The General heard those steps but they seemed to be nothing, a rubbing, brushing, imaginary rain, forgotten sand, not his neighbor in the room opposite and especially not the service women, and without needing to look at his watch he resumed combing his hair in no hurry, adjusted his tie, examined the crease in his slacks, checked his pockets, looked around to be sure everything was in place, neared the door; and at that moment he did hear steps but they were going down the stairway almost tumbling: the young student from the upper floor.
Young Gangulf greeted the room all around when he entered the salon, asked about the health of Madame Simeoni and whether Miss Nehala had enjoyed her day, and went to the chair where Madame Nashiru had just sat down, when Madame Helena entered. Today, Katja thought, will I have to open the doors of the dining room sooner than usual? But no, Madame Helena would open them as always at the exact time: she said she would like to introduce the new guest in the house and just then the General entered, and as Madame Helena presented everyone with few gestures and hardly a step back, Miss Esther entered. Katja liked Miss Esther, whose smile was not distant or tight and especially not twisted like the old man with the toys; she did not know about the General because he never smiled; and the fat women would giggle dryly and cover their mouths with the tips of their fingers. Madame Helena approached Madame Nashiru, who stood up and smiled. Madame Helena was dressed in a long flared black dress with a vermillion satin sash at the waist. Madame Nashiru wore sky blue, a dress of a fabric that seemed to be darker in the folds and the hem, and a pearl necklace and pearls in her earrings and rings: Luduv had told her one afternoon, she was not sure if it was in winter or summer, that she had to fish for shadows the way they fished for pearls, to dive, dive down, and find them; pull them from their fleshy stalks and bring them up. Katja had not known until then that pearls were fished: she thought they were animal eyes or came out of the ground or sprouted from rocks or were made by chemists. She thought that Madame Nashiru must have fishermen at her service, pearls, so many pearls: she must have a cook and maid, lady in waiting and coachman and errand boy and fishermen. Miss Esther did not have pearls, only a gold chain around her neck and blue eyes below hair a bit mussed; a brown skirt and white blouse with cuff and collar embroidered in brown and gold. Katja did not care how the fat women were dressed but she watched them as they greeted Madame Nashiru and told herself that no matter how close the shadows came, she would never squint her eyes or frown like that when she greeted someone, when she said good-bye, when she had to talk to a lady she did not know, never. It was time, and it seemed to Katja that everyone was talking all at the same time except the General: something had happened to him, he was not standing rigid like the back of a chair but bent forward, one shoulder higher than the other, his face shining like the pearls that she had seen and he could not stop looking at. Madame Helena spoke to everyone and no one specifically, gesturing only with her eyes, her large-toothed mouth, the turn of her head like a colossus half buried in the sand or a miniature in a glass case Katja remembered from cleaning at a different house, her voice deliberate and error-free with meaning on the wing, as the fat mother would say who was born with songs in her mouth. She said that Madame Nashiru had arrived from Tokyo, so very interesting, and was going to remain six months or at least until a business was established and underway that she would open on Kafter Street, until the personnel had come from her country and she had contracted staff from within the city. A jewelry store, she added, and young Gangulf in a decorative attack one-on-one with the elements that the General would have admired if he had not become perversely attracted by what he feared most, spread one of his smiles around the room and followed it by saying that this would a good idea because there was only one jewelry shop in the city, the one across the street from the tea room of Miss Esther, had she met Miss Esther Schleuster? Everyone stood because it was now time, a habit in their afternoons and evenings, and moved the same way, driven as a group toward a terrible dream that brought liberation and fear: me? jump into a bottomless well? Katja unclasped her hands, turned, and before she reached for the doors she chanced to see everyone on foot except the Simeonis piled on a sofa like bags of rags that someone had forgotten on a worn wooden bench in a station smelling of smoke and rust where people waited and wept, where the next day all the stories would be erased and start again refreshed: bells, whistles, shouts, forgotten bags of rags on a worn wooden bench. The double glass doors with beveled panes where light danced opened smoothly without a sound, and Katja entered the dining room, opened them fully, secured them, lit the lights, stood next to the sideboard, and waited.
