Secret Dreams (62 page)

Fräulein sat by the window, standing watch over the courtyard. The slow morning hours slipped steadily by. She rose once from her perch to make a cup of tea. That's when she heard the feet on the stairs. Mother had crossed the courtyard and Fräulein hadn't even seen…. The teacup clattered to the sink. The teakettle began to sing, but she turned it off.

Shoes on the stairs. The steps creaked with great pauses, as though Mother climbed slowly, inch by inch…. Fräulein began to shiver. M-m-m was coming. The Maker of Ninny Blue Toes.

The stairs creaked.

M-m-m, who made her cuckoo.

Owner of the loving brush. Would you like this, darling? I'll let you have it if you show me. Don't you want it now? And snip-snip went the scissors as all Püppchen's hair fell off.

The footsteps stopped outside the door.

Her hand trembled in an awful twiddle, sawing fitfully on her thigh. She leaned weakly against the wall. Mother.

Owner of the broken horses.

Ruler of the Brass.

Someone knocked.

Mother. Who gagged her with the home brew. Little It on one leg, clutching the swollen bag that hung from her behind. Saying, Do you promise not to look at the book? Do you promise not to touch the brush? Promise me. Fräulein clasped her hands to keep them steady. Hissing, “Prumse not to draw the Lady of the Veils. Prumse not the book. Prumse not the brush. Prumse never bad bad bad again.” Until the wolf snout jammed in. And the Brass swallowed her whole. And she fell forever as the Beautiful Lady cooed:

We'll be together soon.

Sooon

Soooon

The woman stood in the dark landing. She looked like an ungainly stork who had lost her way. She peered uncertainly about her.

“Hello, Mother,” Fräulein said. “Won't you come in?” The woman stood awkwardly in the light of the room, blowsy and flyblown. Her complexion pale as milk — all the blue veins glowed luminescently through her waxy skin. She poked her nose curiously about the room, then paused at the table laden with books and papers, now neatly stacked. She glanced at the newly made bed. At the row of bright plates in a drying rack over the sink. She stood in the middle of the room, unsure of what her eyes told her and ill at ease before the unfamiliar young woman standing nearby.

“What kind of place is this?” her mother asked in a frail voice.

“It's my home, Mother.”

The ungainly woman sank to a chair, “Home … ?” as if she no longer knew the meaning of the word. What had happened to her mother, her proud, terrifying mother, in that single year? What had happened to wreck her, to devour her soul? The long, gangly woman began to weep, her hand limply waving at the four walls of the room.

“Why, this is terrible. All this. This place. Terrible. And after such a splendid hospital. Why did you come here? Can't you go back? I didn't raise you to live in a tenement. We had so much better, finer things at home. Bigger rooms. Servants too. Before your father …” Her voice trailed off. “Before your father…” She halted wanly. “Why, if he saw this now, how you are living, I just know he'd come back. Yes, I'm sure….” Mother fell silent. She gazed into- her daughter's face, trying to find that person, that little girl, who no longer existed. “You've changed somehow. When did you change?”

“Mother,” Fräulein tried to explain, “you haven't noticed I can
talk”

The older woman considered this for some time … lost in the spell of an elusive feebleness/ the inability to grasp the essence of what stood before her. Slowly she took from her purse a dirty scrap of folded paper. Smoothing it over the surface of the table, she read it again, as if for the thousandth time. “It says you're his mistress. That you sleep with his wife. Are you? Do you? Your father left before I could show it to him. Who sent it? Do you know? You're really not his mistress, are you?” The words dribbled from her mouth, weak, pointless.

“You didn't let him do anything, did you?”

Fräulein started the fire under the water once more, and the tea kettle whistled its warning. She poured hot water into cups and dunked a tin tea ball filled with leaves.

“No, Mother,” she said evenly. “I didn't let him do anything.”

This seemed to ease the woman's mind. The dirty scrap of paper fluttered to the floor. Her eyes darted nervously after it, then wandered away. A steaming cup of tea was set before her, and bowls of cream and sugar.

“Oh, how nice,” she said mechanically. “You made a tea party for me,

“Yes,” Fräulein whispered. “I have a bit of cake too.”

Her mother made a motion to reach for her tea, but even this was too much effort. Her hand fell limply to her lap. Fräulein forced herself to look over Mother's body, forced herself to remember how proud and straight it had been. How sharp her glance, how stern her bosom. How beautiful Mother's clothes,- how each piece fitted to perfection. But now the woman seemed to be faded and frayed, sagging and wrinkled and unkempt. Mothers dark hair had gone gray in streaks. On some impulse, Fräulein found the silver-handled hairbrush and took it up to brush her mother's hair.

The woman held the matching mirror to her face in wonder. “Why, where did you ever find this? I've been looking forever. I thought your father stole it….” She left off as if recalling something cloudy now. The silver brush tugged through her mother's limp tresses. It left slivers of pale scalp through her thinning hair. “Oh, didn't I use to be so beautiful,” the old woman mourned sadly, “and now I'm going quite bald….” Mother patted the lackluster waves about her face, smiling with shallow vanity into the silver mirror. Fräulein abruptly put down her brush.

Mother was failing … adrift. Lost.

Father had left her just to avoid living with a madwoman. To avoid seeing her decay. Mother held the mirror to her bony features, smiling vacantly into it, as though admiring a face she wished to see. “Mirror, mirror in my hand … who is the fairest in the land?” She laughed in hideous cackles. “You said you had a cake. A cake for me?”

