In Munich’s tiny airport, propeller fans spun overhead. I retrieved my trunk—more suited to ocean liner travel than this—and lugged it out onto the road.
It was only November but already the curbs were heaped with dirty snow. One white Mercedes taxi after the next sped from the small international building. I looked around for the handsome couple and saw them shrugging into a taxi. I wasn’t dressed for such cold. I looked over each shoulder and, in desperation, stuck out my thumb.
Almost immediately a private car stopped. The driver helped put my trunk into his and we went toward town. I took out the crumpled address I had safely in my pocket and pressed it into his hand. He scrutinized it in a despairing way that let me know it would be far out of his way. But, bless him, he drove me there. There was an American station on the radio, Armed Forces Radio, and Richie Havens was singing. I could hardly believe my
good fortune. I was living the faraway life I had yearned for, but I was lonely and homesick by now.
He stopped outside a glass and steel building. I watched nervously as he drove away. I brought my great trunk inside and onto the elevator with me and rode up to the room on the note. Someone was summoned to the front desk who could make something of my English. A plump lady in a thrifty gray suit trotted out. She put on the glasses hanging on a brass chain and waited skeptically while I explained.
“Fräulein,” she informed me, “this is not a model agency at all but a fashion magazine.”
I realized then I’d given the driver the wrong address of the two I had. My horrified expression must have struck her as funny. That and the sight of my enormous trunk, because she doubled over with laughter.
The receptionist had had enough. She used the internationally recognizable eject finger and pointed toward the exit.
“Halt! Wait! Come with me one moment,” the gray-suited lady broke in, and she ushered me to the office cubicles behind the reception area. “Try this on,” she said, handing me a yellow ski suit.
I slipped out of my jeans and put it on. My heart sank. Once again—as usual—it was too big. I was too small.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Thank you for trying to help.” I gathered my clothes from the ledge. “This was what always kept me out of all the runway work I tried for in Paris and Milan.”
“No, Liebling. That’s not it. Nobody can get in this and we must shoot it by Friday.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Na! This is not the runway business.” She clothespinned the back, took a step away from me, and looked me up and down. “For photography it doesn’t hardly matter what the back side is
looking like. We were afraid we would have to cut the back open to shoot it. Perfect!” She beamed at me. Just then, another lady arrived wearing a bracelet of pincushions. She shoved me around inside the snowsuit and I joggled back and forth. “Endlich! Gut,” she said. Finally. Good. “We’ll need you for two days. Which agency?”
I dove cooperatively into my messy bag and came out with my other paper. They bent over it and nodded approvingly. I guessed the agency must be all right and I left, lugging my trunk. At least, I hugged myself, I would have work.
This time it took a long while to get a ride and by the time I got to the agency—a cozy pink house on a canal out in the outskirts of Nymphenburg—they were about to close. The booking girls left me sitting on a red leather sofa while they drank their hot chamomile tea. Although there were bar stool–type chairs, they stood. They manned the phones.
One girl finally noticed me. “Was ist?” She frowned and jerked her chin at me.
I suppose I looked pretty bedraggled at that point. I skulked unhappily over and asked to see Gita Ratleman.
Gita Ratleman, the booking girls informed me in harmony, was still away in Italy on a business trip. They seemed like very stupid girls to me. I didn’t like them. They were as arrogant as the French, but without the sharp, high style. One girl I’d been watching had switched from rapid-fire English to Dutch and then French. I directed my plea to her.
“Excuse me, miss, but Gita Ratleman, your boss, gave me my ticket and,” I shrugged, “here I am. Do you think you could advance me some D-marks, so that I might get a hotel?”
She snorted disdainfully and turned her back, saying, “You must come again in the morning,” and returned to her telephone call. She had seen girls like me before, girls who smoked pot and
played the guitar. She had a very smart Mary Quant sort of haircut and the heels of her olive suede shoes were not worn down on each side the way mine were. I waited humbly, by now very tired.
