“What happened to his mother?”
“It was grotesque. She swelled larger than this.” Bärchen held his arms out, encircling a huge belly. “How many babies can a woman’s body contain? Twins are common, triplets not unheard of. I can’t imagine how women survive even one, can you?”
Helen shook her head. Sour wine burned the back of her throat.
“My brother’s fault. He should have been more careful than to get so many babies on his wife.”
“I don’t think it works that way,” Helen said.
“It does in our family. One is fine. They should have been content with Peter and stopped there. But no, they had to have more children. And now they’ve all joined our family in the crypt.”
Bärchen stared at the house’s foundation stones. Helen followed his gaze.
“Do you mean there are tombs in your cellar? The door in the cellar leads to a crypt?”
He nodded. “I’ll go there too, eventually. Not soon—I’m still young.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I try not to think about such things. Paris makes it easy to forget.”
A chill breeze stirred the water. She put her empty wine glass down and chafed her arms. “And your brother?”
“My brother couldn’t live without his wife. He had to join her.”
“Let’s go in, it’s getting cold.” Bärchen shook his head. “I can’t leave you out here alone,” she insisted, pulling on his elbow. “You’re too melancholy.”
“Don’t worry about me, Mausi,” he laughed. “I have no urge to join my family. I love my life in Paris too much to give it up yet.”
At the door she stopped, half in, half out of the house.
“Do you know what happened to Mimi’s mouth?” she asked.
“I heard it was an accident,” he said, and turned back to the lake.
• • • •
Bärchen left at the first light of dawn. Helen’s pounding headache woke her just in time to spot him from her bedroom window, rowing across the lake in the skiff, pocking the water’s surface with each frantic pitch of the oars. She’d never seen him move so quickly, put so much of his bulky muscle to work. It was as though he were escaping something.
Anxiety wormed through her breast. If she called out to him, he’d turn around and row back. But the window latch was stuck, the claw cemented into the catch with years of dust and grit. She struggled with it for a minute, and then gave up. Her head throbbed, her mouth was coated in grit, and her eyes felt as though they’d been filled with sand. She crawled back to bed and shoved her head under her pillow.
When she finally ventured up to the nursery in the afternoon, Mimi was sitting in the window seat, needle and thread idle in her lap. The boy was nowhere to be seen.
Helen joined Mimi in the window seat. “How long have you been caring for Peter, Mimi?”
The girl shrugged.
“I suppose when you first came here, you ransacked the house every time he hid from you.”
“Oui,” said Mimi.
“But you’re tired of it. He’s older now. He should know better.”
Mimi hung her head. One lone tear streaked over the rose of her cheek and dropped to her collar, staining the cotton dark.
Helen longed to wipe her knuckle along that soft cheek, lift the dregs of the tear to her lips as if it were nectar. But no. That might be fine in a sodden Pigalle bistro, but not here. She’d only frighten the girl.
She rested her palm on Mimi’s knee, just the lightest touch. “Stay here, I’ll get him.”
Helen found Peter sitting on the edge of the terrace, legs extended, trying to reach his toes into the water. He leaned back, balancing on his arms, and squirmed closer to the edge.
Helen’s heart hammered. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep herself from calling out—a sudden noise might startle him. She crept closer, poised to run and grab him if he fell. When the boy turned his head toward her, she kept her voice low and calm.
“Come here, Peter.”
He ignored her. She slowly edged closer.
“Come away from there, please.”
When he was within reach she snatched him up, hauled him to the front of the house and set him down on the doorstep. She gripped his arms firmly and bent to look him in the eye.
“Peter, you can’t keep running off, do you understand? It’s dangerous. What if you’d fallen into the lake?”
“Bitte, miss.” The boy scuffed his foot. The light bouncing off the lake seemed to leach the color from his skin.
“Yes, Miss York. That’s your first English lesson. Repeat after me, Yes, Miss York.”
“Yes, Miss York,” he said.
“Good,” she said.