The velvety scent of nuts sauteed in butter and boiled in fish broth entered Miss Esther’s nose and she felt hunger tightening her waist and throat: gobble down fish, sauce, bread, house, mills, grass, the world; swallow water, sea, and waterfalls, to awaken again on another shore, able to laugh without memories. It was not hunger, it was happiness. Katja brought her the platter and Miss Esther served herself a minuscule bit and a spoonful of sauce. She guessed Katja’s thoughts: take more, eat more, come on, another piece. She waved her hand and Katja moved on.
The book in his pocket bothered him, everyone laughing, Kati-Kati went to the other side of the table and he did not care, fish, meat, whatever but let dinner end right away, let him return to his room because it annoyed him to leave a page half-written: “Articulated figure sitting on a Queen Anne style chair.” Mr. Pallud’s skin grew and stretched until it became almost invisible, a sparkle on his temples and fingers and the bottoms of his feet; but a wrinkled excess lining his groin, his armpits and the backs of his knees, knotted into his navel and tamed into his orifices, with thin nose hairs and rough eyebrows over eyes fastened on the waist of Kati-Kati, a silly girl and as quiet as anyone could be. When he traveled, when he explored, when he extended himself over the world’s vast floating distant globe, when he left, no more white fish or creamy sauces, instead dark strong meat beneath a copper bronze fiery threatening sun. When he was no longer there but in the confines of the jungle, on the borders of deserts, he would not need books in his pockets, a white linen suit would be the fashion, held in place only by the watch chain around his body, and they would look at him differently, not the way Madame Helena was at that moment: Kati-Kati was offering him the platter and for all that he wanted to take his time, Madame Helena continued to look at him and he had to put down the serving utensils and the silly girl left at the moment when the daughter of the singer was saying that what she most wanted in life was to travel and she listed Paris, London, New York, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Saint Petersburg. Madame Nashiru smiled. He clenched his silverware; the elastic skin stretched and contracted, stretched and contracted.
Tokyo? Tokyo was a barbaric city twenty years ago when she was there singing Aïda but perhaps Madame Nashiru did not understand what Madame Sophie Simeoni had meant to say by barbaric city and that was why she kept smiling. Her daughter wanted to make her be quiet—would she just be quiet with knots, flames, seas, steel blades, behind shut doors or in bed howling, sleeping, trembling? Just be quiet? Round, gray, soft, and voracious, they did not seem to concern themselves with the golden air of the dining room or the other guests or the time or the pearls. They swallowed air, words, food; they squinted, took one mouthful after another, and a shining ring formed around their mouths until the daughter looked at her mother more than the mother looked at her daughter, she gestured at the napkin, and the two wiped their mouths, their fingers sinking into the fabric that wrapped around their chins. Katja came with the bottle of wine. But where they most liked Aïda, according to Madame Simeoni, was in Buenos Aires. The lament in the second act had earned ovations and one night in the recently inaugurated Columbus Theater in the presence of the president of the republic, she had to repeat it three times, three.
Madame Helena nodded: she foresaw a new shining aureola, this time of broth forming around Madame Sophie Simeoni’s mouth and cream seeping out of the corners of her lip
s and bonbons sticking to her teeth. She leaned over to tell Madame Nashiru about the fame Madame Simeoni had enjoyed around the world years earlier. She also pointed out her daughter’s devotion in caring for her now that her health was in decline and the public, except for a few experts, had forgotten her. The ingratitude and the whalebones in her corset bit Madame Helena’s heart: she kept her back straight the way a juggler kept colored balls in the air one over another, like soap bubbles, always about to trick her and slip and escape, straight and upright, an inevitable arc in her viscera and no other concession to softness, buttocks firmly pressed against the chair, shoulders in a straight line parallel to her waist, and eyes everywhere. At some instant, in some corner, at times a whimper might awaken, for which she had to sit even straighter, be obstinate, maintain primacy, any advantage no matter how small over disorder, and block the pain or even the hint of an ache. Madame Helena preferred dessert without cream at the evening meal but since this was a special day, she had ceded to Lola’s suggestion. She signaled to Katja: the General’s cup was empty again.
