Caging Skies

by Christine Leunens

  Now I'd like to mention the other two reasons I missed out on school. First, I'd made up my mind to find my father, come what may. Over and over again I chanced official posts, with as little success as I did train stations and highways. I found myself speaking about my loss to truck drivers who picked me up, ticket controllers who didn't pick me up, basically strangers I knew I'd never see again. During these excursions I raked up — more than anything else excluding hope — all kinds of anecdotes from the Great War, such as that the Soviet Union had freed her Austrian prisoners more than a decade after the war had ended, and without ever having delivered their mail! These true stories were mostly told as encouragement in regard to my father. There was the wife who had remarried and had three children before the real husband stepped back into their matrimonial chamber to face his usurper. There was the wife who took her husband for a thief when she came back from work to discover him in their home going through a drawer, and nearly killed him. There was yet again the wife who'd remained faithful but didn't recognise her husband on opening the door, so he turned around without saying who he was, whereupon his walk rang a bell . . .

  And, at last, after changing my mind half a dozen times, I'd gone to see whether anyone from Elsa's side had by any chance survived. The doubts, non-existent when I was at home, had assaulted me whenever I was out in the open. If a person I passed didn't look like my own father to begin with, he or she turned into a potential relative of Elsa's. Every old man was her maybe father, every old woman her maybe mother. Nathan was tall, short, thin, stocky, twenty, fifteen, forty. He was no one and everyone. He was even invisible, up in the sky, watching my every step.

  I'd imagined there would be a place in Vienna where I could go to obtain this information — some governmental building assigned for the purpose — but this was not so. The Nazis had destroyed many of the registers before the end of the war and there was no simple way to go about finding someone's whereabouts or fate. There were displaced persons' camps in and outside of Vienna, but these regrouped individuals from forced labour and prison camps with the survivors of other camps — concentration, extermination. You had to be able to furnish the exact name and camp to which the person had been sent, or, even better, go there yourself. I told them if I already had all that, I wouldn't need them. They asked me if I had any idea just how many missing people by the name of Levi there were? It was a wild goose chase. Some told me the best thing would be to find survivors, trust word of mouth. Or the IKG — Israelitische Kultusgemeinde — but this had been annihilated during the war! Or how about the Rothschild-Spital? Weren't there different points set up in places where lots of people passed through? Why don't you try the tracing service of the Red Cross to find the correct camp? But none of this was as easy as it sounds. Not just anyone could walk in and request information. You had to say who you were, why you were looking for the person. Again and again I took the risk of giving my identity, told them of my father's business partner, explained that these were friends of my parents.

  Going through the existing partial lists (even today, no one would claim to have anything complete) was like reading a telephone book. For anyone who has ever consulted them, it's incredible how you come to feel for people from their names alone. I can guarantee anyone who doubts me: I knew no relief. I sat in front of yet another volunteer, trying to pluck up the courage to follow her finger's rapid descents. It came to a halt. Even on learning that this time it was Nathan, my long-despised rival, I knew a defiling pain, which I would never have expected of myself. The end result of it all:

  Mosel Kor, died after 16 January 1945 forced march from Auschwitz to Mauthausen.

  Nadja Golda Kor, née Hochglauber, Mauthausen, gassed October or November 1943.

  Nathan Chaim Kaplan, died 6 January 1942, Sachsenhausen, exhaustion.

  All those years, he, my greatest threat, had been dead, before I'd even known of Elsa. It was a shock to me, as it would be a shock to her — the dates, I mean. I sat under a tree in some desolate public square all afternoon rearranging my thoughts and perceptions, switching layers of truths, half-truths and untruths within myself, and switching them back and forth with her in my mind to make it all fit again.

  ***

  Pimmichen was trying to strike a bargain with Janusz and Krzysztof. If they did some plumbing and painting around the house, they could have my father's old study and the guest room. In the beginning, they'd only smiled at her attempts to slop an imaginary paint brush in the air. Even funnier was her effort to describe the concept 'sleep'. She pointed to each of them, tucked hands under her chin and snored, her nose all the more masculine because she kept her hair pinned back. One must keep in mind that her snores probably kept them awake more than theirs did her, if indeed they snored, and I suspect Krzysztof said something to that effect to Janusz, who winked at me.

