhaps that’s just the impression I had because I’d mostly learned French and didn’t speak much English. I don’t know.

I barely saw Papa that summer. KdF had tons of events to organize, entertaining people wherever possible and bringing Germans from across the Reich to the capital and people from the capital to the rest of the Reich. I was all alone with Mama when I wasn’t working for the Olympics. One morning, I found her sitting at her piano in tears. She wanted to talk to me, alone. She asked me to close the window in case the maid heard us.

“Listen, Magda. I’m exhausted. And your father has been invited to a huge party at Schwanenwerder.”

“I know. At the Goebbels’. He’s spoken of nothing else for a month. Tomorrow, right?”

“It’s very important to him, darling. I have to go with him.”

“And you don’t know what to wear?”

That was when she broke down. I’d never seen her in such a state. I had to sit down beside her on the little piano stool, like I did when I was learning my scales.

“Your father loves society life, he loves everything that shines, everything that sparkles, Magda. It’s a curse. And he’s going around telling anyone who will listen that the Führer himself will be at this blasted party!”

“But Mama…”

“I won’t go. And you’re going to help me. Remember these words: women must help one another. Never count on a man!”

Mama’s plan was simple: she would make herself sick to get out of the party and instead I would go with Papa. It was unthinkable that he would go alone.

“If you’re old enough for someone to sing you Ständchen, you’re old enough for dinner at the Goebbels’. But promise me you’ll behave. And don’t count on them showing you how to. Those people have lots of money but precious few manners. Anyway, there’ll be thousands of guests: no one will even notice you.”

“But Papa will never believe you’re ill. He’ll be angry.”

“That’s where you come in, darling. You’ll go down to the bakery and get me a sugar pie…”

“But you’re not allowed sugar! Papa said it could kill you!”

“A little piece will make me just ill enough not to have to go to this stupid party! I’d rather be sick all night than have to clink glasses with proles who think they belong to the bourgeoisie. Now do what I say or you’ll never have another singing lesson again.”

I was furious with her. Not because she was throwing me in at the deep end at the Goebbels’, not because it hurt me that she would poison herself like that, and with my help, too, but because she’d insulted Magda Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda’s wife, a person I worshipped, like many other German girls. Do you know her? Not personally? Poor Kapriel! She’s not one of your Wessi-Tanten! She died in 1945. I’d keep every newspaper cutting, every photograph of her I could find. She was a kind of Nazi saint. She was everything I was supposed to become: a mother. That was it. Women were to have children. The Nazis went on about that a lot, just like your Catholic priests. To set an example, Magda Goebbels had already had three children on top of the one she had from a previous relationship: Harald, Helga, Hilde, and Helmut. The six children she had with Joseph Goebbels all had names beginning with H. H for Hitler. Do you see what they were up to, Kapriel? Onkel Adolf didn’t have a wife, you see, so Magda Goebbels became the Reich’s First Lady by default since she was married to the Minister of Propaganda. Eva Braun? You’re joking, Kapriel. We didn’t know that little Bavarian mouse was even in the picture back then. At least I didn’t. Magda Goebbels was blonde and chic, always elegant and impeccably dressed. They say she spoke French like it was her mother tongue. The thing is, she was born in Belgium and brought up by French-speaking nuns.

I didn’t understand why Mama said she had plenty of money but precious few manners. If I’d been older, I would have understood, but at sixteen I didn’t see much beyond Magda Goebbels’ shockingly blonde hair. To be honest, I secretly wanted to be her. She was beautiful, admired, and elegant. And no one was ever going to ask her, just to be spiteful, just to make fun of her, if she was actually a boy.

So it wasn’t so much my willingness to help out Mama than my eagerness to meet Magda Goebbels that led to me accompany Papa to Schwanenwerder. The following morning I gave Mama a slice of Streuselkuchen, a sugary cake, her poison of choice. Then I went to meet Ludwig at the zoo. He had been severely punished for the serenade and we were only able to see each other once a week at the zoo, in the hour after my lesson.

“Will you go back to taking singing lessons?”

“If Father lets me.”

And then, I don’t know what came over me. I asked him what I had to do to get the cross back. He said he’d think about it. A half hour later, still on the same park bench, he set out his conditions.

“You want the cross back.”

“Yes.”

“What are you prepared to do?”

“I don’t know. You tell me. Do you want me to sing outside your window?”

