Prodigies

by Angélica Gorodischer

  The Danube could be seen from the windows of the second floor of the doctor’s house, but a cigar factory impregnated the air, irritating eyes and noses, especially on windy days. Her husband had an office on the first floor and Helena was bored upstairs with the windows closed. She did not like to sew, embroider, or paint with watercolors; she had a servant, a cook, and a young girl who came to help with the cleaning; the house was tidy and orderly, the closets smelling of lavender, the bathroom of mint, and the drawing room of wood; the platters shone and the crystal rang. She had large, strong hands, amazon legs, and nervous eyes: she opened the curtains and looked out at the street, but that was not enough. Her husband did not let her go out or receive visitors or find some task, some distraction, which she had initially found flattering because she had thought he wanted her exclusively, everything for him. But he was sullen, and she could not overcome the distance between them; he wanted her to always be there, always, but not to be a bother, not to speak to him or want him to speak to her; at times he did not even look at her for hours, an afternoon, all day. He became impossible when she asked for money, every little trifle irritated him, and he would spend days without speaking to her, coming and going as if he lived alone in that house. One morning during breakfast she finally looked at him carefully, as if she had never seen him before, not even having seen him for the first time across the salon where young people had met that afternoon; she looked at him while he drank his coffee, not looking up, she looked at him slowly, in detail, his hair, his forehead, his temples, his nose and so on down his face, his neck, his arms, his entire rigid body sitting at a table like a doll with hinges. She looked at his hands, she moved in her seat to look at his waist, his hips, his thighs, she knelt to look at his feet, and then she straightened up and thought about the razor-edged instruments in the cabinet in his office: with one of those sharp blades she could make in incision from his forehead and down down down the same way she had looked at him, she could study him from inside, too, separate gray or pinkish warm viscera from the yellow fat that surrounded them, wet her fingers with blood and thick fluids until she found the gold. In her jaw and then in her entire mouth she felt the sweet aftertaste of expectation, the hope of something long desired. The woman who had launched a thousand ships had done absolutely nothing except leave her house, and because of that she did not move from her chair, and she let him go without saying a word. When she was alone in the dining room, she thought about the house that her parents had bought, a house from which she could not see the Danube but instead a tree-lined street, a different river, a garden, and other houses; she thought about the room with the balcony that faced the crowns of the trees, she thought about a tree filled with white flowers, and that was the moment when she got up, opened the windows of the dining room and let the irritating air inside. She went to the bedroom, opening the windows as she passed them, packed her suitcase, put on a light blue suit, went down the stairs, and left, also without saying a word.

  Until then all the women who had lived in the house on Scheller Street could have been a single woman who had wound up leaving it for another country, another city, another house, after having eaten, slept, and borne children in it. They had left alone or with their husbands, and they had left nothing behind of themselves. Helena Lundgren was the one who returned: she had briefly had a man at her side, she had not borne children, she had left and had decided to return, and when she inherited the house she had decided, against all advice, against sensibility and self-interest, that she did not want to sell it and look for smaller one or an apartment in the center of the city, that she wanted to do something with it, not knowing what. She walked from one end to the other, she touched it, she went around corners, she pondered it, she slept on it, and she sat in the grand salon on the ground floor and reflected on it. The tea, the dark oblique mirror in the cup, steaming on a cold afternoon, showed her the reflection of lamplight as if it were a drop of yellow paint. She told herself that now she knew what she had known without knowing it. She put the cup on the table and walked through the house again with a notebook, writing down the modifications that she would have to make.

  5. Lola Is Cooking

  Before the clock in the salon rings eight in the morning, every morning the steps of Madame Helena strike the marble in the service stairway, continue down, become loud on the wood floor, pause on the checkerboard mosaic but never pass beyond the green and black border that marks the edge of the pantry, and Lola waits for her on the other side of the border, closer to the kitchen door but not much closer, in a sky blue dress and blue apron, arms crossed and hands in her pockets. Stew pot, frying pan, copper-bottomed pots, saucepan, stock pot, saute pan, blue eyes, untidy black hair tied with a yellow-and-pink-striped scarf, the oven lit, the burners revived by clumsy-handed Wulda waving a reed fan. Madame Helena is the first to say good morning and Lola answers; then Lola is the first to speak and Madame Helena chooses what will be served that day at noon and evening while Lola imagines knife, cleaver, meat tenderizer, and colander on the table; while Lola sniffs, looks, separates, and distributes eggs and mushrooms, thyme and sage, scallions and cheese, mint and rosemary, milk, ginger, oregano, galanga, ground pepper always white, leavening and citron, garlic, beans and vinegar, parsley, paprika, curry and a pinch of sugar mixed with sesame. Madame Helena leaves, making much less noise than descending, and succulent Lola turns toward the kitchen and moves forward with sails set but very little cable freed from the anchor’s windlass, shaking her head with resignation at Wulda’s efforts: Lola keeper of the embers, Lola, whose veins are swollen with broth, liquor, juice, strong hot coffee, and sweet wines, says oh girl, oh, and tells Wulda that from the looks of things, if she does not pay attention, she will never learn anything.

