engineers fiddled with knobs and microphones. All morning everyone’s attention had been focused on the small pool of light occupied by Clara and Rühmann, but when the minister for propaganda entered, suddenly no one was watching the actors anymore.
As soon as Clara saw Goebbels take shape in the shadows, assistants fluttering around him and the violet haze of his cigarette smoke coiling up into the studio roof, she knew there was no point going on. The man in charge of all filmmaking in the Third Reich was not the type to linger respectfully in the shadows. Once he registered that she had seen him, he gave an infinitesimal nod, and Clara, with a quick, apologetic smile to the director, threaded her way through the camera cables and followed Goebbels as he hobbled in his built-up patent leather boots along the corridor to his office.
The propaganda minister’s limp was the first thing everyone noticed about him and the last thing they dared mention. In the early days of the regime, the Society for the Aid of Cripples had brought out a pamphlet celebrating Goebbels as the supreme example of mental powers triumphing over physical disabilities. The charity got a taste of those mental powers shortly afterwards, when their pamphlet was burned and the society closed down.
Reaching his office, Goebbels flung open the door.
The office was a symphony of gleaming light, polished oak, and pale leather furniture. Chrome lamps graced a desk of immaculate walnut. Stills from Ufa’s greatest hits were displayed in tasteful black frames on the walls. Pride of place was devoted to an enormous close-up picture of Goebbels’s own face, cadaverous, hollow-eyed, and exuding all the gravitas of a wanted poster. The office also came fitted with the standard accoutrements of any minister of the Third Reich—microphones concealed in the walls, lamps, and picture frames—invalidating the need to close the door quite so firmly as he gestured her to a seat.
Goebbels stalked across to his desk and threw himself down. Generally, his charm was as polished as his own furniture, but that day his bony visage was grimly set and his pomaded hair visibly graying. Despite the immaculate Hugo Boss herringbone suit and shimmering silk tie, he looked more wretched than Clara had ever seen him. A twitch flickered in the corner of his left eye. Something serious was plainly troubling him, and though there was no shortage of troubles that might concern a senior member of the Nazi government in the spring of 1939, Clara guessed Goebbels’s misery had nothing to do with the prospect of European war.
She wondered if it was the stomach complaint that had forced him into hospital recently, or the fact that Lida Baarová, the Czech actress he had been besotted with, had been banished from Germany on Hitler’s orders. Yet instinct told her it was the same old story—the ongoing marital war with his wife, Magda, who according to studio gossip had taken revenge for her long humiliation by initiating an affair with Karl Hanke, her husband’s aide, and was now disporting herself in an unseemly manner around the city’s nightclubs. On Goebbels’s desk Magda stared out from a silver picture frame with a look that could freeze blood. Clara wondered how he managed to stop himself turning it to the wall.
He eyed her coldly.
“I must say you look totally unrecognizable with those spectacles. You don’t need them, do you?”
“Not yet.”
“Good. They’re hideous. Take them off. Spectacles on women are worse than trousers. They lend a dreadfully academic air, and I loathe academic women. Besides, it makes it harder to tell what you’re thinking.”
Unbidden, Conrad Adler’s phrase again floated into Clara’s head.
Like fire behind ice.
“Actresses are supposed to project their feelings, not suppress them. It doesn’t do to look sly. Especially—”
He broke off to reach for the silver cigarette box, a gift from Hitler himself, and extracted one
As soon as Clara saw Goebbels take shape in the shadows, assistants fluttering around him and the violet haze of his cigarette smoke coiling up into the studio roof, she knew there was no point going on. The man in charge of all filmmaking in the Third Reich was not the type to linger respectfully in the shadows. Once he registered that she had seen him, he gave an infinitesimal nod, and Clara, with a quick, apologetic smile to the director, threaded her way through the camera cables and followed Goebbels as he hobbled in his built-up patent leather boots along the corridor to his office.
The propaganda minister’s limp was the first thing everyone noticed about him and the last thing they dared mention. In the early days of the regime, the Society for the Aid of Cripples had brought out a pamphlet celebrating Goebbels as the supreme example of mental powers triumphing over physical disabilities. The charity got a taste of those mental powers shortly afterwards, when their pamphlet was burned and the society closed down.
Reaching his office, Goebbels flung open the door.
The office was a symphony of gleaming light, polished oak, and pale leather furniture. Chrome lamps graced a desk of immaculate walnut. Stills from Ufa’s greatest hits were displayed in tasteful black frames on the walls. Pride of place was devoted to an enormous close-up picture of Goebbels’s own face, cadaverous, hollow-eyed, and exuding all the gravitas of a wanted poster. The office also came fitted with the standard accoutrements of any minister of the Third Reich—microphones concealed in the walls, lamps, and picture frames—invalidating the need to close the door quite so firmly as he gestured her to a seat.
Goebbels stalked across to his desk and threw himself down. Generally, his charm was as polished as his own furniture, but that day his bony visage was grimly set and his pomaded hair visibly graying. Despite the immaculate Hugo Boss herringbone suit and shimmering silk tie, he looked more wretched than Clara had ever seen him. A twitch flickered in the corner of his left eye. Something serious was plainly troubling him, and though there was no shortage of troubles that might concern a senior member of the Nazi government in the spring of 1939, Clara guessed Goebbels’s misery had nothing to do with the prospect of European war.
She wondered if it was the stomach complaint that had forced him into hospital recently, or the fact that Lida Baarová, the Czech actress he had been besotted with, had been banished from Germany on Hitler’s orders. Yet instinct told her it was the same old story—the ongoing marital war with his wife, Magda, who according to studio gossip had taken revenge for her long humiliation by initiating an affair with Karl Hanke, her husband’s aide, and was now disporting herself in an unseemly manner around the city’s nightclubs. On Goebbels’s desk Magda stared out from a silver picture frame with a look that could freeze blood. Clara wondered how he managed to stop himself turning it to the wall.
He eyed her coldly.
“I must say you look totally unrecognizable with those spectacles. You don’t need them, do you?”
“Not yet.”
“Good. They’re hideous. Take them off. Spectacles on women are worse than trousers. They lend a dreadfully academic air, and I loathe academic women. Besides, it makes it harder to tell what you’re thinking.”
Unbidden, Conrad Adler’s phrase again floated into Clara’s head.
Like fire behind ice.
“Actresses are supposed to project their feelings, not suppress them. It doesn’t do to look sly. Especially—”
He broke off to reach for the silver cigarette box, a gift from Hitler himself, and extracted one
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