The Cigarette Girl

“Transvestit?” Berni looked from the men to Anita. Anita was hiding her face behind her cupped hand, and her shoulders were shaking, but she made no sound.

The table of men were laughing so hard they’d dropped to their knees. Berni growled. She’d had enough of letting all of them get the better of her. “Transvestit,” she said to Anita. “If you don’t tell me what it means, I’ll tell Sonje.”

All color had drained from Anita’s face. Her hands shook as she yanked her skirt down, giving Berni the feeling the joke was on her as well. Even Lev seemed to be in league against them, now that his customers were laughing and happy. “Here,” he said, trying to lift the hem of Anita’s skirt. “Show her. Show her!”

Anita pinched her knees together. Her face became a mask of panic, her eyes wild, and Berni remembered a time she’d seen a group of men in an alley with a cornered dog, kicking it for fun.

She took off running, out the door and into honking traffic. She ran over the mottled lawn of the park, past a group of picnickers opening champagne on a blanket. After a minute she realized someone followed her. She heard a pair of ridiculous high heels slapping the path, heard Anita’s breath wheezing closer and closer behind, but she did not stop. She ran as though lions were chasing her.

She burst into the apartment to find Sonje on the telephone; she took one look at Berni, murmured a goodbye, then hung up. “What is the matter?” she asked, standing up when Anita came close behind, panting. Each breath sounded like a cry.

“I want to leave now,” Berni said. She felt heat coming from Anita. “The men at the Medvedev said Anita was a Transvestit and that I was too. I don’t want to catch what she has.”

“I don’t understand, Berni. Of course you aren’t . . .” Sonje put two fingers between her eyes. “Berni, I—my God, I never did explain, did I? I thought it was obvious . . . my, my.” She tapped the table. “You won’t catch what she has, nicht? It’s how she was born.”

“This is not how I was born,” Anita said to the floor. “It’s how I made myself.”

“Oh yes, yes of course,” Sonje said.

Berni looked from one to the other, her face and fists growing hot. “Fine, speak in riddles. I don’t care. Just take me back—get me away from—from her.”

Sonje sighed and sat back in her chair, arms crossed. “Goodness, Anita, is there anything worse than aggressive stupidity?”

The corner of Anita’s mouth twitched.

“Goethe,” Sonje told Berni.

Berni stamped her foot and ran for the bedroom. She began gathering her few belongings into her pillowcase: one hairbrush, a pair of underpants. The problems of her previous life seemed so simple now. The sisters, frigid as they could be, had never managed to make her feel so ignorant, so foolish. Why hadn’t she tried harder to cooperate with them?

After a moment she heard the front door to the apartment slam, and then a soft knock at her bedroom door. “Go away,” she called.

Sonje stood on the threshold and watched her for a while. “So, you are leaving already.”

“I am.”

“Your life has not been easy, Berni.” She took a seat on the bed. “I thought you might understand her. Your parents are dead. Hers are alive, but they feel their son is dead.”

Berni covered her ears. She saw the veins in Anita’s hands, her hollow cheeks, the wide jaw and skinny neck. “You let me share a bed with a boy!” she cried. “And the men thought I was, too, since I ran around with a—Transvestit.”

“There is no boy here,” Sonje said softly. “She is Anita. She desires men, same as me, same as you. You don’t call her ‘boy.’ It’s sie.”

Berni’s head spun. Did she desire men? “That’s ridiculous.”

“Bernadette, if you leave us, where would you go? I won’t let you live on the street. And I don’t think you can return easily to the sisters.”

“They’d take me,” Berni said, but she wasn’t sure.

Sonje did not say anything. They listened to the wall clock, which seemed to Berni to grow louder with each tick. Finally Sonje cleared her throat. “I had a chance to attend an academy myself as a girl, a music conservatory. My father was a composer, and to him I was more a protégée than a daughter. After the conservatory rejected me, he would not speak to me.” She picked a thread on the quilt. “He must have known I’d blown the audition on purpose.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Why do we sabotage ourselves? I suppose we each had our reasons.” Sonje stood and flicked dust off her skirt. “I found Anita two years ago,” she said in a hardened voice, “unconscious under a nightclub table. Try to imagine how she’d react, hearing us discuss the opportunities we’ve had the luxury of throwing away.” When she left she closed the door to the bedroom, plunging Berni into darkness.

• • •

A few nights later Sonje took both of them to the Tingel-Tangel in Mitte to meet her lover, Gerrit. The air inside was thick with smoke, shot through with electric theater lights, but they soon found him at a round table close to the action. A girl performed a contortionist piano act onstage, back-bending over the keys.

“Pleased to meet you,” Gerrit said as he took Berni’s hand. Like Sonje, he used the du form. “Comradess Berni.”

