Seventeen Widows of Sans Souci

by Charlotte Armstrong

  There was a light fixture in the center of the ceiling and another over the washbasin. There was a towel rack within the tub area, and two more, one on either side of the basin.

  Everything gleamed, light on white.

  Nona turned her back upon this bleak interior and her attention to the door. It was a door that would not open. She strained at the knob, as she had so many times already. But there must be more than one way to open a door! She looked up and realized that this door (like her own) opened outward. She had long thought it unusual. Now she found it dismaying. For the hinges, in which there were pins which might have been teased out of their sockets, were not on the inside of this bathroom.

  Still, Nona looked around for a tool, an instrument, anything.

  The towel racks were of metal, but they were not the kind to slide out of metal holders. They were fixed solidly to the wall. On the washbasin there was a nailbrush. In the glass holder a plastic glass, and hanging beside it a toothbrush.

  So Nona opened the medicine cabinet and took inventory.

  Top shelf: A clinical thermometer. A bottle of aspirin. A package of gray plastic hairpins. A tiny box of corn plasters. A small bottle of iodine. A bottle of vitamin pills, almost full. A Gillette razor and a package of blades. Some emery boards. A metal nail file. A tweezers.

  Second shelf: A box of Band-Aids. Roll of adhesive. Box of sterile cotton. Toothpaste. Two bars of toilet soap. Bottle of spray deodorant. Comb. Hairbrush. Flat box of face powder and a puff. A small syringe.

  Bottom shelf: Box of Kleenex. Round box of dusting powder. Tall container, scouring powder. Bottle of shampoo, blue. Bottle of mouthwash, pink.

  Nona chose from this store the metal nail file. She took it to the door and tried to slip it between the tongue of the lock and the metal rim beyond which the tongue slipped into the jamb. The file scratched and slipped.

  “I’m not too experienced at lock picking,” Nona confessed.

  Tess said, “That lock isn’t too pickable. Something is very wrong. That door’s not just locked. It’s stuck. Something’s broken.”

  The file screeched and Tess winced.

  “Nona, you do realize that, sooner or later, the maid will be in. We are not incarcerated forever.”

  Nona stopped her efforts. “When does she come?”

  “Um. Elise was here yesterday. What’s today? Thursday?”

  “You mean she won’t be back until next Wednesday! Well, that’s too late.” Nona’s hands felt weak. “We’ll just make noise,” she pronounced. “We can yell our heads off.”

  “Who is to hear?”

  Nona began to consider their exact position in the building. They were against the corridor wall, yes, but thickly tiled away from it. Who went by in that corridor the other side of this wall? Nobody, except Daisy Robinson. When Daisy might come or go, they had no way of telling. “Or else, you know,” she said with animation, “we can let the water overflow. It will drip through somebody’s ceiling.”

  “Whose?” Tess said reflectively.

  Marie Gardner’s ceiling, Nona remembered. “Well, we can try,” she said. “We’ll have to try, Tess.”

  But she was thinking how very isolated they were in this wing. Leila Hull was not there, next door. Elna Ames, farther along, was not there. Georgia Oliver was constantly around the corner with Mrs. Fitz, not in this wing. There was nobody except Daisy Robinson, really living in this wing. Agnes Vaughn, in her snug center-of-the-building corner, would not hear anything, so far away.

  Nona remembered something else.

  Mindy Shane, who made it her business to know what went on in Sans Souci—Mindy Shane was home, sick!

  Nona sat back on her heels. “ Why didn’t Mrs. Fitz call anyone, tell anyone we were stuck in here? Didn’t she hear me?”

  Tess said nothing.

  The night fell deeper upon Sans Souci, the Thursday night. Morgan Lake was very tired and he slept. Oppie Etting yawned in the deserted lobby.

  Mrs. Buff was the last one in, returning from theatre and after-theatre supper, just before one A.M. After she had gone by to her own place with her gracious good night, Oppie fixed the telephone, locked the entrance door, and left, yawning … mooching through the silent patio where the trees shook their uppers, where his feet made a lonely echo within the walls. Above, the widows’ windows were all dark.

