Secret Dreams (28 page)

So! She had taken his clothes and meant him to go home by tram in his bathrobe, slippers, and overcoat. Ja, the price to pay for disrupting their home life, for two nights sitting up in a hospital chair and five months of him talking to himself about a patient no one had ever seen. He must stop at Yenkel the florist (whose wife was her best friend) and buy Emma some flowers. Maybe stop in at the butcher's dressed in his pajamas, or the greengrocer's, and pick up a tidbit or two. Just put it on my bill, please….

He plucked the note off his coat lapel and stuffed it in his robe pocket. His finger touched stiff paper.

The letter from Herr Schanderein. Forgotten in his pocket. No: ignored— put aside. Truthfully, the letter frightened him. Perhaps someone else in the hospital, Nekken or even Direktor Bleuler, had written to the parents. About his notable excesses. About his weird attempts at therapy. And this a response, fallen into his hands by mistake. His skin crawled, that he and the girl could be undermined so easily. Everything must be set to rights at once.

He went straight back across the hall without taking his tea. This time he knocked, and the answering silence came. He opened the door. He asked for permission to enter. She gave the wordless permission.

“I forgot something,” he stammered truthfully. He showed her the unopened letter out of his robe pocket. ‘This came from your father two days ago. I'm dreadfully sorry I didn't give it to you at once, but I was afraid you might not move your bowels. Perhaps I was more frightened that people were talking behind our backs. Maybe writing your parents about us. This was weak of me. Nothing people say should matter. I should have known this in my heart. Forgive me. Shall I read the letter to you, or just leave it?”

He thought he saw a trembling through the length of the mummy's wrappings, a shifting of the folds — yes, he definitely did.

"I'll leave it,” he said at last, putting the envelope on the edge of the bed. “If you want to share it with me, just leave it out where I'll find it.”

He turned to go, his hand on the doorknob. A soft mumbling came from the bed. À murmured, stuttered sentence, spoken so faintly it might have been a person speaking in the room next door …

“Did you say something?” he whispered.

Again the soft mumbling came, with a few distinct words as though escaping out of a deep well. “I'm the muh-muh-muh. With a quonk quonk end.”

He shut his eyes and leaned his head against the door. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I couldn't catch everything you said.” The wood of the door felt cool against his cheek. “Is this about the letter from your father?”

A long silence followed, in which he thought he heard the mummy trembling,- then he realized you couldn't hear a person tremble. But you could. The sound of her swathings rubbed together, and the bedsprings groaned as she squirmed…. The groaning stopped. No sound at all. She had given up, changed her mind. The moment lost.

He put his hand on the door with a sigh —

Then came the caw of a harsh voice:

“Tell him I'm the Queen of Sparta!” said the wrapped head. “Tell him I'm the Queen of Sparta with a hot rear end!”

“What?” he asked stupidly.

The trees beyond the window in the garden creaked sadly, the midday sun covered by a tuft of cloud. The wrapped head spoke hoarsely again, the voice rising and falling in cracked octaves from her months of silence.

“Tell my father I'm the Queen of Sparta with a hot rear end.”

“If I write him saying that, will he understand?”

A pang of instant regret. Stupid question. He was there for
her
, not the father.

The voice rattled like gravel falling into a pit: “You make him understand. Make him.”

“But I don't understand.”

“Yes. You do. You understand.”

They were having a conversation. Him talking, her talking back. Saying things to each other — who cared if it made any sense or not? And each time her voice fell off, how terrifying she might never speak again.

“I'll try to make him understand,” he said. “As much as I can. As much as I understand….” For a vivid second he hated her for making him wait so long. What a twisted bit of shit she'd been. Now he had to go home through Zurich's streets in a bathrobe and slippers. Did she know he spent nights across the hall? Tying himself in knots for her?

She rattled on. “You make him. Make him. That the Queen rules the earth and the sky at night. And the men from the mountains and the woods. Kill each other for her lovely hand. Lie with her in her temple under the light of the moon.”

