The Dominafuhrer - MISS SPITEFUL'S GOLD

Episode 41 - Rudi's Revels

September 1952

Kelly made sure that Sapphire and Natalya got into the other taxi with Stiletto and Solitaire, earning her grateful smiles from Miss Spiteful, Sugar and myself as we settled back for the journey.

Our little convoy went round Ernst Reuter Platz, crossed the Landwehr Canal by the Marchbrucke, the Spree by the Gotzkowskybrucke and headed north through Moabit. Once we were over the Berlin-Spandau canal, we were in the industrial district of Wedding with its working class residential areas.

One of the bonuses of the air and land battles for Berlin had been the widespread destruction of the Mietskasernen, grim barrack like tenements into which the factory workers and their families had been crammed. In places, along our route, new housing was filling some of the the gaps, less stark and ugly than the concrete blocks that we had seen in East Berlin. We also caught glimpses of dimly lit, narrow side streets with small terraced houses and cobble-stoned road surfaces.

Once over Mullerstrasse, one of the main roads going north, we weaved through some minor roads and found ourselves passing a public park with two massive humps just like the ones at Volkspark Friedrichshain. I realised that these must be the remains of the Humboldthain flak towers. The French, who controlled this sector, had had the same problems as the Russians and the British, who had a pair in the Tiergarten Zoo, in trying to demolish these formidable structures. Here, explosives had failed to flatten the fortresses, so the French had just bulldozed the rubble against the remaining turrets and left nature to cover the mounds with trees and undergrowth.

We were halted by traffic lights at Brunnenstrasse, another of the wide north-south arterial roads. To our right, between the two carriageways, was the entrance to Gesundbrunnen U-Bahn station, the deepest in Berlin, and on the other side of the road was the station for the S-Bahn and the Regional Railway. There was a row of buildings between the station and our destination, Behmstrasse, and we could see searchlights sweeping the sky over their roofs.

Behind the buildings, when we entered Behmstrasse, there was a vast open space to our right. But it was not empty. It was packed with people and cars, hundreds of them, parked on a levelled area of ground rubble. On the far side was a large low structure, reminding me on an Allied Escort Aircraft Carrier. There were two searchlights on the roof, crossing backwards and forwards, and two more at ground level playing on the front of the building. Coloured light bulbs were strung from roof and, over the twin brick arched entrances was a pink and blue neon sign; ‘Erleidengarten’.       

The doors appeared to be under siege, with ever increasing queues of people to the left and to the right leading up to them.

“Ach du meine fresse!” I exclaimed as the taxis bumped onto the car park. “It’s an old Air raid Shelter.”

I have mentioned before that there was another Berlin beneath the surface. In addition to the Railway and Government tunnels there were huge deep shelters, both military and civilian and this one was probably part of the Gesundbrunnen complex. The local industries, particularly the vital AEG works, and their workers needed protection; which the guns on the Humboldthain flak towers and the shelters provided.

Only a direct hit by the British ‘Tallboy’ or ‘Earthquake’ bombs could penetrate the thick concrete roofs of these shelters and, at the end of the war, they had proved as intractable to demolish as the flak towers. In fact, for some years, they had been used to provide living accommodation for the thousands of displaced persons and the citizens of Berlin made homeless by the war. Most had now been sealed off or leased for commercial purposes.

“Spiteful, look!” Sugar touched her arm as we got out of the taxi and pointed to our left. Less than five hundred metres down the road was a suspension bridge over the railway track. At either end were checkpoints and barriers, with a long queue of vehicles waiting to cross from the far end. Steady streams of pedestrians were also approaching over the bridge. At the near end was a large notice which we didn’t need to get close enough to read because we all knew what it proclaimed; ‘Vous quittez le secteur Francais’.

“Ach Rudi!” Miss Spiteful groaned as we realised how close we were to the Soviet sector. “Come on then,” she shrugged. “We are here now.”

“What about the taxis?” Kelly asked. “Shall I ask them to stay or come back later?”

