The Light at the End of the Day

by Eleanor Wasserberg

  They were ushered upstairs with an air of hurry, but Alicia moved slowly, her hand on the polished banister, feeling truly like a lady of a huge house, feeling like Mama, and enjoying the power of making everyone wait. Adam indulged her, and a waiter hovered with Adam’s great overcoat, heavy and slipping in his hands.

  The room was as grand as home. The walls were buttercup yellow, so the wintry weather dissolved into a summer light, as though they had stumbled into a fairy land in a snowy wood. The Glowny stretched below, framed by plush golden curtains that Alicia itched to roll up in. The table was set with flowers and shining silver. The waiter danced with elaborate precision to place her napkin around her throat. Adam kissed her hand as she sat. ‘Happy Birthday,’ he said.

  Alicia was in heaven: her father all to herself, her sister at home, an adult treat just for her, and to be admired by Adam and the room, who she felt certain was gazing at her pretty face and curled hair. This was perhaps all she ever wanted, as well as the occasional treat and sweet and pretty dress. The deep wells in her, the unsatisfied untapped springs of her heart, stilled and were silent.

  Adam ordered for her while she pulled at her white under-gloves, noticed with horror a hangnail, and slipped them back on, glancing around to check no one had noticed. She caught the eye of a lady in an old-fashioned dress who seemed to be looking at her with disgust. The woman sniffed, an ugly look distorting her face. She must have noticed the hangnail, Alicia realised, and flushed. She put her hands into her lap as the woman turned away.

  Alicia was distracted from this by the arrival of cheese and bread, plates of butter, pickles, glistening beef in a sticky glaze. It was not so different from the food at home, but prettily arranged on gold-edged plates, and with sweet red wine that she sipped as elegantly as she could. Adam tested her on German and French verbs, asked what she was reading; she told him about the swallowed, stolen ruby of Agrapur, cut from the thief’s belly by the Maharajah.

  ‘Your sister shouldn’t give you such things to read,’ he said, but smiling and, she thought, impressed.

  ‘Thank you, Papa,’ she said, when she remembered to.

  ‘You are welcome, my little Ala,’ he replied. ‘But this is not all,’ he said, leaning back in his chair and opening his arms wide. ‘There is another gift, but, really, it’s for me so you must indulge your Papa.’

  ‘Not a doll, Papa, please, I have so many … I’d like …’ she cast about, caught off guard by the unexpected opportunity; she rarely ever had to ask for anything at all, ‘a fur like this one of Mama’s, or for her to give this one to me, will you ask her?’ She stroked the fur against her cheek again. That wasn’t right, it wasn’t what she wanted at all, but since she didn’t know what she wanted, the white fur would do as well.

  Adam laughed. ‘I’m sure you can have it, but what else? Let’s see if we thought the same.’ He smiled, seeming delighted with this idea.

  Alicia tried again. ‘Lessons.’

  ‘Lessons? In what? You want your governess back? Poor Miss Paula, I’m not sure she would have us again!’

  She faltered. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Piano? Riding?’

  ‘Yes, riding,’ she said, swallowing something.

  ‘All right, we’ll arrange it tomorrow.’ Adam drained his glass. ‘But you haven’t guessed! Because it’s a trick! It is something wonderful but also something that you will not like.’

  His mouth twitched and Alicia understood. She slumped in her chair.

  ‘This is something for your Mama and me. So we have something to remember how pretty you are. It is a treat for us. You will do it for us? And you will not … sabotage?’

  Now she laughed. She’d been five years old, already the favourite. The young genius her Papa had paid to paint her was irritated by her fidgeting. He made her stand for long, silent, still minutes in the natural light, and she wanted to play with her sister. That night she grabbed a pair of scissors from the sewing kit in Janie’s room and chopped off her hair in a jagged, spiteful line. Her parents had almost laughed themselves sick over her stubbornness, and paid the artist double when he said he would abandon the painting. Still it was left unfinished, her wild hair in wisps around a ghost-like chalky face. It hung in Papa’s study, where he often liked to point it out to visitors and tell the story.

  And now he wanted another.

  ‘Is it the same man?’ she asked.

  Adam laughed again. ‘No, darling Ala. I want to ask my friend Jozef Pienta. You’ll like him! He is a great artist, and you know, quite poor.’

