The Sensualist

by Barbara Hodgson

  “Doesn’t she look wonderful?” Günther’s insistent voice from behind her reminded her that she and Rosa were not alone. Seeing his face so pleading and yet so euphoric, she nodded silently to him. Günther was clearly head-over-heels with Rosa, but Helen somehow doubted that Rosa could love him back. No, doubt was too cautious a word. Helen looked Günther over again, but assessingly, wisely, and she knew she could never love him. He was too weak, he loved too deeply, too completely, too surrenderingly He kept nothing back. And if Helen couldn’t love him, neither could Rosa.

  “Is there something wrong with my make-up?” Rosa asked imploringly.

  “No, Rosa, nothing is wrong, nothing at all,” Helen said.

  “There is something the matter!” Her hands fluttered about her face like large hummingbirds, lightly touching nose, cheek, chin, earlobe, hair. She grabbed her wig with both hands and shifted it about, rubbing it around her bald head. Günther was watching every movement of his new bride with his rapt look of love and attention.

  “I’m always so perruqued! There! Is this better?” Rosa asked, leaving the wig slightly askew. Without waiting for a reply, she popped her bottom denture out of her mouth and mumbled to Helen, “Here, hold this.” She stuck the still-wet appliance in Helen’s hand. She then removed the top one, looked at it, and zipped it back in. Helen nearly threw up at the sight of the glistening pink and ivory, but managed to notice that the denture had, in the place of its second premolar, a pearl. Too much was happening too fast. As she reached to pick the pearl out of its socket, Rosa grabbed the denture back and replaced it. Helen hopped off the bed and ran to the sink, where she washed her hands over and over, rubbing them vigorously with the tough green laundry soap supplied by the hotel management.

  “That’s revolting stuff,” exclaimed Rosa. “How did you end up in this squalid dive anyway? It’s full of Turks!”

  That explained the men in the lobby. Helen shrugged.

  “You really must celebrate with us, Helen,” said Rosa, putting out her hands and drawing Helen back towards her. “Come out with us and celebrate.”

  “Where, Rosa?” asked Helen coldly, drying her hands. “It’s the middle of the night.” She would never forgive Rosa for that puerile demonstration.

  “Pooh, what does that matter in Munich.”

  “No, I’m not going with you. You’re leaving and I’m going to go back to sleep.” She suddenly noticed that under all of the veiling and folds of material Rosa wore a black armband on her right arm. “Who has died, Rosa?”

  Rosa looked down at her arm, moving the tulle further out of the way and stretching her arm out fully to better display the armband. “I almost forgot,” she said, rearranging her expression into a mourning pout. “Your friend Friedrich Anselm has passed away.”

  Helen’s heart jumped, tripped over itself. An emerging wail was subdued before it had a chance to betray her. “Herr Anselm? But how?” Coming from Rosa, this could be a trick. She had to be on guard, not let her defenses down; to even think of it.

  “You tell her, Günther,” Rosa sobbed theatrically. “It is too much for me.” Helen looked at her in disgust, knowing full well that the histrionics were a sham. Rosa had no tears left. She knew that; she had worn her eyes. She knew every tiny part of Rosa’s vision, and it had been decades since her tear ducts had sacrificed their offspring to soothe the hardened surface of her eyes.

  Günther hoisted himself up from his kneeling position, groaning and creaking as he did so. “Fire,” he said. He walked over to the rickety chair and sat back down with a wheeze. “He caught on fire.” To emphasize the situation he lit another cigarette. Maybe it was true; Günther couldn’t lie. The panic she could feel rising in her was fanned by Rosa’s continued bawling.

  Rosa suddenly stopped and pulled a white beaded handbag out from under her. She ferreted about in the bag while Helen waited anxiously for Günther to fill in more details. Rosa, not finding what she was looking for, wiped her tearless eyes with the hem of her dress, leaving a streak of blue and black not only on the dress but across her face. She fussed some more, eventually pulling out a folded newspaper. There were several pages dated from the day previous. Helen scanned the headlines, lurching to a stop at the heading, “DISTINGUISHED SCHOLAR DIES IN FIRE. Herr Friedrich Anselm, distinguished collector of rare anatomical treasures, perished in a fire that consumed his house and his valuable collection yesterday evening at 2300. Fire fighters and emergency crews rushed to the scene but arrived too late to save the collector’s life. The fire took two and a half hours to extinguish and caused the evacuation of neighboring houses. Herr Anselm left no survivors. Please see obituary, page 42.”

