“No need to thank me, by the way, for the box, and stop staring at my mustache; you’re growing one too.” Helen’s hand flew to her upper lip. Rosa then said, “I see you’ve been around. Where did you get this charming item?” She pointed regally to Wilhelm’s tooth, lodged into the frame. “No, don’t tell me. Anybody who thinks that a second premolar is more valuable than a pearl will not be able to supply me with a rational answer.” She continued her inspection.
“A real pearl?” asked Helen.
Disbelief disfigured Rosa’s mouth. “On second thought, tell me where you got it.” She sighed when she heard it was from the elevator man. “I see you have already broken the glass.” She pulled out the shards and tried to fit them together. “And lost some of it as well.” She wrenched one of the bottles out of its hole. “Here, try some of this,” she said, undoing the cork. “It’s Euphrasia—good for your eyesight.”
Helen waved the outstretched hand away.
“What did you do with the glass?” persisted Rosa, tucking the bottle back into its slot.
“I gave it to a woman with a terrier,” objected Helen, “I didn’t lose it.”
Rosa shook her head. “She only had to ask me. There was no need for her to badger you. Well, what’s this,” she said approvingly. She was rolling the finger bone like a cigar, admiring the ring. “Now this is something.” She tried to yank the ring off but discovered, as Helen had, that it wasn’t to be removed. She tossed it back and pulled out the dog tag, asking if it had come from the terrier.
“Yes, it did,” said Helen. “Well, the woman who owned the terrier gave it to me.”
“What was its name?” asked Rosa.
“It didn’t have a name,” replied Helen, “But Dr von Ehrlach held the magnifying glass up to the dog tag, read the word etched onto the glass, and announced that he knew the dog.”
“And what word is etched onto the glass?” asked Rosa, squinting through the glass, trying to read it herself.
“Sohle” answered Helen. “It means soul or spirit, I think.”
“It means shoe sole, idiot,” snapped Rosa, who then looked surprised at herself. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. I hope I haven’t hurt your feelings.”
“No, that’s alright,” said Helen. “My command of German is quite limited. I’m used to making mistakes. But that does explain one thing…”
“What is that?” asked Rosa.
“He offered to find me a new pair of shoes,” said Helen.
“Who did, the doctor?”
“No,” replied Helen, “the dog.”
“Well, you should have taken him up on it,” said Rosa, “if only to be able to judge his talents. In spite of his standofrìshness, he has great taste.”
She ferreted around some more. “Aha, here is Louis’s gift to you,” she pried the engraving out from its place between the pages then glared at it. “ This is supposed to be a good reason for exchanging the pearl for a tooth?!” she fumed.
Helen remained silent.
“A very bad sign,” Rosa sighed. “Either that,” she said, brightening up, “or a very good one. Ask Herr Anselm to show you the secret of the box.” She replaced the objects, slammed the box shut, and struggled up out of the chair, wrenching herself free of its confining arms with a faint hiccup and a crack of splintering wood. “I must go.” She pinched the folds of her cape into obedient pleats and fluffed up her hair.
“But you haven’t explained to me what you are doing here or why you’ve made this appointment for me.”
“We can work together, if you’ll permit it. We’re both prisoners— I’m caught in a parody of humanity; you, you’re a frozen wasteland. We’ll see each other again, dear.” She stood caught in the warp of the distinctively Viennese doubled doors. “In the meantime the world will look as lost to you as it does to me. Goodbye.” And with that she turned the knob of the outer door and quietly escaped.
Helen crept over to where Rosa had been sitting and slid into the chair, as if trying it out for size. Where Rosa had been confined by its arms, Helen rattled loosely, but it wasn’t really the fit she was curious about; it was the view. From Rosa’s former throne she looked at the room, her bed, the deep indentations her body had left in the soft mattress. The view was as familiar to her as if their roles had been reversed.
