Caging Skies

by Christine Leunens

  After a silence, my mother's voice was cold. 'What do you want with her?'

  'I have to talk to her.'

  'No.'

  'I have to!'

  'Forget her.'

  'Where is she?'

  'She's not for you.'

  'You can't know.'

  'She's not for you, you're not for her. You're too young for her, Johannes, apart from everything else. Please, put her out of your mind.'

  'I must know where she is.'

  'She's not here any more. For your sake, forget she ever was.'

  'Where is she?'

  'I don't know.'

  'Who does?'

  'None of us do.'

  'You sent her away.'

  'No, she was just gone, she left on her own. I went up and her place was empty. I was as shocked as you are. She's gone. Gone for good.'

  'You're lying!'

  'I trusted her. It may be she hoped to protect us . . .'

  I didn't want to let my mother get away. In her thrashing about to get out of my grip she fell, which caused me to trip, though it might have seemed to her that I came down on her deliberately. Regret was wrenching my innards; I knew I'd gone too far yet had to continue.

  'Johannes, if you know, it'll risk your life along with mine. If they torture you, they'll get it out of you. You'll put her in danger, put yourself in danger. You know that, don't you?'

  I let her go. She staggered up, brushing broken bits of porcelain from her skirt. 'See? I'm risking my own son's life right now to escape pain. To get out of a scratch. Me. Your own mother!'

  I begged her for the truth.

  'You would be willing to die for such silliness?'

  'Yes.'

  'It's just infatuation, growing pains. It has nothing to do with love. Nothing will ever come of it.'

  'They'll never torture me like I'm being tortured now.'

  'You don't know what torture is. They inflict pain, pain and pain, until the only hope you dig your fingers into is less pain, at any price, anyone's death — your mother's, father's, your own.'

  'I love her, Mutter.'

  She knelt down, took me in her arms. 'I know you believe you do. But you know nothing of life. One day you'll grow up into a man and you'll see I was right. You'll love someone else with real love, someone meant for you. Everyone's struck by a first love, but everyone heals from it, believe me. Life goes on. We all would have sworn we'd never survive. I know what I'm talking about.'

  'Mutter . . .'

  'The feelings will be milder, but true, ripe.'

  'Have pity!'

  She took a deep breath, crossed her hands primly on her lap. 'She's on her way to America. As soon as they inform me of her arrival, I'll tell you.' She sat still for some time. 'It's the honest to God truth. She's on her way to New York. Her brothers have long been there. One's in Queens, the other's doing well in Coney Island.'

  She was avoiding my eyes. I moved my face close enough for a kiss had we been lovers. She covered it, howled in frustration. 'Stop looking at me like that! Stop it! What do you want? A lie? If you would prefer a lie, I can give you one.'

  I wouldn't let her turn her face away from me.

  'You prefer me to tell you she's dead? Would that make it easier for you to forget her?'

  'Her exact whereabouts!'

  'Fine! You asked for it! But first you must promise you'll never go and see her. You'll let go. Swear it. On my head.'

  She led me to her bedroom and indicated four floorboards that looked no different from those around them. 'She's leaving tomorrow. Your father made this years ago, just in case we ever found ourselves in this position.' She showed me a bent nail which, with the help of the handle of a cast-iron cup, could be used to lift the assemblage up. The only holes through which Elsa could breathe were made from nails that had been removed. 'She's safe and sound. You've nothing more to worry about. Believe me, she'll be happy.'

  My heart sank. The space under there would have been the size of a tomb. Either it was a lie — no one could make it out of there alive — or I knew Elsa had to be dead.

  Part II

  ix

  When Pimmichen returned from hospital the next morning my torment over Elsa eclipsed any joy I might have felt. Without her I felt incomplete, reduced to half of one body. I was instantly conscious of my missing forearm, the still half of my face. Missing her, I missed these parts more. This insufficiency had disappeared while I'd been with her — I'd been whole again, my existence had doubled, I was two people, not one, not half. I'd lived life in her place as much as I did mine, if not more. Now suddenly I was an amputee again — and severed from her. I was bleeding to death: there is no other way to describe what was happening to me.