“No, I’ve had enough of that type of thing. It’s something else I’m after.”

“I’m listening, Ludwig.”

“I’ll exchange it for another piece of jewellery.”

“I won’t steal from Mama to get my hands on your cross.”

Ludwig took a newspaper out of the trash. There was a photograph of Magda Goebbels in it.

“You want me to bring you back Magda Goebbels, bound hand and foot?”

“No, just this.”

He pointed at the photo of my idol alongside the Führer at an award ceremony.

“You want a medal?”

“No, you idiot! I want her earrings!”

“What do you mean, you want her earrings? What am I supposed to do, just walk up to her and go, ‘Oh look, a bird!’ and swipe them without her noticing? Have you lost your mind?”

“That’s your mission, Magda. Magda Goebbels’ earrings and you can have the cross.”

What a lunatic. He knew how the Reich’s First Lady absolutely fascinated me. Hitler, on the other hand, always left me cold. That ridiculous Austrian accent, Kapriel! But Magda Goebbels, well, I was a little… yes, a little in love, perhaps. That settled that, at any rate. I would never see the little cross again. Ludwig would have it forever. I gazed for a long time at the earrings in the photo. Tiny pearls. How much must they have cost? A gift from Joseph Goebbels himself? Who knows? We went back to see the zebras.

By the time I got home, the Streuselkuchen had done its work. Mama was in bed, grey. The maid swore to Papa she hadn’t seen sugar anywhere. She was a plump Potsdam girl. What was her name? Marie? No. I don’t remember.

“I swear, sir. I didn’t bring any with me! No cake, nothing!”

He was livid. There was no way he was going to miss the Schwanenwerder party. No way he was going by himself, at any rate. The invitation was for two.

“Magda, your mother is very ill. Would you come with me to the Goebbels’ this evening? They say the Führer will be there. I can’t promise he’ll speak to you; there will be thousands of us. All you’ll have to do is be on your best behaviour. Do you have a dress? A pretty one?”

How could I hide the fact that Mama had prepared the dress I’d be wearing before even biting into the Streuselkuchen? It was a purple gown, the kind of thing a vestal virgin would have worn.

“There. You look like a Greek goddess! Very olympisch!”

Papa was pleased. On the way to the party, he explained what I was to do, what I was not to do, what I mustn’t say.

“Talk about Königsberg. People like that. And don’t sing! Even if you’re asked!”

Then three minutes later:

“Sing if you get the chance. People like that. But don’t mention Königsberg, even if you’re asked.”

I’d never seen him so worked up. At Schwanenwerder, there were so many cars parked we had to walk for at least fifteen minutes. The Goebbels had made a princely home for themselves on Lake Wannsee, on a private island linked to the mainland by a little bridge.

It was no ordinary party, Kapriel! Everybody who was anybody was there—from all over Europe! We were welcomed by young women dressed in white tunics and holding torches, true to the Olympic spirit. Musicians, dancers, and entertainers were everywhere.

The Goebbels had spared no expense. You had to queue for a quarter of an hour just to be able to say hello to the hostess. Night fell around the Goebbels’ mansion. All across the lake there were little butterfly-shaped lights. “Italian Night” was the theme.

We were introduced to Frau Goebbels at last. I still tremble at the memory.

“Herr Alfred Berg of Kraft durch Freude, and his daughter Magdalena.”

Genuflect, Kapriel! Proffer a little hand. And you’ll never ever guess, Kapriel, what Magda Goebbels said to me! Ja! You guessed it!

“You have a very pretty name, Fräulein Berg.”

I thought I was going to faint. Papa clenched his teeth, which I knew meant: “Say something, you little nitwit!” But what could I possibly say to a woman I only knew from the newspapers? The guests behind us were already growing impatient. I barely had time to stammer an awkward thank you before we were shooed into the garden, where supper was to be served.

It didn’t take long for the party to descend into drunken debauchery. Sheer decadence. Nothing less. I had no idea, at sixteen, what the word “decadent” meant. All I knew, looking around me at the way people were behaving, was that I wasn’t cut out for a life of decadence, Kapriel! Not like you! Ach! Stop being so sensitive! I’m not the one the police just brought home drunk from a bar in Prenzlauer Berg! The earrings? Yes! The earrings! Magda Goebbels was wearing the very same earrings. At once a stroke of luck and misfortune. Luck, because now I knew exactly where I could get my hands on them. How else would I ever have found them in such a huge villa? Can you imagine me rifling through the drawers of the Reich’s First Lady? And the misfortune being that they were in her ears. It wouldn’t be easy getting up close to the ears of the First Lady of the Reich. It was far from a foregone conclusion.

