Charlotte. David Foenkinos
borders on harassment.
For months, he has been promising Paula the earth.
A neurologist too, he helps women with nervous problems.
To cast a spell on her, he even tries hypnosis.
Paula starts to yield, then pushes him away.
One night, coming out of a concert, Kurt’s wife suddenly appears.
Desperate, she throws a vial of poison at Paula.
Poison that she probably thought about swallowing.
A tragic love story.
This incident leaves Paula weak.
She decides it is time she got married.
To put an end to this exhausting situation.
In this context, Albert seems to her like a refuge.
Anyway, she prefers the surgeon’s hands.
Albert tells Charlotte about his meeting with Paula.
Thrilled, she insists that he invite her to dinner.
It would be such an honor.
He obeys.
On the evening in question, Charlotte wears her best dress.
The only one she likes, in truth.
She helps Hase prepare the table and the meal.
Everything must be perfect.
At eight o’clock, the doorbell rings.
Eagerly, she rushes to open it.
Paula gives her a big smile.
You must be Charlotte, says the opera singer.
Yes, that’s me, she wants to reply.
But no sound emerges.
The meal passes in an atmosphere of muted joy.
Paula invites Charlotte to see her in concert.
And afterward, you can visit my dressing room.
You’ll see, it’s very beautiful, Paula adds.
Backstage is the only place where the truth exists.
She speaks softly, her voice so fine.
There is nothing diva-like about her.
On the contrary, there is a delicacy to her gestures.
Everything is going wonderfully, thinks Albert.
It’s as if Paula had always lived here.
After dinner, they beg her to sing.
She approaches the piano.
Charlotte’s heart is no longer beating—it is pounding.
Paula leafs through the sheet music next to the piano.
Finally she chooses a Schubert lied.
And places it over the Bach.
6
Charlotte cuts out every article about Paula.
It fascinates her, that one person can be so loved.
She loves hearing the applause in the concert hall.
She is proud that she knows the artist personally.
Charlotte basks in the audience’s enthusiasm.
The noise of admiration is fabulous.
Paula shares with her the love she receives.
She shows Charlotte the flowers and the letters.
All of this takes the form of a strange consolation.
Life becomes richer, goes faster.
Suddenly everything seems frenetic.
Albert asks his daughter what she thinks of Paula.
I simply adore her.
Well, that’s perfect, because we’ve decided to get married.
Charlotte throws her arms round her father’s neck.
Something she hasn’t done for years.
The wedding takes place in a synagogue.
Raised by her rabbi father, Paula is a true believer.
Judaism has had little importance in Charlotte’s life.
One might even say: none at all.
Her childhood is based around an absence of Jewish culture.
In the words of Walter Benjamin.
Her parents lived a secular life.
And her mother loved Christian hymns.
At thirteen, Charlotte is discovering this world that is supposedly hers.
She observes it with that easy curiosity we have for things that seem distant to us.
7
Albert’s new wife moves to 15 Wielandstrasse.
Charlotte’s life is turned upside down.
The apartment, long used to emptiness and silence, is transformed.
Paula brings the cultural life of Berlin into their home.
She invites celebrities.
They meet the famous Albert Einstein.
The architect Erich Mendelsohn.
The theologian Albert Schweitzer.
This is the zenith of German domination.
Intellectual, artistic and scientific.
They play the piano, they drink, they sing, they dance, they invent.
Life has never seemed so intense.
There are now little brass plaques on the ground outside this address.
These are Stolpersteine.
Tributes to the victims of the Holocaust.
There are many of them in Berlin, especially in Charlottenburg.
They are not easy to spot.
You must walk with your head down, seeking memories between the cobblestones.
In front of 15 Wielandstrasse, three names can be read.
Paula, Albert and Charlotte.
But on the wall, there is only one commemorative plaque.
The one for Charlotte Salomon.
During my last visit to Berlin, it had vanished.
The building was being renovated, under scaffolding.
Charlotte erased for a fresh coat of paint.
Sanitized, the house façade looks like a movie backdrop.
Immobile on the sidewalk, I stare at the balcony.
Where Charlotte posed for a photograph with her father.
The picture was taken around 1928.
She is eleven or twelve, and the look in her eyes is bright.
She already looks surprisingly like a woman.
I dally for a moment in the past.
Preferring to look at the photograph in my memory rather than the present.
Then, finally, I make a decision.
I weave between the ladders and the workmen and go upstairs.
To the second floor, outside her apartment.
I ring Charlotte’s doorbell.