  But Pimmichen could be stubborn and I felt it was only a question of time before they gave in, for she was already teaching them bridge, despite their objections and raw outbursts, in which y, k, n, f got sandwiched as easily as p, r, j, v, and after which they would both throw their cards at each other until one would face her again sheepishly — the one who'd inherited half the deck. If they agreed to Pimmi's bargain, I was planning to move Elsa to my parents' room, where she'd have to stay under the floorboards. As long as I was home she could have my room. I'd lock the door and, if need be, she'd have my bed to hide under. At night she could sleep in it; I'd sleep on the floor. We'd already talked it through and she'd agreed.

  What I put myself through those schooldays, counting the minutes within the hours within the fragmented mornings and afternoons. Anything could happen at home, and I wasn't around to control the situations that kept presenting themselves. School was complicating my life, and on top of it, I wasn't learning what I should have been because I was too busy worrying. I gave myself stomach cramps imagining worst-case scenarios, only to find, evening after evening, the setting more or less as I'd left it. Yet it seemed impossible that the threads of our lives, all five of them, could continue to be knitted together without a tangle. The more providence accumulated, the more providence seemed likely to fail.

  Each morning I got to school panting and sweaty just as the doors closed. Class dismissed, I ran back as fast as I could, downhill, uphill: I knew the topography by heart. Every now and then the guys my age asked me to join them for a round of ping-pong (which shows the extent to which I never took my arm out of my pocket). Besides having no time, I felt as if my secret alienated me from them because, number one, I'd no doubt have to censor myself all the time; and number two, the conversations they'd strike up, motorbike motors, sports scores, girls' legs, were not exactly what I had on my mind.

  In the state I was in, my legs practically gave out the day I rushed up close enough to our house to make out a military vehicle parked outside, partly camouflaged along our hedge. An officer motioned me to the door while five French soldiers stood waiting, machine-guns at the ready. I put my arms up to reassure them the person they were looking for was safe and sound.

  But they didn't ransack the upper quarters — didn't go further than the foyer, where Janusz and Krzysztof were manipulating pipes. I'll never forget the look Janusz gave me, reassessing me as a traitor. Krzysztof knocked chairs over on his way into the bathroom in a move I deemed futile. The French tried to talk him out. A short silence ensued. We heard glass shattering.

  'Il se suicide!' yelled a soldier, attempting to smash the door-handle with the butt of his machine-gun. The officer ordered the others outside around the house and I followed them. Krzysztof had chosen the direction of the vineyards. The shots didn't dissuade him; he took his chances. I was convinced a bullet got him, because from far away I could see his shirt-back bloodstained. Later, though, I discovered blood in the bathroom, so I hoped that only the window had been behind the injury — after all, he'd kept running.

  Janusz had been a passive onlooker until the gunshots shook him out of his stupor, but
the officer got hold of him before he got his second leg out the door. I feared he'd kill me if the officer didn't manage to hold on to him. He kept calling me a word I was glad not to have understood. Pimmichen scolded the French officer. 'They're not criminals! I forbid you to treat my guests like that in my house. Pas comme ça chez moi!'

  Janusz looked on hopefully as their argument metamorphosed into a discussion. With the dignity of a queen, Pimmi crossed the room, oblivious to the fact that her skirt was unzipped at the side, her feet were crushing the backs of her orthopaedic shoes. She pulled a sealed, signed document out of a drawer. She'd rolled it up, tied a red ribbon around it, so Janusz didn't recognise it until she extended it, at which point he looked at her with big eyes and put up another show of resistance: it was the document they'd come with the first day, granting them shelter in our house. Pimmichen, convinced she was within her rights, had her heart set on proving it. Her French was grandiose; one would've thought she was reading a treaty to Louis XIV.