“You as well,” Berni said, taking a seat. She wasn’t sure what to call him—Comrade? His peaked canvas cap sat on the table in front of him, and his shirt was coarsely woven. His face, however, had a raw smoothness suggesting a recent shave by a skilled barber, and his fair hair looked clean. Too well-groomed to be a real Communist, Berni thought, though his attractiveness certainly didn’t seem to bother Anita. She sat with her back to the stage, her lashes fluttering at him like fervent moths.

Today Anita had offered to lend Berni clothing in what seemed a peace offering of sorts: a skirt and Bemberg stockings made of rayon. “Much better than real silk for preventing foot odor,” she’d said. She looked slightly disappointed when Berni chose to borrow wool jodhpurs and a gray cloche hat from Sonje.

The men’s voices at the Medvedev echoed in Berni’s ears: another one. Did wearing trousers make her a Transvestit? If so, she didn’t care. She’d had her fill of ugly dresses long ago.

Four beers appeared on their table, and Berni passed one to Anita, receiving a slight nod in return. For the past few days she and Anita had been polite to each other, if stiff. Berni had begun sleeping on a pallet on the floor of the dining room. Yesterday Anita had taken her to the Silver Star, where Berni had done much better selling cigarettes. Shockingly, everyone there seemed to treat Anita as if she were normal; there were even others like her. Still, Berni found she could not help looking for the boy beneath the girl. Even now, as she watched Anita paint her lips Coty dark, she stared at the faint ghost of hair on her upper lip.

“How did you come to befriend Sonje?” Gerrit asked Berni, his arm interlaced with Sonje’s. Berni explained briefly why she had to leave St. Luisa’s.

Sonje tittered and said something about Berni’s moxie, but Gerrit shook his head. “Those nuns,” he said, “send the academy the girls they think worthy of joining the middle class. Your sister, with her defect, wouldn’t make the cut.”

“Enough politics for now,” said Sonje. Berni watched the stage. In St. Luisa’s she’d have slapped anyone who said “defect.”

Gerrit went on as the pianist completed her solo. “. . . defenders of capitalism are loath to allow proletarians a hint of social mobility. You should be proud you refused them.”

Should she? She missed her sister. Today she felt the sting of her absence more painfully than ever before. She tried to think what the girls at St. Luisa’s would be doing this evening. Bible story time with Sister Josephine; it seemed so distant from the Tingel-Tangel that it might have been happening on another continent.

Berni’s beer felt cold in her hand and in the pipes of her throat. She watched a stocky emcee appear at the corner of the stage, followed by a spotlight that adjusted itself a few times. “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s turn our attention to the mech-an-i-cal.”

Six young women chugged onstage in a little train, wearing military jackets and sheer hose. “We hear it everywhere—everything’s become too mechanical. Transportation. Communication. Even the act of love!”

The girls thrust out their hips to a drumbeat. Someone whistled.

The emcee tugged his bowtie. “My friends, Berlin is healthier than it’s ever been. Look at how productive we are. We make coal. Rubber. Steam!” Six little clouds of white smoke puffed up behind each girl’s rear end, and in unison, their eyes popped. The crowd laughed and clapped. Berni turned with mouth open to Anita, who shrugged as if to say she’d seen it before.

“Love in Berlin has become mech-an-i-cal, they say. But we know our city still has its beating heart.” Now each of the dancers ripped a panel off the chest of her military jacket, revealing six round left breasts.

Berni was enthralled. She couldn’t help it. Those breasts! Each a perfect sphere or cone, the faces above coldly beautiful, captivatingly stoic. She peered over her shoulder to see the crowd’s reaction through the dim smoky air, and jumped when she found Anita crouched behind her. “Tell Sonje I’m headed to a party.”

Berni glanced toward Sonje, who had her face tucked against Gerrit’s. “Why leave now?” she asked Anita. “The show’s just started.”

“I’m through with this tired old bit,” Anita said, and turned away with a flounce.

Berni took pulls of her beer, growing bored and embarrassed by her tablemates’ necking. By the end of the routine, the dancers were wearing very little. When finally Sonje resurfaced, she glanced toward the exit, then pulled Berni close. “Anita auditioned for this dance line once.” Around them, the crowd burst into applause. “You can see why she wasn’t chosen.”

The alcohol was beginning to make Berni feel dizzy, and very sorry for Anita. “I’ll just make sure she’s okay,” she said and stumbled out, bumping the backs of chairs as she went.

She found Anita standing on the curb, one bony arm flung out to hail cabs. “So,” she said, sucking the end of her cigarette. “You’d like to see the real Berlin.” She yanked Berni’s arm down when she tried to signal a car. “We want a cyclonette. Cheaper. Look for the cabs with three wheels.” Eventually they found one, and Anita gave the driver an address. They drove past the opera, then under the Brandenburg Gate, which glowed pale purple.