by Vera Caspary
“And you don’t believe me either.”
“Apparently your husband hasn’t trusted you with his confidences.”
“My husband trusts me,” I answered but involuntarily looked down at my arm where the puffed sleeve ended. It was a long time since Gerhard’s tense fingers had left blue marks on my flesh. Victor watched me. Hastily, as though he could discern the guilt in my glance, I let my eyes slide down to the watch on my wrist, and said nervously that I had to hurry or I would be late for the noon meal. “My husband does not like to be kept waiting.”
We walked back through the meadows, separate, careful not to let our hands meet. There was no handclasp when we said good-bye at his car. “I’ll see you tonight then.” I found, perhaps because I sought it, a return of eagerness in his voice. “Yes, at the theatre,” and my voice came to life, too.
He drove off. It was late but I did not hurry toward Liebhofen. The path twisted among the many shaded bays of the lake. “Lenchen, dear sweet girl!” I was so deep within myself, so apart from the world, that I did not hear the speaker the first time, and when I turned my head, failed at first to recognize Frau Stompfer in a dress so new that it rustled and her hair arranged in a formidable fashion, the new French style, like a steeple on her head. At her heels trotted two of the grandchildren.
“Such a beautiful day, isn’t it? We have been enjoying a happy morning in the forest. I hope you are well, dear Lenchen.”
Without waiting for the usual gift of coins to the children, she took their hands and hurried away.
Gerhard and I ate our lunch on the terrace overlooking the topiary garden where disciplined plants were lined up like soldiers at inspection. We had become so accustomed to Wolfy’s presence that we sat like strangers at our own table. Through the long and heavy meal a word echoed in my mind…Wardenthal. The fountain whispered it, the food bore its flavor. I was tempted to ask about that name, but found many excuses to avoid it. It seemed that Imre hovered more than usual, that the assisting waitress was forever handing around or removing plates. When finally coffee had been served and these two retreated, I said that I would like to ask a question.
“Well?”
My courage cooled like the untasted coffee in my cup. Gerhard waited. I smiled downard, tilted my head, and asked in my most childish voice if I could not drive my own car to Salzburg.
Gerhard laughed. “Why did you hesitate to ask? Am I such a tyrant? Do as you like. I only thought it would be more convenient to have Hugo drive you.”
“Hansi will be with me, it’s quite safe. And I feel so stuffy riding behind Hugo, like one of those mothy old countesses.”
Gerhard laughed again and reached across the table to touch my cheek. “Such an independent little girl. Drive carefully though, there’s a lot of repair work on the road.” We left the table and he took my arm for a stroll through the garden. His attitude was affectionate and protective. “Now take a nice long nap, you’ll be up very late tonight, you know.” He kissed my wrists and mouth. The tenderness shamed me so that I threw my arms around him and clung to him in penitence for my suspicious and unfaithful thoughts.
Nevertheless it was of Victor that I dreamed as I lay upon my bed through the long afternoon, wondering how it would have been if we had become lovers in the fern dell. Such improbable dreams for a woman who has just embraced a loving husband. The ceiling of the bedroom is painted a pale, pale blue and on such days the blue and white curtains billow out like the skirts of old-fashioned coquettes. Bees hummed in the garden, the vases were filled with phlox and daisies. To exorcise wicked dreams I read the Ariadne libretto and tried to fix my mind on the story of the king’s daughter deserted by her lover on the Island of Naxos, discovered in her sorrowful sleep by Bacchus, taken as his love, given an immortal crown of stars. Between the dreams and the effort to concentrate on lines of fine print, I decided not to wear the gown I had asked Suzi to lay out for me but another, a sea nymph’s tunic of palest blue-green chiffon artfully pleated. There were slippers and a coat of brocaded silk in a deeper hue. How vain I was that night, how greedy for Victor’s admiration.
We were to leave a little after six, but Hugo was sent to fetch Hansi earlier so that we could have cocktails and little sandwiches which had been prepared so that we should not become too hungry before the opera ended. “How kind you are, dear Gerhard,” said Hansi with a flirtatious glance, “and how lucky Leni is. I have never had one husband who gave so much thought to his wife’s comfort.”
