скачать книгу бесплатно
Then the door collapses inwards. It’s pulled back with a force so fierce I expect to see cracks in the white plaster of the walls that surround it.
An elderly man, once he’s picked himself back up, stands in the doorway, stopping momentarily to draw a flask to his thirsty lips. He’s so close to us that I can’t fail to see that he has an oversized red nose from which veins trace across his cheeks like tributaries on a map; the whites of his eyes are yellow. He looks the worse for wear, no doubt due to the liquid contents of his flask, which he attempts to drain by holding it upside down until he’s drunk every last precious drop within. He is an intriguingly strange and disturbing sight on this cold and wintry day.
‘… but they’ll be here in a minute,’ a woman’s voice pipes up. ‘You’ve got to go.’
A small, elderly woman with messy grey hair – despite its being pinned back in a bun – now stands at the open door, pushing the man with the flask over the threshold. An evil old crone pops into my mind. Will she lure us in? Pop me, Katya, Olga, and Frieda in the oven? Cook us? Eat us? But I push this wicked witch on through before she sets up permanent residence in my imagination. I never did like the stories she was in.
‘Frau Wittger?’ my mother asks, her voice rising with trepidation: worried that she is, worried that she isn’t.
‘Oh, Oh!’ She pushes the old man with the flask out into the street and we part like the Red Sea as she shoos him on his way. He leaves a sour smell and goes without a struggle, more intent on checking the contents of his flask every other second. He’s forgotten he’s just emptied it down his throat. Sway, swig, puzzled expression. Sway, swig, what? There’s none left?
‘Same time next week, Wittgi?’ he shouts behind him, not hanging round for a reply.
‘Oh!’ The old woman puts one hand to her hair then brushes the front of her skirt with the other, just like Mama used to do when we had visitors. Before father died. ‘Frau Wittger,’ the woman says, ‘that’s me.’ And then, with hushed embarrassment, she leans closer to Mama and whispers, ‘You won’t be seeing him again.’
At this I notice my mother sway a little. I put out my arm to steady her. I fear she’s growing weaker and I have visions of my sisters floating away untethered for want of a mother to hold them in place. Twelve and 12. It’s my time. I can do this. I push them in front of me, Katya included, as I am the eldest, extending my arms around the shoulders of the two younger ones to give strength to their sapling limbs.
Katya copies me, which I don’t begrudge on a day like this. Together we cross and link limbs in an intricate, delicate way. We will be strong together, my sisters and I.
A broad smile stretches out the wrinkles of Frau Wittger’s face, which softens at the sight of us. ‘Oh, such little ones. Such lovely, lovely little ones. Come in, my dears. Look at you all. Oh, my dear girls. Come in. Come in.’
She nods a welcome to me, then Katya, before bending down and taking Olga and Frieda by the hand. I first think her overly clucky, like a broody hen, but as I see my little sisters relax, catch the relief sweeping across Mama’s face, I am soon grateful for the gentleness this stranger brings, and for the excess of warmth with which she tries to thaw us. ‘Oh, you poor dear mites, you’re frozen,’ she cries, as she beckons us inside.
She leads us to our room at the top of the house. We follow in silence, pulling on heavy bags while I clutch tired hands. ‘If you need anything …’; ‘if you get any trouble …’ She bombards us with kindness and offers of help we’ll never remember.
And as we make our way up creaking stairs, and along dark corridors lined with closed doors, she lights up this new and shadowy world with the exuberance of her voice, wraps us in the warmth of her words so that we feel protected from the harsh shouts and coarse laughter that come from the rooms along the way. Though Mother asks, ‘Are we your only guests?’
‘A key, look here, you’ve got a key,’ she pants when she gets to our room at the top of the house. There is a lock, and with a rattle and twist of the key we are in. A sharp blast of icy air hits us. I look at Mama.
Frau Wittger looks to heaven. ‘Oh, it’ll soon be warm, once you makes yourselves all comfortable up here!’ she wheezes, more in hope than belief, and with that she abandons us, taking her optimism with her.
The room is miserable, with a bare wooden floor, its discoloured curtains drawn, drawn to conceal a broken windowpane I discover when I go to open them. Cold air comes in through the cracked glass, causing the curtains to flap around.
Katya tells Mama what she should do: leave, move, go back, say to Frau Wittger … But I know that’s the wrong thing to do. I know that Mama has no choice. Not one of us has any choice other than to stay here, and we’re lucky Frau Wittger’s such a good, kind soul.