  Pimmichen poured us Kräutertee. Her little finger, ordinarily crooked when drinking tea, was keeping warm with the others around her cup. She sipped to quell her coughing. 'There are more people in the hospital than there will be left out of it if this war doesn't stop. You wouldn't believe what I saw in a day. You wouldn't. By the time we win, we won't need more land, we'll need less. What my old eyes didn't see.' She shook her head. 'Men with their bottom jaw blown right off — chin, tongue and all. I didn't know you could survive like that. A nurse fed them, my God, they can't chew, smile, talk — their faces end here at the top teeth. Nothing underneath, just the hole that goes down to the stomach. No, Dearest, trust me, you're still human: anyone looking at you can figure out what you used to be like. The ones I saw, they lost their individuality, their humanity! It looked like some mad sculptor had come along and chiselled off their face.'

  Pimmichen carried on about what medicines she'd been made to swallow with no doctor examining her, how nurses gave her dirty looks as if she had no right taking up a bed at her old age. She knew she'd better leave in the morning before she received a dose of hemlock. To my consternation, every subject came back to me. 'And they weren't the worst off! Another had his face off right up to the nose. Two eyes on a neck — how can he go through life like that? Just raw nothingness from here down. He's ruined; no one will ever marry him. How could any girl be expected to? One look, she'd faint. Imagine waking up to that? He'd have been better off dying. No, mein Sußer, you're not so bad . . .'

  She was depressing me no end. What she was basically saying was if there was no one else in the world besides a hunk of roast beef perched on a spike and me, a girl might choose me. But what girl would be cut off from all other choices? I took advantage of my mother's inattention to get up.

  'No, no.' She caught the back of my sweater. 'You stay right here with me.'

  'I was just going to get the comics I left upstairs.'

  'I'll come with you.'

  'He's big enough to get them himself, Roswita. You're not a baby any more, are you, dear?'

  'I was just going to get my comics, nothing else.' I looked my mother in the eye.

  'Fine.'

  Halfway up the stairs I heard her say, 'Oh. My spectacles.' Needless to say, they were in her bedroom. At one point she went down for a book she'd left on the bottom stair, where she had a habit of depositing whatever had to be brought up. Given that I was in my room, next to hers, I just had time to rush in and press my mouth to the floor to utter, 'Elsa? Elsa? Can you hear me?' There was no answer, and anyway, I hadn't time to wait.

  My mother and I both skipped lunch, neither of us leaving our rooms, after which she came into mine to tell me I had to go shopping with her. Feigning illness got me nowhere. Hearing the front door close, I gave it a minute to play it safe and sneaked in her room again to find my mother sitting on her bed, arms crossed. 'You disappoint me, Johannes. Don't you remember the agreement we made? What you swore on my head? Well, now that you're feeling better,' she held out a list for me to take, 'why don't you run along and get these for me.'

  Time was against me. I considered all sorts of plans for that evening, such as rearranging the pillows on my bed so she'd think I was asleep, dropping one of Pimmichen's sleeping pi
lls into her water. In the end it was simpler than that. My mother, with no explanation, went out. Pimmichen was cross. She told me to keep an eye on her, for without my father around she could easily be taken advantage of. She said she'd have a serious chat with him next chance she had.

  I was sure it was a trap. I'd lift the lid to find my mother, arms crossed, scowling at me. Be that as it was, I didn't care. If Mutter was there, at least I'd know who wasn't.

  Her room had just been cleaned and looked spacious, almost unused. Because the boards had been polished, I couldn't find the right four. I spotted the nail but nothing budged, cup handle or not. I'd been a fool to buy her lie. Scrambling up furiously, I caught my sock on another nail.

  I banged and called out, 'Elsa? Elsa?' There was no answer. My thoughts and heart were racing. Would I find her? Dead or alive? 'Elsa! For your sake, answer!'

