While The Sky Is Still Blue [Gladis&Hideki] (Private)

[-Hideki-]

Veit Jaeger

Gender: male

Height: 1,81m

Date of Birth: 19th July 1898

Hair Colour: blond

Eye Colour: blue

Nationality: German

Sexual Orientation: homosexual

Languages: German; English

Occupation: Tailor; Costume designer

Biography:

Veit Jaeger was born on the 19th July 1898 in Berlin Germany to his young ballet dancer mother and his lawyer father.

His family was well off and of a high status. His mother’s family was an artist family from Berlin with his grandfather being a famous opera singer and actor who is internationally known and his mother being a coryphaeus in European ballet.

His father’s family on the other hand was a new rich family from Duesseldorf that paid for his father to go to law school. During a trip to Berlin rich solicitors of his invited him to visit the ballet after he had won the case for them and as he saw Veit’s mother on stage he was casting his eye at the beautiful dancer, expressing to his rich clients that he ought to get to know that lady and they made it happen for him.

 

Young Veit grew up well sheltered and privileged in a beautiful mansion in Berlin Grunewald and while his father wanted his son to go to medical school and become a doctor the boy had apparently inherited more from the artist side of the family as he couldn’t be bothered with medicine or law but was fascinated by theatre, by literature, stories and characters and by how they came to life on stage, how the actors got turned into the characters they portrait. So it appeared that he became more of the custody of his grandfather because he followed him around and always wanted to accompany him on his trips throughout Europe.

 

He was a daydreamer, living in his stories, drawing pictures of characters in sophisticated costumes at an early age already and he was extraordinarily curious with an exploring mind that wanted to understand what it didn’t know. He loved to travel and enjoyed his stays with his grandfather at an English lady’s mansion who was a great fan of the opera. But since he couldn’t speak English as a child and the dinners were painfully long, sitting at the dinner table was a burden and he misbehaved because he took every opportunity to disobey and leave the table and sneak around in the large stunning mansion, discovering places and he got awestruck when he laid eyes on the huge library of the English lady.

 

Although his grandfather had forbidden him to touch anything inside of his English friend’s house the kid couldn’t resists and began to pull the books out of the shelves and to look at them although he couldn’t read the language. When he stumbled across a book called ‘ Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ a shadow laid itself over him and he saw the English lady standing behind him. He panicked, apologised hectically, awaiting to be scolded and his grandpa getting informed of him being disobedient but the lady smiled at him warmly and gave him the book as a present.

 

Returning from the trip he became the only boy in his school who was spending more time trying to teach himself English to be able to read the book he had been given than with the actual tasks the school gave them. But it paid off as he learned to understand and read the English language and he falls in love with the book, relating to Alice a lot and thus he discovered his love for English literature.

 

1913 only one year before the start of the Great War Veit discovered another love of his! His love for his fellow men. When he accompanied his grandfather to the birthday celebration of the old English lady he was asked to sing for her at, he laid his eyes on the woman’s grandson and the weird feeling that streamed through his body as he talked to him made him instantly know that he had never been in love that way with the girl at home he thought he had had romantic feelings for as he was seeing eye to eye with her and could share his passion with her. That this was much different! And Veit with his curious mind didn’t waste any time to be afraid of those new feelings but went right after them and at the end of the night he had been intimate with another guy for the first time.

 

The following year went great for him. He exchanged excited letters with his lover in England and the other even visited him in Berlin. He also decided to not pursue higher education and got himself an apprenticeship at a luxurious tailing studio for evening attire what led to him fighting with his father who was displeased about him more often than not no matter how often Veit explained that he wanted to create art, wanted to know how to make his visions become reality and not pursue a theoretical academic profession. He didn’t let that get him off track though and it didn’t keep him from dreaming his future together with his English boyfriend in the letters they exchanged.

 

But the illusions of this future only lasted one years as hell broke loose in 1914. His boyfriend who was a few years older than him got the call of duty and he was technically an enemy soldier now and so did his father who was not old enough to not be called to fight for their nation. And the letter that arrived that year informed the family of Veit’s father’s death and the tailor’s apprentice never got the opportunity to make up with his father again while his mother fell into a pitch black hole of grieve and stopped wearing colours and found herself unable to dance from there on, dealing with depression.

 

Another earth quake hit Veit and the family when only shortly after the young man had earned his qualification as a tailor he got called to arms and was soon after brought to the frontlines as well, leaving his grieving mother devastated and terrified who had pleaded that he could stay at home and then had begged Veit to hide himself but although the man had never believed in that war, he hadn’t even once thought about hiding or running away from this as it’d have felt like cowardice to him to not prevent other forces from defeating his fatherland.

 

But Veit was everything but born to be soldier. His free spirit and curious questioning mind alone was making him unfit to obey orders without second guessing them and the first day of experiencing the terrors and horrors, the bloodbath on the frontlines was enough for him to almost be certain that he wouldn’t survive any longer than his father had.