I look at the bed and I’m about to suggest to Mama that she go and have a rest in it when there’s a knock on the door. It’s Frau Wittger, now quite flushed, perspiration around her nose and across her forehead. She’s made her way back up the stairs. It hasn’t been easy for her. And there, tucked under one arm, she has the prettiest white bedcover, embroidered with the daintiest of pink rosebuds. Dangling from the other arm is a basket so heavy she puts it down the minute I open the door.
‘For you and your mam,’ she says, offering the bedcover to me. As soon as I take it, she holds her side, clearly in physical discomfort, before bending down to pick up the basket. Once inside, she closes the door and sets the basket down. She hugs Mama before leading her to the bed and helping her to remove her boots.
‘Lie down and rest, dear,’ she says soothingly, though Mama casts a look of anguish over her daughters in protest. ‘That’s why I’m here,’ she assures her softly. ‘Now cover your dear mam up with that cover, why don’t you, girl,’ she tells me. ‘Then you little ones can bring that basket over and we can see what’s inside.’ By the time Olga lifts the cake out, Mama is asleep.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_fbaf3efa-98ee-508b-b89c-a341e396b6ae)
The first nine months are tough. To set the tone, Mama does not get out of bed for three weeks, and when she does she looks as though a noose has been placed around her neck. Exhausted, that’s what Frau Wittger tells us is the matter with her, but Mama’s not done a day’s work yet.
The elderly woman we’ve only just met cooks, cleans, and cares for us as if we’re her own.
Her rooms are on the same floor as ours and she opens them up to us with a joy that doesn’t blind us to Mama’s suffering but helps us see there’s something more. That Olga and Frieda play ‘searching’ in her drawers full of broken costume jewellery is a rare and unexpected pleasure for this woman with no children, as it is a welcome escape for the little ones from the groans our mother makes as she grapples with her own demons. She’s not a kind stranger for long.
The rent on the room’s been paid in full for the first three months by my father’s sister, Aunt Klara, and Mama’s grateful to Frau Wittger for, well, just about everything else. Having four daughters is not for the financially challenged, ironic considering that’s what Mama is. Even Frau Wittger, no matter how lovely she thinks we are, will soon be struggling to maintain the support she so wants to give us and which she’s under no obligation to provide.
Mama needs to get a job and so do I. I’m twelve, I live at number 12 Favoritenstrasse and I can do this. When I announce I won’t be going to school no one argues – not even Mama. Especially not Mama, when it turns out that the first job she herself gets is the wrong one. She takes it because it’s in a pretty building – all exotic. She thinks she’s crushing flowers when what she’s really doing is making insecticide. As she’s as delicate as a butterfly she was never going to last there for very long.
As Mama leaves I start, but I may as well have kept going round the revolving door as two weeks later I’m out. I’m underage. Someone reported me. Children must receive eight years of school. It’s the law. Who knew? From the number of children in the factory, not many. Mother’s been sentenced to eighteen hours’ imprisonment. That’s certainly tightened the rope around her neck. We’re all worried about her. I’ve just got to get another job. These are fast-changing times.
I go to school with the others for a month. Then I get another job, this time in a bronze factory where I work with the soldering irons. But they are powered by gas. Which makes me pale. Giddy. Ill. I have to see a doctor who tells my mother who’s weaker than me that I need a nourishing diet and plenty of fresh air (which is all that we have to live on).
Mama has lost one job. I have lost two. We’re wasting time, not earning money. Frau Wittger whispers to Mama about the workhouse, the very mention of which is as effective as a dose of smelling salts on her.
And that’s how Mama’s ended up in the glasspaper factory. It’s an unpleasant dirty job, but she does it without complaint. She gets me a job there as a counter, putting glasspaper sheets into packs ready for the salesman to take around the country.
At home things are better for a month or two. We have money for food, bills, even ribbons.
His name is Herr Bergman, the travelling salesman. He doesn’t come in that often. But when he does the other women and girls go into a flutter. Flapping, flirting. He has his favourites who giggle as he whispers in their ears, their dirty-fingernailed glass-dusty hands pressed against their oh-you-saucy-devil-you mouths.
Herr Bergman, the popular travelling salesman.
He’s so busy tending to his admiring flock that he doesn’t notice me at first. I’m quiet, conscientious, don’t even talk to the other girls, as what they like to discuss in hushed tones punctuated by ribald laughter does not interest me at all. But one day – it is the day when I tie my hair with the new shiny black satin ribbons I bought with some of the money Mother allowed me to spend from my wages – he demands a counter, ‘the one with the red hair and the black ribbons’, for the stock he has come in to collect.
