Series: Metropolis, Book 2
Genre: Historical Fiction
Weimar Berlin, 1927
Having recovered from the hyperinflation, the decadent metropolis is prospering against all odds. Unbothered by the turbulent events of the previous years, Berlin plunges into an orgy of life, entirely oblivious to the dangerous signs of an upcoming catastrophe.
Much like the rest of Berlin’s artistic elite, Margot von Steinhoff is too preoccupied with her work on the set of the infamous Fritz Lang, to pay attention to the dark shadow of the nationalistic threat hanging over the city. When Ernst Weniger, her former lover and now an official NKVD officer, asks for her help in aiding the German communists, she refuses at first, choosing to stay apolitical, just like Lang. However, when the new Gauleiter of Berlin, Joseph Goebbels, arrives in the city and begins his relentless campaign of harassment and misinformation, Margot realizes that staying neutral is no longer an option. Playing on the wrong side can cost her not only her career but her freedom, yet Margot has never been more certain of her choice.
“I don’t read political newspapers, Margot. I only want to make my films… I don’t want to have anything to do with all those politics.”
“I don’t want to have anything to do with them either. But the sad fact is that sometimes politics wants to have everything to do with us, regardless of our desires. At some point, all of us will have to take sides. The good news, Fritz, is that I’ll always be on yours.”
Dark, gritty, yet full of hope, “Spies” is the novel of the doomed Weimar Republic and the last generation of free-thinking artists who lived and created their masterpieces in a city, on the verge of collapse.
Excerpt
On the roof, it was colder still. The wet chill penetrated even through the layers of her warm overcoat and scarf. Margot hugged herself with both arms. She saw Lang at once. He stood on the very edge of the roof, hands buried deep in his pockets, not a jacket in sight, seemingly oblivious to the gusts of icy wind that tossed his dark hair, tangling its longish threads. His gaze was riveted to the street at his feet. As Margot approached him, she had just seen Thea disappear into one of the cars.
“You know she only did it for you, right?” Margot said softly, risking threading her arm through the crook of his.
He didn’t pull away, only laughed vacantly and with great cynicism. There was a long pause, wind howling in the wires that stretched like a great spiderweb underneath.
“You know nothing about Thea at all,” said Lang at length, with somewhat of an ironic look about him.
“I know that she wishes only the best for you…” Margot’s voice lost its conviction after Fritz gave her a certain look.
“Margot, my angel, sometimes I imagine you only say such things to give me pleasure. You don’t truly believe them, do you?”
“Of course, I do.” She grew progressively confused.
“I know that you two became good friends. She is my friend as well and I don’t wish to say anything bad about her. At one point, we used to be very close. Very, very close.” He paused, staring pensively ahead. “But she’s not like us, Margot. We can come off as cynics and even misanthropes but deep inside, we’re the most ridiculous of idealists. We wish to see the world better than it is. We wish to see the good in the worst of people. We are hopeless optimists in this world that is going to the devil. Thea, she’s a pragmatist. She only thinks about her own skin. She knows where the wind is blowing from but unlike us, she’s not stupid enough to go against it.”
Margot began shaking her head. “She stood by you because—”
“She stood by me because I’m still useful to her,” Lang threw back. “That is her entire reason for standing by me. We’re making good money together. We’re Berlin’s golden couple, a team that is only successful because it’s still a team and she’s very well aware of that. Don’t try to make it out into something romantic.”
“I wasn’t talking about anything romantic. But there’s simple human decency, after all—”
“Human decency,” he interrupted her once again, “showed itself when you refused to take over the filming when Klitzsch asked you to. That was human decency. That—” his hand shot out in the direction of the road, where the small procession had long since disappeared “—is betrayal and that’s all there is to it, Margot. I would have expected it from Klein-Rogge, he’s been a nationalist as long as I remember him – the reason why I have always cast him as a villain for my pictures. He has all the reasons to hate me. I did steal his wife from him, after all. But her… I didn’t expect it from her.”
Suddenly, he pulled his hand out of his pocket and wrapped his arm around her shoulders.
“My poor angel, you’re shivering something terrible.” She didn’t even notice that she was. “Let’s go back inside before you catch a cold.”
But Margot didn’t budge. “Fritz?”
“Yes?”
“Since we’re talking about betrayals,” her voice trailed off. Lang watched her keenly, waiting for the confession. “It was me. I brought all those leaflets here. The police were here because of me. It’s all,” she gestured vaguely around them, “because of me. All your troubles, are completely because of me.”
For a few moments, he was silent. Then, a grin began growing slowly on his face.
“Do you think I’m blind? I knew all about the leaflets.” With unexpected affection, he cupped her cold cheeks with his icy palms as he regarded her tenderly. “Just as I said, the most ridiculous of idealists.” He planted the softest kiss on her forehead and pressed her head to his shoulder. “Bring all that Bolshevist agitprop here. Plaster the walls of the set with it if you like. I’ll film it and release it with all that Red rot in the background just to give that sod an apoplectic shock on the day of the premiere. But don’t submit to them, Margot. I need at least one kindred spirit around. Else, I shall lose all hope in humanity altogether.”
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