When Anselm came home an hour later Helen met him at the door, helped him off with his coat, told him about the strange calls, and asked him why he had three telephones in the study. As he removed his scarf and carefully draped it over the coat stand hook, he chewed on the inside of his mouth, absorbed in the echo of the silent phones. “Those telephones were disconnected years ago,” he said, “after my parents died, in fact. My father used to work from that study,” he added, “that’s why there were three phones. I’ve never had a need for telephones. I don’t even have an account.”
They walked through the house towards the study, and when they arrived at the door the phones started ringing again. Anselm, without changing pace, entered the room and went straight towards the file cabinet. He picked up the receiver—the ringing in the room stopped—and spoke into it. There was a moment of silence while he listened and then he spoke again, so rapidly that Helen had a hard time keeping up with his words. She did hear her name repeated several times and understood the conversation was largely about her. Anselm hung up.
“Well,” he said. “Well.”
Helen waited for him to go on.
“That was Frau Kehl, my mother’s old companion. Funny, I thought she’d be dead by now. She must be 90 years old. They used to call her my governess, although we knew better. She was asking after you. Tell me, Helen, how is it that you know Frau Kehl?”
Frau Kehl. Mrs Kehl. The woman on the train. This was too bizarre for words. How could there be a connection between Frau Kehl and Friedrich Anselm? It was intolerable enough that she was caught up in the web between Rosa, Anselm, even von Ehrlach, but if Frau Kehl was part of this too it meant that the web was snaring her like a trap. She was suffocating under the tangled slender filaments of coincidence. Her answer to Anselm’s question was rushed and incoherent. “I met her on the train to Vienna, if it’s the same woman. It must be, I don’t know her at all. But if it was the same woman, I don’t know how she would know to reach me here. She gave me the ring that you felt in the box.”
“Ah, the ring,” said Anselm. “Could you describe the ring to me, please?”
Helen told him about the gems, the gold, the petite size, and the name engraved inside of it, that coincidentally said, “To Helen.”
Anselm nodded, “That’s her first name, too. Helen. Was she traveling by herself when you met her?”
“No,” said Helen, “she was with a young man. He was very well dressed and wore mascara!” Nerves jangling, she burst out laughing at the memory. Laughter had finally escaped, but as evidence only of tension, not happiness.
“You don’t say,” said Anselm, not sharing her amusement. “And just where did she get on the train?”
“I don’t know,” replied Helen, “the train had been moving for about a half hour before she came into my compartment. She pointed out that she was making a 5-hour trip to Vienna so I guess she must have gotten on at, uh, Salzburg.”
“Munich,” Anselm corrected. “She would have gotten on in Munich. I made that trip with her very often—Munich to Vienna and back again. It was where she was born, where she called home until she moved in with us. But she was never able to entirely cut her ties there. She always traveled with incredible amounts of luggage and was always rude to everyone.”
“Did she have a phobia about traveling with her back to the engine?”
“Indeed. The number of times we had to move compartments in order to avoid this was,” he paused, “inconvenient.”
“Was she missing a finger?”
“Yes, she was. The third finger of the right hand.”
“How would she know that I was here, I wonder,” mused Helen.
“Probably because that was me on the train with her.” Helen stared at him in disbelief. “Not me personally, you understand. But a substitute. Ever since, well, ever since many years, she has taken to finding young men who look like I did when I was young. She travels with them—they are her traveling companions—until they lose their,” he hesitated, “youthful corruption.” He was very still, his immobility along with his absurd response clear evidence that Frau Kehl’s telephone call had shaken him up. “Well, Helen,” he continued, “I’m sorry I won’t be able to say good-bye to you later when you go; I must leave now. Please take these as a parting gift.” He handed her his glasses that he always carried with him but that she had never seen removed from his pocket. “And this.” He walked to one of the shelves, pulled out a pocket-sized treatise on Vesalius published in Latin, and handed it to her. She watched him leave the room, walk down the hall and turn to go up the stairs that led to his private quarters. “Good-bye, and thank you,” she called out to him, tears in her eyes.
Alone again, Helen went to the bookcase that housed Anselm’s family photo albums. She put the one that he had shown her onto the desk, along with the other two. All three were quite large and meticulously covered in luxurious dark green leather and were bound at the edge with gold covered rope. There was a cartouche on the front of each binder, and two of them were ornamented with Anselm, the family name; Wien; and a set of dates: the first one read 1900—1925, the second one 1926—1944. The cartouche on the third one, the one containing Anselm’s own photographs, lacked the dates.