And he watches me while I re-count the pile of glasspaper that I set aside for him earlier in the day.
‘… forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty.’
‘Beautiful hands.’ No sooner has he said these words than jealous eyes pierce me. Eyes of women who know exactly what he means.
I am even more silent than usual as I do my work that afternoon, and after a few sarcastic ‘nice hands’ remarks, by the time I go to find my mother to go home, the tense atmosphere has lifted.
But, as I walk along the corridor towards my mother’s workroom, a man’s hand grabs me and pulls me into the stockroom. It’s Herr Bergman. He knows all about me. Feels so concerned for me. Wants to give me a fatherly kiss, because – sad creature that I am – he feels so sorry that I don’t have a father to look after me. I freeze. Can’t move as he gives me his fatherly kiss. Then he releases me. What should I do? What if I lose my job? Should I tell Mama?
For the next few weeks I keep it to myself. Avoiding Herr Bergman. Until I can’t. He comes in one day, leans over to whisper in my ear the way I’ve seen him do to other girls before. But, unlike them, I do not giggle. I do not put my hand to my mouth in an oh-you-saucy-devil sort of way. And as he pushes himself hard against my shoulder I do not move.
‘I’ll see you later, Beautiful Hands! I’ve got a little something for you that I think you’re going to like.’
For the rest of the day I don’t hear the other girls call me names. All I can think about is Herr Bergman.
It’s late but I can’t delay any longer: it’s time to walk along the corridor. Within seconds he’s pulled me into the stockroom, so eager to shower me with paternal affection and give me my surprise that he doesn’t get round to closing the door.
My mother screams. And screams. Her small hands pull at him. With a back sweep of his hand he knocks her to the ground, stepping over her while sneering, ‘I was doing you a favour, you silly cow.’
See now why my voice is getting angrier, my words more knowing? Because I am angry. Shocked. Doing things I shouldn’t be doing, seeing things I shouldn’t be seeing. Forced to grow up quickly. I’d thought of painting my life better than it is, as I’d wished it to be – Lord knows it doesn’t make me feel good to read over what has happened – but I can’t. No. I’ll not give this story a sugar coating, lay claim to an innocence that experience has already tarnished with its guilt-stained hands
Bitterness. That’s its true taste. And if you have a daughter who’d never think or say what I commit to paper, pray she never has to endure what I have had to endure. Because if she does you’ll soon hear a change in her voice.
We are out of work again.
That night in bed, as I cuddle the sleeping Olga on one side and Frieda on the other, the atmosphere is dead calm. Katya is still awake, pretending to read in the corner because she doesn’t know what to say to me. Nor I to her. And so there we are, silently listening. No rain, nor wind to disguise the hysterical sounds of our mother falling apart in the other room.
‘So what am I to do, Frau Wittger? I have no strength left. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to protect them. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid girls. And after what I’ve done I might never get decent work again. She’ll end up on the streets. They all will. Oh my lovely stupid girls, what will become of them?’
Katya and I, scorched souls silently screaming in the next room, cry tears that run over the molten lava of our mother’s love.
As I listen to Frau Wittger console my mother while she sobs, I wish I’d been strong enough to let Herr Bergman give me what he thought I’d like. If my mother’s to be believed, somebody’s going to give it to me anyway.
‘There, there, dear. There, there. You need to sleep. Believe me, things won’t look so bad in the morning. Your Wally’s a good girl. None of this is her fault. Nor yours either. I’m not promising anything yet but I think I know how we can get over this. Your Wally’s a good girl, and a pretty one. But I think I’ve got a way to make that work for her. Again not promising anything but fingers crossed this could work out well for all of you. Now off you go to bed.’
Mother sleeps on the floor that night, the noose so tight around her neck the next morning her eyes are bulging.
Shot to bits by grief, pain, misfortune, and the challenge of bringing up girls in a city full of predators, Mama’s on the brink of giving up. And who could blame her for that? Not I. But I won’t. I won’t give up. Not ever. I will be strong and do whatever it is Frau Wittger has in mind.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_82ed7b2c-3526-56d7-b921-b7dcc5c1d0be)
It’s Tuesday the 5th of November, 1907, and nine months since we turned up at Frau Wittger’s door and gave her something to worry about; she says her life was a walk in the park before we turned up, although the strange way she laughs as she says this makes me wonder if that was as good a thing as it sounds.