“Look,” I tried again when she at last got off the phone, “at least you could advance me enough money to get a meal … .”
Scornfully, she looked me up and down. “Do you mean you have no money at all?”
I looked out the clean expanse of window into the twilight. The air over the yard was dense with empty branches. “Yes,” I admitted.
“Oh, come,” she scoffed. “No one changes countries without any money. Not even rootless photomodels.” She delighted herself with her grasp of the language. The disdain in her voice dripped with her true feelings for the models she booked. And there was a horror there, underneath. She’d made her choice, this girl. Hers was a safe, humming office and health insurance. No gallivanting around the world for her.
“I don’t have a single mark,” I protested, knowing I must sound pathetic and realizing what she said was certainly true, yet here I was. I’d come this far. If I was ever in this snippy little office worker’s place, I promised myself, I would behave in a more charitable way. I would be darned if this small-minded Fräulein would play any role in thwarting my destiny. Suddenly I didn’t care what she thought. “Listen,” I said in a harsher tone, “Gita Ratleman is your boss, isn’t she?”
Like most bullies, she had little spine when bullied herself. She unpursed her lips.
“I don’t think she would have paid for a flight for me from Milan if she didn’t think I’d work here.”
She gave a hard laugh. “Gita takes a chance on a lot of girls. That’s what she does. Tickets are tax deductible. Only one of ten will work, though. She makes money either way.”
I uncrumpled the paper I still held in my hand. “But this fashion
magazine, Freundin, booked me for two days starting tomorrow. At least you’ll be assured to get your advance back.”
She really saw me for the first time.
“I went there first, by mistake,” I explained.
Her eyes widened at the signature on the paper. Suddenly, she became almost courtly. “I’ll tell you what,” she acted as though we’d been chummy all along, “I’ll advance you twenty marks from my own pocket and book you a pension near the Leopoldstrasse. The Franz Joseph. It is cheap and clean. And it’s in Schwabing.”
Even I knew that twenty marks was hardly anything, but I was so tired and hungry now. All I wanted was to get away. Laboriously, she wrote out the directions for the trolley but as soon as I was out of sight, I stuck out my thumb. There wasn’t much traffic out this way. Swans glided up the canal, hoisted up their skirts of belly and waddled across chunks of ice, then plopped back in the water and continued gliding down the canal. They eyed me as they passed.
This was so different from Italy’s dark, narrow canals, its lives behind groaning shutters. Out here were spacious lawns of clean blue snow. The twilight had turned the water a shimmering purple. I wished I’d thought to open my trunk and find a thicker sweater. Far off, stout ladies and men played a serious game of Eisstockschiessen—bowling on ice. The people were all twice the size of Italians—and I could hear the pins clacking in the crisp air where they played. I could see right into kitchen windows edged in white lacy curtains. Farm lamps twinkled. Families ate their supper. I thought of my mother and father back home. The newspapers open. The smell of food. A car came down the lane but passed me by. It didn’t matter how long it would take. Twenty marks would not go far and who knew what tomorrow would bring? Eventually, a car did stop and I hitched a ride to the Pension Franz Joseph. It seemed hitchhiking wasn’t done, but the fact that I’d transported this great trunk with me struck them as jocularly
original. Each of my drivers had laughed and laughed at my plight, but each one had driven me to exactly where I’d had to go.
The pension was in a dark, gated Hof. The stones on the ground were worn with the centuries and shone with moonlight. I lugged my trunk through the yard and up the stairs. The stout woman behind the heavy wooden door spoke no English but it didn’t matter because everything she said was drowned out by the shrill barking of her four vicious dachshunds. Together, they showed me to my tiny room. I shut the door. The window looked out onto a medieval stone courtyard. I had never seen a bed so soft and high or linen so white. Cherishing the thought that this would be mine tonight, I took from my trunk my sketchpad and charcoals, a heavy sweater—my brother’s varsity football sweater from St. John’s University—put the wrought-iron door key in my pocket, and went out to find some food.