 

That first day also was the day where he made the acquaintance of Kurt Jansen. The scrawny son of a pastor from Kiel who’s glasses set on his face lopsidedly, who held a picture of his girlfriend in hand and was a shivering mess. Kurt was a terrible soldier. In fact, Kurt was an aspiring intellectual who was head deep in political philosophy and rebelling against his father’s theocracy at home, who had two left hands and dropped everything.

 

Kurt, as useless as he was as a soldier, however would remain thankful to Veit for having managed to talk the man frozen in panic into moving again and he found a friend he could have conversations with to distract him from death that was always just a few centimetres away from them. And death had almost gotten Veit after a messily month at the frontlines hadn’t it been for a man named Hannes Schmitt called Schmitti by his comrades. Schmitti was the son of a poor industry worker family, tall, strong and unlike the tailor or his friend Kurt basically born to be a soldier, being a blessing to his comrades and a curse to his enemies.

 

Schmitti not so discretely as he might have thought was hitting on Veit right after he had saved him but although nothing came from that it was the start of a friendship between three very different young men who managed to survive two years of fatal trench war not so sure how they even managed to when Germany surrendered in 1918.

 

When Veit returned his mother was clinging onto him crying, not letting go of him, relieved to have her son back swearing she’d never let him go away another time and the first thing Veit did thereafter was trying to sent a letter to his English lover but what he got back was a spiteful message that told him that the man wouldn’t bear to see his German grimace ever again without throwing up, much less would he be capable of not feeling anything but hate for those who burned and crippled him and killed his brother and friends. It hurt him but just as the stench of death and blood and the images of suffering and pain he wanted to forget the insulting letter from someone he had loved as well so he threw it into the fire place and went out there with an undying thirst for life, for liberty, for culture, art and love.

 

Hence he went to chase his original dream again and went to apply as the costume designer at the theatre and he got the job due to his relations with his famous grandfather. Veit however didn’t care about that, he was determined to show them that he would create his own artistic legacy and he was on the best way to do so, starting to blossom again and to live to the fullest. He even had several love affairs and one that seemed rather serious but ended because the man left Veit and Berlin in favour of New York.

 

Veit however didn’t have any time for sorrow, regrets, or sadness, life was fragile, short and he had to enjoy it and live it while he was alive and so he did. And he wasn’t alone either. Kurt had moved to Berlin, studying at the university right after he had gotten home from war and had found his girlfriend in bed with his sister behind his back, behind the back of his parents for certain or they’d have chased her away a long time ago and tried to exorcist his sister’s demons. Veit and Kurt only got closer during that time, while Veit inhaled everything that inspired art and Kurt was not studying theology as his father thought but was aiming to become a political philosopher building connections to Berlin’s intellectuals but also journalists and other political people.

 

Schmitti, like Veit was from Berlin himself but although he kept in contact his life went down a different road and while Kurt’s and Veit’s worlds seemed to be compatible, Schmitti’s didn’t seem to fit theirs at all. The man’s father had been disabled by war and couldn’t work in the industry anymore to feed his mother and his little brothers and sisters what left him with the task of providing for the family. But all Hannes Schmitt had ever been was a soldier and the humiliated nation had no Army anymore. Hence, Schmitt, who didn’t want to accept the defeat and willingly believed in the Dolchsto?legende and repeated it to everyone who asked – also to those who never asked -, joined a unit of the Freikorps, being convinced that they had to fight the Bolshevik traitors of their nation and the ‘jewish world conspiracy’.

 

And while Veit was dedicating himself to art and culture and Kurt was discussing theories as to how to take this new start as a chance to create a better, freer political system and future, to prevent such a war from ever happening again and how that could look like, Schmitti - after the government’s attempt of bringing the different Freikorps back under one roof of one Army failed due to the treaty of Versailles humiliating the nation by forbidding it to have an Army larger than 100.000 men what threatened dozens of former soldiers with unemployment, one of them Hannes Schmitt - became an early member of the NSDAP and then went over from his Freikorp division to the SA in 1920, not done with fighting and not done with warfare in slightest.

 

Whatever Schmitti was doing was incredibly far away from Veit though whose career was going great, who was blossoming in his work and making characters come to life on stage, seeing the actors in the costumes he had made, spending most of his time in the theatre around artists and actors and interesting people. And one day in autumn 1923 Kurt told him about someone he had met listening to that persons speech in his university and that man had introduced him to the owner of a cabaret and that owner was according to Kurt one of the most interesting people he had ever met and he was dying to show him the cabaret that was in search of someone to help them to make their visions come to life, someone to contribute his creativity and ideas to it, swearing that he’d absolutely love it and won’t be disappointed and his friend had been most certainly right.

