Of all the beautiful places in Berlin, could there be any lovelier than the sunlit drawing room of the Faith and Beauty community building, with its marzipan-yellow walls, charming meringues of plaster on the cornices and tall windows propped open to allow a freshening waft of pine from the woods beyond? Outside, a flock of hens pecked in the shade of the orchard and horses were being saddled up for riding lessons. A group of rowers were preparing for an outing to the lake, and on the lawn, two girls in face masks were taking instruction from the fencing master, their bodies as quick and flexible as the sleek silver foils they wielded. The quiet of the morning was punctuated by the solid, comforting clunk of the grandfather clock, and the faint scrape of a violin issued from the music room on the other side of the house. It was impossible to imagine that near this idyllic place just a few days earlier, a crumpled body had been found beneath a heap of leaves.
When Hedwig Holz first saw the Faith and Beauty home she was open-mouthed with amazement. She had grown up in a drab apartment, with nothing but a window box to tend and a dank cobblestone courtyard below. Even though their apartment was slightly better than their neighbours’ on account of her father’s managerial job, it had still taken weeks to accustom herself to such refinement. When she told her parents about the classes in Art, home décor, fashion design, needlework, flower arranging and conversation, her mother could barely contain her amazement. Conversation! Who needed classes in that?
Hedwig felt much the same about Art. Sitting in front of her easel she sighed, squinted at the life model, made some further experimental cross-hatching, then rubbed out the face she had drawn. Already a murky patch testified to the number of times the sketch had been erased – the model was beginning to look like something from one of those old horror films, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, starring Conrad Veidt, with nothing but a shadowy void where her features should be. Hedwig dreaded the moment Herr Fritzl, the art master, turned up to linger at her easel, twirling his moustache while he tried to think of something constructive to say. Their portraits were supposed to mirror the correct proportions of the Nordic form – every figure must have broad shoulders, a long body, and slender hands – but Hedwig’s sketch could have been straight out of Grimm’s fairy tales.
The Saturday life drawing class had been Lotti’s idea. Hedwig didn’t have an artistic bone in her body and would gladly have signed up for skiing, rowing, even high board diving rather than humiliate herself with Art. Hedwig’s father, a stolid production line manager at the AEG engineering works, thought art training, like everything else on the Faith and Beauty curriculum, was a lot of effete nonsense, but he deferred to her mother, who had ambitions for her only daughter. Privately Herr Holz told Hedwig to concentrate on her job and think about her promotion prospects. If indeed she had time for promotion, before marriage and motherhood came along and put an end to all that.
Hedwig agreed. She had never imagined getting a job as a librarian and she loved it. Although her most taxing duty involved looking interested while doing very little, she enjoyed sitting at her desk, greeting visitors and being the only female in the building. She could think of a thousand better ways of spending her weekends than attending Faith and Beauty art classes, but Lotti had set her heart on it.
It was agonizing to think that Lotti had sat in this class only two weeks ago, sketching costumes, her bold, confident lines delineating impossibly glamorous women, their outfits carefully annotated in her flowing handwriting. Hedwig could picture her now, high eyebrows arched above aquamarine eyes, chin jutted forward as if she was born to it. As if, indeed, it was all slightly beneath her.
Hedwig knew Lotti only wanted company, yet where Lotti was concerned she could never say no. Faith and Beauty girls were encouraged to think of themselves as a spiritual sisterhood, but to her Lotti was more like an ordinary sister. As children their two families had sometimes taken holidays in the countryside outside Berlin together and Hedwig and Lotti shared a room. She recalled Lotti’s grave face, reciting German poetry, or expanding on her ambitions for life, requiring only that Hedwig be a devoted listener. And when Hedwig had confided her most precious memory, of the first time a man kissed her, Lotti had burst into peals of mocking, sisterly laughter.
Sister or not, she was dead now, and Hedwig felt an utter desolation.
The murder had sent shockwaves through the Faith and Beauty community, but although no one could talk of anything else, they were forbidden to talk about it at all. That was useless when it was all over the newspapers and a pair of steel-helmeted soldiers were shuffling their feet on permanent guard outside the front gate. A hasty set of new regulations had been formulated for the girls. Shooting was curtailed so long as the killer was at large and replaced with rowing. No girl was permitted to walk alone the short distance from the Griebnitzsee S-Bahn through the forest, though that was quite unnecessary advice because being alone was frowned on. The Party disapproved of solitude on the grounds that faithful citizens would always prefer communal life and privacy in all its forms was strongly proscribed for Faith and Beauty girls.
Hedwig stared out of the window and wondered if her mother would agree to her leaving now. Etta Holz adored the idea of her only daughter being here. Faith and Beauty training gave German girls such an advantage. No going to the Nuremberg rally and getting pregnant by the first Hitler Youth you encountered. Hedwig would be invited to parties with senior Party members. She would be cultivated and polished and pass into the top echelons of society with ease. ‘Once you’ve finished you’ll hold dinner parties for all the top SS men and you’ll be able to talk about . . .’ Here Frau Holz paused, having no idea what top SS men might possibly talk about. The Merry Widow, she finished lamely, recalling the Führer’s favourite operetta. ‘It will pay for itself, you’ll see.’
But the real reason that her mother favoured the Faith and Beauty Society was that it meant her daughter would grow out of Jochen Falke.
Jochen did not have the kind of looks deemed handsome among Hedwig’s friends. His high, Slavic cheekbones and skinny frame were far from the muscular athletes modelled by the Führer’s favourite sculptor, Arno Breker. But he had quick, hazel eyes which always seemed to flicker with amusement and a swagger about him that reflected his inner confidence.
He was an artist too – in a way. He worked at an art manufacturing plant in Kreuzberg, a humdrum place that carried out all forms of printing and publishing, as well as commercial artwork, signs and advertising. But the real money-spinner was merchandizing the Führer. Hitler souvenirs were big business. Birthday figurines, postcards, ashtrays, medallions, posters, cocktail forks and bottle stoppers. There was a whole variety of jewellery, and cameo brooches were especially popular because everyone wanted their Führer close to their heart. Jochen’s speciality was pictures. On a good day he could reproduce Adolf Hitler a hundred times over.
‘What takes the Fräulein’s fancy?’ he would laugh, parodying an unctuous shop assistant. ‘We have Hitler in a gilt frame, Hitler with children, Hitler at the Berghof, Hitler with Bismarck, or would Fräulein prefer the Führer’s hands alone?’
He worked with a photograph in front of him, softening the nose and making the eyes larger, adding a tint to the cheeks. ‘Just doing a little cosmetic surgery.’ He brought one back for Hedwig’s mother, who hung it proudly opposite her bed. Hedwig thought seeing the Führer’s scowl like that last thing at night would give her nightmares, but her parents seemed to like it.
She looked up to see Herr Fritzl approaching. He was bound to say something uncomplimentary about her efforts. Last time he claimed Hedwig’s approach smacked dangerously of Degenerate Art, which was tantamount to accusing her of treason. Apparently in the Weimar period Berlin had been a hell-pit of sexual depravity, and obscene nudes by Degenerate painters like Otto Dix corrupted the morals of an entire nation.
The thought of Otto Dix’s nudes only reminded her of Lotti, her graceful gymnast’s limbs askew in the clumsy crush of death. She pictured the diaphanous wings of flies glittering like cut coal in the air above her body. What had Lotti ever done to deserve that fate?
Hedwig picked up her charcoal stick and turned back to the horror on her easel, but found she could no longer see it because of the tears slipping down her face.