"A Berlin Story"

Published in the Show Business is Murder Anthology, Berkley, 2004

Excerpt

Herr Hesse should never have stayed for the last number. Indeed, some expressed shock he was there at all. A physics professor at the University of Berlin. Well-dressed, a touch of gray in his hair. Why would Friedrich Hesse visit Der Flammen, a seedy cabaret tucked away on a side street?

It came out later that Ilse had asked him to stay. Ilse—the star performer at Der Flammen. Ilse—with the sad brown eyes and short blonde hair and a black sequined costume that stopped at the top of her thighs.

He sat in the audience that night, a glass of Schnapps in his hand. Elbow to elbow with the riff raff, all of them vying to be decadent. The life of the genteel Prussian had vanished, replaced by the ennui of the jaded. No one pretended to innocence in the Berlin of 'Thirty-two; what counted most was scandal. It masked the pain and despair.

He suffered through buxom women in skimpy costumes and the men pretending to be. He turned away from the animal parade. But when the orchestra sounded a drum roll, he twisted back toward the stage. And when Ilse appeared in the wavering beam of the spotlight, he brightened like a man glimpsing salvation.

In her first number she flounced across stage as a mountain girl, long braids pinned to her head. She wore a leather vest laced tight across her breasts, but not much else. It wasn't until the shepherd boy unlaced it and forced her to ride the goat that Hesse looked away.

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All content © Libby Fischer Hellmann.