 

It was the weirdest thing, the weirdest place with the weirdest people he had ever seen, it seemed like wonderland in a sense, where everything and everyone could happen, and he loved it and agreed to help the owner and his eccentric staff out. And while it started out with only occasionally helping out he began to work more and more and to spend more and more time at the cabaret enjoying the company of the people and the atmosphere, feeling absolutely at home and fulfilled amongst them. And when he had thought he had gotten to know all kinds of people by now, right after he had, without thinking and in a drunken head agreed to contribute massively to make the new play happen he had even helped writing and designing the characters for on New Year’s Eve, he made another interesting, maybe one could even call it fateful, encounter.

 

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It was cold. Freezing cold. And the wind made the cold creep through his woollen coat right into his bones. He could see a cloud of his warm breath in front of himself as he was walking past the little stores, restaurants and bars on this late Friday afternoon. It was 5pm but it was already dark outside. Not many people were out and about on the streets of Berlin and he thought that the temperatures of -5?C might have gotten something to do with it. The men whom he saw rushing past him were mostly those whose shifts had ended and who were eager to get back home to their wives and kids and more importantly a warm, home cooked meal.

 

Veit Jaeger however, although he came from his working place at the theatre, wasn’t on his way home. The man who was carrying a clothes bag and had his brief-case hanging down his hip - what in his eyes always gave him something of a teacher or a bureaucrat – was on his way to his other working place. A small cabaret down the road that he would have never heard about had his friend Kurt not dragged him there! This time the costume in the clothes bag would at least be the right one. The day hadn’t started out that greatly for the young blond man with the light blue eyes and high cheekbones. While juggling his work for the prestigious theatre and the underground, alternative little cabaret he had confused the clothes bags and had brought those costumes to the theatre. Much worse his boss had noticed sooner than himself.

 

He could still see how his old bosses narrow eyes had widened as much as they could, his face had went through a metamorphosis of different shades of red until he had turned around and had yelled at him while breathing gaspingly and spitting in the process, expressing how obscene and frivolous of a costume this was. What he was thinking to bring junk like that into his theatre and if he was trying to take him for a fool. Veit had apologised. Multiple times. He had said that he had made the costumes for a private client and that he had confused the bags, that he had the correct costumes all ready at home and would fetch them right away for the actors to practise in them. And under his bosses disapproving gaze of what kind of perverted clients Veit accepted he had had to run to the street-railway to get to his apartment to grab the missing costumes and bring them to the theatre in time.

 

Four years ago Veit had moved out of his parent’s mansion in Berlin Grunewald and had moved into a beautiful, large apartment in the city centre on the Friedrichsstra?e and he had never regretted his decision. Not only did he live where the pulse of the city was, where its heart was beating, was closer to his working place, night life and all there was to desire in the world, he also didn’t have to come home in the evening, eager to have dinner with his lady mother and his famous grandfather whom he loved dearly just to find his mother sitting there in her all black attire next to some strange young woman Veit’s age, with his grandfather rolling his eyes saying nothing reading the newspaper while his mother was trying to set him up with whatever woman she had brought there the whole night. His mother wanted, no his mother demanded grandchildren. And it wasn’t like moving out had changed anything about that, she’d nag him about that whenever he visited them, but at least he didn’t have to get to know people he had absolutely no interest in getting to know day after day now and generally enjoyed more personal freedom and space.

The blond was suspecting that his mother knew what kind of man he was but that she was consequently in denial about it and tried to ignore it in hopes that if she did ignore it and they’d never talk about it, it would just go away eventually and Veit would bring home a nice woman to marry and have kids with. But deep down she probably knew as well as he did that this was not going to happen.

 

Turning right at the next corner he took a deep breath of cold air. The evening at the cabaret just had to go better for him than what had happened in the theatre doing the day. The costumes he had were definitely the right ones. They were for some of the side characters. And he too had his designs for the female lead characters costumes in his brief case as well. This evening he’d meet the actress who’d play the character for the first time. The play laid close to Veit’s heart. He had contributed massively to it. He had written most of it with the owner of the cabaret together and he wanted that it was going to be perfect. Especially the main character! He loved the main character! She was a mixture of Alice in Wonderland and Frida. His Frida. And Veit loved Frida. Firda was perfect. Beautiful, interesting, smart! Frida who was his best friend. Frida whom he had once thought he’d marry. He had always loved her. But he had never loved love her. He had thought he had loved love her but he had been wrong what a certain Englishman who had carried him off his feet and who had turned his whole world upside down had made very clear to him back then.

 

Veit had told Frida. It wouldn’t have been fair to not tell her. He had loved Frida after all and she had been mad, she had been hurt but after she had yelled at him, had slapped his face, after she had fallen silent for very long, painful minutes in which she hadn’t looked at him she had uttered that she had suspected that there had been something very wrong with him, since no man in the world would be as reluctant and passionless about a gorgeous body such as hers. And Frida had posed and smiled at him with her shiny teeth and her crystal eyes, playing with her wild blond curls that had always been untameable. Nowadays Frida was a successful actress. She could be seen in many movies and she certainly was desired. However whenever she had time and they’d meet she’d result back to the old joke that the two of them would probably end up getting married to each other regardless one day.