Eyes empty, fish swimming in a sea of eyes, everything white including the storms, terminating in a silver platter looking at the ends of the teeth of a fork that was nearing, penetrating, passing through a body that opened obediently: all the soldiers, the entire battalion was one body maintained and contained by one voice, one music, and one order. There in front, empty glass, empty field, and only one more body needed to arrive unstained. Emptiness seemed too much like chaos: the General did not want to confess that in the nothingness between bodies, it was impossible for him to support the order of clothing, accessories, details, and so, with the platter at his side, he had to place his hands over that body, take the serving utensils, render it to pieces the way a battalion fell to pieces before a machine gun, serve himself a slice of meat and return victorious walking over new earth asking himself how it was possible that I, with a useless shield, scuffed boots, tooled leather breastplate tainted with sweat and blood, how have I become the lord of this. Anxious with all his might to be back in his room, in the darkness, to save himself the sight of another mouthful, he obliged himself to swallow, for he had survived far away, exited into emptiness without gender or words, stubborn and bitterly opaque. This woman did not seem like a woman but like an erroneous boy, that smooth body, obedient face, that foreigner, that enemy naked and with her back to him, narrow buttocks beneath that blue dress, could look like a boy, a stable boy, a god without attributes, his soldiers, pearls like bone tears sliding on an open wound, the itinerary of the park at dawn, everything lost contour and sharpness and Madame Helena spoke serenely, terribly, unmistakably, and perfectly in charge of the situation, in the tea ceremony, as women do when they are determined to make everyone else happy.
Young Gangulf never drank tea: the Titans, in his opinion, subsisted on the rocks of time, and he, when he arrived punctually, had chocolate. I prefer the rocky, gray, and firm face of the General like a Herschel plaque to the yellowish face of the old idiot; I don’t like the round faces of women; above all I prefer the shrieking roaring face lost in terror. He said as if pirouetting in a thundering circus that all ceremonies are mysterious, battles, communion, prizes, opening nights, is it not so, dear madame?
Downstairs, Lola sighed. Katja measured the wine left in the bottles and wondered whether Wulda was awake or had fallen asleep sitting in a chair low enough for children, her head resting on the white wall, mouth open, hands on her skirt. Sleep, Luduv said, standing in the windowsill, sleep, the snare of sleep.
Part Two: Toni Plays
13. A Tiny Thought
A tiny thought crossed the street like a flash of lightning; it was an orange-hearted blue spark that would have been invisible on a sunny day but that day was going to be gray, all the gray of winter’s end, after being white and before being green, gray clouds and blankets on horses, a tiny thought round as a wish crashed against the dry facade when dawn came to Scheller Street. People might be sleeping behind closed windows, behind balconies blind as a mole or chrysalis, bodies might move in spite of themselves imprisoned by hindering blankets or a coat swimming in dark dreams, abandoned and vulnerable; there might be a single sigh made from all the air of all the breaths, mouths might slacken and eyelids tremble, cramps might grip the elderly and terror the children; and the entire sweet night slid toward the smooth river where dawn would come to this part of the world. What had been Mill Alley was still a ravine in the darkness down which flowed women dressed in mauve or sky blue or white, fat Hoenken sniffing the approaching rain, the most enchanting of hosts, servant women with wide hips who carried the change from purchases hidden in their apron pocket, Novalis in search of the primal fire that arises from the center of the earth. A tiny eagerly buoyant thought touched the favored foreheads and flourished in halberds, rockslides, and drumrolls: barely light, the overcast day barely born in cold dispersed the greetings of men, the measured steps of girls, the chatter of servants; morning hardly entered the mouth and ears of the perplexed merchant; softly at first and then louder, filling corridors and antechambers with echoes, the padding footsteps of the nursemaids and wet nurses on the wooden floors of their rooms. Breasts filled with milk ached, fingertips touched lips rough with sleep, hands reached for door handles and towels, the struggle ceased between legs in the folds of eiderdown tossed to the feet of beds, the scent of coffee rose; and with the first voice that established wakefulness, anguish and intrigue reinstated themselves. A tiny sinuous thought like a whim returned from the street to the interiors of the houses, reflected, multiplied, changed into a vision that flooded the eyes and tightened the throats; and mothers sighed and nursemaids knit their brows.