By eight o’clock, the bushes around the mansion were already crawling with SS, throwing up their lunch and everything else. I can still hear the sound of their vomiting… Papa tried to distract me from the shameful scenes.

“Look, it’s George II, the King of Greece.”

Everybody who was anybody, I’m telling you, Kapriel! The King of Greece with his whole entourage! A tall man with a nose like… Well, let’s just say that if he’d been King of Italy you could have said his nose was shaped not unlike his country. You find that funny, do you? Wait till you hear the rest! Now we could hear other sounds coming from the bushes. The hostesses dressed as vestal virgins had been dragged off by the SS men for a roll in the hay under cover of darkness. Nothing too glorious about it all, but just as Mama had predicted. Magda Goebbels was furious! I watched as she stood up and shouted at her husband, but they were too far away for me to hear what she was saying. Ach! I’d love to be able to tell you. What was she so furious about? That her lovely Nazi party had turned into a Roman orgy! But there’s something else I should tell you: Papa hadn’t been sticking to lemonade… Since he was tipsy, I was able to escape his attention for a moment or two.

What can I say about the garden? It looked a bit like a Biergarten, with everyone singing and drinking like there was no tomorrow. Magda Goebbels was still trying to stay on top of things. But the harder she tried to calm the guests, the more they acted like savages, and soon the entire staff was busy trying to control the drunks as they fought, smashed furniture, and pissed on the frightened hostesses. We could see the employees running outside to help their despairing mistress.

In the ensuing chaos, I walked up to the villa door and, without even stopping to consider what I was doing, went inside. There were a few famous faces, ministers, people I didn’t know in the sumptuously decorated rooms. It was as though they had no idea what was going on outside. Nobody there was throwing up into the bushes; the moans of pleasure hadn’t reached their ears. Most of the men were in tuxedos, there was a tray filled with glasses of champagne on a little pedestal table. I helped myself so as not to look out of place. The muffled clanging of pots and pans could be heard from the kitchens. Nobody seemed to be paying me the slightest attention; the staff had its hands full with what was going on outside.

The villa’s main room was decorated ostentatiously: busts, paintings, incredibly kitsch chandeliers. Everything in black, white, and red, of course. All the swastikas you could wish for! Women had taken cover inside, away from the vulgarity of the orgy that was now in full swing in the garden. The women were stiff-lipped and sophisticated. They acted like nothing was out of the ordinary, debating the merits of Verdi and Puccini while the SS sodomized the hostesses outside. It was truly pathetic, Kapriel!

At the end of the room, a hallway led off to an office. I noticed a long pedestal table. I could hear a telephone ringing at the end of the corridor. Seconds later a manservant rushed out shouting: “Frau Goebbels, schnell! Am Telefon!” Since Magda Goebbels had gone outside to the garden, I had time to make my way down the hallway to the telephone that awaited her. But I was being reckless. I could have been caught in the empty hallway at any minute. I’d walked into a trap. Any second now, Magda Goebbels was going to walk right into me. I had no choice but to hide in the closet a couple of yards away and wait.

Her quick footsteps came closer. I couldn’t see her, but I could hear her. She was telling someone it was a shame they couldn’t make it to the party. Who was she talking to? How would I know, Kapriel? To the Führer? Surely not. She wouldn’t have been so curt and, besides, I think the Führer must have been in bed by then. But I digress. She hung up, then, much to my relief, walked away from the table and back toward the clamour of the party. God knows she might have opened the closet door and found me hiding there between two coats! I waited a minute then tiptoed out of the closet. On the wooden table next to the telephone, something white shone in the light. It was one of Magda Goebbels’ earrings! She must have taken it out to talk on the phone, as women often do! It was the same little pearl stud that Ludwig had pointed to in the newspaper at the zoo. I pocketed it without a second thought and quickly returned to the entrance hall. Magda Goebbels was already on her way back. She passed just behind me. I had to look composed, find a conversation to join.

“It was during the second act,” one woman was saying to another, a few steps from me. “Right when she wants to kill him to get her hands on the safe conduct. The knife didn’t fold, it seems, and the singer was almost killed.”

I reacted instantly.