It was now quarter to seven and the cigarette butt was cold. Helen dropped it into the box, pressing it like a blossom between two engravings, slid back under the covers, and turned over to go back to sleep.
CHAPTER 7
FRIEDRICH ANSELM
The sight of Herr Friedrich Anselm didn’t so much as soothe Helen’s eyes as capture them. He was withered and yellowed— not jaundiced but aged—absorbing light and surroundings; he was about seventy years of age with wavy, flowing, shoulder-length white hair. He could’ve been Jesus had Jesus lived to be an old man. Clearly proud of his crowning glory, he drew attention to it with the flight of his hands and the toss of his head. In a younger man the gestures would have been affected, but with him they were enchanting. Helen was captive from the second she crossed the threshold.
In Anselm’s presence the watering of her eyes abated, the tension eased, the intense glow that had followed her from her hotel faded as her irises shrank back to normal. The walk out from the hotel to the wealthy residential quarter had been frightening and perilous. She’d started out fine, no apparent vestige of the night’s torment. But a ray of sun reflecting off a window pane branded her with its piercing light—a condemnation, she sensed instantly—a damnation to never-ending wakefulness, to the loss of night. Oh well, she thought, who needs sleep when there are still so many days to perfect? Her eyes admitted the entire world, all of the illuminations, reflections, movements; this heightened vision overloaded her senses and ravaged her balance. She squinted, her eyelids open only a sliver, attempting to filter out as much as possible, but with these eyes her world was 360 degrees, and as sharp at the edges as in the center. Black was as intense as white, no relief in the shadows, no comfort to hide her head in the heavy woolen coats of passersby. No relief except with Friedrich Anselm.
He greeted her so naturally, helping her off with her coat, his papery hands rustling against her sweater; he handed her a daintily monogrammed handkerchief to wipe her still-streaming eyes; he treated her like a seldom seen but fondly regarded relative, a niece perhaps, a goddaughter. The more agreeable he was, the more confused she became. Just what was she doing here anyway? It was as if they shared a history—a long history—filled with love, secrets, pleasures, and emptied by recriminations, suspicions, jealousy. It was a complex history, unspoken yet immediately recognizable. She clumsily offered him a box of chocolates that she had bought for herself the day before, bought not because she desired them but because she didn’t want to disappoint the shopkeeper. He accepted them, first inspecting the box then whispering gratefully, “Belgian!” He immediately untied the ribbon, pried open the lid, and ate three chocolates, one after the other, before Helen could even remove her shoes. His naturalness gave her a chance to get her bearings and to recover from her traumatic walk.
Anselm popped two more chocolates into his mouth and led her through the house to his study, talking while chewing. As they walked along the corridor, Helen craned her neck this way and that, trying to take it all in. There were Turkish rugs (she could hear her mother exclaim, “Turkey carpets!” approvingly) spread about on the polished wood floors, vases full of fresh flowers tucked away in unexpected but perfect corners; smug, indulgent chairs lolled here and there, ready to seduce the indolent idler. It was the art on the walls, though, that was most enthralling. There were paintings and engravings of bodies: skeletons in postures of philosophical musing, muscle charts of the healthy and the diseased, blood circulation studies, cut-aways of bone, and details of surgical procedures. She absorbed as much as possible without actually pausing at any of the pictures. She wanted to interrupt Anselm and beg him to let her look but acquiesced
to move on, ever the dutiful guest. He was talking non-stop about the weather, the neighborhood, the style of architecture, the architect of his block. When they reached the study, Anselm held the door open to let her pass through. It was the most astonishing room that she had ever seen.