 

So that woman who played this role should better do an amazing job! She’d better be an impressive person! He thought. Because if not… He stopped himself right there. Rolf, the owner, had been excited about the actress he had chosen. He had praised her massively and Rolf was not easy to impress. Thus Veit probably had nothing to worry about and she’d portrait the role perfectly.

 

When he finally arrived in front of the Jugendstil building of the cabaret he thought he could hear his bones rattle from the cold but whether he actually could or not, what he definitely heard were voices from inside. The cabaret wasn’t opened yet but although the sign at the door said ‘Closed’ the door was unlocked and the lights were burning inside. Upon entering it felt like a wave of heat was overrunning him and his face and fingers started to glow and burn. He greeted and nodded towards the bar keeper who was polishing glasses and the waitress who was sweeping the ground another time before they’d open and the first costumers would arrive but then he immediately turned his blue gaze towards the voices that were sounding quite loudly through the room.

 

Rosemarie a thin, tall woman from Bavaria, a famer’s daughter, who had fled from home in the middle of the night years ago to not have to marry the neighbours son the next day, was standing there, her hands in her hips, wearing the black ladies suit Veit had made for her, looking down on the man in front of her with her smart, grey eyes. She looked a little like a raven with her pointed face, the short, dyed pitch black hair and the vamp make-up. No one would ever get the idea that this woman, with that strict expression and the cold aura surrounding her could sing with as much emotion and passion as she could. She was a remarkable singer. And when she was with her girlfriend, who was basically the exact opposite of her in all aspects one could imagine, she seemed really different. Louise, that sweet young woman Veit’s friend Kurt had fallen for. The blond didn’t know what it was with Kurt but the bloke would manage it to reliably crush on the one sapphic woman in a crowd of a thousand straight ones.

 

The man Rosemarie was murdering with her eyes right now was not Kurt but a plump guy with dirty blond hair, round, friendly green eyes, a broken nose, a face that was fleckered with freckles and a fashion sense that left much to be desired. “What the hell is that Vladimir!” Rosemarie hissed pointing her index finger down at something like a sword. And it was just then that Veit saw the furry little fluffball on the ground. Vladimir raised an eyebrow and shrugged his shoulders and showed her the palms of his calloused hands. “What do you mean what is?” he found the question completely redundant. “Is bear! I rescued!” he told her and Rosemarie who wasn’t the most patient human being out there barked at the Russian man while swinging her index finger sword towards the animal on the ground multiple times in a row as to emphasise her point. “I know that you cretin! But it shouldn’t be here! Bring it back to where you’ve gotten it from!” she ordered and Vladi narrowed his thick eyebrows. “I was visiting family in Russia. I saw bear on the streets. Wasn’t treated good. So what I do, I steal bear, hide it and bring here. I can’t bring back.” He told her.

 

Vladimir Kasparov was their set designer who originally was a carpenter and he turned the cabaret into an animal shelter from time to time. The man had a history of rescuing abandoned or hurt animals and he always brought them with himself into the cabaret. During the short period of time Veit had worked for it Vladi had already brought an injured hedgehog, a stray dog, a rabbit he had stolen before it had been slaughtered and a squirrel. The squirrel had run loose and they had had to capture it again and it had made a mess in the whole cabaret. And now his newest prot?g? was apparently a little black bear.

 

“I don’t care!” Rosemarie said. “It’s a bloody bear. Not only isn’t that a zoo, this bear is probably also dangerous. It needs to go! Before the first client arrives, do you hear me.” She said and pressed her index finger against Vladimir’s chest. “You’re not boss, you heartless monster.” The man said shoving back her thin hand. “Is baby bear!” he said looking at the little bear who was toddling in between their feet. The woman snorted disdainfully. She and Vladmir had never really gotten along. “Yes, right, I am heartless. It’s not you who is a reckless, overly emotional and impulsive man who only thinks from 12pm to midday! What are you planning on doing with this bear when it grows up? Tell me Vladimir? Should a giant predator live in the cabaret and scare everyone away? Until we get reported and arrested?” the woman spoke in a sarcastic, mocking tone. “Is not important now what to do when is big. Is little now. I think of what to do with it when big when is big. Now is now, then is then.” he said and she laughed snorting. “Proves my point.”