  Old women—without men. Oppie wasn’t feeling sorry for them. Is this what becomes of the little girls? Oppie was thinking, sleepily. Their dear little narrow waists, their smooth and lively little hips, the fresh skin on their faces, sweet as their sweet young breath. Their lips. Their good white teeth. The luxury of their hair that glints and lives on their young heads, these heads that ride so gracefully on their clear smooth graceful little necks.

  Lovely little girls, so lithe and wonderful and refreshing.

  What becomes of a man’s desire toward them? When he is pushing forty, and the belly rounding out, the legs spindling, the hair receding …

  Nothing becomes of the man’s desire toward them. It remains. Oh, a man could make a fool of himself. He doesn’t, he isn’t let, unless he has the money. No, he hobnobs with an old crow like Harriet Gregory, all sinew and tension, as soft and appealing as a coil of barbed wire.

  He went under the Spanish arch where blossoms hung from the vine. A man would like the freshness of something flower-fresh. Especially when he himself is past his bloom. But he wouldn’t get it. Oppie felt sad. He was forty-one. He had no money. He had never had any money, or any luck, or anything very fresh. He had never married, either. He thought, If you don’t grow old together you grow old alone. This seemed to him to be very sad and profound. It cheered him a little to have had such deep thoughts. He shook off philosophy and mooched toward his own one-room apartment. The seventeen widows of Sans Souci were not the only lonely people in the world.

  A feeble tap-tap, two walls and a corridor away from Daisy Robinson’s ear, did not disturb her, in the night. As a matter of fact, she was snoring, and her snores were much louder than the puny unusual sound. She did not waken.

  Marie Gardner heard it and started up in her bed. It wasn’t anything, was it? No, no, it couldn’t be anything. It was nothing at all.… She sank back. She knew better. Oh, yes, knew better …

  Tess said, “Oh, Nona, stop it! You are driving me crazy.”

  So Nona climbed down, again, from the rim of the tub where she had been standing in order to tap with the tin Band-Aid can as near as possible to that vent.

  “Everyone must be asleep. It’s late. Well …”

  Looking grim and determined, Nona began to root into the hamper. She found two towels and a few articles of clothing.

  She spread the bath mat on the narrow floor space and heaped what clothes there were under one of the towels. She climbed up to unfasten the shower curtain from its pins. She told Tess to lie down on the floor and be covered. “You can rest a little. You can’t sit there, all night.”

  “How about you?”

  Nona said, “I’ll just wedge myself in the corner. I can doze. Someone will surely come in the morning. Now, please, Tess. This is all my fault.”

  Tess looked at her shrewdly; then she demurred no more. She put her old bones down on the improvised pallet and Nona spread the shower curtain over her. “It’s not too bad,” said Tess with a sigh. “Quite an adventure. Like camping.”

  “Are you a countrywoman?” said Nona suddenly.

  “I don’t know what that means.” Tess yawned. “I was born and brought up in Boston.”

  “Boston!” Nona wanted to laugh.

  “Liam took me to Maine. A very nice small city. Lived in a house in the middle of town, but there were trees. Seemed country to me. Good night, Nona.”

  “I’ll turn off the light.” Nona was feeling better. “Good night, Tess.”

  She huddled into the corner of wall and wooden door. She was barefoot, to have been able to stand more safely on the slippery rim of the tub. She wrapped her
skirt over her bare feet. Upon her back the wooden door was soon warmer than the tile of the wall.

  Now, in the dark, how strange to be sitting on the floor of this tiled box, away from the air! Although the air in here was not stale. It held a faint soapy small, but it was fresh enough. The room was not too cold. She was not too uncomfortable.

  Her eyes were tired, so that the darkness was welcome. So was the silence. It was not complete. The old woman breathed lightly.

  Not too bad, thought Nona. (She was very glad that Tess could stretch out and rest.) But so strange, so crazy! Outside of every expectation, to find herself locked for a whole night in a bathroom. An adventure? Well, that was a point of view.

  Her body heat began to seep away. She knew she would be getting colder and stiffer. But she was still the younger and the stronger, and must take care. Courage and endurance were required of her, and a perverse streak of pleasure in that, after all. Tomorrow they would get out, of course.