This place didn’t look so bad, I thought. I went into the Pschorr Brauerei on the Leopoldstrasse, where huddles of university students sat smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. No one troubled over my sketchpad here. I could sit and draw to my heart’s content. I ordered a goulash soup and a glass of milk, the only dish I could decipher on the menu. I can taste it still. The milk was odd tasting and not cold but the soup was delicious, hot, greasy, and spicy. I wiped the bowl with the last crispy roll and sighed with renewed hope. The next day I would begin to work. Work! I calculated my expenses. Why, I could live for weeks on one day’s paycheck, if I scrimped. I began to draw the smoky room.
“Excusez-moi?” A young man stood at my table. I looked around, meaning to indicate another table, but the restaurant had filled. Before I could answer, he sat down and stuck his straggly head of long hair behind a menu. He wore a Greek sweater tied around the waist and raggedy clothes. He introduced himself. “I am Chartreuse.”
“I’m Claire Breslinsky.” Nice, I thought, eyeing the acoustic guitar slung over his shoulder. Like Angelo, my friend in Italy.
“Student?”
“Always.” I smiled. “But not matriculated.” I apologized, “I just model, I’m afraid.”
“Ah.” His eyes glittered. He actually rubbed both hands together in leering appreciation.
“You are French?” I asked shyly.
“I am … shall we say … intercontinental.”
“Oh,” I said, impressed. I was so happy to speak English. “Are you a student?”
“Mais non.” He eyed my sketchpad. “I am an artist.” He did look like an artist; his long, lustrous hair down to his shoulders, his dirty fingers, his handsome nostrils flaring with sensual abandon. He could have been a rock star.
“Imagine,” I gushed naively, “the first person I meet in Germany is an artist!” I blushed. “It’s what I hope to become!”
We smiled at each other. He glanced over his shoulder. “Joint?”
“Sorry?”
He held a hand-rolled fabrication of hashish and tobacco—complete with filter—up in the air.
I looked around. “What about the police?”
He laughed. “This is Schwabing. Student territory. What you would call the Left Bank of Munich. No one weel bother you here.”
“Oh, not tonight, thanks,” I hedged. “I’ve got to be up before dawn tomorrow. We’re going to Austria. To Kitzbühel.”
“Ah! Keetzbuhel! I love eet! Which mountain?”
“They didn’t tell me that. It’s for some magazine called Freundin.” Little did I know that in my country that was like saying ‘some magazine like Glamour or Mademoiselle.’ Chartreuse’s eyes opened wide.
“Would you do me a favor?” I asked. “I just want to pay my bill and I don’t speak German.”
“But, of course.” He snatched the twenty-mark note from my hand and signaled the waitress. In one deft movement he slipped the rest of the rolls from the breadbasket and smuggled them into the Nepali bag he wore across his chest. The waitress arrived, counted up how many rolls were gone, and added them to the bill.
Chartreuse paid with an elegant flourish. He had beautiful eyes. Yellow. Rimmed in kohl. Then these long silky eyelashes. He, too, was short, I realized when I stood.
I can’t tell you why I liked him. I believe now that the attraction happened because I was at that time still innocent. It was before anything untoward had happened. Perhaps my goodness was drawn to his wickedness. But there was something very sweet about him, too, something of the small boy alone in the desert hankering for Westerners and all they brought with them. And he looked at me as though I were made of gold. He seemed romantic to me. Not in a sexual way, certainly (I remain aghast at dirty fingernails) but as a pal, another artist. I held out my hand firmly for the change he’d so cavalierly pocketed. He gave it back. We grinned at each other.
We walked outside together and then back to my pension. I wasn’t sure I could have found my way and I was glad for the company.
“So long!” He gave me a peck on both cheeks as I fished for my key. His breath smelled of sen-sen, which I learned later he kept at all times in his pocket. “See you soon!”
“How will I find you?”
He gave an easy shrug. “I am always at the Café Münchner Freiheit.”