He looked about for his damn writing pad. What was she saying? Moon goddess and the men who slew each other,,, Who fought for her bed … How strange — as though he'd suddenly turned down a familiar street at dusk in an unknown part of town. The streetlamps being lit and the lights coming on behind curtained windows. Had he been there before? Only to wake in bed?

He called this lick of déjà vu by a private name. It was Lamplighter's Street. À dreamer's street. Existing only in his mind.

The folds in the mummy's sheets began moving in ways he had never seen before. First her hands appeared, slithering from under the covers, Long and thin — not emaciated, but quite elegant … Her skin coarse and gray, as though shriveled in a dungeon. He saw a bedsore at the back of her elbow, the skin flaking off whitely from the red knot of a boil, Her hands moved hesitantly across her knees as though lost….

He wanted to rush to the door, make sure no one interrupted! All he had to do was tell her, Wait! Let me make sure no one comes. But she was on the verge of unwinding the swathings from around her head. Already her hands fluttered, picking gently at the bumoose, faintly touching the first tucked folds.

She was going to show him her face.

Her self.

She had risen from the bed and turned toward the window. Her thin hands clutched hold of the bumoose: slowly they peeled back the lower layer of sheet. The cloth unwound, a strip from her forehead, another strip. More strips, uncurling like a bandage, falling about her neck. Just a cowl remained, casting a black shadow. Her hands went to the edge of the hood to peel it back.

Someone knocked on the door. He writhed. Fräulein Schanderein froze, her hands to her head. Perhaps the person would leave. Another knock.

“Stay here,” he managed to croak at her. “I'll send them away.” The intruder knocked for a third time. A little gasping pip escaped from her, and she began to wind the strips of bumoose around again.

He turned on the door's viewing slit with a gathering weight in his brain, a pressure that would explode his head, splattering the room. The moronic face of Orderly Bolzen peered furtively at him through the glass.

“Stand away from the door, Bolzen,” he ordered. The orderly moved obligingly to one side, wringing his hands and blinking stupidly. He had not forgotten his banishment.

“Well, what is it?”

“I have a message from Senior Physician Nekken.” Bolzen came to a full stop, waiting.

“Ja, what is the message?”

Orderly Bolzen clasped his hands in front of his pants as though repeating lessons from school. “Herr Senior Physician Nekken offers you his heartiest congratulations on the events of this morning. And” — here, the ape-man struggled to remember — “and regarding your personal request, he is at your disposal.” Obviously Bolzen hadn't the foggiest idea what he was saying. “Is that all right, Herr Doktor?”

“Fine, Bolzen. Thank you. Offer Herr Nekken my sincere gratitude for his good wishes and cooperation.”

Orderly Bolzen bowed deeply and left, mumbling to himself, “… my sincerest gratitude for his operation. No, my sincerest …”

Numskull!

Neanderthal!

Knuckle-scraper!

Herr Doktor wanted to heave a brick down the hall at Bolzens retreating head. The mummy had gone back to the bed, the burnoose wrapped, her pale, elegant arms gone. Everything as before. He wondered what would happen if he smacked his own head against the wall, again and again until little spots of blood appeared, and then a few more and then a few more.

“May I come tomorrow?” he asked. The answer came. The heartless pause of long reproach.

“There's always tomorrow,” he said.

But no more today.

He went back to the room across the way and drank a cup of tepid tea.

Why hadn't he just told the big cretin to go away?

Leave us alone, Bolzen. That's all he had to have said.

He knew the answer. Fear. Because when the girl shed her wrappings, she was no longer his safe, bedridden patient. If she walked and talked, if she spoke and showed him her face — so much more would be required of him. More than the simple knock on the door, the May I come in? The May I leave now? … The daily May I? and then home to bed himself.

Forget about home. Forget about bed. He really ought to send Emma a note saying he wasn't coming. He really ought to do this, but he felt Mistress Sleeps soft fingers touching his brow…. Go on, she said, write Emma. And so as his eyes drooped he composed a wonderfully sensible letter to Emma, explaining everything. Especially how important his staying across the hall was right now. And toward the end of the letter, he imagined Emma's strong, thin thighs as they warmed him in bed. He ended his note: “P.S. Darling, I'll ravish you tomorrow.” And then he slept.

