Stardust(21)

He went over to the desk, intending to start on the drawers, but Liesl came in, carrying flowers. “Oh good, you found one,” she said, nodding to the bathing suit. “I’ll be right down. As soon as I deal with these. I have to put them where she’ll see them. She’ll ask otherwise. Now what?” she said, as the phone rang. “Why does everybody want to talk?” But she picked it up anyway, not waiting for Iris, and immediately switched into German. She had the rich, fluid German he remembered from before the war, before all the coarse shouting, and her voice sounded relaxed, at home in it.

“Salka wants to drop off a cake,” she said wryly, hanging up. “But she wants to know if Alma’s here. They’re not speaking to each other.”

“Alma who sent the flowers to Danny?”

Liesl nodded. “Mahler. Well, Werfel now, but if you leave out the Mahler she puts it back in.”

“And Salka?”

“Viertel. Berthold’s wife. Well, when he’s around. Everyone goes to her on Sundays—like a real salon. So of course it makes Alma crazy. Two queen bees in one hive. I suppose they’ll have to see each other, if there’s a funeral. For five minutes anyway. They’ll all come. It’s like a village. They’ll come to see who doesn’t come. So, you’ll be all right?” she said, gesturing again to the trunks, then glanced at the desk. “Were you looking for something?” She met his eyes, her face suddenly soft. “He didn’t leave a note. You can look, but he didn’t.”

The drawer was a mess of papers: letters, odd pages of scripts with margin notes, bank statements with canceled checks, more private than clothes. An envelope with a doctor’s return address. He pulled out the letter. An annual physical, boxes checked in columns, blood pressure, heart rate—everything had been fine in January, perfect in fact, except for the lazy eye that had got him a 4-F. He put the form down, suddenly embarrassed. What exactly was he looking for? An explanation? An apology? He looked at Danny’s handwriting again— swooping caps and then tight, closed letters. Which meant what? Would he even have given it a thought a few days ago? This was like looking at tea leaves or chicken entrails. He shoved the paper back and closed the drawer.

Downstairs, sliding glass doors led out to the pool. There was a wet bar, some bright patio furniture, and a galley kitchen with a serving window that opened to the terrace. Ben imagined parties with platters of food, umbrella tables by day, the million lights by night. To the side was a closed door. The garage? No, a screening room with red plush seats and musty velvet drapes, so dated it must have come with the house. He turned up the lights. Except for the sound speakers, it was the kind of room Lasner might have used to run Two Husbands. Maybe even for Chaplin, a lifetime before Paulette. Did Danny still use it?

The projection room, at any rate, was functional, the equipment newer than some he’d used in the Signal Corps. A few cans of film lay next to the projector, waiting to be put back on the metal shelf lined with hexagonal storage boxes. Ben went over to look, expecting a row of Republic serials, but they were Ufa films, titles on the boxes inked in German. Drei Mädchen, Ein Tag in Berlin, Sag Mir Adieu—all the silly comedies and shopgirl dramas their father had made out in Babelsberg, a kind of shrine to Otto Kohler. All here, even the ones from the thirties, when Otto still thought he’d be safe. Ben ran his fingers across the boxes. Films he hadn’t seen, then never asked to see later, all faithfully collected. The father’s son. Even Two Husbands, probably moldering away now in its canister.

He moved from the shelf, his eye caught by a wall of framed photographs. Another Kohler homage. Otto on the set with Marika Rökk. A group picture with Jannings, Lorre, and Conrad Veidt. Dietrich showing him her leg, a gag shot. A formal premiere, probably at the Zoo Palast, in gowns and white ties with—yes, Goebbels at the end of the row. Otto on a crane. Otto blocking a scene. A wall of Otto. And finally, at the end, a picture of the family, all four of them in Lützowplatz, his mother smiling broadly, her hand on Ben’s shoulder. Danny making a face.

He took the picture from the wall and stared at it, suddenly moved. His life, too. How old had he been? Eight? He remembered the day it had been taken, Frau Weber telling Danny to stand still and then not finding the shutter button so he’d laughed at her again, making another face, the whole afternoon still so real that Ben felt he could touch it, right through the glass frame. His face flushed, a warm surge of recognition. Not someone else.

“There you are. I saw the light. I’ve been looking—” Liesl stopped, seeing his face. “What?”