Fräulein brought the cake. She sat with Mother while she ate. Sat with her as the afternoon lengthened into evening, the sparrows falling silent in the eaves outside. She sat there until Mother rose to leave.

“Well, I really must be going. I'd like to do some shopping before all the stores close. I have a four o'clock train tomorrow. Shall we have lunch at my hotel before I go? I just came to …” She paused, uncertain why she came. “I came because I wanted to …” Wanted what? Mother did not remember. She glanced at the floor and saw the scrap of folded paper.

The worrisome letter. But clearly she did not find it so awful any longer, now that her mind had been put at ease, her fears to rest. She made her way to the door, calling back, “What a nice tea party Well, good-bye for now. Be a good girl while I'm gone.” And Fräulein answered, “I will, Mother.”

The ungainly woman tiptoed timidly down the stairs. Then the stairs were empty. At last Fräulein whispered words to the vacant hall, speaking the question she had never dared to ask;

“Mother, did you love me? Mother, did you? When I was small? Did you really ever?”

Frau Direktor Schanderein sat in her office of the Rostov clinic watching the strip of wallpaper curl slowly off the wall. Why did it choose that moment, after all those years of staying up, to suddenly come curling down? Why now?

Was it because that single child she could save had gone? How bare the old place felt now … without Marie. In this final letter she had mentioned the plight of the child and the two unlikely guardians who spirited her away. Now she addressed it: To Herr C. G. Jung, Bollingen Tower, Bollingen Zee, Switzerland. The wallpaper curled again, slinking down six inches as though it had a mind of its own. How long would her letter take to reach him? she wondered…. Would it ever?

They came for her in the afternoon. Voices in the front hall. Not school voices.

“Where now?”

“In the back.”

“Wait here.”

Frau Direktor Schanderein noticed the dull gleam of his leather coat. He had come into her office without knocking and stood for a moment taking it all in. Its dingy shabbiness. Her place behind the desk. She tried to look at his face, to see what kind of man he was — but gave up after a moment. He had the animal face of a human pig. Soft pouches around the mouth, sullen eyes. The bored expression of a man engaged in empty ceremony. A mere formality. He produced a greasy paper. “Sabina Schanderov, Direktor.” At first she did not register the speaking of her given name…. Then decided to ignore the Russification of her last one. “It says here you have twelve charges. Two interns. We counted only eleven charges. One intern.”

“The paper must be mistaken.”

A short silence followed. The greasy paper vanished into the man's overcoat pocket. How many battered rooms had he traveled through today? Was she the first? The last? Without waiting to be told, she collected her coat, her purse, her glasses.

“Come along, then.”

No one had bothered to turn on the lights in the main room. One of the children cried out at the sight of the black leather coat.

“Who will stay with them tonight?” Frau Direktor asked.

“They will be collected.”

Then silence as the shadow of the man followed her own silent shadow. For some reason she thought of the golden butterfly she'd seen earlier in the day, fluttering vainly against the window in the bitter cold. A butterfly in winter. It must be dead now too…. A darkness closed around her head, a gray sinking cloud. The world seemed very empty.

Emma found him in the long grass. “You were curled up like a caterpillar,” she said. He wondered what the hell she meant by that. But felt too weak to argue. “Help me sit,” he ordered her. So she sat him like a rag doll in his chair by the stone window.

“You were holding this.”

The girl's crumpled letter with the bold face of Lenin on the Soviet stamp … “Yes, give it here!” He snatched the thing from Emma's fingers, glanced at it, then thrust it away. “No, burn it. Put it there.” He looked to the dead embers of the hearth,- the old letter settled to the cold ashes.

Herr Doktor now stared at his hand resting on the stone windowsill. The fingers moved. See? Good as new. Better than new. Just then he noticed the golden butterfly upon the ledge. It lay on its side, quite dead. Its wings trembled in a sudden breeze,- a gust took it and swept it away. His eyes lost the silly insect somewhere in the grass. He wondered what it meant. And then forgot about it.

He rose from the chair, feeling hungry now, famished. He wondered anxiously if there were a few potatoes left in a barrel. He went to the well to draw water for a pot. But when he got back, Emma had still not lit the fire. She was rummaging about in his small cupboard of banished memories, among the fallen mess of papers. “Here now,” he told her. “I'll do that. You just start the fire.”

“Who are these people?” She showed him a postcard from Paris with a candid snapshot on the front. À favorite of tourists who have their own photos taken, before Montmartre or the Eiffel Tower. This particular photo postcard had been shot in front of Notre Dame. Standing before the doors of the cathedral were a man, woman, and child. The two adults held the young girls hands as if they were her parents. The man and woman seemed careworn, foreign, like mismatched strangers. But they were smiling. The girl stared hostilely into a middle distance. He could not place the faces, but he felt as if he should know them. The postcard was addressed plainly enough, yet the message meant nothing to him:

The signature was smudged as well. He gathered the snapshot postcard along with all the other spilled papers from the cupboard and tossed them onto the cold ashes of the hearth. “You don't know them?” Emma asked again. But now indifferently, as if the question had little value.

“They're somebody's children,” he answered her. “Or grandchildren.” He poked about for matches, fumbling over them as he tried to strike a flame. “They're friends of a friend,” he muttered. Then, finally:

“Who knows?”

The match head flared; the old papers caught. Emma stood with her back to him, peeling potatoes. His answer already forgotten.