  Alicia wrinkled her nose.

  ‘He will then have the money to make even more beautiful things, and I will have another picture with your hair all shiny and long.’

  Sweets arrived, pastries glazed with sugar syrup, creamy gelatinous pudding, ginger biscuits. Alicia tried to finish her wine, but its sharpness hurt her throat.

  ‘Here,’ Papa said. He came around to her side and dunked a biscuit into the wine, ate it.

  ‘Papa!’ she shrieked, deliciously outraged. ‘Manners!’ He laughed deeply, held out his arms to encompass the golden shining room, so people turned to look. Alicia’s awareness of the woman in the corner, the hangnail, came back to her, and she wished he would sit down again.

  ‘Why, isn’t this my city, my table? My biscuit, my wine?’ He laughed again, deep and mellow, and Alicia poured her wine over her dessert like a syrup, ate until her stomach swelled and her head swam.

  Later, she’d return again and again to this night. The sharp sweetness of the wine and cream. The waiters crowding plates among the candles so the food caught some of the golden flame, and the whole room in gold, as the sun went down, so all was warm and full and her father laughing and laughing. Sometimes she’d hear again that woman’s angry sniff, try to remember the set of the woman’s mouth, and whether it was in fact the whole room that turned away after her father’s joking speech, or if that was only her mind playing tricks.

  Stepping out, rewrapped like a present, Alicia was grateful for the warm fullness of her belly and glanced back at the gleaming rooms.

  ‘When can we come back?’ But Adam didn’t hear, stamping and re-knotting his scarf around his throat. The wind had dropped, an icy stillness descended, and glittering ice crystals had grown on the stones of the square. As they came further away from the Wentzl, the dark and cold seemed to leach away Alicia’s pleasure. Adam held out his hand for a cab, but none stopped. Pinched faces hurried past.

  ‘Let’s walk home, then,’ Adam said. ‘It will be fun.’

  A couple were sitting on the steps of the old town hall, leaning against one of the lazy stone lions. The woman’s legs were bare, Alicia noticed with a small thrill of shock. Her Papa hurried her along, then dropped her hand to rub his own together inside his gloves, and in the moments he stopped, Alicia took greedy sips of the strange sight on the steps, the urgency of the man’s hands, the small sounds of distress of the woman. The back of the man’s head was pressing, pressing, and the woman was shrinking back. When the man shot his hand up the woman’s skirt, exposing a shock of white flesh, Alicia gasped, and tugged Adam’s hand. Her Papa looked at her in indulgent expectation, before catching sight of the couple behind her.

  He took an instinctive step forward, then stopped, his head slightly cocked, as though trying to see clearly.

  ‘Hello,’ he called. To Alicia his voice sounded soft, almost comforting. She had stopped watching the couple, and saw only her father’s form, striding forwards.

  ‘Hello, hello, stop,’ he said, much more strongly now, his familiar voice. Alicia felt her blood quicken, watching him pace, his long coat billowing behind him, towards the man with the urgent hands. Adam flicked his gaze back to her. ‘Stay here,’ he barked, and she ignored him, trotting after him just as the couple responded to the approach.

  The man had stopped crushing the woman against the stone lion, and was smiling, biting his thumb and looking down. Alicia recognised the look as one
of her own, when she was disciplined by someone she didn’t respect. He had long girlish eyelashes and he seemed small, much smaller than Papa. But the hands, his thumb in his teeth, were large and dirty. He wasn’t wearing gloves in the cold, which made Alicia think he must be very poor. She sneered, emboldened by this realisation, and the bulk of Papa beside her. The woman shrank even further into the stone, pulling down her skirt, her face blank. You should say thank you, Alicia thought savagely. Her mother’s voice came to her, the cadence of overheard gossip in the house, unguarded chatter in the kitchen. Having your legs out like that. Instead the woman looked at her shoes.

  ‘Hello,’ Adam repeated. He hesitated, glanced back at Alicia. ‘It’s cold and late. Is everything well?’

  Alicia glared at the woman, who still hadn’t said thank you or taken the chance to run away. She had a sudden, unbidden image of the woman from the restaurant, her pursed lips and stony face, the angry straightness of her back.