  Helen scrambled through the rest of the paper, looking for the obituary. The second page was covered with a full-page advertisement for a fashion show, and the next page had the international weather report and a selection of exclusive houses for sale. She looked at Rosa inquiringly.

  “Yes?” said Rosa, her face once again composed.

  “The obituary?” asked Helen curtly. She handed the paper to Rosa, who shook it about as if the obituary might be clinging annoyingly to one of the sides.

  “Didn’t you bring it, my love?” asked Günther solicitously.

  “Yes, of course I did,” Rosa snarled, “it’s here somewhere.” She opened up her bag and looked again, turning it upside down and emptying the contents onto the bed. Among the items that fell out was Rosa’s passport. As Helen reached out for it, Rosa snatched it away in a voice reinforced by sarcasm, “Thanks so much for seeing to its return.” And her expression was unmistakable: “You can see what it’s got me,” Helen read on the contorted face.

  In addition to the passport were several thick rolls of German marks, Austrian schillings, Hungarian forints, and Bulgarian leva, rolled and bound in elastic bands. The money, for some reason, reminded Günther of the lock of hair.

  “The hair, Helen, show Rosa the hair!” he cried out.

  “Later, Günther, can’t you see the poor girl is upset?” Rosa waved him silent. The passport out of sight and forgotten, she unwound the wad of schillings and found the obituary rolled up in with the bills. “There,” she said triumphantly, handing the clipping over to Helen. “See, I told you I brought it,” she cooed to Günther, throwing him a kiss that brought a boyish blush to his face.

  These machinations were lost on Helen, who had buried herself deeply in the obituary.

  Friedrich Franz Anselm (1927-1998), illustrious and sublime collector of art, died tragically yesterday in his home in Vienna. The only child of the controversial speculator Franz Hermann Anselm (1890-1965) and leading doyenne of Vienna Society, Helga Louisa Anselm (1892—1991), Herr Anselm began his distinguished career as an expert in anatomical art by studying medicine at Vienna’s University. He traveled prodigiously, both to augment his formidable collection and to consult for galleries and museums around the world.

  Born in Vienna, he also had strong ties to Munich, home of his governess and close friend Fräulein Helen Kehl (see accompanying obituary). By 1965 he had claimed to have made the circuit between Vienna to Munich over one hundred times. Never enjoying full vigorous health, Herr Anselm became clinically blind in 1967 but did not permit his condition to interfere with his collecting.

  Friedrich Anselm remained single all of his life and leaves no heirs. The unfortunate circumstances of his death, a spectacular fire of unexplained origins, also destroyed his precious collection. It is roughly estimated that approximately 14,000 irreplaceable sketches, paintings, engravings, books, photographs, figures, and instruments were consumed by the blaze.

  Funeral services…

  Helen folded the piece of paper back up and said quietly, “Would you please leave, now?” It was true; Rosa hadn’t tried to deceive her. How long could she restrain the grief that was pounding against her head, her ribs, pounding to get out? It was so powerful it stopped her breath, it battled with other long-lost griefs. The others she had never acknowledged
, the ones that had been weaker. They were still there, not ready to cede their places. They had become too comfortable hiding in empty corners. “Get out!” she yelled suddenly.

  Rosa replied evenly, “We wouldn’t think of leaving you alone. Besides, you must show me my hair.”

  “We should go, Rosa.” Günther was quietly inching towards the door.

  “I want my hair.” Rosa’s petulant tone held no possibility of compromise.

  “If I give you your hair will you go?”

  “Oh, Rosa doesn’t need her hair back, do you sweetheart? She has such nice hair now.” Günther leaned over, gently swept part of the veil away, and carefully undid one of the pins, running the freed strands between his fingers. He just as carefully rolled it back up and replaced the hairpin.