There, I thought as I slipped the lacy key into the gate, one day in town and already I’ve got a friend. I went to my room, washed up, and climbed into that scrumptious bed. Then, for some reason, my eyes would not close. I turned over. I thought I’d crack
open the window a bit and rolled out of bed. But before I could open the sash I caught sight of a figure below in the dark. People still hurried down the tree-lined avenue but someone stood there in the shadows looking up. The ember on his cigarette had captured my attention. I took a step back and peered through the drapes. Why, it was Chartreuse.
I left the window shut and stole back to my bed. I lay there, contented in the assumption that he’d fallen for me. I felt idiotically proud. But you know what they say about pride.
The next day I began to work.
A caravan of oversized Mercedes taxis arrived in the still-dark morning. I climbed aboard one of them. They were full of sour, sleepy, grumpy Germans—they were so big! I think I was half the size of every one of them. They dozed with their heads pillowed against windows and I was forced to wedge myself into a middle spot of the last car—low man on the totem pole as I was. Still, I was excited. We were headed for the Alps. The Alps! I sat up straight, the driver and I the only ones awake. We chatted convivially in English. He was happy to point out the sights.
My hungry eyes devoured the picturesque countryside.
We drove and drove. I was beginning to doze off myself. At the Austrian border we were jostled awake, our passports reviewed by humorless, armed agents, then waved through.
At last we arrived. The muddled gray sky and the bitter air were not very inviting. I just let myself be pushed along with my group. The men were all impossibly handsome, I noticed, and effeminate. They minced along. The women, more masculine, were bleary-eyed and their hair was done up in rollers. They stomped along carrying “falls”—great manes of pretend hair that they would later anchor with combs to their own.
We were hustled into a large gondola, where, standing, we were wedged like sardines among early morning skiers and photographic equipment. I felt my stomach drop as we became suspended onto a cable and lifted, airplane-like, upward. Breaking through clouds is always a thrill, I don’t care how many times you’ve done it. Suddenly we were bathed in morning light.
Nothing the Germans like more than sunlight. At once they awoke and began to chat. Outside, the sky was crisp and blue. The other passengers, used to this sort of thing, were prepared in their own ski clothes and boots. It became manically cold. I wriggled over to the side and took a peek down. We glided above what looked like miniature villages and pines. Cars and trains the size of toys slid by and then, stuck in a cloud, the gondola hesitated, then swayed. It jigged an interrupted little dance, sending the passengers into one another. My heart was in my throat. I could feel the sweat on my back. We lunged higher still. I began to tremble. The others, however, were as casual as New Yorkers on the el train. There was the smell of suntan lotion and the happy sound of loud, guffawing bliss that is the German in unrestricted sunlight.
We landed, sliding along an icy embankment, and were jostled into a herding gate. I was glad to see some sort of rest house of glass and wood built into the mountain. It was rimmed with broad balconies and slanted, magnificent skylights. One steward swept away the snow and behind him another went about setting up leisure chairs. I could smell coffee and the promise of food. Coming from New York as I had, I’d never tasted air that sharp and fresh. It practically bit you.
“Hey!” One of the models nudged me with her huge tote bag. “Mach’ mal! Beweg’ dich!”
I imagined she meant, “Get a move on!”
“Sorry!” I said, pulling myself together and moving along more quickly. She looked vaguely familiar although I couldn’t imagine why. I supposed it was because she and I were the only
redheads—I was auburn, she had the I-love-Lucy red. That sort never quite trust my naturally dark brows and lashes. She was of the pale-lashed, pinkish-eye variety. She wore an awful lot of jewelry for so early in the morning, I thought to myself, but I quickly dismissed her. There was so much going on.
The photographer and his assistants were already out on the mountain ledge beside the T-bar, setting up for the shots. We were led to a makeshift dressing room in the building; it was at the end of a tile corridor near the cold passageways. I looked longingly through the windows at the steaming pancakes on trays in the canteen-like restaurant but there was to be none of that. Everything was, “Komm! Komm! mach’ schnell!” “Hurry hurry,” the stylist would cry, for though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, there were bundles of outfits to be got through and the weather this high up could change in an instant. There were so many trunks of clothes, I couldn’t see how we would ever get done in a day, but, carefully, systematically, the assistants lined everything up on portable-hanger trolleys and we were soon under way.