  As I succeeded in lifting the floorboards some millimetres, a silverfish crawled out. A closed-up, foul smell sickened me. I suffered an initial shock. Nothing. Blackness. Blackness. Limitless blackness. Eternal emptiness. Nothingness to cut off my breath. Lost seconds of darkness in which I longed to alter my fate, whispering to myself that I could have hugged a corpse, loved it a last time, but absence, total and irremediable, condemned me to visions of her sniffing the sea air on her way to the New World, full of hopes and dreams not involving me, fancies that would slip like a laughing ghost through my arms at my every futile embrace . . . until gradually . . . my eyes began to adjust. Fear had blinded me. Now I could make out the newspapers lining the narrow space, balled-up darkened pages, a bowl of water on one side, a stale sandwich on the other.

  I was able to perceive her half slumped in the bottom, half forged into the darkness. She had lost substance, was thinner, unrecognisable. I had to concentrate hard to make her out. She had brown blemishes on her face, was paler, sunken. Her eyes shifted to avoid me, or maybe it was the light, because when they did focus on me, she reached wildly to pull the top down again.

  'I'm sorry for the way I treated you. Forgive me!'

  She blocked her mouth.

  'I don't know what came over me. I was . . .'

  I couldn't understand the sounds she was making.

  'Really, I'm sorry! What do you want me to do? Tell me, I'll do it!'

  Her wish was incomprehensible. I wrenched her wrists away from her mouth. Between breaths, I understood something like, 'I'm not allowed to speak to you . . . If you don't leave, things will go bad for me.'

  'Who said so?'

  'Frau Betzler. Your mother.'

  'They look bad already.'

  'Worse, much worse . . .'

  'I'll speak to her.'

  She choked to catch her breath. 'Don't. She hates me enough as it is. She found the torch, thought I had stolen it to make signals. She said I broke her trust — she endangered her family for me and I'm set out to bring you all down.'

  'Why didn't you tell her the truth?'

  'I did, I had no choice. It only made it worse; she said I had no right getting you involved.'

  'She's punishing you!' I said.

  'She's protecting me. It's my last chance. Your father was picked up at the factory.'

  'I know. He'll be back, like last time.'

  'He's been sent to a work camp,' she said.

  'How do you know?'

  'Frau Betzler told me. She says they'll torture him. That's why I'm here. If it came out, I'm safer, and so are you, ach Gott, so were you . . .'

  'I told them the light was me; I was reading.'

  She put her finger to her lips. 'I know. She told me what you did for me, Johannes. I'll never forget it. If anything happens to you or her, I'm to blame. They searched the factory after that. She's right, it's my fault. But I wasn't signalling anyone, I just . . . didn't want the cursed black.'

  I took advantage of helping her sit up to hug her. She was content, I think, even if she kept her arms tightly against her breasts.

  'Frau Betzler tells me it won't be for long: years sneak unseen from the future into the past. She says it won't be for much longer; I've come from a cage upstairs down into this hole. I don't want to die, I can't, not without seeing . . . again . . .' She swallowed his name.

  She couldn't see the pain on my face as I stroked her back.

  'It's dreadful here — how will I live? The lid presses down on my face, my feet, there's no air . . .'

  'I'm sure my mother will let you return upstairs; it'll be bigger, better compared to here. I have ideas for the future if you just hold out.'

  She said sadly, 'That reminds me of a story my mother used to tell me as a child. An old woman went to see a rabbi to complain her house was too small. "What prayers shall I say to have a bigger one?" she asked.

  '"No prayers," the rabbi answered. "You must act."

  '"What shall I do?"

  '"A good deed. Take in all the homeless of the village."

  '"Where in the world would I put them?"

  '"God will provide, he will move the walls apart."

  'She took five homeless in from Ostroleka. There was so little room, she had to take her bed apart and sleep next to them. When she awoke, no change had taken place. She went back to see the rabbi, who explained that God was testing her goodness.

  'The homeless stayed all winter — her house was smaller than ever. "With the summer will come your blessing," she was promised.

  'Summer came: the corn and wheat ripened. With the harvest, each homeless person found work in different parts. After they left, she went back to the rabbi. "May heaven gobble you up, Rabbi, you were right. God has moved my four walls far, far apart. My house has never been so big."'