  Lola comes from the east, from the plains of hunger and persecution; she came from death, slowly, not running but now laughing and she is a cook because what other thing can be done in this world where if you look around you will see that everyone eats, men, women, animals, time, everything. She learned to cook from a grandmother who was killed when she ran off toward the forest and for that she got not even a burial: Lola thought she knew everything and escaped with nothing. She crossed the border by pure luck behind the backs of armed men and begged in the city at the doors of a café which she entered one night because, as she told a man dressed in solid black who happened to ask her why, outside it was cold but inside it was warm. The cook laughed and asked her if she knew how to poach eggs. She said yes and that night she slept indoors and the next day she ate three meals and when, five years later, she left the job of head cook to work in the boarding house on Scheller Street with less bustle and better pay, she had plumped up to one hundred seventy pounds, married, had a son who died at birth and because of that had no more menstrual periods, separated from her husband, and knew everything she had thought she had known at the edge of the forest.

  The biggest room under the mansard is Lola’s: big enough for a double bed, night table, large chest, closet, table, and two chairs. She has a mirror and a rug, a heating stove and a curtain on the oval window. On the wall at the head of the bed hangs a colored print of Saint Elizabeth of Schuange in ecstasy. There is a coat hook behind the door and a landscape of Bavaria in an old gold frame on the wall opposite the bed. Lola keeps blankets, sheets, and heavy winter coats in the chest; her dresses in the left side of the closet, the aprons, caps, and underwear on the right, and a gold chain with a gold heart that has a shining stone in the center wrapped in a handkerchief inside a shoe she no longer uses mixed in with other shoes on the floor of the closet. Sometimes on Sunday nights after having left everything prepared to start the week’s work the next day, she locks the door of her room, descends the service stairways silently, and leaves. She sits drinking a beer in a tavern near the river where the owner has known her for years, ever since she was a kitchen porter, assistant cook, and finally head cook at Café Netzel, and she carefully looks one by one at the regular custome
rs without haste, as if she were sizing them up, trying to get it right, as if she were playing—that one? No, not that one, his eyes are too close together and his shirt cuffs are dirty, this other one? Hmmm, could be, I like him, big hands, or maybe not, let’s see, that one? Yes, that one, or no, better the other one with the big hands and long legs to wrap around her and plenty of laughter to recall on nights that are not Sunday, he is happy, I will, no, I won’t, I hope he turns around; another beer. In the rooms upstairs, she likes to release all that flesh, to open her blouse and laugh, imagine that it is not just that one who opens his mouth wide for sweets, he who surrounds her with his tongue and hands, but all of them, all the men in the world, those she had and those she did not and even the one that she left downstairs with his eyes too close together and his dirty shirt cuffs, all of them, those who can and those who no longer can, old men, thin men, young men, very young, athletes, teachers, sailors, fat men, blonds, merchants, sad men, dying men, rich men, madmen, poor men, powerful men, all, all of them, they all take her and lick her and lay her down over the bed and submerge and rise up only to breathe and return to her, all of them, not just that one and she is happy, broth and onion, wine and butter, ginger, bread, liquor. Lola does not know about Madame Nashiru; she continues to talk to Wulda as she passes white shelves, opens and closes doors, slides boxes, says that it is the hand that should move, not the arm, takes out the whisk, knives, cutting board, large tongs, peeler, spatula, sieve and cooking pot, two enameled casseroles, a pitcher, teaspoon and tablespoon. She tells Wulda that if her arm moves she will get tired, it is better to relax the elbow and shoulder, move your head like this as if you were singing and it would not be bad to sing, relax the neck and only your hand is left, as if it is someone else’s and not yours, moving the fan hey-ho hey-ho so that the fire dances. She says all this while she places the meat, fish, greens, nuts, cream, salt, butter, and spices on the table, and she tells her to write in the notebook that they need to buy beets, powdered French mustard, rice, and oil, and that they have to order white cheesecloth because what they have is hardly any good anymore, and a curved wide-eyed round-tip needle.