“I was there! A terrible accident. Poor Scarpia!”

Seconds later, Magda Goebbels came back out of the hallway in a panic, her hand against her left ear. I didn’t see her again for the rest of the evening. Papa drove too quickly the whole way home, cursing the people who had ruined the party. I pretended to doze, clutching the little pearl in my right hand. Mama was right: Puccini was making a criminal of me. But Tosca was to have me do much worse still.

In September, I was reunited with Ludwig at Terese’s. I hadn’t been able to see him before that. His father had packed him off to Bavaria to work at his cousins’. His reaction was nothing short of churlish.

“You only have one!”

“And that’s a miracle in itself!”

“But I wanted both. What am I supposed to do with one earring?”

“Don’t tell me you were planning to wear them for the recital!”

“Why not? Perhaps pearls suit me.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“I don’t know, Magda. I can’t very well give you half the cross. A cross comes in one piece. Otherwise it’s no longer a cross.”

“A deal’s a deal, Ludwig.”

“Mmm…”

He agreed to let me have the cross, all the same. Albeit reluctantly.

His concern was understandable. I think we were both beginning to fear the monster we’d created. What would we do next? Yank off the Führer’s mustache? Both of us could see we’d gone too far. Papa would have been in serious hot water if I’d been caught red-handed at Magda Goebbels’.

We calmed down a little. In June 1938, I was eighteen. Ludwig too. We were often together, much to Papa’s delight. Mama was always ill. We kept on with our singing lessons, even after our Abitur at the end of high school; even when everyone was certain war was set to break out. To celebrate the Austrian Anschluss, we put together a shortened version of The Magic Flute with Terese. I was Pamina, and Ludwig was Papageno. Terese’s other students were given the other roles, with Terese herself singing the Queen of the Night’s part. It was probably the happiest time of my life. Just before everything started to smell real bad. All our practicing for The Magic Flute meant that Ludwig and I spent virtually all our time together, so Papa ended up allowing him to stay for supper with us in the evenings. When Mama felt up to it, she would accompany our duet on the piano. Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen. It was a wonderful show! Papa even wanted us to put it on for the workers in the factories, with the financial support of Kraft durch Freude. But we were all exhausted the day after the show. I wanted to return part of my costume to Terese at her apartment on Bülowstraße. I showed up there with Ludwig only to find her packing, looking absolutely radiant.

“I’m getting married, kids!”

Just like that! She’d waited until after the show to tell us. Her parents knew, but hadn’t told Ludwig. He wouldn’t have been able to keep it to himself. This meant, of course, that she would no longer be teaching us, that she’d be moving in with her fiancé, a man from Posen who’d come to hear her every time she sang. We knew him from photographs. He was much older than her.

“I didn’t want to upset you over nothing while you were rehearsing.”

“You’re leaving for Posen?”

Ludwig was sad.

“Yes, but it’s only a few hours away by train. You’ll come to visit with Magda.”

Losing a singing teacher is a bit like finding yourself orphaned. That’s barely an exaggeration. Terese was married one month later. Not much of an engagement. The couple didn’t stay in Posen for long, though. Her husband soon fell ill and needed treatment he could only get in the capital. Terese came back to Berlin in 1940. She was widowed by 1944. I think it was multiple sclerosis he had, that fine husband of hers.

Papa felt sorry for us and bought Ludwig and me season’s tickets to the Deutsches Opernhaus, with as many tickets as we liked at the other opera houses! What operas did we go to in the 1938-39 season? Tosca, at least ten times. Madame Butterfly six or seven times. Verdi until we could take no more! And Wagner’s Flying Dutchman five times at least.

Ludwig and I spent the months leading up to the war at the opera. Today everyone thinks there was only Wagner playing in Berlin in the 1930s. Wrong! They couldn’t be more wrong! Do you know what played most often? Do you know what people couldn’t get enough off? What we lined up for? Puccini!

