The Empire of the Senses (46 page)

Lev nodded gratefully, feeling her cool hands on his face, inhaling the familiar scent of her: bark, mint leaves, wheat.

“There,” she said, pressing her thumb into his forehead. “Better?”

“Yes,” he whispered, his head lighter, his face cooler.

She took his arm. “Come.”

Fruit dangled from the ceiling of the hut. He grabbed a curved yellow squash. His mother sat on a dusty cushion drinking mint tea. She shot him an accusatory look. “We thought you’d never come, but here you are.”

Leah looked at the squash he held in his hand. “We’re waiting until sundown to eat. But sit. Here’s tea.”

She served him strong black tea, and his mother told Leah not to fuss over him too much because he didn’t appreciate it anyway.

Leah ruffled his hair and sighed.

Then his mother stated that Josephine was suffering from heatstroke. “Such a delicate thing,” she added.

Leah sat down next to Lev and wrapped her cool white arms around him.

“Where’s Josephine?” he asked.

Leah yawned. “She’s convalescing with her mother.”

The light outside faded. It was nearly sundown.

“Her mother’s dead.”

Leah patted Lev’s hand. “Such a shame.”

Lev’s mother shook her head. “That woman would never have withstood the revolution. In the end, it’s for the better.”

Leah turned to Lev. “Will you get us some wood? We need some wood to make a fire.”

Lev agreed. His mother and Leah smiled secretly to each other, thinking he did not notice this exchange. He left the hut, convinced he was married to Leah now, and somehow, Josephine understood this arrangement.

He wandered into the forest. Pink streaks ran across the Prussian blue sky. The sun, an angry ball of red, descended behind the foothills. He searched for firewood. Leah had described its whereabouts, but her description bore no resemblance to his surroundings.

Halfway behind the foothills, the sun dropped out of view, and then it was night. Lev stumbled on the low-lying bushes and uneven ground. He steadied himself against a tree, struggling to adjust his eyes to the sudden darkness. The moon rose up, full and luminescent. Lev tried to ascertain how far he had gone and from which direction. The goal of getting the firewood faded, and now he only wanted to return to Leah and the hut.

He heard a low guttural moan, and peeking around the tree, he saw his son howling at the moon. His son’s head was a lion’s head and his arms were wings. The bottom half of his son’s body was human; he still wore his military slacks and black boots.

Franz swiftly turned toward Lev, his leonine eyes glowing in the darkness.

“Franz?”

Franz blinked back at him.

Lev tried to speak. No words came.

Franz threw back his head and howled, this time louder, as if in pain.

Lev spoke Yiddish, the only language he could summon.
Franz, are you hurt? Can I help you?

Franz shook his head back and forth. He didn’t understand Yiddish. He flapped his wings in frustration and emitted a series of high plaintive yelps. Lev remembered holding Franz to his chest when he was newly born—his eyes barely open, his mouth down-turned, he cried incessantly, red-faced and angry at his arrival in the world. If he could only tell us what’s wrong, Lev had said to Josephine, feeling a sinking helplessness as he held the screaming creature, who tapped his balled-up fists into Lev’s chest.

Franz let out another low moan that sounded akin to
Father
.

“I’m coming for you,” Lev said, but when he moved, his legs felt heavy and sluggish.

Despondently, Franz wandered off into the woods, shaking his head, flaring his wings.

Soft velvet rubbed against Lev’s cheek. He pulled away, inhaling the sweet thick air. Opening his eyes, he was startled to find the moon-shaped face of the portly Chinese host hovering over him. Lev checked his watch: five a.m.

The host bowed and offered Lev a cup of hot bitter tea.

After taking a sip, Lev slowly sat up with a pounding headache. Otto was rubbing his eyes. The other men were standing up, their legs shaky, except for two Chinese men who had taken even more opium and were still asleep.

Lev glanced around with distaste, for the other customers and for his unsettling, opium-induced dreams. His eyes burned and sweat had dampened his shirt.

Otto grinned. “Well?”

“Is it common to have hallucinations?”

“I was just fucking twenty women, including Marlene Dietrich.”

Lev nodded soberly. “Sounds nice.”