This was not Gerhard’s only thought for our comfort. He said he would have enjoyed giving supper at Liebhofen, but after so much music we would be too hungry to drive all the way to Altbach without food, and it would be fatiguing for Victor and his aunt to have to return again to Salzburg. Dinner had been ordered for all of us at the famous Goldener Hirsch. “It will be served when you come in. I hope your friends will approve my choice of wines.”
“How thoughtful,” Hansi said once more.
“My only regret is that I won’t be with you.”
“I hope you won’t be lonely.”
“I can manage to amuse myself. Remember, I was a bachelor for many years.” Gerhard walked to the car with us, kissed Hansi’s hand and my cheek. I told him not to worry if I came in late and he said he did not expect me until one o’clock, possibly later. He would give instructions that the outer gate be left open. “Have you your house key, Leni?”
We arrived home before eleven. Hansi had lost the big emerald. She had not noticed during the one-act opera, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, nor in the interval afterward, but later during the first-act duet of Ariadne and Bacchus, she touched the ring through her glove inadvertently. As one feels the shell of a tooth whose filling has dropped out, she felt the empty setting. For a few moments she had tried to listen to the music but had become nervous and wriggled about in her seat so that she made everyone nearby uncomfortable. Whispering an excuse, she pushed her way out of the aisle with great care so that she should not disturb the audience. I thought she had gone to the ladies’ room and worried because she did not return. Thinking Hansi might have stepped outside for a breath of air I went out and found her hurrying across the street from the car park.
She showed me the empty setting and said she had been searching the car. I suggested that she might have lost the emerald in the theatre but she said this was impossible since she had kept her gloves on until she was in the empty ladies’ room where she had spread a towel on the dressing table before taking off the glove. “I put my gloves on in the car after we left your house. I had taken them off to eat the little sandwiches and Gerhard kissed my hand as I got into the car. As we drove off I put them on again, I remember distinctly.”
“Have you searched the car thoroughly?”
“Yes. The attendant helped me, I gave him ten schillings and we went over every inch of it with a torch. I am sure the emerald is in your house or,” she moaned, “on the driveway.”
“We can have the servants look for it in the morning.”
“No, no, no! Have you any idea of the value of that stone?”
“What do you wish to do, Hansi?”
“My dear, I know you think I’m too fond of material things, but it is so valuable, worth a fortune and besides, I have such tender memories of the night it was given to me.” Her eyelids, painted purple for the formal occasion, fluttered. “You will not mind missing the rest of the opera, I hope. Do you think Victor will be angry?”
He had begun to worry about us and had pushed his way out to the aisle. We explained the situation and begged him to forgive us for deserting him. Once more Hansi repeated that she could not bear losing such a sentimental souvenir. Victor assured us that he understood and was sorry that we were to leave so early. We could not disturb the audience to bid his aunt good night, but begged him to carry our regrets and enjoy the supper Gerhard had ordered at the Goldener Hirsch.
It was an abrupt farewell. We had no plans for seeing each other before he left for Ame
rica. Driving home I told Hansi that I did not expect to see him again. She was horrified. I told her firmly there had been no affair.
“Then you are more of a fool than I thought. It is quite apparent that he is in love with you. Such an attractive person, too, so manly.”
“But I’m married.”
Hansi grunted.
“I love my husband.” I said this firmly as I steered the car around a curve. Hansi did not bother to answer. We were rather cross and did not talk much during the hour’s drive. I asked whether she wished to be taken straight home, but she preferred to return to Liebhofen to see if the emerald had been found. When we got out of the car she looked down in despair. “If I dropped it in the gravel, it will never be found.”
I used my key to enter. The lower hall and staircase were as brightly lighted as if there had been a party in the upper salons. Through the half-open door of the smaller of the formal dining rooms I noticed that plates and wineglasses had been left by two diners. I stopped to look more carefully, noticed the crystal candelabra and centerpiece of orchids, the precious white ones that I was never allowed to take from the greenhouse. Without thinking why I looked up the staircase to see if Imre was standing guard.