The ceilings elsewhere had appeared to be eleven or twelve feet high; in this room the walls stretched up at least twice that. Two stories of glassed-in library shelves were separated midway up by a balustraded passageway that ran along two adjacent sides of the room, but Helen could see no way to get up to the walkway. Along the other two sides, the walls were literally covered with framed paintings and reproductions of parts of the human body. Some of the pictures were packed in so tightly that they were actually overlapping. The effect was like a giant collage, heightened rather than diminished by the chaotic eclecticism of frame styles, sizes, and colors. Several tall ladders on runners leaned against the walls, their rungs stacked with more books and their supports sporting fluttering pieces of paper taped on helterskelter. Helen stood gaping at the expanse of books and pictures. The room was windowless and yet softly lit with even, natural light. She threw her head back further and saw that the illumination came from a large skylight.
Anselm stood by his desk, watching her with amusement. “Stunning, isn’t it?” he asked proudly. “Please sit down. Perhaps you’ll have a chance to explore after our conversation.”
Helen took a seat next to his desk.
After her discussion with Rosa early that morning, Helen had expected to meet someone who was blind, or nearly so, but Herr Anselm appeared to have no problems seeing. He wasn’t wearing glasses, although he did have a pair stuck in his breast pocket, didn’t walk with a cane, didn’t squint, and looked Helen squarely in the eye. Helen also noticed that when he put the box of chocolates down on the desk, there was only one left.
“So, Rosa has suggested to you that I may be able to reveal the secret of the box, has she? Hmm. I haven’t got a clue what she’s talking about; I’ve never seen this box before. Did she say anything else about it? I don’t even know how to open this thing.” While they had been chatting about his house, his collections, Rosa and various other things, he had been idly trying to raise the lid.
“No, she didn’t,” replied Helen, watching his long thin hands alternate between pressing panels of the box and smoothing back his hair. She was about to point out to him that he needed to swing back the plaque when he inadvertently did so himself. But rather than look inside the box he looked inside the plaque, the underside of which was exposed when it swung back, and removed the paper nestling under the glass. It was more than just an engraving—it was a booklet. Anselm opened it up—it appeared to be about 8 pages or so, cut into an oval just like its frame—and slowly started turning the pages. He ran his fingers down each page as he did so.
“Remarkable,” he said. “Truly remarkable. I suppose you realize what you have here?”
“No, actually,” said Helen. “I had no idea that the picture could be removed. What do I have?” Was this the secret?
“What picture?” he asked, as he handed the booklet to Helen.
“Why the picture on the top of the box, of course,” she said. “The one you removed.”
“Is there a picture there? Marvelous. What is it of?”
Helen opened the booklet to the first page and found on the lefthand page an illustration of the anatomy of sight and on the right-hand page, the regular punctures of braille.
“Do you mean you can’t see?” she asked, astounded.
“But of course I can’t see. I was under the impression that you were quite aware of that. However, I believe I can understand your confusion.” He plucked the last chocolate out of the box and stuffed it in his mouth.
“But your collection? How do you know what you have? And you move around so assuredly; you look straight at me.”
Anselm, still chewing, ran his fingers through his hair again, pushing it back away from either side of his face. “That was caramel,” he said finally. “I have coded every piece in my collection. The codes refer to episodes in my life that have special meaning, and by being reminded again of these particular moments I can recall the pleasures that the individual pieces of my collection have given me and continue to give me. It is an elementary but effective means of allowing me to appreciate what otherwise would have been stolen from me.
“As for moving about in my own house, I have had decades of practice, and I assure you that it is by no means a special feat. Lastly, as for looking straight at you, my eyes may lack vision but they are not weak—I have no reason to fear scrutiny nor do I fear scrutinizing. You realize, I hope, that the eyes are capable of picking up more than just the visible.
“This booklet you have shown me has done the very same thing even though I have never seen it before in my life. But you really must excuse me for talking so much. Since my eyesight has failed, talking is one of my few recourses to words.”
“But you can read braille,” said Helen.
“No, I can’t,” said Anselm. “The braille I read shows me pictures not words. I’ve never learnt how to read words in braille.” He smiled at her, a disarming, disingenuous smile, a deceptive smile; for he was lying; his lips had moved, barely, but they did move, as his fingers swept across the bumpy surface of the paper. “And besides, with so many languages floating through my head, clearing space for the philological aspects of braille would be a burden.”