They stumbled into the antechamber. The host drew the heavy curtain, closing off the main room, and then went to retrieve their coats.

When Otto shoved open the door to the street, the gray morning light stung Lev’s eyes.

The host, handing Lev his coat, smiled graciously. “Come again soon,” he whispered. “It was a pleasure, watching you dream.”

30

Since they had returned from Rindbach, Lev had begun leaving the house at night on a regular basis. After dinner, he casually folded up his napkin and told Josephine he would return later. In an attempt to soften the blow of his nocturnal outings, before leaving he would caress her cheek, and say, “I won’t be as late as last time,” as if this offered some sort of consolation. He never said where he was going, and she didn’t dare ask, in part because she feared what he might say, and in part because she knew he would resent such interrogations. And few things were more distasteful to her than pushing a man into a corner, forcing him to behave properly or say something he didn’t mean. Her friend Sophie, who had lost her husband in the war, used to scream after him when he left the house, as if he were a hunted animal. Afterward, she knocked on Josephine’s door in a panic, her eyes wet and searching, muttering how he had gone off somewhere but didn’t say where, and Josephine had tried to explain that this demand to know his whereabouts only drove him farther afield.

Josephine sat alone in the living room, staring out at the spacious garden, its few dark corners filled with rhododendrons, the patchy ground sprinkled with lilies of the valley. The rest was a properly ordered garden, intricate paths lined with blooming roses and fuchsias, so from where she sat, the view, which extended over the wide lawn, made her feel a perfect sense of equilibrium. But her eyes kept traveling back to the dark undergrowth, and although it amounted to such a small portion of the garden, those unruly spots seemed to undermine its overall beauty and shape.

If Lev didn’t want to tell her where he’d gone off to, then she would certainly not stoop so low as to inquire. She sighed, leaning back into
the chair, uninterested in the magazine article she was skimming about how bias-cut dresses were all the rage. She glanced around, aware of every sound. The rustle of her skirt against the chair seemed overly loud, but then again, the rooms were so still and silent, she imagined sheets draped over the furniture, as if they’d left for summer holidays. Vicki was not at home either, now that young women went out freely at night without chaperones, something Josephine still found hard to accept. Every now and then, she heard Franz rumbling around in his room, but the other night when she had knocked on his door, he opened it with such an affronted look on his face, she slunk away, mumbling an apology.

Fingering the biscuits on the silver tray, the same shortbread biscuits her mother used to eat, she turned her gaze back to the garden and was reminded of how her grandfather on her mother’s side used to sit on the terrace in a brown velvet jacket with a rug over his rheumatic knees, even in summer. And the two surly greyhounds lying next to him, his loyal companions; he loved those dogs so much—oh, what were their names again? She racked her brain but couldn’t think of them. When the weather was fair, he’d take a ride after the midday meal. The carriage waited at the entrance of the estate with the manservant poised to open the front door the moment her grandfather emerged from the dining room, his cheeks flushed with satiation. Her mother would dress her in a stiff navy frock and place her in the carriage next to her grandfather, and they would ride around and admire the summer residences of the Hohenzollern kings.

As she bit into the biscuit, the lightbulbs in the chandelier flickered on and off with a strange spark. She carefully put the half-eaten biscuit down on the tray. The lights flickered back on. Yes, it was certain: Mother must be sending her a signal through the lights. Whenever Josephine thought about her with a strong intent, aided by the biscuits, the lights flickered in this odd way, a sure sign her mother was still here, but just in another form. Josephine took another bite of the biscuit. What did she want to say? Why was she not at peace?

Mitzi wandered into the living room, beckoned by the scent of the biscuits. The dog glanced around dolefully and then took her time settling
down, circling three times before curling up next to Josephine’s feet. Well, she thought, if I went to Balthazar’s church, Lev would strongly disapprove, even though Dr. Dührkoop had recommended him. Lev relied on science, insinuating that faith was medieval, a device to uplift and control the peasants when, after a day in the fields, they stood in awe before soaring buttresses and rose windows saturated with color. She could hear his voice now:
Of course under those circumstances anyone would believe in God!
A callous, cavalier argument, she thought, finishing off the last of the biscuits.

