Arme Lena

In the smoky twilight of a Berlin dance-hall, Lena Schmidt’s lithe silhouette slices through cigar haze like a scythe of sequins; her legs spell out hunger in Morse code. A flimsy lottery ticket, trembling between her chalk-dust fingers, suddenly transmutes into ten thousand paper butterflies—Deutschmarks that whisk her from the garret’s cracked mirror to a spa town where fountains spurt moneyed gossip and every promenade is a catwalk for caged diamonds. Enter Gustav Lindner, paint beneath his nails instead of bread, eyes scavenging for a dowry the way crows eye carrion. He sketches her swan-neck while calculating the interest rate of her pulse; she mistakes his cadence for ardor, he mistakes her laughter for collateral. Around them parasols twirl like roulette wheels, orchestras tune to the key of impending debt, and a single yellow glove—left on a garden bench—becomes the talisman of who is hunter, who is hunted. When the last champagne bubble bursts against a dawn the color of unpaid rent, Lena waltzes back to the station with nothing but the return ticket and a fresh understanding that luck, like a lover, keeps the change.