Helen sat down and opened the earliest one first, feeling somewhat guilty for this invasion of Anselm’s privacy. The composition of each page had been done lovingly and carefully—the photographs were placed to complement each other and the script below each, in white ink, was unobtrusive. Helen read them slowly, finding the handwritten German words more difficult to translate than typescript. A family history of grandmothers, cousins, babies, friends, birthdays, weddings, births, even deaths—Anselm’s grandfather’s corpse resting in his lavish coffin had been dutifully photographed from several angles and labeled—was chronicled in the binder. The second held more of the same, although the handwriting had changed to printing and, though tidy, was less refined. The tenor of the photographs changed as well. The earlier photographs had been stiffly posed; these, although still formal, had a more relaxed quality about them. Frau Kehl, labeled in the book as Fräulein Kehl, first appeared in the pictures early in 1927, at the age, Helen calculated, of nineteen. The year Anselm was born. She was, if possible, even thinner than when Helen had seen her on the train. Her hair was done up in a similar style, but in these pictures she looked like a Gibson girl, probably, Helen supposed, out-ofdate for the times. In the pictures following her arrival she wore what appeared to be the same dress in every picture: dark cotton or silk material, mid-calf length, wide white cloth sash resting low on the formless hips, short sleeves. The change of season from summer to fall brought the addition of a dark, rimmed hat and a sombre overcoat the same length as the dress. Almost whenever she appeared in a photograph she was accompanied by one or more family members. As the years went by Helen could see Fräulein Kehl turning into the woman that she met on the train, her clothing and demeanor becoming gradually more and more extravagant. Towards the end of the album, around 1942, Helen found several photographs of Fräulein Kehl and Anselm together. The first one was taken from far enough back to show that they were prepared to go on a trip. They stood dignified and severe, about a foot apart, and Anselm was grinning contrarily, gesturing to the luggage piled up behind them into a pyramidal heap. The second one showed the two of them closer up—Anselm was wearing mascara and was unmistakably the twin of the young man who had been Frau Kehl’s companion in the train. The cascading hair, the clothing, even the faintly smirking look were not only similar; as far as Helen could remember, they were identical.
She flipped to the last page, past years and years of the distant memories that these photos held. On the very last page was the photograph of Rosa, clumsily overexposed yet carefully vignetted. She had no trouble recognizing her although the portrait showed little resemblance to the present-day woman. No, she only had to look in a mirror to see what had been, what still was, what would be. It was Rosa, and it was her.
CHAPTER 12
BUDAPEST
Helen left for Budapest with Rosa’s photo burning a hole in her instincts. She would at least go this far, to Budapest, just three and a half hours from Vienna, after all. The trip was uneventful, the train nearly empty, and although the heating worked only sporadically, she was quite comfortable and was left alone except for a brief interlude when the door opened, admitting a bearded, dark-haired young man in rolled-up shirt sleeves and jeans. She’d seen him a short while earlier pacing up and down the corridor in staccato reconnaissance. He sat down on the seat opposite, smiled at her, and said “Hi” in North American English.
“Hello,” she replied.
“Where’re you going to?” he asked, looking around the compartment, assessing her luggage.
“Budapest,” she answered. “Where are you going?”
“Thessaloniki, and then Athens. Why’re you going to Budapest?”
“I’m curious to see it, I guess. Why not?”
“Yeah, why not?” he shrugged, sat back and dangled his arms between flopped apart legs. His knees moved towards each other and apart in a kind of restless rhythm.
“What’s your name?” he asked suddenly. “Mine’s Jeff.”
“Helen,” she replied.
“Pleased to meet you, Helen.” He hopped up and shook her hand. He sat back down and started tapping the toes of his right foot. Shivering slightly, he rolled his sleeves down and buttoned up the cuffs, covering up tufts of black hair that should have kept him warm.
“Where’s your luggage?” she asked him, not really caring.
“It’s in my compartment. Up in first class,” he winked. “You’re from Canada, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am. Where are you from?”
“Nebraska. Seventh Heavenville. At least compared with this dump.”
“You mean the train?”
“No, Europe. The place is a dump. Pollution, crap, too many people. You don’t think it’s a dump?”
“No, actually, I like it.”
“You wanna know how come I can tell you’re from Canada?”
“Ah, sure,” she said, not at all sure she wanted to know.
“First of all, you got hair like wheat.” He sat forward and moved closer—inspection time. “Second, you you got eyes like…” He searched her face, lost, at a loss. “Second,” he repeated, “you’ve got,” he settled, “nice clean skin, like the sky.”
Oh God. A come-on artist, but what had disconcerted him? Helen resisted the magnetism between her hands and her skin. Skin like the sky? It’s eyes like the sky. Blue eyes. Sky-blue eyes. But her eyes were brown, forgettable brown, the brown of the earth. What color were her eyes to this guy? She resisted the pull between her hands and her eyes. Goodness knew that her fingers were teaching her so much lately, but they couldn’t show her what he saw of her eyes, not even her own eyes.
Jeff had been only momentarily perplexed, it seemed. He was rambling on. “Thirdly,” he paused for emphasis, “you’re traveling second-class. Me, I got one of those Ur-Rail passes. Lets me go first class. I betchu buy your ticket from station to station. Never know where you’re going next. Right? Right.” He nodded to himself and then shuddered. “Man, it’s cold in here!”