Then came Herr Küchenmeister. What can I say? How can I put it? It was a few weeks before the invasion of Poland. There was one word on everyone’s lips: war. And what were my parents doing? Off to Norway on a Wilhelm Gustloff cruise! The Wilhelm Gustloff was a huge cruise ship the Nazis had built. It belonged to Kraft durch Freude. “Deserving” folks went on cruises to Madeira, Portugal, Italy, even to Africa! Papa had always wanted to take Mama on a cruise. As head of the Amt für Kultur, he only had to say the word. I was livid they’d left for Norway without me. Perhaps because they felt guilty, they had asked a couple of Papa’s colleagues to look after me, as if I wasn’t capable of looking after myself! It was while they were away in Norway that Ludwig came across this idiotic ad. It said:

Singing lessons for all levels

Anatomy technique

Guaranteed results after 1 lesson

Herr Küchenmeister

Berlin Mitte

It was written on a little card. Ludwig wanted us to go over right away. I was still mourning Terese and here he was looking for a new singing teacher! What do you make of the young man, Kapriel? His country is on the brink and all he can think about is vocal technique.

I had no desire to ever set eyes on this Küchenmeister fellow. Besides, his apartment was right beside Alexanderplatz. What’s that? No, there was no tower back then! Poor Kapriel! It was the GDR that built the tower. No, before that, Alexanderplatz was no place for a young girl from Charlottenburg. Not so different from today, in fact!

The little devil made me take the subway to Alexanderplatz with him one Thursday in August for our first lesson with Küchenmeister.

“Come on, Maggi. Let’s give it a try! He works wonders, I hear! Even singers from the Staatsoper go to him for lessons!”

“Lessons in what? It’s Alexanderplatz.”

“You’re a snob. You disappoint me, Magda.”

I was skeptical. The thing is, Kapriel, there’s a category of singing teachers known as “anatomists.” What does that mean? You couldn’t care less? I have to explain it to you anyway. The singer’s instrument is his body. His whole body. Not just the pharynx, but everything from the toes to the ears, even the asshole. Yes, you heard me, I said asshole. Tosca, when she sings, doesn’t leave her legs or liver behind in the wings. Her whole body is on stage. Same goes for Scarpia and every other singer. And teachers, to get beginners to understand the mechanics of singing, to show them how to produce perfect sound, often use metaphors. Terese often did.

“You’re floating in a tube, Magda! Now imagine you have a head cold and the sound has to come out just beyond your nose. There you go. Your nose is blocked! Lean into it! Clench your buttocks! As if you had to carry ten marks between your butt cheeks from here to the Bahnhof Zoo!”

See what I mean? Küchenmeister belonged to the school that doesn’t believe in metaphors. No imagery. No comparisons. No poetry. Only organs. Perineum. Diaphragm. Pharynx. Stabilizer muscles. Bone resonators. Hard palate. Soft palate. Breath broken up into fractions, not measured in images and colours depending on force and output. Song is a product of the human body; the rest is gobbledygook!

So there we were at Alexanderplatz, Hirtenstraße, not too far from the Volksbühne. All very proletarian. What a contrast with the Italian night at the Goebbels’! Although some of the passersby looked as strange as Joseph Goebbels. Ludwig held my hand all the way to Herr Küchenmeister’s. He lived on the fourth floor. No elevator, of course!

He was shorter than me. I’m a little on the tall side, even for a German from the north, but he was fat too, wearing a black suit with a bowtie. Nothing says “I’m a total cretin” like a bowtie, Kapriel. Never wear one! Everyone will immediately think you’re a fool. His blond hair was combed over to the side, washing up in a little wave at the top of his forehead. Bulging little blue eyes. A little piggy. A little blond pig with a bowtie. He invited us in to his studio and launched right into his sales patter. Nonsense like “You’re lucky I had an hour left on Thursdays! This will turn your world upside down. You won’t believe your ears! My revolutionary anatomy-based approach will show your other singing teachers up for the charlatans they are! Who were you with before?”

“Terese Bleibtreu on Bülowstraße,” I answered, curtly.

“Never heard of her! Tessitura?”

“Coloratura soprano. She sings the Queen of the Night.”

“Where?”

“What do you mean, where?”

“Which opera house?”

“She doesn’t sing at the opera. She sings with us!”

“Ah, I see. Her career’s seen better days, so she’s making a little money on the side taking on students. That’s what they all do! I only teach. I’m in such demand that I wouldn’t have time for a career even if I wanted to.”

The first hour was devoted to exploring our diaphragm’s shape, length, and consistency. Then he set our homework: sing five bars of a Vaccai arietta. I did it right there and then so he’d see we weren’t beginners.

“Ach! You’re trying to impress me! But you’ve got it all wrong, Miss Burg!”

“Berg!”