There were six female models and six males, the men up and ready first. We women had a part of the balcony cordoned off and we applied our makeup from handheld magnifying mirrors. I remember not being very impressed with the models. To me they all seemed old. They looked as if they were almost thirty, for heaven’s sake. But these were catalog models, the kind with whom I’d not had any experience. They were “girls” who were no longer girls but who, on every roll of film, never lost the photographer a shot. They knew all the tricks, how steadily one must hold a smile, how not to move too quickly but in rhythm with the camera—just enough movement to give the outfit another angle, but never so much that the texture of the cloth might blur. In every shot the hands were extended and held with the grace of a ballerina. These were the pros. Their complexions might look spackled in person, but in the catalog or the weekend circulars
they graced, they glowed like young brides. They also made a lot of money. The girl with the pink eyes, for example, in a gloss of mascara and black liner now, looked extraordinarily glamorous.
BoBo, the stylist, instructed us that we must not make use of the skis. There would be severe repercussions if anyone tried.
“Es heisst wir werden nicht bezahlt,”—It means we won’t get paid—wisecracked one of the girls and everyone laughed. I turned to get a better look at her. She was a wild stallion sort of girl with lots of unkempt, mahogany hair—not like the others with their sleek heads in varying shades of blond. She stood out.
But not only because she was dark. I noticed that everyone chuckled then shook their heads in fond indulgence when she said anything in her deep, attention-getting voice. For the first time I wished I understood German. She moved unhurried and pantherlike, comfortable in her own skin. This girl carried an edge of danger. I was just thinking that I’d love to paint a girl like that when she hopped the fence, flung herself down on one of the sunlit chaise longues, and presented herself to the sun.
“Hey! Isolde!” the photographer shouted at her. “Bleib’ mal genau so!” Stay just as you are! Quickly, he disassembled his camera and refocused in her direction.
“Isolde.” I said her name out loud to remember. Stalking about like a panther—that’s the only way I can think to describe her.
She was as old as the rest of them but she gave off a sort of spectacular charm. They were all a good six foot but this girl had something special besides.
Suddenly she sprang from her languid pose, heaved herself away with a pair of poles, and took off down the slope. Everyone leapt to their feet and leaned in one movement over the fence to watch. Obviously an excellent skier, Isolde gave us all a good show, skimming to a stop in an arc of snow at the bottom of the hill. Not missing a beat—she was supposed to be up here working with us—she hopped onto the ascending T-bar.
I’ll never forget the way she looked. She was wearing a china red ski suit and as she glided toward us in the crisp morning sun with the blue sky behind her, every eye was upon her. She waved. Her dark mane of hair shone with good health and her agate eyes glittered with mischief. I looked at the photographer to see how he was taking her hijinks, expecting fury. Oh, boy, I thought, who’s in trouble now! But everyone seemed instead to be filled with admiration. She carried it off. She had a threat about her, something carefree and a make-my-own-rules kind of ruthlessness that you had the feeling if you went against, you’d be sorry.
Or maybe it was what I’d overheard one of them say—Isolde was a noble, a countess.
We all had a smoke. Everybody smoked in those days. Just then, the client arrived. He emerged from the gondola to see his high-priced models lollygagging at the viewing fence, puffing away. His outrage set the photographer on a tirade and we tiptoed back to work.
“No monkey business, you!” BoBo, the stylist, surprised me by wagging her pointer finger at me.
“Don’t worry about me,” I assured her, stretching my neck out and peering down the treacherous ravine. “I’m terrified of heights.”
Eyeing a threatening scarf of clouds in the east, the photographer shouted instructions to BoBo and she took me back to the dressing area. They had to make sure they had this outfit photographed. I was jiggled into the yellow ski suit and propped up on three telephone books piled on the snow. I stood there trying to look like I knew what I was doing.