He was not in sight. A waltz floated down from the English bar. Bent boldly upon intrusion, I walked up the stairs quickly. Hansi followed at a slower pace, looking for a glint of green on the red carpet. I threw open a door without knocking, was immediately aware of the pungent, Oriental perfume. Quietly in the doorway I watched the waltz, noted every detail; the deep black decollete, the chain with the diamonds set in platinum lozenges, the matching platinum and diamond eardrops which Gerhard sometimes took from the safe for me to wear at important parties, the short crop of dyed chestnut hair, several bracelets from the safe. Satin slippers had pointed toes and thin high heels but the ankles above them were thick and not at all shapely, the ankles of a man.
Hansi had come up behind me. Her chill hand bound my wrist. Having known, wondered, teased and questioned, she now suffered at the sight of me publicly and perversely dispossessed. Clarity had come to me with striking swiftness. There was no moral outrage, no sense of vice, corruption or degradation. Early training had toughened my spirit. Before I was eight years old I had seen childbirth and miscarriage, death, cruelty, the fights and lovemaking of women. Once (it came back in a flaming vision like a holy picture on a calendar) I had watched a prison guard force a woman against a wall. People saw in me a delicate woman in Paris gowns with jewels on my hands and arms and my ears. A long neck, narrow head, proud features, gave the impression of tender and fastidious flesh. My sensibilities were neither. I knew the smell of dirt, sickness, sweat and sin.
Shock hit the dancers with greater force. Frozen in the waltz while the music trilled on, they could only stare. Then Gerhard, as though his teeth were cutting ice, said, “I didn’t expect you so early,” and left his partner. With great effort.
“Hansi lost the emerald out of her ring.”
“Come home with me, Leni. You’ve seen enough.” Hansi pulled at my arm.
Imre limped in with the coffeepot and two cups, brandy and a silver dish with sugared fruit. He knew his master’s tastes, had served him long before a wife had been brought to the house. On the tip of his tongue probably was an apology for not having been alert to my return. For an instant he became rigid, then recovered, set down the tray.
“Your coffee, gnädiger Herr.” He marched off without looking back.
“Leni, darling, come with me. I have a guest room ready.” Hansi hovered at my shoulder.
Gerhard stood fixed like a statue with his back toward me like a man who hopes to conceal the shame of disability. (As a boy walking with his sister in a Berlin park, he had seen a ragged old man pinch his nose and blow snot upon the path. Until that time it had never occurred to the boy that it was possible to clear the nose without a handkerchief. He had been distressed to the point of nausea by the sight of that circle of phlegm shining like a coin on the sidewalk. The little sister had seen it as a huge joke. To tease him she would clasp her nose and snort out imaginary fluid while he would turn away, trembling.) This was how I saw him now, like the high-shouldered, stringy boy suffering the exposure of an oversensitive nature.
“I will come with you and help you pack a few things for the night,” Hansi persisted.
“Please,” I said several times. That I took a more active part in the scene I am not sure. I see the others clearly, myself hardly at all. I know that I did not wish to go with Hansi and endure her sympathy. Above all else I needed time and quiet.
Gerhard wore the look of a hunchback who had until the height of this moment succeeded in concealing deformity. His eyes rolled, the pupils disappeared, the whites became as blue as thin porcelain. In old paintings the eyes of tortured saints showed the same unearthly tints, the tormented flesh has this translucent glow. This was all in my mind, incongruous since there was no saintliness in this pale sinner in a silk dinner jacket. The other man had seated himself and raised his legs to push with his toes at the slippers’ heels as if the pointed shoes pinched his feet. He said nothing, merely listened with his rouged mouth decorous, showing patience until his turn came.
“You cannot stay under this roof. Listen to me, an older woman, I know what I am saying.” Hansi had been Gerhard’s friend before I came, but there was no question about her loyalty; she belonged too aggressively to the female race not to champion the woman. “I cannot allow this innocent child to stay in this evil house.”
“She’s my wife,” snapped Gerhard.
“Her womanhood has been betrayed and insulted.” Florid language gave ironic accent. In her fervor Hansi clasped and unclasped her hands, felt the ring with the empty setting, looked at the floor as if she expected to find the emerald like a shining symbol at her feet.