  The man continued to nod and bite his thumb, smiling, on the cusp of laughter even. Perhaps he isn’t poor at all, but mad, Alicia thought, and that’s why he doesn’t feel the cold. Perhaps he will be taken to the mountains to lie in a room painted white and with starched clean bedsheets. The man, slow and unsteady, lurching to hold onto a lion’s mane, pulled himself to stand. The woman at his feet hissed something. Adam settled into his feet, crossed his arms as the man belched smoke into the cold air between them, brought his face level to Adam. He had to get on tiptoe to do it, and swayed dangerously.

  ‘Go fuck yourself,’ he said.

  Alicia’s shock made a laugh fall from her mouth before she could cram it back into her chest. The man narrowed his eyes at her, and Adam began to back away.

  ‘Come,’ he said to her, soft. When he took her hand, she felt his fingers inside his mittens were trembling. Then they were wrenched from her, there was the dull sound of something hard on flesh, and her Papa was on the ground. The stranger kicked him as he lay there, silent and only curled up with his hands around his face. Once, twice. Adam was silent. Alicia cried out, an animal sound. The man looked her up and down, taking in her rich clothes, the glint of red silk.

  ‘What’s that, little bitch?’

  ‘Don’t,’ Adam said, pulling himself up.

  A small crowd had formed, almost a circle. Alicia looked around at them. ‘He kicked my Papa.’ She tried to scream it, but it came out very small. Some were shaking their heads, others were sneering. Disorientated, Alicia watched Adam slowly pull himself to his feet, a bloom of red near his temple. His hands shook as he removed his kippah, knocked askew, and put it in his pocket. He faced the man, so much taller and stronger. Kill him, Papa. Throw him to the ground, make his blood splash across the ice. Adam followed Alicia’s gaze and looked out at the gathering crowd too.

  The woman on the steps called out. ‘It’s cold. I want to go home.’ The man ignored her, staring at Adam with a disgusting look of triumph on his face. Adam’s fists were clenched and he’d moved in front of Alicia.

  ‘I want to go home,’ the woman said again. The man gave a mock bow to Alicia, blew her a kiss, and strutted back to the steps.

  ‘We’re going home,’ Adam said. As he pulled her to him, the small crowd began sliding away. Alicia heard the woman on the steps hiss something again. Some in the crowd laughed.

  As they retraced their steps down Bernardyńska, Adam’s grip firm and his stride quick, they didn’t speak. Alicia was lost in fantasies in which she murdered the couple on the steps. The man she scalped, making him kneel and apologise first, or had him hung from a lamppost. The woman’s face she ripped off with her nails. She kept at the edge of her thoughts her burning shame at her father’s humiliation, unable to look at its full white heat. Instead she imagined slipping out of bed later, returning to the steps with a gun. She tried scraps of different dialogue, indulged in the man gibbering at her feet, panicked spit trailing from his mouth, his hopeless, pink, squirming sobs.

  As they reached the comforting block of home, Adam stopped and crouched down so that his long coat trailed on the pavement. He put his hands on Alicia’s shoulders and she began to pitch forward into the comfort of his arms, but he held her stiffly away from him, shook her a little.

  ‘Say nothing to Mama and Karolina. Or Janie or to anyone. Do you understand?’

  She nodded, but her eyes were fixed on the bright red, striking as a midsummer flower, plastered across his temple and down his cheeks.

  ‘They’ll see,’ she said, in answer to his questioning gaze, and pointed at the wound.

  ‘Well, I slipped on the ice. Yes?’

  She nodded.

  ‘It will be difficult for you to lie because you are a good girl, but it is because I ask you to. Yes?’

  She didn’t reply that lying came to her as naturally as breathing.

  Never had home seemed so solid and warm. Alicia wanted to scream at Robert to close the door, lock it, to shout that there were bad people all around, but instead she let him take her gloves as he asked, ‘And how is the birthday princess? Did you enjoy your dinner?’ Then, when he caught sight of Adam, he melted into silence. Alicia saw her father bow his head briefly; close his eyes as though in standing sleep.

  Robert shut the huge double front doors, locking them in place.

  ‘Papa slipped on the ice,’ Alicia said. Robert nodded at her.

  Some of the cold, set faces from outside, their harshness, had crept into the house with them. The pinched look of the woman in the restaurant, the woman on the steps, the crow of the man as he weaved back to her.