She was not in the position to challenge him so instead asked, “How many languages do you speak? English, German, Dutch… ?”
“Oh, I’m not speaking of linguistics,” replied Anselm, twirling a lock of hair around his index finger. “I’m talking about voices. The individuals who conspire to talk to me, through me, in spite of me.”
“Do you mean voices in your head?” asked Helen hesitantly. She didn’t want him to think that she considered him deranged.
“Yes, I do mean voices in my head,” he replied firmly. “And if you don’t have voices in your head it’s because your voices are in your body.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Where were you raised?”
“Well, in Canada.”
“I should have known,” he sighed. “A typical North American education. Prepares you for nothing. It is a miracle that you’ve come this far. What else do you want to ask me?” He picked up the chocolate box, held it to his nose and took a deep breath, and then shook it and turned it over, dumping the few remaining crumbs onto his desk. He swept them up and tossed them into his mouth.
Helen hesitated. “I have so many questions. I don’t want to waste your time, but I find that I’ve lost my sense of order. I mentioned to you that I study anatomical art?” Anselm nodded. “Well, there’s a lot I would like to ask you about your collection, and I’d like the chance to study it as well, if there’s a chance we could discuss that…?” Her voice trailed off, in anticipation of a response. He nodded again.
“But, I guess, more importantly, there’s my husband.”
She faltered. Anselm sat up straight and put both hands on the table. “I so rarely have anything to do with other people’s husbands. I’m intrigued.”
“My husband was, is, Martin Evans, a journalist. He came to Vienna in December. Early in the month. He was doing a story about stolen anatomical art, no, sorry,” she remembered Ganz’s version, “about art forgeries.” Anselm’s sightless eyes were fixed on a distant corner of her face. She paused, searching for something else to say, then added, “He’s taken off without notifying me or his papers. I mean the editors at his papers. I’m trying to track him down.” She faltered again and let the silence absorb them both.
Anselm had been twisting his hair around his index finger throughout their conversation, but now dropped the lock of hair and held the finger in front of his eyes, moving it back and forth, the only movement in the room. Helen was fascinated. What did he see? Shadows? Motion?
“I never met your husba
nd,” he said finally.
“No, I didn’t imagine you had.” She had no reason to doubt him. “But since he was trying to track down this story, I thought you might have some ideas about the forgeries.”
“Where did you find out about me?”
“From Rosa Kovslovsky.”
“Yes, of course! You just showed me that box. Did she tell you I’d be able to help you find your husband?”
“No, I haven’t discussed him with her.”
“Then why did you come here?”
“I don’t know, Herr Anselm. But now that I’m here and see your incredible collection I can’t help but think that you might have some suggestions. According to the director of the medical museum, Martin was particularly interested in the Vesalius woodcuts. Do you know anything about them?”
“Oh, so you’ve met Peter Ganz?” The fact that Anselm’s voice was level didn’t make the fact that his lip curled maliciously any less shocking.
“Yesterday.” The malevolence marching across his face was mesmerizing.
“What did he have to say?” Always the even, detached voice.
“Just that my husband had met with him and that the original woodblocks had been destroyed in a bombing in Munich.”
“That’s correct. They were destroyed. They no longer exist.”
“But, you see, Rosa Kovslovsky also gave me a reproduction of a Vesalius woodcut. It looks quite convincing—faded, a bit worn, you know. I showed it to Peter Ganz. He’s kept it to be authenticated.”
“Kept it? Too bad. I would have liked to have seen it.” The irony of the statement was lost on Helen, who took his words at face value. The trust that she had already developed for Friedrich Anselm disturbed her but was unshakable.
“Could somebody be producing forgeries? Would there be a market for fakes?”
“Fakes? What is a fake? There have been countless editions of Vesalius produced over the centuries. Which of those would be fakes, might I ask?”
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