And she’s already worrying before she starts to work on me today. I am too. We have a lot riding on it. ‘Come here!’ she cries, grabbing me more roughly than she’d intended by the arm.
‘Your skin’s so pale – it shows every mark!’ Tut-tut-tutting, she places her hands, cold and rough, around my jaw and turns my face to the light.
It’s a sunny day. The sort that shows up the filth on the windowpanes. Whose low-in-the-sky late autumn sun blinds you for your foolishness in daring to face it. Hitting you. Blasting you with searchlight force, and any other object in its way, against the facing wall. Too bright. Woe betide the poor ordinary mortal who gets in its way.
‘You two! Get out from under there!’ she cries as Olga and Frieda come out of their hiding place under her bed and run out of the room. ‘But be careful not to disturb your mother,’ she whispers after them. ‘She’s trying to sleep!’ She closes the door after them. Then, in the unforgiving light, she scrutinizes me.
Tut, tut, tut!
As she releases me from her searching grip Frau Wittger retreats to the only upholstered chair in the room, momentarily overcome by the magnitude of the task. Now she too is in full beam. Irritated, she shields her eyes and face from its cruellest revelations. Yet she cannot conceal herself completely. Her hands and neck take a heavy hit.
I suppose you could say she is well dressed. Certainly the weight of the deep blue wool from which the dress is made gives her an air of respectability. And its design – square-necked bodice, decorative buttons centre front, pinched in at the waist, white lace collar – gives a pleasing shape to the parts of her body that it contains. But as the white lace collar frills and froths in the sunlight its uneven pure white edges cast shadows on an already interesting neckline, seemingly squeezing out a well-filled strudel and giving it an exceedingly flaky crust.
And though her hair – piled high upon her head in the pompadour style – glistens with streaks of white and silver, this only serves to blind me, causing my eyes to seek sanctuary in the brittle, grey dullness of her hands. Those rough hands she has just laid upon me. Hands that thirstily drink in the sun that seeps through every crack and flake, rendering the fault lines ever darker and deeper.
A carriage passes by on the street outside. Horseshoe on cobble. Its clack-clacking disturbing the dust motes in the shaft of light. I follow snakeskin scales as they fall away from the backs of Frau Wittger’s hands, crumbling away, swirling, eddying upwards, before vanishing into the kindly, forgiving shade. I pull my gaze back to the hands. They drain the light, sucking it in behind every crease and fold, its energy magnifying as it goes. Skin knots and ridged-nail trunks on gnarled tree-bark hands.
I blink. Refocus. My kaleidoscope stare makes out yellow spots beneath dead-dull thick claws.
I have come to have her prepare me. I imagine the scraping of desiccated fingertips, traces of Frau Wittger, on the surface of my skin.
She stands, bringing her hands by her sides, slowly moving towards the coolness of the dressing table upon which are displayed an attractive array of pots and potions in all sizes and colours. Tissues. Books of papier poudré. Sable hairbrushes and bright-coloured ribbons. Timely and pleasing distractions all, upon which to rest my eyes after the trauma caused them by Frau Wittger’s hands.
As if she knows what I’m thinking she positions herself with her back to the window and presents her hands for my inspection. No longer grotesque out of the sunlight, they just look pale and small. And possibly a little dry.
She sets about her tricks.
She opens a tub, plunging her fingers into the glistening white peaks contained within. Wringing, kneading, rubbing, patting, she works cream into the crevasses and creases of her hands. White. Translucently melting. Vanished. And not just the cream. Like a magician she raises the palms of her hands and wriggles her fingers. All, all gone. The creases are softer, the skin now smoother. The flaky, brittleness now plump and moist. She takes a tissue and blots the residue before offering the back of her hand for my delectation. Not sure what to do I kiss it. I have heard my sister Katya say that that is what ladies do – give out their hands to be kissed. That’s why I do so.
She laughs.
‘No need to kiss the likes of me, silly girl. Just smell it.’
My nostrils breathe in Frau Wittger’s floral-scented skin.
‘There. Geranium oil.’
I smile in surprise then wonder at its delicate fragrance.
‘Now touch. Touch my hand, girl.’
I touch her hand, unable to stop myself turning it in awe. I caress its dewy softness as she glides the back of her other hand lightly across my cheek. What sort of magic is this? Then ‘Clap!’ she puts her hands together dramatically before whipping them away, back now turned to me.
This most elaborate of hand moisturizing rituals is still not finished. I hear another lid removed. An unctuous squelch. Fingers in jam. Not a minute later she has rubbed in and buffed up the jellylike stuff on her nails. She removes the excess with a tissue, which she leaves scrunched up on the side.
