a taxi to Berlin, where they saw films at the cinema or had tickets to the Opernhaus or to the Philharmonie. They loved cabarets, singers, any form of entertainment, and liked to frequent a new transvestite bar that was all the rage. In the morning, they recalled gags they’d heard, repeated off-color jokes, and like wayward schoolgirls fell about in fits of giggles. On the last day of August, Natalia went with them to the opening night of The Threepenny Opera at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm. Zita bought the sheet music, and she and Natalia learned the lyrics to the Bertholt Brecht and Kurt Weill songs “Mack the Knife” and “Pirate Jenny.” Music to commit revolution by, Zita said.
And they’ll see me as I stand beside the window and
They’ll say: what has she got to smile about?
And a ship with eight sails and
All its fifty guns loaded
Will lay siege to the harbor.
Beatriz applauded. She said, “Natalia, listen to you, how you sing, and look at you dancing. I would never have guessed my quiet girl was such an actress.”
Beatriz gave dinner parties, inviting actors, filmmakers, writers, as well as her good friends Herr Saltzman, Sophie Brecht and her husband, Gustav, a professor of art history at the Berlin University. Everyone an authority, a connoisseur; everyone with an opinion. The conversation, generally lively and stimulating, could become contentious, as on the evening Zita emphatically denounced the disparity between rich and poor. Some of the guests agreed; others argued that society, any society, naturally evolved toward complexity, some won, some lost; how could it be otherwise? The utopian ideal did not exist; surely Zita would agree? No, she didn’t agree, Zita said. Like any machine, society required skilled engineering and oversight in order to work. It hurt her when, walking down any street in Berlin, she saw paupers on one side, tycoons on the other. “Inevitably there will be a crisis,” she said. “And when it comes, it will be cataclysmic. It will pull us all down.”
“A cataclysm? I hardly think it will come to that. Isn’t it the responsibility of those who have, to look after the less fortunate?” Sophie Brecht said, a chocolate bonbon halfway to her lips.
“Charity,” Zita said. “Charity is poison.”
“If everyone thought like that, we would indeed have a crisis. A moral crisis,” Sophie said.
“Hungry people need food, not sermons,” Zita said.
“Did I say anything about sermons?” Sophie ate the bonbon, wiped her mouth on a napkin.
“I’ll tell you what I don’t like,” Beatriz interjected. “I don’t like that the central bank has raised interest rates to eight percent. I wrote to Hjalmar Schacht. I told him straight that tightening the money supply will have a disastrous effect on the country’s economy. I let him know I’d already pruned my German stock holdings to almost nothing. He might be the head of the Reichsbank, I said, but I could do a better job blindfolded.”
“Bravo!” Herr Saltzman cried. “Although I fear your intervention will get you precisely nowhere.” He smiled at Beatriz. Zita got up to refill Beatriz’s wineglass and offer her the silver tray of cheese and grapes. Beatriz took a grape. Zita murmured a few words in her ear. Beatriz laughed.
A day later a letter came for Natalia’s mother in an envelope bearing violet-colored República Argentina stamps. It was from the law firm that managed her legal affairs in Buenos Aires, informing her that the caretakers at her villa were retiring in October. A new caretaker would have to be hired. Her lawyers would be pleased to act on her behalf, or she could attend to the matter in person, if she preferred. Beatriz kept changing her mind: Was it worth the time and money to travel to Buenos Aires? She stared at the photograph of her childhood home and said, after twenty-two years she owed it a visit, didn’t she? One evening, she came into the living room, where Zita and Natalia were reading, and perched on the edge of a chair and announced that she had decided: they would all go. On the mantel above her the ormolu clock shone, as if emitting light, but Natalia thought it was Beatriz; she was the one shedding radiance, from her eyes, from the pores of her skin. “If we leave in late November,” she said, “we will arrive in Buenos Aires when the jacaranda trees are in bloom, the gardens in flower. Zita, you’ll love it.”
“I can’t afford to take six months away from work, Beatriz.