Prodigies

by Angélica Gorodischer

  Out of curiosity to see the new guest, Madame Sophie had said that on that day for certain, like other days, they would go down to the dining room at night, and on one of those other nights that Helena woman had assured them that in an instant, in less than an instant, a drowning man sees his entire life, all of it, everything he lived, complete, eloquently recalled, clean and brilliant, what had happened day after day hour after hour in less than an instant, less, even less, far from time, confusing it with death; and that night, that very night, she had started imagining a stumble, a fall, and even a shipwreck, depending on the time available in her room between one whim and another and going to bed, provided she fell from a trans-Atlantic vessel or the boat overturned or she fell off a cliff, so she sank and returned to the surface, breathing a little air, a little, and water, and swallowing and waving her hands, sinking again and coming back up and sinking and coming up again, hardly floating and sinking and seeing her life and never coming up again, sinking to the farthest depths. What she liked about the sea was the green silence, solitude, but not the impossibility that someone, something might come to save her. And she would go to Berlin, to the Americas, all around the world, the deserts, wild plains, lagoons, summits, and jungles.

  Of all the deaths, including murder by icepick or meat grinder but never a bullet which was fast although the first-aid manual detailed the ravages of a bullet in the stomach, including a crazed ax murderer or being crushed by a landslide, perhaps the most perfect was asphyxia, although this depended on her state of mind, not just because it was slow and acceptably tragic but because until the end there was hope: someone would come, someone would open the room, someone would have a second thought and remember that she was there; except that no one ever came or did come but too late. In the Americas there were assassins with icepicks and hundred-story buildings you could fall from or from which someone could fall on you, and in the Americas rich people had giant safes that could hold one or two or even three people, with hermetically sealed doors that could not be opened with blowtorches, chainsaws, or cannons, and the sounds of voices or shouts or noise could not pass through the door either. She counted her money only in that room, and the door silently closed behind her because it had a hydraulic mechanism that worked if someone forgot and left the door open, and she did not even notice and kept counting and counting, so much money to count, and only when the air began to run out did she turn around and realize that she was locked in and was going to die there, a prisoner with her money, the bills, the gold coins that suddenly fell from her hands for the last time, and rather than look at them she pounded, she shouted, she sweated, she rolled on the floor crying out, sure that someone would come but no one heard her, she tore at her throat, she pulled out her hair, she ripped off her clothes, she wept, and she died, no, not yet, she was about to die, just about but she opened her mouth seeking air air and everything was hot and opaque around her: there was no more air. One more try, another, and another weak try, and she died.

  The idea just occurred to Madame Sophie that perhaps Katja had forgotten or had become ill. Ill? At night in her tiny room with the tiny round window, in her bed pushed against the wall to make space for a chair where she could put the clothes she took off, Nehala had seen the irony of another dream in which she was sick, soothed, and rocked: cool hands, a balcony, broths and creams, cologne on her temples, sunshine. Madame Sophie asked if she thought about doing anything when Katja’s footsteps sounded in the hall.

  11. “Miraflora”

  On the day when Madame Nashiru arrived at the boarding house on Scheller Street, with a little music, a light step, a narrow waist beneath lace trim, underskirt, petticoat and skirt and over that against the cold a tight blue suit blue beret blue ankle boots, Madame Esther sang almost silently to herself returning home happy in the afternoon, imagining itineraries through the darkening city almost as a dance, as exploration and surprise, better yet as an enigmatic path, a backstep instead of a river, a turn, a deceptive pas-de-deux, trois, quatre, foule, a crowd, the more people the better starting with the murmur of discrete voices, Madame? Sir? that filled the salon at “Miraflora” in the elegant business neighborhood on the wide airy street opposite the offices of Geschrei. Miss Esther Zaira Schleuster, hidden in a profusion of flowers, concealed and stealthy, lady of the blooms, observant and respectful, walked through the late afternoon city with shadows of eaves and architraves against imposts and archivolts at the doors of potters and cabinetmakers, of seamstresses and necklace beaders down Olmuz Street toward the riverbank; she would have preferred being solitary, mistress of her own savings, life, and will, to be a painter, courtesan, governess, thief, perhaps an actress or lion tamer: she would have been sketched as a portrait of a silent woman in shadowy golden light, eyes half-closed, dyed jet-black hair tied in a chignon at the back of her neck, decorated with a spray of chrysanthemums in a landscape of gray rainy lake country; she would have ridden in a luxurious coach with the curtains raised to let in the sun and would have seen the back of the faint empty silhouette slipping through the doors into the house on Scheller Street and forgotten it in less than an instant, immediately, with a surprising change in posture or expression; she would have arrived at the New World in a caravel and would have gone on to live majestically and cautiously in the golden palaces of Alagoas and Oruro, where servants with dark skin and almond eyes and earrings of bone and silver would shut the curtains tight at midday and would have leaned at the waist over wooden balustrades to see His Majesty’s horsemen; she would have jumped like a tiger or the wind or a falling stone on a woman leaving a coach who distractedly held herself in the doorway with a foot still in the air, would have surprised, assailed, robbed her, taken her purse, pearl necklace and earrings, would have pushed her and fled at her shout, losing herself in the crowd, because someone was waiting for her alone in an alley, at a crossroad, an avenue, she would have recited