  Helen took a deep breath, grabbed her shoulder bag from under the bed, removed the box, opened it up and pulled the tress out, handing it to Rosa, who was sitting like a Buddha, waiting with outstretched palms. She left the book open to the now-empty oval cut into the pages. Rosa stroked the lock as though it were a beloved pet. “Oh well,” she sighed, replacing it into the cavity, “it is of no use to me anymore. What else have you got in here now?” She picked through the objects—tried on Anselm’s glasses over her own then fingered through the loose pages of the Latin-English dictionary. “Such a beautiful language,” she declared with uncharacteristic gentleness. “Tactus libentia,” she was now reading from the title page, “the pleasure of touch. Videndi miraculum, the wonder of sight. Odorandipotentia.” She lingered over the long i.

  Helen filled in the pause herself, “the power of smell.” The force of the words and of Rosa’s compassionate, exquisite recitation of them hit Helen hard. As hard as the distressing sensations she’d been experiencing in Rosa’s presence.

  Suddenly, without reading the rest, Rosa announced their departure, declaring, “It is imperative that we leave. You mustn’t keep us any longer as we have much to do.” Günther stood up obediently and helped Rosa off of the bed. The two of them walked out the door and down the hall without saying goodbye, leaving Helen at last to sorrow over the blind old dead man.

  HEARING

  CHAPTER 17

  GÜNTHER

  Mourners all know that grief retreats in the face of practicalities. Was Helen’s loss really Friedrich Anselm, a man as ethereal in life as in death? Or was it the visceral assurance of his library—his books, his pictures, his walls? Or was it the inexplicably intricate caches of whispered clues that materialized when least expected but most needed? Clues to? To Martin’s disappearance? Perhaps. But did she care anymore? She hadn’t thought of him for—hours? days? eons? Or were they clues to the whereabouts of the Vesalius woodblocks? Maybe. But were the woodblocks really just a single part of an even more complex enigma? And what did an anatomist who lived five hundred years ago have to do with Rosa, Anselm, or herself, for that matter?

  And the photograph of Rosa. Together with Rosa herself—a very personal memento mori. Living cells and silver nitrate molecules mixed into a bleak, sobering vision of the immediacy of time’s cruelty. She reexamined the photograph for the hundredth time, holding the print carelessly, letting her fingers stain the surface with their oils, their dust. What would it matter if her negligence ruined the print? She stole it, after all; she shouldn’t even have it. She stared at it for the thousandth time, but now through eyes freshly contaminated by the remembrance of Rosa’s tainting gaze. Rosa, too, said it looked just like her. Helen reached for a book of matches left lying on the bedside table and clumsily managed to strike one alight. She held a corner of the print to the flame, mesmerized by the curling smoke, the blackening edge. This is how the photo would have been destroyed if she hadn’t stolen it.

  After several futile attempts to get it to burn, it finally burst into flame, its surface and subject puckering and buckling. Helen watched it burn for the thousandth time. Cinders dropped into her lap; the heat scorched her fingers. In seconds the portrait was completely consumed. She painstakingly brushed the ashes into the palm of her hand, taking care to pick up stray flakes off the floor and the bed, ready to make a place for them in her box. But instead, she abruptly blew them into the air. Rosa’s face in blackened powdery clouds. Her face in an ashy fog. Their face. Spiraling. Into the air.

  It was time to hunt for a different hotel. This one, bad enough to begin with, was now impossible. No amount of scrubbing would remove the cremated traces from the room. They would always be there, floating, hovering; waiting to be breathed in, threatening to complete the transformation. She had to move, try to work out what to do next. Her first instinct had been to fly back to Vienna to find out what happened to Anselm, but sober reflection forced her to face the fact that she had only known him for a few weeks and that her presence would be unnecessary, and, perhaps even more, misunderstood.

  She paid her bill and headed out into the now-sunny streets of Munich. The city that morning had a fresh lively appearance, passersby were cheerful, coats were unbuttoned, reminding Helen of times when she pretended she was in love. This was the first moment of real sun that she ‘d seen since leaving for Europe six weeks earlier and the weight in her heart lightened just a bit. Stopping to consult her map, she headed back towards the train station and a street of decent-looking hotels that she had passed the night before. Her route took her along busy streets and past stores jammed with activity. She heard her name being called out and turned around, startled.