The houses on Scheller Street had moldings, weathervanes, balconies, alcoves, lightning rods, and wide carved polished doors that were varnished once a year. Storms that came from the north struck the facade of Madame Helena’s boarding house and her neighbors’ but the houses across the street received southern sunlight in winter and the easterly or mountain winds that made the panes in the windows shake. The hallways retained the outside chill, the rooms were wrapped in family intimacy and the smell of soup or tuberose; funeral processions left the doors, prodigal sons returned through them, messengers left, visitors entered hauling pride and errors, trying to hide the ragged ghosts they carried on their waistbands or hatbands, the fatigue, the acid breath of an argument. In contrast, the windows and especially the balconies announced the world: one could open the curtains, lean out, spy, return inside, leave them half-open, and illuminate rooms thanks to them, wait, call someone, secretly observe, and even be surprised. Prudent openings, the windows of the houses on Scheller Street eased themselves awake in the mornings with the flurry of cleaning girls, fulfilled by fringes, rosettes on the cushions, bedspreads, coats, and blankets folded over parapets and bannisters. Hurrying, collars warm, hands in gloves, boots shined, little eyes alert, through the processional doors polished once a year left the daughters and sons; the older ones alone and clumsy, helmet-like hats on their heads, straps across their chests under their coats held books hitting their hips at each step as they ran after someone or pretended to; the smallest ones with a nursemaid or servant; girls with headscarves and caps edged with lace, homework in a bag embroidered with initials; boys with a short hooded cape edged with leather, satchels with books: a tiny thought moved the singing feet, the trail of voices, the greetings of the maids or snubs behind the words, the intention, the haste, a tiny impatient thought evasive as a lie. At that moment Lola sits before the white table and Wulda pours a trickle of cream into a cup of thick chocolate that sinks and is lost, with two toasted marzipan rolls the color of grapes in the sun, dark, translucent, and frosted with pink, crunchy looking and rough to the taste, and she thinks of the mystery of stems, sap in veins, the water that feeds wood, the roots like wise tentacles although she would not use those words: strange things, she says, presences, as if they were little animals that cannot be heard and ye
t proper Christians, heads held high, saying no, not at all. Her creeper, for example, climbs immoderate and nimble, perhaps overwhelmed by snow and cold, vengeful now that the ice is melting and the river flows agitated and noisy, presumptuous as a rich man and arrogant as a boss, never caring at all for the coming sea, bursting its banks, lanced by yellow light and white fish; the change of season has brought her here and she has never felt like this, her arms useless, an enormous space opening in her head and pushing her palate down, ears out, hair falling from braids and buns while her entire queenly body, stomach and kidneys, belly and bladder, piles into a hardening heap and gives her this appetite, these desires, this impulse, this force that turns like a wheel at the end of the world and consumes itself in mere light, never in labor. At night sleep comes immediately and she stubbornly sleeps a couple of hours but then she suddenly awakes as if obliged to climb the walls of a well where she fell without knowing how or when, and light enters filtered by the shutters as consolation. She herself is like a whim of the plants: there are dishes she liked a year ago that now she will not taste and even dislikes preparing; big meals but without grace or elegance that she would never cook even for Café Netzel, and if she thinks about them they take over her thoughts and dance, making her mouth water until she frightens them away, irritated, ill humored, like the buzzes entering her head through her ears when a storm is coming from far away which at that moment only the body feels and it is time to put screens in the windows to keep out flies trapped in minuscule whirlwinds of dust and dirt. Perhaps she is sick, perhaps in fact death is courting her, perhaps what she needs is a man who will stay at her side a little longer, all her life, a week, two months, until the creeper grows and raps around the frame she has placed on the wall and reaches Miss Esther’s window up there and makes her life a little happier. Lola’s life is like a decoy, thunder, magic fire, sun on the windowsill: it would be a pity for it to end, if suddenly she were to ask herself but what is happening to me and discovered that she was dead and no more sputtering, no more reaching around to her back to let out her corset, laughing. But that should not be, why should it, who announced it to her, between what columns did she pass where she failed to see the angel of life. Golden marzipan, pink when baked, soft belly, voices of children in the street, thaw and flood, Lola thinks about Sunday and smiles to herself and tells Wulda to eat another roll, one more, she really needs it now that her poor mother has died and she is so sad, as transparent as a soul from holding back so many tears, come on, eat one, come on, one more.
Prodigies Page 7