 

With an angry expression on his face Vladimir picked up the little bear from the ground and yelled:” You’re soulless witch!” at the Bavarian woman and Veit had just decided to disappear in the studio again quickly before either one of them noticed him and tried to get him involved when something furry and warm and bear-ish was pressed into his free arm while the blond man was trying to get the clothes bag out of the way and not drop the little bear given to him unwantedly at the same time. “Veit is good guy. He’ll help.” Vladimir said and that he didn’t stick out his tongue to the black haired lady with the ghostly pale face was everything. Vladi smiled into Veit’s face widely. “This is bear from Russia. Is called Nikolaj!” he said and Veit was stuttering “Uhm…ahh…” searching for words. “You’ll get along great with bear, da!” he said and gave Veit a collegial punch against his shoulder and walked away, not noticing the blond calling out “Vladi!” to him, standing there in the middle of the cabaret with an illegally held black bear.

 

Sighing deeply Veit went on into the studio, closing the door behind himself, putting the bear down onto the ground thinking to himself ‘That starts off just great’. Then again, this absurdity and eccentricness was exactly what he loved about the cabaret and the people who worked there. And frankly, he fitted in better with this crowd than with the conservative one at the theatre and at this point he enjoyed working for the cabaret more but the theatre was the one that led him to success, to an artistic legacy, to becoming known while this cabaret did not. Thus he couldn’t just give up the job at the theatre in order to work here could he?

 

The man hung the clothes bag onto a rag and then began to spread out his designs for the main character’s costumes onto the table, beginning to make some quick changes and to sketch out some new thoughts that had come to mind. He was soon focussed only on his work when he suddenly heard a loud crash, startled, drew a line across the whole piece of paper because of it and turned around. Nikolaj, the illegal bear, had thrown down two whole boxes filled with props that were now allotted all over the studio floor. “No! Nikolaj!” he called out displeased, stood up and tried to put the stuff back into the boxes while juggling the bear who was completely sabotaging him.

 

It didn’t help him at all that he knew that the new actress for the lead role would arrive every minute now and while he was rushing around, hoping she’d be a little late, he heard it knock and then the clacking noises of heels on the floor, punctual like clockwork, seeing smooth legs through his own legs as he was standing there bend over, putting stuff into a box, while a black bear baby was basically trying to shake his hand. Veit was waving around – it was a wonder that he didn’t fell onto his arse – grabbed the bear and stood straight, his blond hair in disorder now, more out of breath than he should be.

 

But although the blond man was certainly the one seeming like a goofball and was the one standing there with a bear in his arms his blue eyes examined the arriving lady really closely, scrutinising her, checking her from head to heels. She was certainly gorgeous. Wearing a tiny yellow dress, on point make up and dark short hair that reminded a bit of the strictly styled hair of Rosemarie. But this woman was prettier than Rosemarie overall, much prettier. And she had quite the presence that filled the room immediately. She certainly didn’t look like Alice in Wonderland though, much less like Frida! She was much taller than Frida and less curvy and a lot darker, in terms of hair and eye colour. That wouldn’t be an issue though. The deciding factor was her presence and her acting skills.

 

Finally after he had stared at the beautiful woman critically for a while, he was approaching her, reaching his hand out to her, having to relocate the bear on his arms to have the right hand free to greet her. “Good evening Ma’am!” he greeted her and shook her hand, realising that she had quite the handshake for a lady. “I’m Veit. I make the costumes.” He introduced himself and then remembered the bear. “And this... is a bear… it’s a bear!” he said and placed him down onto the ground. “His name is Nikolaj, don’t even ask!” he informed her and then rushed to the chairs, pulling one out from under the table, pointing onto it with his hand offering it to her. “Here, have a seat, make yourself at home. Do you want something to drink?” he asked a little hectically, hoping she wouldn’t think he was a complete wacko.

[Gladis]

 

 

Name:

Benjamin Eliezer Cohen

 

Nickname:

Ben, Benny

 

Stage Name:

Age:

27

 

Height:

178 cm

 

Eye Colour:

Dark Brown

 

Hair Color:

Black

 

Nationality:

Danish

 

Sexual Orientation:

Homosexual

 

Occupation:

Actor/Performer/Drag Queen

 

Spoken Languages:

Danish, Yiddish, German and a tiny bit of French

 

Biography:

Born on the 5th of April, 1896, in Denmark, Copenhagen, Benjamin was the third child to bless his family of five. His father Aaron Cohen was a successful architect and structural engineer, who among other things contributed to the 1900-1901 redevelopment project of the Br?nsh?j district. Although they did not live in the lap of luxury exactly, the Cohen family was certainly better off than most, and Benjamin along with his two older sisters Frida and Eva were seldom left wanting for much. That is not to say that their parents spoiled them. Aaron Cohen was a very strict father, and the expectations he put on his children -- and Benjamin in particular -- were high. Although he did not consider it paramount that Benjamin follows in his own footsteps per se, he did put a great deal of importance on higher forms of education and academia, and he wanted to see his son to become no less successful than himself.