Twenty minutes into the next morning's lecture, the hand began moving under the covers again. This time he had prepared. Early in the morning Zeik fixed up a sign, Do Not Disturb, which hung outside the door. Herr Doktor also tacked a rectangular piece of paper across the viewing slit, making them as insulated as possible.

He watched Fräulein Schanderein slip off the bed and face out the window. As he lectured, she unwrapped the strips of sheet from her head at the same slow pace, but now it seemed to take ages just to reach the same stage as yesterday His tongue grew thicker and thicker. If anyone —
anyone
— ignored his sign …

A deep shadow fell beneath the lip of her cowled hood. The shadow's reflection stood out blackly in the window. Her thin white fingers pulled the cowl back. He glimpsed the pink curve of her ear and a lank mouse nest of hair. Indeed, it seemed a horrible tangled mess, limp and unwashed, hanging in greasy tendrils. Thick mats fell clean out of her scalp as she uncovered her head. He saw white skin through the patchy wisps — the ravages of half meals. Red and black scabs speckled her pate, surrounded by a freckling of dry flakes…. A long, stringy lock hung across her face. She seemed to lurk behind it, as behind a half-drawn veil. He must see about coaxing her into a bath — but how?

The window reflected her ghostly face. She was wilted and ravenous, cheeks sunken, the muscles around her mouth sallow and drawn. Her eyes gazed dully into the middle distance of the garden. He wondered that the blazing light of the blue sky didn't sting her eyes. Perhaps an innate dullness shielded her even from the sun. She played with a twist of hair that hung across her face. Twirling it now one way, now the other. Then curling the last little end around her mouth.

She had been pretty once. But what a waste now. What a waste … Then by slow degrees he saw yet another face: as if by looking at the girl he had stepped through an unseen door and found himself on Lamplighter's Street once more. No, not a face. A smell … the secret scent of
her
. Richer than all the perfumes ever sold with names like Night's Close, Autumn Moon, Amber Chase. The scent of…

Nanny Sasha.

He closed his eyes. Nanny's dark scent wreathed him like a cloud. And he smelled the sweet-scented nipple that hung above his face, a rich dilated nipple, swollen and tender and ready for him. He put his lips to it, swelling in his mouth, giving everything of itself….

The crazy girl had turned her face toward him. He gripped the chair's arms, terribly afraid some force would drag him to the nape of her unwashed neck, inhaling deep and hard afraid that Fräulein
too
would smell like the cherished suckling of long ago.

Get a grip on yourself. Nanny Sasha was then. This was now. The girl and his treatment. Here and now … Only yesterday she had spoken: ‘Tell my father I'm the Queen of Sparta with a hot rear end.” And today she showed Herr Doktor her face. She had even left the letter on the corner of the bed. For him to read? He took it up now. What a pitiful excuse for a letter. A bland apology for not writing more frequently, with a scant word of hope for her speedy recovery tagged on the end. Written in a single pallid hand, signed: Love, Father & Mother.

Tell him she's the Queen of Sparta with a hot rear end? Where the devil had she gotten that? All he knew was the urgency of her command. Tell him! Make him!

She stood at the window, twirling a strand of hair around her pinkie.

“Shall we send your father a message? A message from the Queen? I'd write whatever you say. We can try to make him understand —”

She stopped twining her hair around the spindle of her finger. Then began sawing her thigh with the heel of her hand. Rhythmically sawing back and forth without a second's pause. A compulsive insane movement. A pointless, repetitive sawing that made her seem an idiot. Twiddling. He had seen enough of it from the Incurables in the day room.

Suddenly she repeated childishly over and over:

“You'll never make him understand. You'll never do it. Never do it. Never make him understand. Never do it! Never —” Sawing her thigh to beat the band, hopelessly twiddling.

Now ordering him in a high, shrewish voice, ‘‘Lecture me! Lecture me!” He picked up Leaman's
Anatomy
from under the chair. Her twiddle went on. And though he lectured her for an hour, she was still going strong when he finally closed the book. Still twiddling alone in her room when he left the Burghölzli at the end of the day.