He raised his hand to her cheek. He gave her one brief caress, and then snaked two of his fingers into her mouth.
Helen reeled backward. Her arms pinwheeled. She grabbed for the door handle but missed. When she fell, she raked her shin along the doorstep’s edge.
Peter stood over her and watched as she keened in pain, clutching her leg and rocking on the ground like a turtle trapped on its back. She rolled to her side and wadded her skirt around her leg to sop up the blood.
When she could stand, she grabbed his hand and yanked him upstairs, lurching with every step and smearing blood in a trail up the steps. Mimi met her on the upper landing. Helen shoved the boy into her arms, dropped to the floor, and raked up her skirts. Blood poured down her leg and into her shoe. Her shin was skinned back, flesh pursed around gleaming bone. She fell back on one elbow, vision swimming.
Mimi guided her to a chair and lifted her skirts. Helen flinched, but Mimi’s touch was soft, her movements quick and gentle. She ran out of the room for a moment, then returned with rags and a jug of water. As Mimi cleaned her wound, Peter cowered in the window seat. Helen kept a close eye on him. He was crying again, silently, his mouth forming one word over and over again. Mama.
Mimi put the final tuck into the bandage, then squeezed Helen’s knee and looked up, her brown eyes huge.
“Merci,” Helen breathed.
Mimi smiled. Lips peeled back over gaping gums. Wire wormed through pinholes in her back teeth. Helen recoiled. She grabbed the edge of the table and hauled herself to her feet. She stumped over to the window seat, grabbed Peter’s shoulders and shook him hard.
“That’s enough,” she yelled. “No more games. No running off on your own. Understand?”
The boy sobbed. She lowered her voice, trying to reach a source of calm, deep within her. “Don’t be afraid, Peter. I’m not angry anymore. What do you say?”
“Yes, Miss York.”
“Very good. I understand you miss your mother and father. It hasn’t been very long since they died, but it will get easier, with time.”
“Bitte, miss,” the boy said. “Mama and Papa died many years ago.”
• • • •
The cook and steward blocked her questions. In between their one-word answers, they commented to each other in an impregnable Bavarian dialect, gossiping about her, no doubt, as if she weren’t even there. And why shouldn’t they? She was acting like a madwoman, limping around the kitchen, waving her arms and yelling at them in every language she knew.
Helen took two deep breaths, and tried again.
“A few days ago, in Paris, Herr Lambrecht told me his brother had just passed away. He had to travel to Meresee and take responsibility for his nephew, the house and the family finances. Is that true?”
“Yes, Fräulein,” said the steward.
There. Everything was fine. The knot in Helen’s chest loosened. “But Peter just told me his father and mother have been dead for years.”
“Yes, Fräulein,” said the steward.
“How can you say that?” Helen longed to grab him by the throat, shake him until he rattled. “How can both those things be true?”
The steward ran his tongue over his stained teeth. “It’s not my place to contradict either Herr Lambrecht or his nephew.”
It was no use. S
he stumped up to the nursery. Mimi and Peter stood in the middle of the rug, waiting for her.
“Peter, play with your blocks. I want to see them in alphabet order when I return.” She pointed at the blocks. “Ah—bey—tsay.”
He knelt on the carpet and began stacking the blocks, obedient for the moment. She didn’t trust him, though. She wedged a chair under the handle of the door, trapping them both inside. Then she stumbled downstairs to the library. It was locked, but one stubborn shove and the lock gave way.
The desk was abandoned, cubbyholes dusty, drawers empty except for old pen nibs, bottles of dried ink and a silver letter opener shaped like two entwined sea serpents. So many letters, I can’t make sense of them, Bärchen had said. Had he taken everything away to Munich?
It made no sense. Why would Bärchen lie to her? He knew how desperate she was. No more friends to borrow from, nothing left to pawn. She would have followed him across the world. She had no other option.