 

Unfortunately Ben could not live up to those expectations. Although he seemed every bit as bright as any other child his age, he struggled to keep up in school -- especially in regards to the reading and writing department. He played two instruments and did well enough with mathematics, but he couldn’t for the life of him spell even the simplest of words correctly. While he eventually did learn how to do it moderately well, his handwriting was (and still is) atrocious, and reading would still take him twice, if not three times as long as it did for his fellow pupils. As a result the grades he attained during his school years left much to be desired -- a point of contention that lead to many fierce arguments within his household.

 

To Benjamin personally though, his grades were never all that important. By the age of twelve he had already figured out what he wanted to do with his life, and studying to become a doctor or engineer wasn’t it. Rather, he wanted to become an actor, a pill his father found very difficult to swallow.

 

Benjamin’s keen interest in theatre and drama was nothing new. Ever since his best friend and then classmate Isaac Abramowski introduced him to the flourishing yiddish theatre scene of Copenhagen, for which his father worked as a playwright, he was hooked. Dazzled by the costumes and music, the sheer passion and joy that seemed to go into the productions, and the overall energy and flare that surrounded the place, he immediately fell in love with it all. The afternoons Benjamin and Isaac spent in that theatre were countless; sometimes just to watch the actors rehearse their parts, but occasionally they would also help out with whatever was needed at the time. The work they did was mostly unpaid, but to Benjamin it didn’t matter. He had finally found a place he could call home.

 

While Aaron never really approved of his son’s after-school activities, aside from the occasional scathing remark he also didn’t really try to prevent Benjamin from going there. That was until in 1910, their housemaid discovered the secret batch of secret letters from Isaac, detailing their… not-so-platonic relationship. Shocked, she immediately passed them on to Benjamin’s father, who flew into an instant rage. He even went so far as to threaten his own fourteen year old son with notifying the police, should he keep on refusing to “quit this blasphemous nonsense at once”; a threat to which Benjamin boldly responded with:

 

“Father, there are many drastic measures I could see you taking, but going to the police is not one of them. You wouldn’t dare. How do you think the rest of the community will react if they find out you raised a sodomite son?”

 

He was right. His father never went to the police, but he did share the letters with Isaac’s parents. Ben could tell by how later that very same week, during their gathering at the synagogue for Yom Kippur, Isaac wouldn’t even so much as glance in his direction. He could tell by the way his hands kept trembling during prayer, and by the tears that burned behind his eyes. It was heartbreaking. Not only because Isaac seemed so upset, but also because there was nothing he could do about it. Even without being told, Benjamin knew he would no longer be welcome at the theatre. That alone made him feel the entire world had come crashing down on him from above. Yom Kippur is meant to be a day of atonement, but as Benjamin went to sleep later that night, his heart felt heavier than it ever had before. He knew that things between him and Isaac would never be the same again.

 

Benjamin graduated from the obligatory mellenskole in the spring of 1911, with less than desirable grades. This only increased the tensions between him and his father, who still somehow had hoped that Benjamin would shape up now that he no longer had the theatre to keep him distracted. But of course, by then it was already too late. Aaron was forced to accept that Ben would probably never live up to his expectations, but that didn’t meant that he would allow his son to slack off. He made it very clear that unless Ben found himself a job, he would have no reservations kicking him out onto the streets.

 

Meanwhile Benjamin had absolutely no desire to stay in his father’s house, and took this as his cue to leave even before he had managed to secure himself a stable income. The first couple of months were though, and absolutely not something he’d been prepared for. A tiny, filthy room in one of the poorer districts of the city was all he could afford, and for a while he would accept whatever work he could find. Usually this meant hard, physical labour -- something he quickly realized that he was less than adequate at. Things began to look up for him when he managed to nab himself a waitering job at one of the finer restaurants, which while the pay was still bad, provided him with more stable means of sustaining himself.

 

It was also through his work there that he first came in contact with one of the restaurants wealthier patrons, Jean-Pierre Dupont. What started out as a flirty banter about desserts, soon turned into a relationship far more intimate than perhaps either of them had initially anticipated. The six years that followed could only accurately be described as wild. Not only did Dupont introduce Ben to the somewhat insane and rather difficult-to-navigate playing field of the social elite, but he also facilitated Ben’s first few encounters with the hidden yet wonderful world of queer culture around Europe. However, although his relationship with Dupont was comfortable, especially from a financial standpoint, it came at a fairly significant price. While he did support and encourage Ben’s acting aspirations, he never really allowed his lover to truly come into his own. He wanted Ben to be successful, but not so successful that he would lose his influence over him. Dupont was very peculiar about mitigating even the slightest of threats to that power dynamic, often making Ben feel more like a glorified pet than the man’s lover. Even so he put up with it. Not only because he had nowhere else to go, but also because a part of him truly loved Jean-Pierre. Yes, he was difficult, but he could also be charming, funny and kind. Yet most important of all; he had offered him a helping hand in a time where he needed it the most.