Sleepily, Mitzi raised her head, hoping some shortbread crumbs might have fallen from above.

The trip to Balthazar’s church, located in southwestern Berlin, required her to take two trams followed by a rushed fifteen-minute walk, after which she finally reached the middle-class neighborhood where the minister had converted his small apartment into a makeshift church and meeting place for like-minded spiritualists. The afternoon traffic had made her dreadfully late, and climbing up the steep carpeted staircase, she feared they wouldn’t admit her. It would be much more convenient, she thought, if he conducted his sessions at a more reasonable hour, but as the pamphlet explained, the spirits were most voluble during the “in-between hours,” when the sun was either rising or setting.

An older woman at the door, wearing a simple navy dress with a high white collar, introduced herself as Sister Grete Muller. She pressed another pamphlet into Josephine’s hand and then ushered her into a dim living room filled with an overwhelming number of books, hanging portraits, and an odd assortment of miniature cat figurines, their eyes inlaid with colored glass. In the middle of the room, ten chairs were arranged around a wooden table. Behind the table hung a large cloudy mirror, and Josephine caught a glimpse of herself in it. Sitting next to two elderly women, she looked slightly out of place in her molded felt hat, given the modest surroundings. She touched the rhinestone pin fastened to the side of the hat, which caught the late-afternoon light, and debated whether or not to remove it. Besides the two women, who were whispering rather loudly, a girl, probably about eighteen, sat at the
edge of the circle, nervously fingering the buttons on her blouse. Her uneven complexion and the way she fixated on the empty chair behind the table, presumably where Balthazar sat, made her appear disturbed. But isn’t everyone here somewhat anxious and disturbed? Josephine thought, pulling off her ivory kid gloves. The loud whispering of the two women interrupted her thoughts. Hearing Balthazar’s name, she strained to listen.

“He’s from Altenburg and his father was a bricklayer,” one of the women said, adjusting her crocheted shawl. The other woman whispered harshly, “He lost both parents and a sister to cholera. That’s when he began seeing the dead. As a young child, he’d been prone to visions, but the visions grew so powerful after the death of his parents, he went to a healer in Zwickau, who informed him that such visions were not a sign of illness but evidence of his strong powers as a medium.”

The woman in the shawl shook her head. “Thank the Lord for that healer in Zwickau.” She sighed. “It’s been a real comfort, seeing Hans again.”

Who was Hans? Josephine wondered. Her son? Husband? Whoever he was, most likely she’d lost him in the war, and for a brief moment, Josephine quietly thanked God that Franz had been too young for the war. She lowered her head.
Please God
, she prayed,
please protect him until the end of his days, or at the very least, let him die after me
.

A middle-aged couple entered the room followed by two elderly Russian men who shuffled their feet. The men carried on a conversation they’d been having on the street, the street being no different to them than this dimly lit, sanctimonious gathering.

Sister Muller closed the door and walked into the middle of the circle, standing in front of the table. “Now that we’re all assembled here this evening, I would like to express my deepest gratitude for your contributions, which have greatly helped us remain afloat, even during the most trying of times,” and as she rambled on about various meetings and lectures scheduled for the upcoming fall season, she passed around a little alms box, and each person discreetly slipped a few marks into it. Sister Muller’s voice, soothing and lilting, together with the lack of
fresh air in the room made Josephine drowsy. She read over the pamphlet in an attempt to appear engaged and alert.

The Technique

Derived from the Greco-Roman tradition, with some later Christian adjustments, our technique dictates that four people, or six, or eight sit around a table made of solid oak. Do not allow five people to participate, for Christ was murdered with five wounds, and odd numbers generally (but not always) invite baleful forces. In the center of the table, place a glass bowl filled with olive oil. The oil’s warm golden color is soothing to gaze at, for living and dead alike. A single drop of fresh blood drawn from the finger of a volunteer (remember, a young virgin is best!) will be blended into the oil. During the séance, concentrate on the bowl of oil and blood
.

Outside the circle, a bell, a steel knife, and some rock salt will be placed at strategic points to defend against any malevolent spirits who may choose to make themselves known
.