“Yes, Berg. I can hear your technique and posture problems as soon as you open your mouth. And that F! You do realize it’s off key? Believe me, in a month’s time I’ll have untaught everything that Bleibweg woman—”

“Bleibtreu!”

“Yes, of course, Bleibtreu. You’ll get used to my sense of humour. I like to laugh. One thing you’ll come to learn at Küchenmeister’s is that I don’t go in for those silly images other singing teachers use. No pirouetting angels, no balls balancing on top of a fountain, no barrels, no ‘You’re as big as a Zeppelin.’ No! I am an anatomist! Song is produced by the body, by the organs. Accept the body’s implacable reality, its limits and promises, and you will progress. If not, you will continue to sing as you do now. I will see you both next week. Needless to say, you’ll be on time.”

A tenor, he said he was. What a boor! Have you ever heard the like of it! I’d just been singing Pamina in The Magic Flute and this crank from Mitte thought he could teach me a thing or two! Song comes from the heart, Kapriel. “Sing was du glaubst, und glaub was du singst!” that’s what Terese would always say. Sing what you believe and believe what you sing. Never would she have boiled it all down to anatomy. Never.

I didn’t say a word between Küchenmeister’s apartment and Alexanderplatz Station. Ludwig must have sensed my frustration. How could he stand for this Alexanderplatz swine mocking his own sister? Why had the idiot not stood up for her? But I didn’t have to worry.

Papa and Mama came home two days later. Their cruise had had to turn back. All ships were being requisitioned.

“So that’s it then. He’s going to have his little war!”

That’s all Mama had to say on the matter. Papa was pale green. He wasn’t much of a sailor.

On September 1, 1939, a huge ass rose on the German horizon. Like a star, it climbed high into a sky normally filled with pale moons, patches of fog, and the occasional harmless witch. Once it was nice and high in the sky, it began to shit, Kapriel. In your country, it snows. Well here, it shits. Brown sticky, stinking flakes of it began to fall lazily to the ground. They fell on people, on cars, on the Olympic Stadium… First across Germany, then across the rest of Europe. At the start, we managed to shovel away the shit that was falling, but soon it was up to our knees, then our waists. It shat for six years. Even today, we’re still shovelling away the shit that began to fall that day. What? You thought it had been shitting for a long time before that in Germany? Yes, but it only began to stink on September 1, 1939. You know the rest. Or do I have to explain that to you, too? Not right away, anyway. Now I’m tired.

We never saw Küchenmeister again, thanks to the war. Ludwig was nineteen that September. He was called up right away. Then came the air raid drills. Just as I was about to start studying medicine. Thank you, mein Führer! Ludwig came back to Berlin on leave from time to time, but I had to flee in August 1940, as soon as the first bombs began to rain down on the city. Mama was terrified. She rarely left the house by 1940, but the day after the first bombardment she took me to see a house in Moabit that had been destroyed. It had almost become an attraction for Berliners, going to see the first houses destroyed by the bombs. But soon they wouldn’t have to go very far for their entertainment. Soon they’d have shows of their own in their kitchens, bedrooms, and living rooms. Mama packed my bag right after the first Allied attack.

“You’re not staying here. I’m sending you back to Tante Clara in Königsberg. You’ll live with her and her husband Wolfgang. I’ve sent your father to the station for your ticket and permission to travel. No, Magda. Not another day. You know that Clara and Wolfgang have three children now and a fourth on the way. Onkel Wolfi has been sent to Poland with the Wehrmacht. Clara will need you… Good Lord, Magda, just for once could you try to act like a young lady? I… You know that Tante Clara isn’t the strongest. You’ll… you’ll need to be patient with her. She’s been very ill. My God, I wish this war was over!”

Poor Mama! And so, at the age of twenty, I went back to Königsberg. Adolf Hitler had uprooted me in 1934, only to send me back in 1940. Since Mama was becoming gloomier by the day, since Papa was virtually never at home, and since Terese and Ludwig were no longer in my life, Berlin had lost all meaning for me. I was happy to be going back to Königsberg, where there were no bombs falling from the sky. Mama didn’t even come to see me off at the station.

But I’m tired now, Kapriel. Shall I tell you the rest tomorrow? Tell you what, I’ll take you to Potsdam, just like I said. I’ll tell you the rest in the S-Bahn and in Potsdam. You’ll love Potsdam. And the end of my story deserves more inspiring surroundings than this apartment. We’ll go to Potsdam. Nothing less than an imperial city for this story of madmen.