  I met a lady in the meads,

  Full beautiful—a faery’s child,

  Her hair was long, her foot was light

  And her eyes were wild

  on a stage blinded by the white light so she could not see the abyss of faces and eyes impertinently fixed on her, their binoculars, cigarette cases, jewelry, two thousand hearts, air confined by corduroy and camphor; she would have hunted ferocious animals in the jungle, the king vulture with a crown of feathers like diamonds that laid five brown eggs that smelled of civet on mountain peaks, or silky tigers or the Dramanabad panther; she would have had scratches, scars, and bruises, an injured and rigid hand but eyes like beasts; she would not live in the boarding house on Scheller Street, which was a pity, she liked the house, but would have lived in an attic apartment with glass roofs and the scent of turpentine along the top of a very old building at the end of a narrow little street; in Gefte Street traversed by closed coaches and inhabited by women who wore Damascene halters with rubies like boulders from Afghanistan, facing the Main Square and the palace with its shades always drawn; here and there looking back over her shoulder; near the Classical Theater in a mansion in Hundszunge Street, where it was said Friedrich Schröder lived with Sofia and Guellermina during the entire 1807 opera season; in a green-painted covered wagon with yellow trim and bright red flowers over its little windows.

  She walked slower when she saw the dark line of park trees far away: if she kept walking at that speed, with a little music in her throat and fast feet, she would arrive too early, meet no one, enter the doorway alone and climb the stairs alone, walk down the corridor, pass the first door without turning her head, looking straight ahead at the second, turn right impassive and autocratic, and just few steps ahead would see her own door. She would already have her key in hand, and perhaps she would have taken off the beret and then would hear with what pleasure the lock mechanism move, shift, slip, open, the door swinging toward the shadows inside, lamps waiting in the blurry light, hardy any light entering from the garden through the window. Her room was above the suite of that new
guest she had heard about but had not seen, although her own room was not as big or complete; it was no suite with a salon, bedroom, and bath, two hearths and doors to the garden. Hers was a little less than the size of the bedroom downstairs but likewise had a window to the garden. And it had another window to the hall and a third, smaller one to the air shaft where young Gangulf’s window opened along with the window in the corridor that passed alongside the empty room in the front. One floor down, Mr. Pallud’s false balcony faced this air shaft, and a window of the large suite at the end of the corridor, and a window of the dining room. If she looked out of it, which she did not and only out of the one facing the garden, she could have seen the back of a chair in the dining room; the lower shelf of the case almost like a shop window where Mr. Pallud kept his miniature toys; a painting that hung on the wall of the corridor next to the vacant room by Ziem of lilacs in a vase at a window through which could be seen a summer landscape in a complete contradiction because blue, lilac, violet were colors for winter flowers, according to Mr. Celsus; and a portion, hardly any of young Gangulf’s room, an armchair, the corner of a wall and the jamb of one of the doors, because his room was the only one that had two doors; she would see no more because even leaning into the air she could not have seen inside the lower suite. Madame Esther did not ever lean out of that window and preferred the window to the garden because she liked trees, plants, paths, and no one else’s window facing hers. Someday, not in caravels which was a daydream but in a trans-Atlantic ship, she would go to live in a country in the Americas where