Miss Spiteful swept her hand towards a far corner of the impromptu car park where all the vehicles were taxis with most of their drivers in a nearby huddle.

“No, pay them off!” she commanded. “There’ll be plenty available afterwards.”

We set off across the car park, our boots and shoes crunching on the rough surface, trying not to stumble and injure ourselves in the dark. As we neared the entrances, the reflected light from the searchlights illuminated us and the ground, making it easier to see where we were putting our feet.

We passed a French Army Officer, wearing a dark Kepi with red piping, talking to a group of Berlin Polizie. They seemed concerned about such a large gathering of people so close to the border with the Soviet sector. They gave us some very curious looks as we marched past but made no attempt to stop us for questioning.

We were almost at the building when the waiting crowd gradually ceased their chatter and laughter and an awed hush descended, apart from the muted beat of music from inside.

“It’s her!” “She’s back!” “They’re all here!” “It’s Miss Spiteful!” The whispers began, growing in volume until someone cheered and then applause broke out.

Miss Spiteful, hesitated, blinked and then, looking slightly bemused, strode up to one of the doorways. The crowd parted for us but a shaven headed hulk in a leather jacket stepped across our path and put his hand up.

“To the back of the queue, you lot!” he growled.

Miss Spiteful fixed him with one of her looks and snapped at him.

“Inform Rudi that the Dominafuhrer and her party are here! Mach es jetzt! Schnell!”

He stepped back and doubt flickered in his eyes but, before he could obey, Rudi himself ran out of the door and almost fell in supplication at Miss Spiteful’s feet.

Rudi Tollweg was a little man, whose thinning black hair was oiled back over his head. When his nose twitched and he squinted through his thick round lensed spectacles, I was reminded of a mole.

“Oh, Miss Spiteful! I’m so glad that you came and brought all your sisters with you.”

He beamed round at us and then blinked in astonishment when he saw Natalya. He recovered and seized Miss Spiteful’s hand.

“Just look at these crowds. I didn’t have time to get new posters printed but they’ve all come to see you just by word of mouth. It’s a complete sell out! Das ist phantastisch!”

He started to drag Miss Spiteful in through the entrance but she insisted on advancing at her own majestic pace.

“Why didn’t you tell me that this was an air raid shelter, Rudi?” she admonished him.

“Ach! It is perfect,” he waved his hand. “When this area was flattened by bombs, huts were built on it to house the Auslander factory workers and this was their shelter. The main public shelters are under the U-Bahnhof, go deep underground and spread out as far as the flak towers. They have got hospitals, kitchens, control rooms, dormitories but none of that was built in here to divide up the areas. There is just this entrance hall and two big empty spaces with twin staircases between each level. There was a connecting passage to the main shelter but that’s been sealed off. All I’ve had to do is put in lights, toilets, bandstands, bars and a stage.”

He was almost bursting with pride but he lowered his voice.

“The Berlin authorities restricted me to two thousand but I’ve sold twice that number of tickets and there’s half as many again queuing outside to get in. Many of them have come to see you. You’re a link to the old Berlin that we lost at the end of the war. They don’t want Hitler back but they would like to regain some of the gaiety and excitement. The Allies frown on things like this because they associate the old Berlin spirit with the Nazis. A lot of the teenagers have come for the music and dancing but some of them have only heard about the old Berlin that we knew and are curious to see what is was all about.”

Miss Spiteful looked bemused again. I think that she was proud of the interest shown in her but not too pleased with the way that Rudi kept linking her with the word ‘old’.

We were now standing inside the big blast doors of the entrance hall. On the opposite wall were two more big archways through which we could see stone staircases descending and hear loud music blasting out through them. We could feel the concrete floor throbbing beneath our feet. The people being admitted through the outer doors were purchasing, or having their tickets checked, at trestle tables and then having them torn in half by more of the shaven headed and leather jacketed guards before being allowed to move to the staircases. There were plenty of black leather and rubber outfits being worn amidst the dance clothes and frocks. Some costumes were outrageous or exotic but even more daring were those stripping off coats to reveal skimpy or erotic male and female underwear, the latter not only being worn by women. There were also plenty of uniforms, some German, stripped of their insignia but, in the main, those of the Allied nations. Occasionally some Slavic looking young men, with close cropped hair and wearing ill fitting civilian suits passed through. Most these off duty Russian Soldiers had German Girls on their arms.