 

Alas, nothing is meant to last forever, and so during a trip to Berlin in the year of 1920, their relationship came to a rather abrupt and unpleasantly dramatic end. Thrust into the uncomfortable reality of being stranded in a foreign City, where he didn’t speak the language and barely had a coin to his name, Benjamin found himself at an all-time low. He had nothing, and without Jean-Pierre, he certainly felt like nothing too. Tired, heartbroken, terrified and with no idea what to do, he had almost resigned to throwing in the towel, when he happened to pass by the storefront of a kosher bakery. Remembering that he actually has family in Berlin, he began to ask around until at least he managed to track down his aunt Dinah’s address.

 

Truly, she was his savior in need. When he unannounced and in the middle of the night appeared dirty, hungry and exhausted on her doorstep, she didn’t ask any questions. She simply pulled him into a tight hug and then ushered him inside, commenting on how thin he had gotten and asking him whether he was even eating at all, before essentially shoving three bowls-full of chicken soup into his face. In a way it reminded him so much of his good memories from home, that he almost broke down crying. He missed his mother, and his sisters. There was even a tiny part of him that missed his father, although that was not something he would ever have openly admitted, and it certainly wasn’t enough to convince him of going back home. There was no future for him in Copenhagen.

 

Now, four years later, Benjamin still lives in Berlin. His German has improved a lot since he initially came there, and he has even been able to land himself a couple of acting jobs, albeit mostly for smaller scale productions. His female roles have been particularly successful, the buzz around which eventually lead him to a certain cabaret…

 

༶•┈┈⛧┈♛ ♛┈⛧┈┈•༶

 

If there was one thing Benjamin had learned these last couple of years, it was to expect the unexpected. For example, if anyone at the tail-end of 1913 had told him that almost a decade later he would be standing in the backroom of his aunt’s little tailoring shop in Berlin, applying makeup in preparation for one of his most important roles yet, he would have thought them mad. And yet there he was, sporting high heels, a sunny yellow drop waist dress, doing exactly that.

 

To say that he felt nervous would have been a massive understatement. It wasn’t so much that he doubted his ability of adequately bringing his character to life, as a mild fear of somehow messing up his lines. Not only was this his first time playing the lead of… well, any production, but he was supposed to do it in German, a language he had meticulously spent the last four years trying to master. Due to its striking similarities to yiddish it had seemed easy enough at first, but it was also precisely because of this that he now occasionally found himself confusing the two.

 

“Don’t worry about it too much, Ben. You’ll do great, I’m sure. Your pronunciation is good and you’ve read the script so many times, it’d surprise me if you didn’t already know every line by heart!”

 

The person trying to reassure him was Greta, his fourteen year old cousin who was dangling her legs over the edge of the table she was sitting on. She was a pretty young girl, with hair so ginger she was often mistakenly identified as Irish. An equally ginger cat was lounging on her lap, purring contently as she rubbed it behind its ear. His name was Moritz, and he was every bit as large as he was terrible. Covered in scars, of which a long one across his left eye and the bridge of his nose was most pronounced, he looked more like the king of strays than a little girls favourite pet. He acted like it too. Every cat in the area knew to fear him, and most of the dogs too. Benjamin had learned the hard way that trying to befriend him was pretty much impossible, and yet in Greta’s arms he almost seemed harmless like a kitten. He loved her, clearly, as wherever she went, he would follow. Loyal like a dog, or overbearing like an overprotective older brother.

 

“I mean, you better do a good job,” she continued, gently shoving Moritz off her lap before sliding off the table, landing on the wooden floor with a ‘clack’, “or all that time and effort I put into helping you read the script will have gone to waste.”

 

Benjamin chuckled, taking a brief moment to inspect his work in the mirror. He had applied enough to soften and feminize his features, but not so much that he would appear overly painted. Satisfied, he slipped his cherry red lipstick into his purse and turned around to face his cousin.

 

“That would be a real travesty, wouldn’t it? To be wasting your time like that. We can’t have that now, can we?”

 

She folded her arms across her chest as her lips curled into a grin. “Exactly!”

 

“Well then,” he mused, making sure to tuck each and everyone of his wild curls underneath his hair net before donning his wig -- a dark brown piece that didn’t look too different from his real hair, except that it was remarkably less messy, and longer, wisping around his jawline. “I’ll just have to make sure not to mess up.”

 

“That’s the spirit. Now, I don’t want to stress you but-”

 

“I know, I know!” he said, waving his hand in dismissal while hastily fastening a sparkly, golden hair piece around his head, “I need to get going. Would you mind handing me my coat?” No sooner had he said it, and she had already taken it off the rack. “Thank you, dear,” he said as he wrapped it around his shoulders, checking his purse just to make sure he wasn’t forgetting anything before adding, “please do me a favour and remind your mother that I won’t be joining you for dinner tonight.”

 

“Consider it done. And Benny?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Break a leg.”