she could lean out of the window and see infinite green, the untempered yellow of the sun, the gray of sea mist, the reddish sunset, the interminable white salt marshes, or the leaden, granite-gray sea. Her father had talked and talked on long afternoons, hurried mornings, after mass in sunny walks, on sleepless nights, and even as he evaded the face of death, about leaving like his brother Manfred to go to those countries with jungles, flocks, swarms, herds, estates without end, cities that grew swallowing up prairies and estuaries, to make his home in the countryside amid a settlement of compatriots between two rivers or in a neighborhood that would reproduce the streets of his childhood, buy a machine on credit, two if he could, open a printing shop and, if God willed, later buy a house with the earnings, set up another business, marry off his daughter, grow tanned under the sun, smell of ink, stain his fingers, trim his mustache, take afternoon walks with his hands in his pockets, and sit in a café beneath the shelter of trees from which yellow pollen and transparent petals drifted down, with long-tailed birds high in the sky, large godlike night cats keeping watch from roofs, and devilish guitar players, loud and fast. Madame Esther never wondered about the names of flowers, had treasured her father’s face but not her mother’s whom she never knew, and had also kept the music, the beat, the rhythm of an ocarina or xylophone, a cadence, symmetry, a metric of words and movements that she could not awaken with a piano or violin but she reconciled with time, in which time was a wave, arms that rocked her, a name and resonance in the most enigmatic moment of time, sheltered by Lola’s almost physical wisdom or Katja’s shadows, like the light on the pearls around the neck of the woman who had just arrived at the house on Scheller Street. Very slowly she neared the corner, turned, and managed to see him on the unlit street, and, so he would see her, she raised her hands to take off her beret, touch her hair, pat it, smooth it a little, affirmed and protected in this part of the world. Young Gangulf stepped aside with a smile so she could enter ahead of him: in the vestibule, the lamp next to the mirror winked, vibrated, exploded, and rose to the heavens, and there shone for ten thousand years, and the applause and the whistles deafened her, skewered her with needles of ice, platinum, mint, and snow in her throat and deep inside, and she said good evening and thank you as she took off her gloves and opened the chancel door to the corridor. Young Gangulf also said good evening: “The new concept of man’s difficulties now places us high above useless metaphysical speculations. Nowadays attention, observation, and analysis of material deeds as dispassionately and objectively as possible are the inevitable preparation that must precede all careful investigation. The scientific approximation of intellectual activity convinces us that in the intimate correlation of chemical processes is found the secret of thought at whose doors the naive scholars of the past knocked without response.” The warrior in this expedition that is life, the exploration of the minimal to reach the superlative, young Gangulf thought, is not the one who fights battles but he who lives peace like war, rest like attack, obscurity like rescue, indifference like passion, he who is not defeated, he who cannot be vanquished. Madame Esther said that the first chills were in the air and young Gangulf agreed but added that he preferred this weather because it was easier to concentrate on his studies in his room than with the windows open in summer. She agreed in front of the door to his room but he continued: he asked if she would permit him to accompany her and open her door, and she, taking a clumsy step but not quite tripping, squeezing to the key before giving it to him, almost reaching again to take off her beret, just said yes, that was very kind of him.