‘There.’ She holds her hands up once again, walking back into the sunlight. Pink nails. A healthy sheen. Soft, generous, plumped-up skin. The metamorphosis is complete. I have witnessed a miracle.
She turns her attention to me. It is my turn to be transformed from a pale and blotchy thirteen-year-old girl with messy red hair to an ideal of female perfection.
‘You’re tired. Shows in your face.’ Tut. ‘This is going to take me ages.’ Tut, tut! ‘Now if only I could slap on some proper colour …’ Tut, tut, tut! I scan the table, responsive to her words, searching for bright and bold. I am excited and afraid. Will she give me red lips? Strong eyes? Vivid cheeks? Will I look like an actress? Dear God, let her not make me look like a prostitute.
With brushes and powders and lotions and potions she massages, creams, and daubs me for the next hour.
She talks me through her materials. Pots of colour. ‘Pinks for the cheeks and lips. Browns and yellows for the eyes.’ Books of papier poudré: ‘face powder for a matt and natural complexion’. Lemon juice: ‘a tonic for the skin. And to lighten it. It can tingle.’ Cream: ‘to both soften and massage in. Gets the blood circulating for a nice, healthy glow. And if it doesn’t then there’s always a stronger rouge. But I will avoid that if I can.’ Petroleum jelly: ‘to make the lips juicy and the nails’, wiggling hers once more to demonstrate the point, ‘lustrous’. Materials spread out on the dressing table, the artist sets to work, her only tools her fingers, one small brush, and some blotting paper.
She begins with the lemon juice. Fingers sweep deftly across my face. Then cream, her now soft and firm hands massaging upwards and out. ‘Up the neck – two, three. Circle round the nose – two, three. Up the side of the face – two, three. Up the forehead – two, three. ‘Supposed to help a girl’s face defy gravity – not that you need it yet.’
I look up at her and I smile. It feels heavenly. Not the cream. But to feel the warmth of her hands, to be touched with such care.
She goes over to the dressing table and looks at the pots of eye colour. My eyes are tight shut. My nose flares involuntarily to keep fine powder dust out as she dabs soft brown on my lids, followed by face powder held between sheets of a pretty little book, on its cover a white silhouette of a woman against a black background.
I hear her move back. Say ‘Yes.’ No tuts.
‘Now for just a tiny pinch of rouge. Tiny, tiny, tiny.’ Her fingers massage peony pink into my cheeks using small circular movements as I breathe with pleasure.
She picks up the mirror to show me two shiny pink apples. To me they are the prettiest of cheeks in the loveliest of pinks. She sees my joy.
‘No, love. No.’ She laughs. ‘Madness perhaps, because you look lovely, but this look says, well, let’s just say, sweetheart, that a look like this can get you into trouble. Attract the wrong sort of attention. This look says danger.’ She looks into my eyes with sadness. She is not smiling. ‘Besides, it’s not the fashion.’ I look at my reflection again. It’s enchanting. But having already received the wrong sort of attention I am in no hurry to court it again. Pink rose blush takes its place, giving the final look a delicate sugar coating.
I take care not to wrinkle, sneeze, or in any way disturb the work Frau Wittger has created. She is beaming as she holds up the mirror.
‘You need just a little something on your lips.’ She fusses, adding peony pink then rubbing it off to leave a delicate stain. ‘Now you can’t get that colour biting them.’ She laughs, her head pulling back and causing her Apfelstrudel neck creases to disappear momentarily.
‘Nearly done.’
With tiny pieces of blotting paper it’s as if she’s wiping away everything she’s done. Yet she’s so gentle, so careful. I’ve not felt so safe for such a long while. Not since before father stopped teaching.
‘Now to make this God-given red hair dazzle.’ Her voice is so happy, her touch so enthusiastic, as she plunges her fingers playfully though my lawless hair, that even I start to believe that this is possible. To change the curse that has been my unruly red hair into a blessing. Can that be? I hope that she’ll pin it up, turn me into a Gibson girl. Instead she pulls out two black satin ribbons. I shudder. I hold my tongue and let her tie my hair in childish bunches.
‘It’s me who’s the real bloody artist,’ she says proudly.
She offers me the pretty silver-handled mirror so that I can fully appreciate her finished work before opening the door. All three sisters tumble in. Though there’s no sign of Mama.
‘She’s ready,’ Frau Wittger tells them as they gasp in appreciation.