  ‘Karolina was sent to bed a few hours ago, and Mrs Oderfeldt is in the drawing room, with the radio,’ Robert said, in answer to a silent question.

  Karolina slept with a book in her hand, another rising and falling with her belly’s breath, a journal filled with her scrawl. Alicia tried to make out the words, looked for her name, but the room was too gloomy. Karolina’s brown hair was bushy like Alicia’s but unlike her sister she had always resisted Janie’s attempts to tame it with oil and irons, and so it grew rather wild. Alicia studied her for a moment, wondering if she would look like Karolina in five long years, when she was seventeen too, or if she might be prettier. She jerked Karolina by the foot.

  Karolina jumped and her book smacked on the floorboards. ‘If you had a nightmare get in with Janie, for God’s sake,’ she mumbled.

  Alicia crawled over her sister’s body and sat cross-legged beside her.

  ‘Come to crow? Go on,’ Karolina said, sitting up. ‘You know Papa never took me to dinner at the Wentzl. Was it very beautiful?’

  ‘Yes. It was like a painting. Yellow. It glowed.’

  Karolina nodded and dozed again as Alicia described the room, the food, the wine and their Papa’s rumbling laughter, the square behind the windows dipping into night. In her mind’s eye, she erased the sour-faced woman at the nearby table like a bad sketch, and then lightly said, ‘But it was icy on the way home and I slipped, and Papa slipped too trying to catch me and cut his temple and bled a little.’ As she said it she realised she would need to give this extra detail to Papa. ‘Oh, and he said he will take you to the Wentzl too, for your next birthday.’ In the weak window light Karolina snorted and rubbed her eyes.

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Yes, and also another painter is coming.’

  ‘Oh! Another portrait of Princess Alicia! The last one makes you look like an ugly ghost.’ Karolina followed this with a gentle push of dismissal.

  Alicia settled on the stairs for a while before going back to bed. From the study, the radio rose and fell, punctuated with static. Only the odd word floated up, muffled by the thick carpets. She heard her name, and her Mama’s voice calm and steady. So, the lie was holding.

  That night she dreamed of being drowned and trapped in paint like an unlucky fly. At her back, the canvas was cold and through the gloop of the sharp-smelling paint she saw her parents and Karolina, huddled in a cold place like the woman o
n the steps, watching her.

  4

  THE GIRLS ATE SEPARATELY from their parents, in the smaller room that had been their nursery, now piled with books and clothes, a desk for Karolina in the corner. Janie and Dotty came in and out with platters, the glint of sunlight on silver. Karolina was at her most animated at breakfast, telling Alicia of a new poem or story she had dreamed or sketched out that morning. The dogs, Mimi and Cece, both Alicia’s, weaved between everyone’s legs, causing Janie to shriek and curse on the stairs when she thought she was out of earshot.

  Alicia, weary after her broken sleep, almost feverish still with rage, had slept late. She came in blind to the unexpected stillness, so consumed by the earthquake in her little life that it took minutes for her to identify that the squirming tension was not inside her own body, but in the room.

  ‘Karolcia?’

  Her sister looked only confused, half shrugged with a nod to the two servant women. Janie stood at the windows, her hands clasped, head slightly bowed. As Alicia looked at her, she gave her a watery smile. Dorothea was serving up fruit, but gone was her chatter: I hope you like this, this is your favourite, I saw these at the market yesterday, look at that lovely colour in it, look at that shine! Instead the clink of china made a tuneless song.

  ‘Karolcia?’ Alicia said again.

  Papa had told, or had failed in the lie, and they all knew, saw, as she had, how they were all laid low, something had been ripped away from them.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Karolina mouthed. ‘They’ve been like this all morning.’

  ‘Janie, is it about Papa?’ Alicia felt she should cry too, match Dorothea’s blotched cheeks, but felt only the deep stirrings of anger again.

  Alicia moved to sit by her sister’s side. She started to say, ‘It was a man, with huge hands, and a boy’s face, and he was only so short, but somehow he hit Papa.’ She only got as far as ‘It was …’ and Karolina began whispering over her, ‘Someone is dead, I know it, it must be Papa or Mama, one of them has died in the night.’