Gretel and the Dark (16 page)

‘An insect bite,’ he said aloud, and thought again of Dora’s torment. ‘With such delicate skin, it pays to take precautions in the open air.’ Lilie glanced at him, but said nothing. ‘A light scarf, perhaps?’ A gauzy affair in rose-coloured silk, one that he’d bought for Mathilde in Venice, sprang to mind. It was a pretty thing, but as with so many of his gifts, his wife had never worn it: too overt a statement of femininity, possibly. It would look well on this fragile young woman.

‘The beans could have been picked in half the time,’ complained Gudrun, ‘without the chattering and laughing.’

‘Sunshine and laughter is often the best medicine,’ Josef chided her. ‘As you’ve said many times.’

‘Huh,’ said Gudrun, returning to her work basket.

Josef also reseated himself, conscious of her smouldering resentment. If Vienna was simmering, then so was she. It
wasn’t hard to find the cause, though it was odious to make comparisons between the two females. Remembering certain incidents in the nursery, he flinched at the thought of Gudrun’s rage unleashed and wondered how Mathilde managed her employee’s bad moods. ‘We must talk later about finding some extra help in the house,’ he said in an effort to mollify her. ‘Clearly there is too much work for one.’ Gudrun, turning the thimble between her fingers, her attention ostensibly fixed on the minuscule petit-point stitches, barely acknowledged his words. Josef allowed himself a mental shrug, focused on Lilie and tried a new approach, though in truth it was old ground he was covering.

‘Is there anyone you’d like us to contact, Lilie? Someone must be anxious to know you’re safe and well.’ Lilie didn’t answer. ‘Talk to me,’ he said, speaking more forcefully. ‘Tell me who we should notify. Where does your family live? Distant relatives? Friends? There must be somebody.’

‘Answer!’ roared Gudrun. ‘You chatter incessantly when you’re with that fool of a boy, so have the courtesy –’

‘I won’t talk while the old woman’s here,’ said Lilie very quietly.

Gudrun gasped. ‘Old woman?’

‘And why is that?’ Josef enquired.

‘She mocks me. Every word I say to you is ridiculed later. You should have heard her this morning – “
Make sure you return that knife to the rack
,
Fräulein
Namenlos
,” she said. “
We don’t want to retrieve it from the monster’s chest later, do we now?
” ’ Lilie had managed a fair imitation of Gudrun’s accent. Now she sat in silence, with downcast eyes.

‘I see.’ Josef tugged at his beard.

‘You believe her?’ Gudrun demanded, scarlet with outrage.
‘You think that of me after all the years I’ve served the Breuer family?’

Josef cleared his throat. ‘My dear woman, no one doubts your loyalty –’

‘I won’t say another word until she goes,’ Lilie murmured, without looking up.

Josef could hardly conceal his delight. ‘Perhaps, Frau Gschtaltner, in the circumstances …’

Gudrun stood and marched towards the door with her head held high. It shut with a sharp click and Josef waited until he heard the sound of retreating footsteps.

‘Now, Lilie, there’s just you and me. Everything that passes between us will remain confidential.’ He hesitated. ‘As between priest and penitent.’

‘But I’ve done nothing that requires absolution.’

‘Ah,’ said Josef, picking up on her understanding of individual Confession, ‘then you are of the Roman Catholic faith?’ Lilie shook her head.

‘I know of it.’ She pushed back her sleeve, displaying the inked digits as if to remind him of her renouncement of her humanity. ‘But I don’t need such rites.’

‘You have no conscience?’

Lilie shrugged. ‘Does your clock? Does the gramophone? Or an automobile?’

Josef rearranged his pens, squared up the blotter. ‘And what of other feelings, Lilie – love, loneliness, longing?’ A lump rose in his throat. When no answer came, he added: ‘What about hate, or anger, or despair?’ Lilie still didn’t answer and, his emotions back under control, he peered over his spectacles at the girl, who was staring into the middle distance, abstracted, as though she were listening to far-off music, or eavesdropping
on an elfin conversation inaudible to him. ‘Lilie,’ he barked, ‘you were angry with Gudrun, weren’t you?’

‘She’s a bully.’

‘Oh.’ Josef hesitated. ‘She doesn’t ill-treat you, surely?’

‘Are you asking if she strikes me? Not yet. She doesn’t need to. She pinches and pushes. Her elbows are sharp, and so is her tongue.’