 

༶•┈┈⛧┈♛ ♛┈⛧┈┈•༶

 

Cold air blasted his face the moment he stepped out onto the frozen pavement. At around five o’ clock on a cold friday evening, the narrow streets of the Scheunenviertel quarter were more or less deserted, except elderly man in rags who seemed to be loitering around a nearby trash bin, and a small group of children that were playing near a frozen puddle. They smiled at him and waved as he passed -- a gesture he was more than happy to return. In several of the windows he passed he could see families gathering around their dinner tables, lighting candles and welcoming shabbat with dinner, prayer and song. Benjamin smiled to himself. That was one of the Jewish traditions he had always enjoyed, even if he could find some of the rules that pertained to it quite stuffy and inconvenient at times. Not being allowed to study, work or even to do something so simple as writing or turning on and off the light was frustrating, and not generally something he felt the need to uphold. In fact, he was about to break that rule right now, as his destination -- the cabaret, would serve as his new workplace for at least the next couple of months to come.

 

The walk there wasn’t particularly far -- 35 minutes at most, and that more or less cut in half with the use of public transportation. Nevertheless it was cold, and Ben had appointment to keep. Shuddering he wrapped his thick fur coat tighter about himself and picked up his pace.

 

The lights that decorated the outside of the cabaret were a welcome sight. A woman, tall and handsome was leaning against the brick wall, smoke curling from the tip of the cigarette wedged between her lips. Upon noticing Ben she paused, as though she struggled to recognize him. Perhaps she did. Although Ben was certain they had met before, he was well aware that he, at the time, must have looked remarkably different. Nevertheless, after a moment of skeptic scrutinization her expression cleared up, the ghost of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

 

“Mr Fein?” She asked through a puff of white smoke, taking the cigarette between her index and middle finger.

 

“That would be me.”

 

She nodded, motioning towards the door. “They’ll be waiting for you inside.”

 

༶•┈┈⛧┈♛ ♛┈⛧┈┈•༶

 

Benjamin’s first impression of Veit was an odd one. Seeing the designer bent over the box of props, he offhandedly caught himself thinking that the guy had a nice ass. Although that would turn out to be the least of his concerns, when he noticed the actual goddamn baby bear clinging to the man’s arm. For a split second, he thought he must have been mistaken. There was no way that was actually a bear. But then Veit swirled around with that thing on his arm, plunging headfirst into an apologetic ramble while confirming that the fluffy little punk of an animal was...well...indeed a bear.

 

If Benjamin was shocked (and he certainly was), he managed to regain his composure surprisingly quickly. His painted lips curled into an amused smile and he raised an eyebrow, regarding the other carefully. He was quite a looker, Benjamin had to admit, and his embarrassed rambling was incredibly cute to boot. Great. It seemed as though Benjamin would

 

“Well, will you look at that,” he mused as he took Veit’s hand, laughing as he shook his head in disbelief, “And here I was arrogant enough to go around thinking I had seen it all already! Congratulations, Mr. Veit -- it seems to me you have achieved the unachievable.” He chuckled softly before waving his hand in dismissal. “Oh, and please, feel free to drop the formalities. Just call me-”

 

Whatever Benjamin was going to introduce himself as was cut short when the doors slammed open and Rolf Werner, a stubby little man with a large mustache and sideburns that looked like they’d been plucked straight out of the last century came waltzing into the studio. His face was red and he seemed slightly out of breath, as though he’d just been running.

 

“Ah, excellent -- you’re both here!” he exclaimed, clasping his hands together. “Veit, let me have the honor of introducing the star of our show; Carmen Feinman. Carmen, this is Veit Jeager, my lead costume designer and co-writer of this production.”

 

“Oh yes!” Upon hearing the young man’s full name, Benjamin’s expression split into a grin, “I remember now. Mr. Werner has told me all about you, sir. Said it was all thanks to you and your nifty brain that they even have a script now, he did.”

 

“Hm-hm,” Mr. Werner cleared his throat, folding his arms across his chest, “Easy on the praise now, Carmen. Wouldn’t want him to get a big ‘ole head now, would we?” he chuckled heartily, winking at Veit before adding. “But I must concede, you were a great help. There is no denying that you are a man of many talents. Keep at it and one day- oh,” he paused with a frown, as though he had only just realized something. Throwing a quick glance at his watch, he exclaimed. “Good grief! I almost forgot, I still need to see Nikonov about the shipment. I’m sorry you two, but I’m gonna have to leave you to it. You were going to discuss the costume designs now anyway, weren’t you? Great, later then!”

 

And with that he was already gone, leaving the to of them in a brief moment of baffled silence. Then Benjamin broke it by laughing, once again shaking his head in disbelief. Not once during the directors short visit, had he even so much as glanced in the baby bear Nikolaj. Either he just hadn’t noticed, or things like Nikolaj were the norm around here. Whatever the case, he found it wonderful and hilarious all the same.

 

“Well then,” he mused once he’d got himself together, before adding with a wink, “What do you say we take that over the drink you were offering me before?”