After a while, though, I could tell from the expression on the photographer’s face that this wasn’t working. He shot a roll without much enthusiasm. My heart sank. I knew I was wearing an important suit or they wouldn’t have gone through so much trouble to book little me. I remembered the look of pure relief on
the face of the woman in the gray suit at Freundin when she’d found me, as if something more than a couple days’ booking depended on it. I had to do something interesting and I had to do it fast. The trouble was I had nothing to work with. The highest up I’d ever been was the top of the Empire State Building. All I had to go on was a yellow suit. Maybe I was inspired by Isolde’s saucy caper or maybe it was my natural competitive-sibling spirit kicking in, but I knew I had to take a chance to make things less stale.
I proceeded to ham it up. I built an imaginary trampoline and sprang from it. This was either going to get his attention and hold it, or he was going to get rid of me. And that would be the end of Germany. Where these girls had moved like statues on lazy Susans, I jumped up into the air, threw my arms akimbo, and gave what I thought was a crazy rendition of a trick skier flying down the mountain.
As luck would have it, the sun broke through. The photographer rose from his crouched position, unscrewed the stable camera, and resorted to his handheld Nikon. In this brilliant light even a 64 ASA film could catch movement without blurring. Wonder of wonders, he loved it. “Mach das nochmal!” he cried. “Do again. Same! Same thing!”
“Sehr gut!” the photographer actually congratulated me after he finished not one but three rolls. He was perspiring, I noticed, but I think he’d been having fun. He showed me the Polaroid. There I was suspended in blue sky, the yellow suit dazzling, my head thrown back, laughing. “Spitze!” I could tell it was high praise. Beaming, his assistant helped me down from my perch.
“Ja!” the stylist called out to me.
As I hobbled, trembling, on my skis past the other girls, they were all looking at me. Isolde came over, and if in the headiness of the moment I imagined she, too, was going to pat me on the back, I should have known better.
“Hey,” she actually poked me with her ski pole, “where are the rest of your legs?”
“They’re home,” I answered, disappointed, without looking. Then I added (lying for spite), “Holding down my fat bank account.”
Americans can take care of themselves. I should have known all along she’d come gunning for me. But I could handle her. I had my own beautiful and insulting older sister back home.
That only stopped her for a moment, though. “I see.” She narrowed her eyes, one provocative eyebrow up, showing off her English, catching the eyes of the others with collaborative derision. “And so you will build your career standing upon telephone directories …”
“That’s right,” I sallied, “and I’ve still got years and years to do it.”
That stopped her. I knew where to hit. I don’t normally like to go below the belt but when it’s needed I’m all set; I’m not part Irish for nothing. It sent her back to speaking German. I was pretty sure she didn’t translate that word for word. I went and changed into my next outfit.
Fast-moving clouds dashed across the sky. The light was beginning to fade and the tempo changed to quick. While the photographer and his assistants moved lights into the restaurant, one of the other models approached me—the one with the bright red hair. Her skin, I noticed, was sunburned under her makeup.
Suddenly I realized where I’d seen her before. This was the other half of the man of my dreams at the airport. She was much prettier than I, but, I reminded myself soothingly, only after a thorough application of makeup. She narrowed her eyes. I thought she was going to say something like, “Hey, I saw you at the airport,” but, “We don’t care for foreign girls here,” was what came out of her mouth.
“Excuse me?” I said. I couldn’t believe I’d heard her correctly. And people were listening.
“No, I don’t excuse you,” she went on in her heavy Teutonic accent. “You take work from the rest of us. You should go back to your own country and find work there. That would be better. Much better. That’s right. You heard me right. We don’t need you here.”
At first I thought she was joking. I was at a complete loss for words. She turned on her heels and stomped away. I stood there with my mouth open, watching her go.