‘Oh.’

‘Perhaps I’ll kill her. Afterwards.’

‘Now Lilie –’

‘Gudrun’s a weakling at heart.’ Lilie’s voice was quiet and matter-of-fact. ‘Killing her would be easy. A few seconds is all I’d need.’

‘Really, that’s enough –’

Lilie looked pensive. ‘Perhaps I’d enjoy it. Some do.’

Was that a clue? Josef leaned forward eagerly. ‘Some of whom, Lilie? Tell me where.’ After a moment, he repeated the questions, but her eyes had closed, her expression had turned abstracted again. It was almost as if she could at will detach herself from the present and slip, like some medieval wanderer, into the Otherworld. Or was it subterfuge? This was so like Bertha: he’d never been entirely sure she wasn’t indulging in amateur dramatics. What if Lilie were her student? This train of thought brought back his previous concerns. What if the pair of them were colluding in some act of revenge? ‘I did nothing,’ Josef whispered. As for his fear of a conspiracy, sooner or later Lilie would give herself away. Deciding to ignore the girl’s murderous fantasies, he rapped on the desk. ‘Lilie, concentrate, please. We were talking about your dislike of Gudrun.’

She blinked and nodded. ‘I’ve known women like Gudrun before.’

‘Tell me about them. Tell me about what they did to you.’

‘Nothing. Silly beasts. All bark and no teeth.’

‘Were they connected to your monster?’

‘Perhaps,’ she said dreamily, pulling at the ribbon hanging from her collar, ‘since they all go,
chop
,
chop
,
chop
, hundreds of goats and sheep, one after the other, into his charnel-house. You can smell their blood and smoke on the wind.’

‘Explain,’ he demanded, his voice rising again. Josef scratched his head. Wherever she’d been incarcerated it wasn’t a religious institution. And no prison doled out judicial executions on the scale she was suggesting. Of course, a century ago she might have been describing the
Narrenturm
when it still functioned as the Madhouse.
Ah, of course, that fitted
… In those days the mentally ill were treated as less than human … as dangerous lunatics, chained like savage beasts to the walls, with nothing but straw mats to sleep upon. And who knew what threats of death were heaped on their poor, befuddled heads? Perhaps such institutions still existed in some quiet backwater of the provinces. ‘Explain,’ he repeated, this time more gently. Lilie clasped her hands.

‘
Ene, tene, mone, mei
,

Pastor, lone, bone, strei,

Ene, fune, herke, berke,

Wer? Wie? Wo? Was?

‘You’re next.’

‘You have a pretty singing voice, my dear,’ Josef said. He
frowned. ‘Eeny, meeny, miny, moe’ – what was the significance of a children’s counting-out game?

‘Two little sinners left their work undone,

One paid the price, and then there was one.

One little sinner left all alone …’

Lilie’s voice tailed off. She turned in her chair and looked straight at him. A very small smile appeared. ‘Don’t let’s talk about that,
Herr Doktor
.’

Josef blinked. He was almost sure … but, no, it couldn’t be. And yet … Had Lilie really batted her lashes at him?

‘I’m told you’re the cleverest man in Vienna.’

Josef smoothed his moustache. ‘Well, I –’

‘And you mend broken souls.’

‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that.’ He frowned, thinking that what she’d just said was as good a way as any to describe the unravelling of patients’ multifarious emotional pains. Josef straightened. ‘Lilie, we must –’

‘Help me,
Herr Doktor
. I must cleanse the Earth of this fiend. It would be the greatest service to mankind you could ever undertake.’

‘Lilie –’ Josef gave a small laugh, but the rejection stuck in his throat as she rose from her seat and placed one slender hand on his.

‘And save your beloved descendants from terrible misfortune.’

They both looked down. Josef compared the sagging skin of the age-blotched opisthenar resting on his desk – for it was hard in this moment to own it as the back of his own hand – with her firm flesh, her perfectly formed nails. He sighed,
oppressed by a moment of defeat, for a man is old for far longer than he is young. Perhaps he’d become youthful again in last night’s dream. He glanced at the door, alerted by a small sound, and then became insensible to everything but the fact that she’d moved away to sink gracefully back into her chair. He casually covered the loathsome flesh where her hand had lain, waiting for the moment when it could be surreptitiously pressed against his cheek. Suddenly very tired, he decided to let Lilie elaborate on her violent preoccupations; after all, spinning stories had brought Bertha relief.