  ***

  My mother came home two days later a changed person. Pimmichen's rude French proverb, Qui va à la chasse perd sa place, addressing my absent father but targeting my mother, was met with her lighthearted laughter. My grandmother was insinuating that my father had left his place free for another man, whose arms, she must have crazily conceived, my mother had just left. My mother attempted to fluff up Pimmichen's pillow, despite her unyielding back, told her not to be ludicrous. I suppose my mother knew I was visiting Elsa, but neither of us brought it up. She stopped guarding her altogether. Her attitude indicated that what she didn't know about, she would tolerate.

  She informed Pimmichen and me that my father, because of his know-how in metallurgy, was in Mauthausen supervising a camp fabricating war weapons, but would be home shortly. She spent those days listening to the wireless with a sly smile, knitting a jersey for him. Pimmichen said my father didn't look good in red — she knew because she'd dressed him as a boy. Besides, she explained, 'that's the colour of red Vienna, so we don't want to dress him like a communist, do we?' My mother nodded or shook her head as was expected of her, but kept on knitting, her smile growing, giving a new lightness to her being. This got to Pimmichen, who took to knitting him one too, in that old Austrian green that still dominates the clothing of our population to this day. The rival balls of wool competed, jerking up and about as though the first ball to expire would win, wrapping itself around my father in the form of his favourite jersey.

  I watched the yarn dwindle like the revolving line of time, the thread being yanked out of its soft round form and worked into the tight constrained knots of the present. I feigned interest in their work. Gradually the small woollen pieces grew, and all I could think of was Elsa — was she still there, would I still be able to see her. Each move of the needles was another twist and pinch in me. I told myself to wait longer, one more row, another layer off the ball, but they peeled off so languorously as I fixed my attention on them. I acted as if I'd misplaced something around my chair, frisked about the room, chanced the stairs. My mother didn't take her eyes off what she was doing, just moved her needles faster, took the lead. Pimmichen's needles stopped, her ball dangled above her ankle, and her head hung over her bust in another involuntary nap.

  I kneeled next to the place almost reverently,
my hand on the wood. The desire I felt was intense. It was as if in lifting the boards I was about to undress Elsa. I considered visiting the bathroom, for if she saw, she might mistake it for a sign of disrespect, but time was precious. Nothing but darkness met me again, a sinister cloak of black I strained my vision to draw away and hence expose her small, over-arched feet, giving the impression she was in the middle of some everlasting rapture, and beneath the soft fabric covering her, the inviting form of her legs, wide hips, sunken belly, breasts, fragile shoulders, neck, face, thick wild hair. I took all of her in, despite my attraction for each unique part.

  She didn't open her eyes, just took in the fresh air, her pale lips parting. I held my breath so the airless smell would diminish, especially the faint odour of vomit I could detect without breathing. Her chest expanded with her sighs; I dared watch it. My hand reached out to caress the air above her breasts. It was incredible: it felt charged, magnetic — maybe it was just the heat coming off her skin that gave me this impression. Even resting in her lining of soiled newspapers she was to me as sensual as if she'd been in the sheets of our matrimonial bed. I longed to touch her, to squeeze her, feel her as solid reality, not just another one of those frustrating samples coming and going in my mind.

  'Thank you . . .' she murmured.

  I believe she was mistaking me for my mother as she reached out for me to help her out. Looking back, I see now what she'd intended. At the time, I took it to mean she was inviting me to lower myself on to her. It was risky — my mother could have shown up any moment, a thought that illogically accentuated my wanting. I remember the excitement of thinking I was being beckoned into her enclosure, feeling her breasts through her nightgown separate under my weight as I leaned over on her and, I admit with shame, I experienced a premature climax. I don't think she noticed because my legs were to one side: I'd only lowered my upper body on top of her. Had she, she must have reckoned my inept movements due to the strain of my position.

  'Johannes? It's you? Your mother says they're winning the war. Soon I'll be free,' she whispered hoarsely into my ear as much as she asked me.