Now Isolde, the magnificent dark one, walked across the canteen toward me. She placed herself next to me and the two of us watched the redhead leave. I suppose I was still visibly trembling. I didn’t know what this one would do. But Isolde lit two cigarettes and put one in my mouth. She didn’t smoke the regular ones. She carried a black package of pastel-colored, gold-filtered Vogue cigarettes. I’d never seen such things before. She gave me a peach-colored one and herself a purple, and ripped the filter off hers. She hadn’t liked me before but it seemed she liked the redhead even less and so I was, by demotion, promoted.
“She your welcoming committee?” I tried to sound casual.
“Ach. Don’t worry about her. That’s just Arianna Weiss. She won’t give you any trouble. She’s on her way out.” Isolde flicked a piece of tobacco from her lip. She did this all the time, like a hooligan in a film noir. “That was quite a show you put on,” she said.
“Oh,” I gave a wry shrug, “in New York all that jazzy stuff is nothing new. I used to stand on the sidelines—you know, poor, dejected me—and watch the working models do all sorts of contortions. This is the first catalog job I’ve ever had. I thought I’d try it out.”
She looked at me with interest. Self-effacement was something new. At this point, however, I was growing weary of who thought what of me. My ankles ached and my nose felt burned.
“Where are you staying?” she asked. “Which pension?”
“The Franz Joseph.”
“How much are you paying for your room?”
I told her. She snorted and the way she sucked in the fat smoke of her cigarette informed me it was too much.
“I am Isolde.”
“Claire Breslinsky.” I shook her outstretched hand. Its touch was capable and solid, more like a good strong peasant woman’s than my idea of a countess’s, but there was a warmth that drew you in.
“Where did you learn to speak English so well?” I asked.
“Boarding school. England.” She sniffed. She was even more dazzling up close. Isolde had brunette skin, like a good rare roast beef with the pink in the middle and brown around the edges. Her mouth was broad and generous and she had those dazzling-with-good-health and twinkling, mischievous, but shrewd brown eyes—the whites of which were almost blue.
“I’ll bet you gave them hell,” I said.
She threw back her head and, just as she was about to laugh, she stopped. At any moment with Isolde, you got the uneasy feeling she was about to run off. She pulled in her chin and frowned. Her eyes became dull. “It was dreadful,” she admitted. “They were sadists.”
“Oh,” I said, a little taken aback by her sudden black mood. To change the subject I said, “So I’m paying too much for my room, eh?”
“Why don’t you move in with me,” she suggested. “I’ve got a lovely little apartment in my house. I’ve got the au pair in there right now. She can move in with the children. She won’t mind. I sometimes rent to foreign girls like yourself.” She leaned toward me and said in a confidential tone, “You’ll make a fortune here.”
“You look more German than the Germans, with your sweet smile.” She looked me up and down, shrewdly evaluating my earning potential. “You’re curvy enough, but you’re too skinny.
You’re lucky you have that big mouth. That’s what they all want now.”
Not sure I’d ever been described quite that way but liking the description for its blatant mercantilism, and impressed with the bold way Isolde ordered everyone around—including the photographer—and although it hadn’t occurred to me first, I suddenly asked myself why shouldn’t I stay awhile in Munich.
“Anyway,” she shook out her long mahogany hair, “I’m in the middle of a divorce. You’ll keep me company. My only prerequisite is that you speak English. It’s something I insist upon for the children.”
“I must tell you,” I warned her, wanting to be fair, to set things straight and give myself an out if I needed it, “I’m actually not sure how long I’ll stay.” I lowered my voice. “I’m really an artist. My dream is to make enough money to travel to the East. I’m not much of a model at all. Well. Obviously. You can see that.” I cleared my throat and adjusted my spine. “But nothing will interfere with those plans. That’s my dream and I’m determined to have it.”
She gave a little “sure, sure” snort. But then she said, “All the better. You can sketch the children. I’ll deduct it from your rent.”
“Well,” I drawled, still imagining I had some say in the matter, “I’ll think about it.”
A man came running toward us. “At last!” he cried and threw his arms around Isolde.
His clothes were beautifully made. I assumed this was her husband.