On each side of the hall, behind lines of trestle tables, were cloakrooms formed of rows of metal coat racks.

“Trixi!” Rudi called out to a tall transvestite in long black spangled dress, wearing a black wig and heavy make up, serving behind one of the tables. “Take our guests coats and give them bar tags!”

Big black false eyelashes fluttered at us and a deep voice uttered “Danke”, as each garment was handed over in return for a red disc on a rubber band, which was slipped over each of our wrists, except for Miss Spiteful, who tossed hers to Kelly.

“Just show the disc at any Bar and your drinks are free,” Trixi said. When it came to my turn, she squealed my name with delight and stroked my arm, fluttering her eyelashes until they threatened to take wing and fly away. The last time that Trixi and I had seen each other had been when we shared a cell while awaiting our courts-martials for being transvestites. Trixi, then an Army Feldwebel, had somehow survived her sentence and the war and had recognised me ten years on.

There was further applause and flashbulbs popped as we stood arrayed in our uniforms. Miss Spiteful wore a one piece, sleeveless, shiny leather body with a zip that ran up the front from between her legs to her neck. She pulled the fastener down until her cleavage was exposed. Black suspenders held up black seamed stockings and her boots came up her knees. Like us all, except for Kelly and Natalya, she wore the black velvet collar with the silver S dangling at her throat. The blue tattoos on her shoulder and hip stood out on her milk white skin.

Sugar was similarly dressed in reddish-brown leather, except for laces replacing the zip.

Sapphire wore a blue and white checked nurse’s uniform with a white apron, black fishnet stockings and black high heeled shoes, topped off with a stiff white linen cap on her blonde hair.

Stiletto’s tight black leather dress had a side split from the knee to the top of her thigh while Solitaire wore only a black leather brassiere and shorts with black suspenders attached to the tops of her black stockings. Both wore black leather knee length high heeled boots.

I had opted for a black leather waistcoat and a short black leather skirt, black suspender belt and stockings and the same style of boots as the Torturous Twins.

Kelly kneeling on the floor, and stowing our handbags away in the canvas bag, wore her slave collar and harness, exposing her bare breasts and her bandaged shoulder, a wide black leather belt from which dog-clips dangled, black leather knickers, suspenders, black stockings and black high heeled shoes. Natalya, her eyes almost as wide as her open mouth, looked stunned as she saw our outfits for the first time.

“Did you get all of the equipment on the list that I gave you?” Miss Spiteful enquired of Rudi.

“Ja, ja,” he gushed. “No trouble at all. My only problem was having to move the acts about to give you the star spot. Rittmeister Kurt was supposed to have the top billing but I’ve brought him forward and he’s on now. He was not pleased, especially when he heard that you were replacing him.” 

Miss Spiteful’s lips curled back in a snarl but she did not make any comment.

“I’ve already given the crowd a knife and fire juggler and a pair of contortionists that lick and suck their own genitals. After Kurt there are some exotic dancers, a stripper and a sex act just before you go on. That should be in just over an hour’s time. There’s a huge queue of volunteers to be your slaves.”

“Sugar will sort them out and the music,” Miss Spiteful declared. “She will also do the introductions for us. Do you have a microphone and speakers?”

“The original system was still here,” Rudi laughed. “I just had to have the wiring hooked up again. The foreign workers might not have been fed or looked after in here but they heard all of Goebbel’s broadcasts. Are you ready to go down?”

Miss Spiteful nodded and led us to the top of one of the staircases. As we began our descent, we were met with a wall of heat and noise.

To continue this story, click Down In The Dungeon.

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