  12. Invitation and Conjure

  If she had her way, that dining room would be open and lit every day and every moment, all the time, table set, fire all sparks and spikes, all flame and kindling, heat and light but not in summer, for summer was the time to close the curtains to block the sun and open the north windows, and people passing on Scheller Street would see without meaning to look knowing they should not but the window was so near their eyes, and looking in they would be astonished at the crystal and china, potbellied fruit, sumptuous bottles, festive silvery mirror, a carnival on the mantlepiece over the fireplace. Open as it should be, not like an office or bedroom, much less a bathroom or dressing room; open like a church, invitation and conjure at any time, confusion of lunches and breakfasts, melon and chocolate, dinners, teas and aperitifs, toasts, petit-fours, honey and sabbath stew, spicy breaded chicken and molasses, people entering and leaving and greeting each other and pulling out chairs, a muddle of scents, jumble of voices, the last lights put out in the house, the first ones lit, Katja next to the sideboard, Wulda in the basement decanting wines, Lola dreaming, a dream of wrapping herself in the entrails of the earth rocked by secret lianas stronger than branches, soft, warm, savory, a dream of crouching and suckling, her immense body agile, rising brilliant to the surface, moons like pearls, dreams of seeing wheat, of the creeper she was going to plant, of a city, not this one, with towers and minarets next to jungles where the climbing vines curved away and the water in the drain spun to the other side and the sun made another trip over yellow land awoken by the pampas wind. Whether kneading, cutting, dicing, beating, or sauteing, whether sifting or marinating, whether whisking or juicing, Wulda watching everything attentively and Katja coming downstairs dressed in black and white, with her hair in a bun and silent shoes; whether toasting or poaching, whether she serves, covers, sprinkles, whatever she does, the platters are filled with colors, vales, and patterns, of tenderness in shadows or peaks, and they steam and go, leaving a barely visible track going up the stairs, an acrid fog, a heavy veil against the nose, and the scents hurry upstairs and elbow their way to the table leaving Lola behind, abandoned, all the work and troubles mitigated, moving away from the stove with a sigh and an order to Wulda to serve the sauce in a sauce boat, the hake without breaking it apart while lifting it out with a slotted spoon, and the vegetables, girl, bathed in sauce but the whole nuts on the fish and a glass of that wine.

  While Lola eats, the first to come to the salon that night was Mr. Ethan Pallud dressed in gray, the high collar of his white shirt cutting into his skin, the very blue gaze of his eyes erratically taking in things and shadows of things without stopping, a book in his right hand, leaving his room behind with its echo of whimpers of cushions and velvet, faint clicks of gears, pillows, axles, tiny pendula, wheels, and levers; passing the landing of the staircase and entering the salon but first pausing for
a second at the closed door of Madame Helena’s office without looking at it. Katja now in the salon, motionless and alert, did not hear words and sentences not meant for her but at his arrival she receded before he came and saw her, returned to the dining room she had just left, closed the doors and paused in the shadow among the solemn backs of the chairs, in the orbit of the aromas waiting on the platters that were already on the sideboard each in a covered dish, embers in the grate for warmth, fruit and cream on the lower shelf, wines on the ledge: she did not want him to see her, did not want him to call her on the pretext of asking what was on the menu or telling her when she should come the next day to clean his room. She wished someone else would come soon because the penumbra, the penury, the puff of time brought her voices of beings and silhouettes of voices; wished for anyone to come, not Madame Helena who always waited for the others to arrive before she entered, but someone, the new lady who might have hurried because she did not know the customs of the house and did not want to be late, even the General, someone, if there were two she could leave, latent, lance, lash, leave the dark dining room, pause at the double glass doors, wait without being troubled by winged beings or men with windblown capes or top hats that scaled mountains, if only it were time to open the doors, light the lamps, display the shining china and crystal. Madame Helena? No, no one, the shadow of someone or something or the old man with the toys walking in the salon, his pointed nose cutting through the air, silky claws and pointed teeth, grey, bluish, transparent, a box in his chest and a shelf in his belly with birds, giraffes, harpsichord players, dolls who spoke with die-cast jaws held with pins to their painted little tin faces, toys on shelves where they lie and peck, bite and die; from reading so much while everyone else slept he knew what girls fear, what the wind drags in, what the water carries. The world of shadows affected Katja but did not dazzle her, she met it on the way, on that very day that had now passed and the house was solid once again, changed but solid, perhaps not indifferent but silent and firmly serious, and in the darkness of the dining room she could see how cherry trees blossomed, how they fell, how almond tree flowers opened at any time of the year, how they withered into ochre and cadmium, she could hear how the roots of all the trees in the world moaned. Katja had been born near Klumbach in a farmhouse that flooded in autumn when the river rose, was dry and windy in summer when the earth spoke, and Luduv had taught her how to hear it. Luduv had died but sometimes he returned, and that night Katja felt he was going to come out of the shadows, appear from behind a seat, arise next to the sideboard, spy through the curtains luminous as the sun, with his sweet-sour caress as he passed, and at that moment two people entered the salon, mother and daughter, and Katja opened the door, left the dining room, stepped far to the right, hands clasped as Madame Helena had taught her, to wait until it was time.