“Mmm, sure is, Jeff.” Maybe this was his cue to depart. It was.
“Well, see ya around. I’m going back to where they’ve got some heat.” He looked at her one more time and left, shaking his head.
“Bye, Jeff,” she called out after him and then catapulted herself over to the mirror, but her eyes couldn’t teach her any better than her fingers: every way she looked—down, up, sideways—showed a different color, a different shade, a different intensity, a thousand eyes, irises iridescent, kaleidoscopic, eyes to drown in, eyes to go blind in, eyes to go mad in.
Helen had no plans for Budapest beyond her appointment at the Semmelweis—a day, two days, who knew. She hoped for confirmation that Martin had made it this far; then she would plan her next step, whether to return to Vienna or go on to Padua.
She ran the gauntlet of pension hawkers lining the platform at the Budapest train station, regretting the spoken and unspoken nos to each and every one of them. Her mother would have told her that they deserved better than her abrupt dismissals, that she should have explained why she preferred to deal with the hotel booking agency, why it was better for all concerned to put a third person in the middle of negotiations for a room, any room, no matter how simple.
Lodgings secured, as she stood outside the booking office, tucking away her money, receipt, map, her general detritus, still they approached, earnest young women, sly old men, a persistent drunk, older kindly women who might have taken her hands in theirs and reassured her.
She took a taxi to the Gellért, the hotel that Martin had gone to, before heading to her pension, noticing the twitching smirk that spread across the driver’s face when she announced the name of the hotel.
So much for her idea that Martin stayed at second-rung hotels: this place was stunning. But within minutes she discovered that Martin had never actually spent a night there but had only used it as a mailing address (a journalist’s privilege). So with nothing more than a scattering of Martin’s telephone message slips, she marched out of the hotel, past her taxi driver who was waiting at the entrance for a fare, and off to find the pension.
Budapest was colder, if possible, than Vienna. Her wardrobe was suited for the vagaries of normal city winter but Budapest surpassed that. There was also the language problem to confront: the idea of learning even a few words of Hungarian to get by for just a night or two seemed overwhelming, especially considering the difficulties she had been having in German, a language that she had taken the pains to study. She hoped that her German would stand her in good stead. Normally she would have prepared herself, would have bought a phrase book, practiced useful words, simple expressions; instead, all she had was a pathetic photocopy of fatuous sentences rendered even more useless by the lack of a pronunciation guide.
Although the pension she was booked into was adequate, operating out of the owner’s apartment, the welcome was inauspicious. A dim foyer led to a gloomier stairwell and a positively dark lobby, lit only by the flickering light of a television set sitting on a makeshift receptionist’s counter.
There sat a wizened little man with no teeth, wearing a limp, green cardigan and baggy black and white houndstooth trousers held up by frayed suspenders, reading a newspaper by the light of the set. A radio played music in the background; Helen thought she could hear “I’ll never be your bodyguard,” sung over and over. The horizontal hold of the television set had gone, so bands of grey and black rolled up and down the screen. Helen ignored the TV after glancing at it briefly before filling out the register. The old geezer tossed her passport and booking slip into a drawer, checked his watch and then pressed one of the buttons on the back of the set. He banged the side panel a couple of times and changed channels. The screen sputtered, and the horizontal bands slowed down and steadied out to reveal a butterfly box, only the box wasn’t full of butterflies; it was filled with spiders of varying sizes and shapes. The stationary c
amera position was unwavering, recording with painful detail this single view. Helen stood transfixed, waiting for a change: a switch to a second camera, the voice of a narrator, opening credits, anything.
She couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
The man filled the pocket of silence with something in Hungarian, adding a proud smile. She returned the smile, an automaton’s gesture. The trance was broken; she rocked on her heels, impatient. As the seconds ticked by even the clerk started to fidget. Then he began clucking rapidly and pointing to one of the spiders in the upper right hand corner, a large one with a diamond-shaped pattern on his back. Helen squinted. Then she saw it; it moved one of its legs. Triumph. She’d seen the film’s crowning moment. Now she could leave in good grace, escaping down the hallway towards the rooms.
The hour spent settling in was consumed in front of the mirror, examining each eye, each iris, each retina in the same motionless detail of the camera that had recorded the spiders, searching for fragments of the brown they had once been. Giving up, she retrieved her passport, was given keys to doors; and for the rest of the evening pursued a warmer layer of clothing, a Hungarian dictionary, and a café or restaurant where she could recuperate from the cold.
By the time she returned, the old man had been replaced by a young, dark-haired boy, probably about fifteen years of age. He had school books spread out on the counter, but the television was blaring and he was watching a wrestling match. As before, there were no other lights on in the lobby except from the television set and even the hallway heading towards the bedrooms was in darkness. Helen asked where the shower was. Without moving his eyes from the screen and with mouth slightly open, he got up and pointed to the end of the darkened hallway.
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