  At eight o’clock on Friday morning, Marie Gardner looked up at the trickling of water down the upper inside wall of her bathroom. Curious. It didn’t really matter. Perhaps it wasn’t real. She wasn’t afraid. She no longer had to pay attention to the world in which she had so often been so thrillingly afraid. She had another world now, a place of mists, half memory, half dream. Restful. Only sometimes, when the mists shifted and laid reality bare, for a moment, did she feel the old fear.

  But she was tired of that fear. So tired. She knew how to pull the mists over. It was better … oh yes, much better …

  Above, Nona knelt, bailing water from the washbasin with the plastic glass and pouring it down around the base of the pedestal.

  Tess said, “I don’t think it’s any good.”

  Nona sat back on her heels. She didn’t think it was any good either. Every one of her bones ached. All her flesh felt bruised from the night’s ordeal. “If we flood the whole floor …” she began.

  “We’ll get our feet wet and be miserable,” Tess said cheerfully.

  “I don’t intend to wait for Wednesday,” said Nona indignantly. “This can’t happen to us.”

  “It’s happening,” said Tess calmly.

  “Shall we scream again?” Nona took in breath. They had screamed in concert several times. The noise had reverberated and bounced in upon them. It had sounded mad. It had felt embarrassing. One wanted to blush for it.

  No one had heard. At least, no one had come.

  Tess shrugged.

  “Are you very hungry?” Nona asked.

  “Let’s each have a vitamin pill,” said Tess briskly. “It’s lucky we have water.”

  Nona got up with creaks and groans. “They’ll miss us.”

  “Oh, they may,” Tess said. “If we hear anything, that would mean we could be heard. That would be the time to yell.”

  “Very logical,” said Nona, calm and brisk. She opened the cabinet and got out the vitamin pills. “One for you and one for me.”

  They took them solemnly, in almost a businesslike manner.

  Georgia Oliver was a bit worried about Mrs. Fitz that Friday. The old lady was still so very tired, when Georgia came in early, that Georgia urged her to keep to her bed. Georgia fixed breakfast and brought it on a tray, everything dainty. She plumped pillows, fetched this or that trifle the old lady seemed to require.

  It was the strain, they agreed. A reaction. Now that Robert was better, naturally, Mrs. Fitz felt let down. It had been a strain to keep up and be cheerful during the crisis. Oh, it told on the nerves. These ordeals had to be paid for. So Mrs. Fitz must simply rest and not worry about a thing.

  About ten o’clock, Georgia helped her to her bathroom, where Mrs. Fitz proposed to have a sponge bath. “Not the tub, today, dear.” Georgia placed soap, towel, everything as conveniently as she could and then (for they were ladies and they had their reticences) Georgia delicately retired. As her hand was pushing upon the bathroom door Mrs. Fitz called out sharply.

  “No. Don’t.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just”—Mrs. Fitz was breathless—”Don’t quite close the door. Not all the way, please?”

  “Of course not,” said Georgia reassuringly. “Now, if you begin to feel the least bit shaky, remember I am right here.”

  “Thanks, dear.”

  So Georgia closed the door upon the old lady only three quarters of the way and, herself, sat down in the bedroom prepared to be patient.

  Mrs. Fitz, however, did not take long.

  “That was quick,” said Georgia when the door began to move outward. She went to take the old lady’s arm.

  “One must make allowances, I suppose,” said Mrs. Fitz rather irrelevantly, when she had achieved her bed again, “but it puzzles me that Daisy Robinson—who is quite the blue stocking, wouldn’t you say so?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “She has so little savoir-faire. So little tact. After all, a lady …”

  “Poor Daisy means well, I imagine,” said Georgia soothingly. “Does Lily come in today?”

  “Who?”

  “The maid? Well, of course not. Or she’d have come by now.”

  “The maid?” Mrs. Fitz’s head was back upon the pillow. Her eyes were closed.

  “I’ll just straighten up a little,” Georgia said softly, and tiptoed away.

  Chapter 29

  To be locked in for a night was one thing. To be locked in by day was another. By day, one is accustomed to moving and doing. One is accustomed to eating.