‘Very well, Lilie. What do you propose?’ Josef wondered how he could continue treating her after the rest of his family returned. She couldn’t stay here. Perhaps he’d take a small apartment for her, somewhere fashionable, with a young maidservant – fresh up from the country and not too bright – to act as chaperone. Not that a visit from an eminent physician should cause tongues to wag. He moistened his lips. As with Bertha, a course of massage might be beneficial.

‘We must kill him now, before he gets too big.’

‘Exactly.’ Josef blinked, and replayed her words. ‘He’s small, you say. Like a
Kobold
? An imp?’

‘No,’ said Lilie, with a touch of impatience. ‘Like a boy.’

He stared at her. ‘You mean the monster is the size of a boy, or
is
a boy?’ His mind raced. Were they dealing with an abusive brother, rather than the father? It wasn’t unknown.

‘He’s a boy now,’ she said sharply.

‘Indeed. And does he have a name?’ asked Josef, interested to see if any details of her story had changed.

‘I told you. It’s Adi.’

‘So you did.’ Josef nodded, glancing at his notes. If the monster was a brother, then the diminutive made more sense. ‘And
the rest of his name?’ He looked up, hoping Lilie would hereby supply her patronymic. ‘Come, Lilie, he must have a family name.’

‘Herr Wolf.’

‘
Herr Wolf
– is that his real name?’

‘Yes,’ said Lilie with a small frown.

‘Good.’ There were many families with the surname Wolf in and around Vienna. With a start Josef recalled the composer Hugo Wolf, said to suffer from mental instability. No, it was more than that. The man had insisted on being institutionalized; there were rumours of syphilitic insanity.

‘No,’ she said a moment later, terminating that line of enquiry. ‘It’s not. I remember now. His real name is Groefraz.’

‘Ah.’ It sounded like another nickname. ‘Any others?’

‘Some people call him the Manitou. It’s an evil spirit.’

Josef laid down his pen. ‘How did he hurt you, Lilie?’ he asked quietly. In response, she hummed a familiar snatch of tune, moving her fingers in time.

‘Have you collected the musical-box yet?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘A Stella, isn’t it? For Margarethe.’

‘No …
yes
, that is, it’s still being engraved.’ He stared, confused. It was a secret. A surprise. ‘Who told you about this?’

‘
G’schichten aus dem Wienerwald.
’

‘But –’ Josef stopped abruptly. Tales from the Vienna woods. Exactly so. The clockmaker must have talked. He’d think about that later. ‘You were telling me about the monster.’

‘No. We need to talk about how we’re going to kill him.’

‘Very well.’

‘It doesn’t take long to kick someone to death –’ Lilie stopped in the face of Josef’s involuntary gasp, before continuing:
‘
Squish
,
squash
. But the boots need to be very large and very heavy.’ She glanced at her tiny feet.

‘Lilie!’

‘Yes?’ Her expression was so sweetly puzzled that Josef found it hard to believe she’d uttered such a speech.

‘Lilie, you can’t have seen anything so dreadful. It isn’t a normal part of life.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘These are peaceful times, my dear.’ She’d closed her eyes, wilting like a flower, and Josef hastily brought their interview to a close. ‘That’s enough for this morning, Lilie. Out you go into the sunshine. And no more kitchen work today. Rest. Relax. We’ll talk again later.’

As she left, Josef jotted down the girl’s suggested method for killing her abuser. Such bloodthirsty ideas could only have come from sensational novels. It might be as well to curtail her reading material severely. That, in turn, presupposed that he’d play a part in Lilie’s future, and he sat for a while, picturing himself visiting her in a small apartment somewhere off the Ringstrasse. Some care was needed, for Sigmund took a daily constitutional walk around the Ring and Mathilde didn’t need further ammunition. With that in mind, proper case notes must be kept. Josef filled his pen and wiped the nib, tapping his teeth with the barrel, resisting the urge to chew the end like a schoolboy.

Fräulein Lilie X

There has been considerable improvement in the patient’s physical condition. She has a poor appetite but this may change now that a modicum of exercise is being taken. The patient appears contented,
in spite of wildly extravagant claims during informal conversations relating to personal observation of murders or executions. She appears to possess a curious detachment from the reality of death and her own humanity. As yet, no treatment has been prescribed. Some tension appears to exist in the back and shoulders. A course of massage may be advisable.