“Harry!” Isolde pushed him off her. He was heavyset but light on his feet. His mustache was wispy and unfortunate but he had these startled eyes—blue and light. He was flushed—he had lovely skin—and out of breath.
“Oh, Mr. Harry Honeycutt, this is Claire … what?” She turned to me. “What is your last name?”
“Breslinsky,” I said.
“What a ride!” he puffed. “But I’m here at last.” Harry wiped the snow from the rim of his elegant Donegal walking hat.
Isolde turned coldly from him. “Yes,” she said, “it was kind of you to come all this way. But I’ll have to stay with the group.”
He looked panic-stricken. “But I’ve come all the way from Munich just to take you home!”
“Dear Harry! You’re so good. But no one asked you to come. It wouldn’t be professional of me to just run off with you, would it?”
“But you said—” He looked bewildered. “You told me I should come. You told me where—” Isolde barricaded herself with a haughty I-don’t-know-what-you’re-talking-about look and he gave up. “Yes, of course,” he blustered. “Idiot me. Thinking of myself …” He swatted his knees with his hat. But you could see the disappointment in his eyes. I felt sorry for him. You could tell that was how she was. Everything was a trick.
“I’m sure no one would be upset if you went home with him,” I whispered.
“Tch. I wouldn’t go with him anyway. He’s been drinking.”
“Oh,” I said, and we went back to work.
Eventually we finished and packed up to go home. The photographer was herding the rest of the models onto the next gondola. There was only room for so many passengers. Harry waited for Isolde. Isolde pretended to hop in the car and just as the doors were closing, she jumped out beside me and said we would wait for the next. She stuck her tongue out at him. Poor Harry Honey-cutt glided away with a marooned expression. Laughing, she jumped into the next car and I followed. There was a sweep and a roar of metal and we were off. I joggled back and forth with the rest of the shivering passengers. I hardly felt the dangling height on the way down. I wasn’t afraid anymore. Although there were other models in the gondola, it was to Isolde everyone spoke.
That was the effect she had on people. I noticed she’d forgotten to return the pale pink cashmere turtleneck she’d worn with her last outfit. Well, I reasoned, there’d been so much going on. Filled with admiration, I watched her.
She felt my look. “It’s too ghastly to spend the night alone. You’ll come home with me now.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “I couldn’t impose. And your friend Harry …”
“Nonsense. You’ll sleep in Daisy Dahlhaus’s apartment. She’s the au pair. She’s used to being bullied about.”
“Well …” I drawled, more interested to see where such a prima donna lived than tired of being alone. That’s how I am: curious of the rich. It comes from being raised in a big family without money. We weren’t poor. We just never had money.
“If you don’t love it, darling,” Isolde picked up a lock of my hair and rubbed it between her fingers as though she were examining a leather wallet she thought she might buy, “you can go back to your overpriced pension tomorrow.”
“All right,” I agreed. “Sounds fair. But I’d better let the pension know.”
“Liebling,” she scoffed, dropping my hair, “they could care less.”
It was a long drive back to Munich and dark when we got there. They let us off somewhere and I groggily followed Isolde into a stately Hof, then up a Biedermeier stairwell with worn wooden foot furrows and wrought iron railings. Just the thing. You huffed and you puffed but you knew you were in Europe.
“There are ninety-seven steps,” Isolde called over her shoulder as she briskly took the stairs, “or ninety-eight. They vary according to how much you’ve drunk.”
Drinking, too! I calculated excitedly, trudging along behind. Ah, to be a boarder in a German household at the top of the stairs! I’d read too many books about this sort of thing—romantic thrillers starring potentially courageous young women on their own in continental garrets—not to be impressed with my good luck.
As I climbed along behind, though, trying to keep pace, I had a premonitory glimpse that this would be the way of our relationship: Isolde confidently dashing on ahead and I struggling unsuccessfully to keep up. But I followed her willingly—delightedly, even—because I knew instinctively she held the key to what I yearned for. Privilege.