I continued to remain separate, aware of all the elements of the scene: Hansi fevered in her defense of a woman’s rights (material rights, her creed and logic); Gerhard whose wounded eyes both drew and repelled me; and the other man with the jewels and makeup and dyed hair.
“Please!”
They turned toward me in vague surprise as though they had forgotten I was there. “Please let me make my own decisions.”
“Come with me,” Hansi pleaded.
“I would like to go up to my own room. Thank you just the same.”
“You’re a little fool, you must not condone…”
“Keep out of this, Hansi. This is our business, between my wife and me,” There was such anguish in Gerhard’s eyes that I offered a wan smile and took a step in his direction.
The man pulled on his slippers and stood up. I saw sweat under the apricot makeup. Cosmetics did not disguise the texture of male flesh. There were drops of dew at the rounding of the nostrils, and the lusterless shadow of a mustache. He said, “You know why he married a Jew girl, don’t you? Out of spite. He was angry with me.”
Now there flashed into my mind a picture of the white and gold and crimson suite at the Hotel Imperial, of supper set for us (oysters and champagne had seemed so exotic then and had become so customary, a mark of invented festivity in the castle), of Gerhard at the telephone, pallid skin flushed with rage and, when he had hung up, the sudden explosion of the marriage proposal. The devil’s bitch. I remembered the feminine noun. There had been no further explanation; understandably. During a marriage proposal a man can hardly confess that he has kept a male mistress. I had been impressed because the rejected bitch had called from Rome.
The interrupted tableau, the dancers’ embrace, explained many puzzling traits of my husband’s character. The picture was not complete. Why, if this was Gerhard’s nature, could he not live honestly like the two Josefs, Sepperl and the Spanish Pepe, who enjoyed the sharing of domesticity, were friendly with neighbors, respected in the community, and able to tell the gossips to go to hell? But Gerhard, sin-ridden and vulnerable to all the infections of a weak conscience, had invited suffering
by adding new guilt.
Bride of spite! This was the blow that sent me running from the room. I could not bear the look in their faces, Hansi compassionate, Gerhard suffering, the stranger scornful. I bolted both doors of my bedroom, the one in the corridor and the one that led to the suite in the tower. The windows were open and I heard Hansi drive off in my car, was roused from introspection to wonder if her emerald lay in the gravel, and if Gerhard’s friend had also left. The gates had been open but there had been no other cars in the driveway.
For a long time I sat on the edge of my bed, cold as a statue but less graceful, my shoulders bent, jeweled arms hanging between my legs. All the lamps burned in my room, the bed had been turned down, my silk robe and slippers waited.
Old enemies returned to haunt my tower. Terrors and resentments of childhood, buried but indestructible, returned in full rancor. Poor lost waif, such an inappropriate ghost to haunt a tower from which arrows had been shot, pikes hurled, guns fired. Bride of spite.
At last I managed to undress and crawl into bed. I soon fell into troubled sleep. The dead walked, I dwelt once more in prison. Poor Elfy was there, tortured, deflowered by a guard against a stone pedestal supporting a tall, emaciated saint. I watched the rape, held helpless by a soldier who laughed and demanded laughter of me. Sobs awoke me. They seemed to come from a long way off. The servants were in a distant part of the house, the door to their quarters locked by Imre at half-past ten. From the suite above mine there was no sound at all. My flesh prickled and itched. With the night cries came the familiar odors, sleep, women, defecation, rotting teeth, hair oil, indigestion and death.
Huddled beside my mother on a potato sacking mattress I am restless but there is no room to turn and twist. The night is hot. Flies buzz around us, lice crawl, fleas drink thin blood. Women weep and pray, argue about salvation, hellfire and God. I listen with the ardor that I give on other nights to the forbidden games. Sister Martha’s hand strokes my head and she prays that I will be saved. We call her Sister Martha because, in her ill-fitting trousers, she walks like a nun with legs close together and her eyes on the ground. She will not tell us that she was a nun, but she does not deny it. One morning she, too, is gone. On the same night Ceci disappears. Cecelia is her real name. She has long brown braids and has been educated in a convent. A good Catholic girl, daughter and granddaughter of two famous professors of medicine who are baptized and have never told her they were born Jewish. “Was Ceci saved?” asks Mutti. “Was Sister Martha?”