She lit a cigarette and pulled hot smoke deep into her lungs. By the time it had burned down to her knuckle, she was sure the mistake was nobody’s but her own. It was typical of her—always too busy searching for the next joke to listen properly. Bärchen had said his brother was dead, but not newly dead. He said Peter’s mother had died in the spring, but not this spring. She’d made assumptions. Hadn’t she?
There was one way to find out.
“The crypt key.” Helen held her hand out to the steward, palm up. “Give it to me, please.”
“I don’t have it, Fräulein.”
“Of course you do. You’re the steward. Who else would have it?”
He flipped his jacket open and turned his pockets inside out. “I only have this.” A blue and white evil eye medallion spun at the end of his watch fob. “You should have one of these, Fräulein. It keeps you safe.”
Helen ransacked the house for keys and limped down the cellar stairs. Her mouth began watering as soon as she smelled the salty air. She lit a cigarette. It dangled from her lips as she tried each key in turn. None fit the crypt’s lock. She leaned on the door with all her weight but the heavy iron hinges didn’t even shift. She squinted through the keyhole. Only darkness.
She lowered herself to the floor and threaded her fingers under the door. A feathery shift of air drifted from below, ruffling her hair. It smelled delicious, sea-salty and savory, like a good piece of veal charred quickly over white-hot coals and sliced with a sharp knife into bleeding red pieces.
Her fingers brushed against something. Forcing her hands under the door, she caught it with the tips of her fingers, drew it out. It was a tiny vertebra, no bigger than the tip of her finger. Helen held it close to the candle flame, turning it over in her palm. It was brown with dried blood. The canal piercing the bone was packed with white crystals. She picked at them with her fingernail. Salt.
There was something else under the door, too—a tooth coated in a brown blush of blood. A tendril of frozen flesh hung from its root.
Helen limped upstairs. The chair she’d leaned against the nursery door was wedged so tightly the feet scratched two fresh scars into the floor as she dragged it away.
Peter waited in the doorway. Mimi was curled up in the window seat.
“Is this yours?” She showed him the tooth.
“No, miss.” He skinned his lips back. His loose tooth hung from his gum by a thread.
“Where did it come from, then?”
He blinked up at her, eyes clear and innocent. “Bitte, miss, I don’t know.”
Tall as he was, in that moment he seemed little more than an infant. His voice was quite lovely. The effect of a slight childish slur on those German vowels was adorable.
“Do you know where the key to the crypt is?”
“No, miss.”
“Have you been inside the crypt?”
“No, miss.”
He was just a child; children had no sense of time. Did he even know the difference between a month and a year? She’d gotten herself worked up over nothing. The steward and cook had taken a dislike to her, but it was her own fault. She should have taken care to make friends with them. But no matter. Bärchen would be back in a few days, and the summer would continue as planned.
• • • •
Helen brought Mimi and Peter their dinner, barricaded them in the nursery, then helped herself to a bottle of claret from the steward’s pantry. She set it on the dining room table beside her dinner plate. No corkscrew, and she hadn’t found one while searching through the house for keys. The steward must have had hidden them. She hadn’t seen any cigarettes, either. She’d have to ration the ones in her cigarette case until Bärchen came home.
She called for the steward. When he didn’t come, she fetched the silver letter opener from the library and used it to pry the cork from the bottle. She lifted the bottle to her mouth like a drunk in a Montparnasse alleyway. The wine burned as it slipped down her parched throat.
Helen put the letter opener in her pocket and took her plate and the wine bottle out to the terrace. The air was fresh with pine. The first evening stars winked overhead between clouds stained with dusk. A hundred feet off the terrace, the floating log bobbed. Slow ripples licked the terrace steps.
She had almost drained the wine bottle when the log was joined by another. The breeze carried a whiff of salt. The two logs seemed to be moving toward her, eel-sinuous. Starlight glistened off their backs as they slipped through the water, dipping under and then breaking the surface in unison like a pair of long porpoises.
The bottle slipped from her hand and smashed on the terrace. Shards of glass flew into the lake.
The logs turned to look at her.