  The bathroom seemed smaller and a stricter prison, now that they could tell, by Nona’s wrist watch, that time was sliding them later and later into Friday.

  Nona kept feeling waves of emotion—anger, panic—that would rise and then sink back to troughs of apathy.

  Panic, because they could hear nothing, or at least no specific noises. There did seem to be some rustling of wakeful life that was different, being day. But this might have been purely subjective. If they could not hear, was it then possible that they could not be heard, even when they were screaming?

  They had tried screaming three more times.

  No one had come.

  “Where are the maids, today?” Nona wondered aloud. “Where is Lily, do you know?”

  “I don’t …”

  “But … Elise does my apartment on Fridays! She’ll miss me. Of course!” Nona sounded confident. Nevertheless, she went on working at that door. Winnie Lake would have missed me, she thought sadly, if I had not cast her off.

  She had found a way to tilt that hamper so that Tess, half-lying on the floor, could use its yielding wicker side for a back rest. Nona herself was scraping at the wood around the lock with the nail file. Tedious. Slow. She didn’t even know what good it would do to expose more of the mechanism. It was just that she had to do something.

  “My lights must have burned all night,” Tess said. “We’re not on the patio side, or someone …”

  Nona said, “There is no light in your bedroom. We could have seen it. The cracks …”

  “That’s so.”

  Nona’s hands kept scraping. Hunger was scraping at her insides. A wave came … fury. Her heart raced. Something to do with the light and Ursula Fitzgibbon. Nona didn’t dwell on that. She began to try to hack with power. The file slipped on the smoothness it had already made. The futility was infuriating. Nona took a deep shaky breath and looked behind her.

  Tess Rogan was propped there, calm as could be, her eyes closed.

  Nona shook with rage. “This damn door!” she burst out. “How can you be so calm!”

  “No use to be angry with a piece of wood. Would you be annoyed with a tree?”

  “I’d like to see a tree.” Nona let the rage out. “And I’d like to get out of here. I’m tired and I ache and I’m hungry.”

  “I’m sure you are. So am I.” Tess’s voice was neither soothing nor angry.

  Then Nona discovered, to her alarm, that she was hating the old woman, and her ugly feet, her face, her eye
lids, her body, her presence—and especially her maddening calm. But this was not right. Nona fought it for a devil in herself.

  Meanwhile Tess went rambling on, quite as if she lay in a deck chair on some leisurely voyage. “I have a theory about travel. You know, it’s supposed to be restful? Why is that? Well, you are passing by strange places where you are neither required nor able to do anything, and nothing much that happens there pertains to you personally. So you are forced to observe, and you can’t be annoyed. That’s what is restful.”

  “You are observing?” burst Nona. “Well, I’m trying to get out.”

  Tess opened her eyes and Nona knew that her own were sending the news of her hatred (which was so evil and unjust). She tried to cover it. She said prettily, “One thing, it’s good you’re not locked in alone. At least, I’m with you.”

  The old woman’s eyes held hers with calm, but no affection. “I’m not particularly glad of that,” Tess said clearly. “Think it over. If you were free you’d have found me before this, I think. Or vice versa.”

  The direct clash, the acceptance in it, at first made Nona’s heart leap for battle. But then some iron recognition of these remarks as facts came into her.

  She looked at the nail file in her hand and threw it violently down upon the tiles. The tiles—those ancient little hexagons—were dirty.

  “All right,” said Nona. “We’re both stuck … and stuck with each other. But I don’t intend to stay stuck in a pigsty! I’ll tell you that!”

  She went to the medicine cabinet and ripped it open. Took the scouring powder. Took up a washcloth.

  Then she put them down upon the basin and carefully removed her lightweight blue wool dress and hung it upon the shower rail.

  In her slip, she began to scrub. At first she worked furiously, but then more and more meticulously, seeing the tinest of stains. She found places that Elise, the maid, had never yet found in any bathroom of Sans Souci.

  At first, Tess moved without fuss to keep out of her way as she went. Then Tess took up a piece of cotton batting and began to polish metal and glass. They worked without speaking.

  Hours later, this bathroom gleamed. It was perfectly clean.