  What Lola does know is that there is a new guest who is going to stay six months at least and knows nothing more until Wulda, tired and stiff without understanding much about only the hand, tells her the guest is a strange woman, she saw her when she got out of the coach and she is so strange she will want to eat strange things. On the basement windowsill sit flowerpots with plants Lola brings home sometimes when she has to go out: she waters them with a white crockery pitcher that says in black letters Two Liters. Not For Commercial Use. Lola, fat and humming, thinks that Madame Helena said nothing about the strange guest to her, or no, what matters for Wulda is to be able to rest this arm that moves around too much and uses too much energy, and while Madame Helena may not have said anything to her, all strange women will be strange upstairs, but down here like everyone else, hake with nut sauce and vegetables, veal steaks cooked in gravy, a cup of light broth, and seasonal fruit with iced whipped cream, each item on its proper platter so Katja dressed in black, white apron white cap and gloves, will take it to the table right on the hour. Lola tells Wulda that there among the plants is a creeper and Wulda asks what is a creeper and Lola tells her but what a silly girl, a creeper is something that creeps, that only knows how to creep, that lives to creep, on a balcony, on a flagstaff, on a column, on the trunk of a tree, and even on a wire if you know how to hang it right. She also tells her she knows she is tired but she is not going to relieve her of that task and maybe she will learn to leave her hand loose, just her hand as if it were not hers and like this to fan the fire without getting tired. But it does not take long for her to feel sorry for her, poor thing, poor little thing, and tells her it is all right, stop now, the fire will not die, and give herself a massage on the arm with the other hand. In this country the creepers wrap this side around but in other countries on the other side of the world they wrap around the other side around, and this is a mystery. Wulda looks and looks at her, cannot stop looking at her, rubbing her left hand up and down her right arm again and again—how can that be? Lola tells her that absolutely anything is possible, that the world is great big crouching animal and who knows if the bottom half of the big animal is doing the opposite of the upper part of the big animal. Wulda stops rubbing her left hand on her right arm and before Lola starts talking again asks her if the world might be two big crouching animals one against the other each one wrapped in creepers from whatever side they want without knowing what the other animal is doing. Lola fans the fire, which dances, and Lola, laughing, says yes, it could be, but she is going to plant this creeper in the garden, and covers the fire with an iron grille and flames try to rise above it and now cannot. Wulda puts away the reed fan and asks if the two big animals have their eyes shut. Lola says she does not know but their mouths are open and they eat. She knows how the world eats, how it chews and swallows and drinks, how it stuffs itself at food stands and how it chows down in dives and how it savors in salons and opens its barrier of teeth and raises silverware full of food to its mouth and how it wipes its mouth with a napkin and how the people upstairs sigh before they get up from the table; the man with the toys eats exactly like the mechanical bird that Katja told her he has on his shelf and pecks on the wood eighteen times, Katja counted, each time he pulls the cord, but eats nothing; the boy, young man, whatever, eats without paying attention to the texture or temperature or taste when he eats and at times does not eat and stares into space as if his mind and stomach were elsewhere; Miss Esther calm and so quiet that if you were to see her you would let her take communion without confession sipping her wine between courses; the fat woman complaining and her daughter jumpy when they come down to the dining room but Wulda says that if she takes trays to their room it is the same; the soldier so fast that you cannot see how the knife and fork and spoon move; Madame Helena like a lady savoring every bite speaking little and listening to everything. The fat hisses in the saucepan over the fire, the oily yellow nuts are crushed in Wulda’s hands, but she does not know that a bread tree grows in the navel of the world.

  6. Tea

  At teatime, however, silence served as protection; an artificial stillness imposed itself on the house as if an external, isolating unction had occupied and transformed it into something more like a temple or exile than dwelling place. In any case, something had changed: if at any previous moment water had boiled or a pot had struck a stove burner, if knives had rattled in the drawer before being placed on the tablecloth, at the moment when the tea was drunk, everything became hushed, Wulda dozed, Lola did the accounts, and Katja stepped carefully. In no other moment reigned so much silence: not at night, as one by one the remaining lights went out, eyes closed, and breathing slowed under blankets, nor at morning with bodies yet to awake and move. While the guests and servants respected the silence, no one appreciated it like Madame Helena; voices and noise were subdued, and no one knew like her the house from end to end to reckon those changes without seeing them, the surprise of hours, the laziness of minutes, the exact place where the shadow of a doorjamb reached on that month day and instant of the year even if there were no sunshine to reveal where it would have been, the size of a crack in the herringbone parquet in a hallway, as if objects that could be displaced or removed or acquired mattered much less. Most of the day, however, was not that way; the time before lunch seemed to run counter to the peace of the afternoon, or even the most perfect Sunday because Sundays lay smooth and empty, a waiting blue hollow in which, although no one said so, a long series of events availed itself to the truce of an imperfect memory. The worst part of the day, like a pendulum or opposing force, a reliable balance to the still and hushed mid-afternoon maintained and imposed by the house, was the time before the evening meal when the day was over and done and could not be brought back except long afterward when defections and failures were no longer so indelible: a time when something halfway done coul
d not be finished, much less could something be started anew, an impatient time when remorse or annoyance stretched out, fingers fidgeted in pockets, hands took things from their places and put them back like inopportune memories or the indecision that undid deeds: come on, finish it or give it up or let it be tomorrow already.