Helen scrambled into the house and slammed the door. She ran to the parlor and began dragging an oak chest across the floor, rucking up the rug and peeling curls of varnish from the floor. She pulled it across the foyer, scraping deep scars across dark wood. By the time she’d barricaded the front door, she was dripping with sweat. Her wounded leg throbbed with every shuddering heartbeat.
She crept to the parlor window and peeked between the drapes. Only one creature was visible, floating just beyond the edge of the terrace. It looked like a log again, but she knew better. She’d seen them. Two long, inky serpents raising their heads from the water, their maggot-pale eyes hollow and staring.
Just a log, that’s all.
The log flipped. Water poured across its back. Its mouth split open. Starlight revealed hundreds of teeth, wire-thin and hooked.
Just a log, that’s all.
Bärchen was a liar.
• • • •
The cook and steward sat at the kitchen table, heads down over their dinner, one candle burning between them.
“I suppose you’ll tell me there are no serpents in the lake. Herr Lambrecht says they’re logs, and it’s not your place to contradict him.” She threw her arms wide. “If one of those monsters bit off your leg and Herr Lambrecht said it hadn’t, you’d agree with him.”
“Would you like another bottle of wine, Fräulein?” the steward asked.
“Always.” She pounded her fist on the table, rattling their dinner plates. “But I’d rather know how badly Herr Lambrecht lied to me, and why.”
The steward shrugged and turned back to his meal.
Helen ransacked the kitchen drawers and piled instruments on the table—knives, forks, even a slender iron spit—everything she could find that was long and slender and strong. She wrapped them in a rag, grabbed the candlestick from the table, and lugged everything downstairs.
Delicious, salty air roiled out from under the door, stronger than before. Helen’s stomach growled. She lit a cigarette and rolled up her sleeves.
The white coating on the walls and door wasn’t frost; it was salt. She scraped the crust off the eye of one of the griffins. It wadded up under her fingernail, dense and gritty.
Helen licked the salt off her finger and slipped a filleting knife into the keyhole. She could feel the la
tch inside, and bumps that must be a series of tumblers. They clicked as she guided the knife tip back and forth. The blade sawed at the corners of the keyhole, carving away fine curls of brass. But the knife was too wide, too clumsy.
She tried the iron spit next. It left a patina of sticky grease on her palms. She attacked the lock with each instrument in turn, whining with frustration. She knocked her forehead on the door, gently, once, twice.
A chill played over her bare skin. Gooseflesh prickled her arms. Sour spit flooded her mouth.
Finally, she drew the letter opener out of her pocket and fed its tip through the lock, leaning into the door as if she could embrace its whole width. She peeked into the keyhole, hand by her cheek like an archer with a drawn bow.
She licked salt from her lips. The lock clicked. The door opened an inch, hinges squeaking.
A little wet bone bounced across the floor and hit her foot. She turned.
Peter was right behind her.
Candlelight flickered over his round cheeks and dimpled chin, the neatly combed wings of pale hair framing his face. He was just a child. Orphaned. Friendless. She’d already given him her sympathy. Didn’t he deserve her care?
“Hello.” She kept her voice gentle. “How did you get out of the nursery?”
“Bitte, Miss York. The door opened.”
The chair must have fallen. She hadn’t wedged it hard enough.
Peter stared at the crypt door. She should take him back upstairs, tell Mimi to put him to bed, but he would just come down here again. And wasn’t this his own home?
“Do you know what’s behind this door, Peter?”
“Mama,” he said.
“Yes, that’s what your uncle told me. Not just her, but your whole family—all of your ancestors, in their tombs. Do you know what a tomb is?” He shook his head. “A big box made of stone, usually. Or an alcove in a stone wall, sometimes. Usually family crypts are in cemeteries or churches. But your family—”
She hesitated. Your family is strange, she thought. She needed to find out exactly how strange.
“Are you sure you want to see your mother’s tomb?”
Peter nodded.
The Long List Anthology Volume 4 Page 35