  It was Günther, all by himself, standing by a display in front of a bookstore, waving a book back and forth. She noticed, with surprise, that he was still wearing his custom official’s uniform and remembered that he had worn it the night before.

  “Hello, where’s Rosa?” she asked.

  Günther pulled a long face but said nothing.

  “Has she gone somewhere?” Helen persisted.

  “Yes,” he said, after a minute of thinking.

  “Where, Günther?”

  “I don’t know.” The long face pouted childishly.

  “I’d like to help,” she said, meaning anything but, “but I don’t know what she’s up to, honestly. Do you have a place to stay?”

  He shook his head.

  “Do you have any money?”

  He shook his head again.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Helen was getting impatient. Was she to babysit this man until Rosa showed up to turn her body inside out once again? “Come with me,” she said finally. The two of them headed away from the store, but the store owner started yelling and chasing after them.

  Helen looked down and saw that Günther still held the book in his hand.

  “Did you pay for that?” she demanded.

  “No,” he said, looking surprised to see it there at all.

  She took the book from him and walked back towards the bookseller who was, by now, quite close. She turned the spine towards her to read the title: I’ll Never be Your Bodyguard. The words rang a bell, but she couldn’t place them.

  The mix-up at the store straightened out, apologies and explanations exchanged, Helen and Günther again headed down the street. They soon found themselves on a street lined with modest hotels. The first one, called “The Südland,” had a charming, welcoming entrance.

  The next hotel was only two doors away and the next one after that just across the street, so before committing herself they walked around, sizing each one up. Since nothing could distinguish one from the other, she asked Günther his opinion in an effort to distract him. He shrugged his shoulders and then pointed to the second hotel, the “Siebert.”

  The rooms they chose were tiny and quiet, and far more expensive than the room she had had the night before. She checked them both in, after taking Günther’s passport from him, and asked the clerk about a good place to eat. She then dragged Günther to the restaurant nearby and they ate outside, basking in a ray of sun as weak and elderly as Günther himself.


  Günther picked at his food, alternating occasional nibbles with drags from his ubiquitous cigarettes.

  “How old are you?” she asked him.

  “Oh, seventy, I guess,” he answered morosely.

  “Cheer up, Günther, she’ll come back.”

  “No, she won’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She has all of my money.”

  “How did she get your money?”

  “She always was nasty.”

  “That was your money in her bag?”

  “Nasty, but beautiful.”

  “All of those marks and schillings?”

  “And leva and forints,” he added. “She still is beautiful, isn’t she, Helen?”

  “Yes, beautiful, Günther, but that was a fortune!”

  “All of my money.”

  “How did you get a hold of so much money at so short a notice? You only met her again,” Helen thought for a second, “yesterday morning.”

  “My savings.”

  “Yes, Günther, a lot of money. Where did you get it?”

  “I carry it with me.”

  “But why? Why not keep it in a bank?”

  He looked at her and said, “I am Bulgarian, and you ask ‘why not keep it in a bank?’ Why not give it away? Ja, like I just did. Nasty. Nasty, but beautiful. She still is beautiful.”

  Helen gave up, finished her lunch, and paid the bill. “Do you want to come back to the hotel, or do you want to finish eating?”

  “I’ll finish,” he said, staring at his plate with a distinct look of revulsion.

  “Alright. Don’t let him charge you again; I’ve paid already.”

  Back in her room, Helen planned her attack on the University Library. With a telephone book borrowed from the receptionist, she looked up the number and the address, and mentally formed the questions that she hoped would help her find answers to the whereabouts of the woodblocks. She had just started writing down possible openings when the clipping that Rosa had left with her the night before caught her eye. Unfolding it again, she reread the brief article about the fire. She picked up the loose, worn clipping of Anselm’s obituary and read for the first time the briefer obituary boxed alongside: that of Frau Kehl, aged ninety-one. It noted her birth in Munich, her long residence in Vienna, and listed as her only survivor, her husband, lover, companion, and son: Friedrich Anselm. Helen mused over the wording of the notice and wondered who on earth had written it. Not Herr Thüring, certainly; he was far from the Ks.