  The facts were that their real names were Sergey Karganov and Fedor Kalinin; they were Russians, not Poles; and this document had been forged by an underground organisation helping them to obtain freedom. The bottom line was that the Soviets were claiming back their soldiers, some of whom were doing all they could to remain in the lands they'd found themselves in. The governments of these free Western countries were collaborating with the Soviet Union, handing them back over, no qualms over their unwillingness to go. We heard that those who committed suicide rather than return, as now and again proved the case, suffered less than they would have as deserters under the Stalinist regime. It was a scandal back then, the Soviet Mission of Repatriation.

  We left their belongings where they lay for over a year. Pimmichen and I did at last go through them, and dug out two pairs of socks, a change of underpants each, sixteen envelopes containing what we found out were pumpkin seeds, two bare crosses, one empty bottle and a deck of fifty-one cards. To continue the inventory, we found a pad of paper tucked in one of their sleeping bags. On it were their first, often misspelled German words, jotted down with an illustration in the margin. I still remember that sein, the infinitive of the verb 'to be', consisted of a stick figure with only its widespread arms deviating from a soldier-like stance, and, more curiously, a smile on an otherwise blank face.

  xv

  Pimmichen was bewildered when she saw me come in with the oils and canvases. I crossed the living room swiftly before she could ask any questions. She cut me off at the staircase, looking me dubiously up and down. 'Is this your latest tactic to seduce Edeltraud? If you've become that desperate, soon you'll be cutting off your ear.'

  'No, Pimmichen, I'm just doing it for me.'

  'Nothing we do creatively is for ourselves. It's only done for someone else, if only for that someone in our head.' She pulled the wooden case out of my grip, pouted at the line of tubes, set it behind her out of my reach.

  'Well, I can assure you, there's no Edeltraud upstairs.' What I meant by 'upstairs' was 'in my head' — a common German expression, oben, better said 'above'.

  'Knock, knock.' Pimmi reached up to knock my forehead, 'Hello? Anyone living up there? Edeltraud! How long have you been closed up in that tiny space? Why don't you come on out, get some fresh air? He's keeping you closed up? Thinks I don't know you're there; thinks his grandma's stupid.'

  'Very funny.' I stepped back, trying to laugh despite the tenseness of my face.

  'I think you know what I mean.'

  'No, and I don't want to know.' I went to step around her but she blocked me off.

  'I think you know exactly what I mean.'

  'I shall see you later, Pimmi.' As I tried to push past, her tickles made up for her lack of strength and the canvases fell.

  'I know where she lives.'

  'Do you?'

  'Yes. I do.' She was on the first step, blocking me by gripping both rails. 'Oh, it doesn't bother me. It's not my affair.'

  I mustered my strength to sound amused. 'And . . . where does Edeltraud supposedly live?'

  'She lives, as you said, oben.' Her face was weathered but her blue eyes were still sharp, intelligent. A faint upward curve on her lips, she rotated her crooked index finger, designating first my head, then the ceiling, up the stairs, testing my reaction with every shift in position.

  I tried to keep my eyes level with hers but it was too much for me. I felt my nervousness beginning to show. 'Upstairs where?'

  Her finger tilted three times towards the guest room, then, after the truth had sparked between our eyes, drilled towards me until it was pointing straight between my eyes, pressing me there. 'In your head.'

  'I see.'

  'You spend your time up there walking along streams, admiring waterfalls, the stars; you tell her your secrets, then you kiss — ah, that first kiss! Even if it's your own soft wrist, she's become real in your mind. You miss her, hurry home, can't wait to tell her about your day. I had such a pretendant living with me at my parents' house. Lucas.'

  I burst out laughing, doubled over. 'Pimmi, that's the most ridiculous story I've ever heard! The most utterly ridiculous!'

  'You're embarrassed. It's perfectly normal.'

  'First you say I have no artistic inclination, and now suddenly I'm capable of making up a human being from head to foot! Boy, do I have talent!'

  'Who says she's invented? You set your eyes on her somewhere. My Lucas was the son of a prominent auctioneer. I used to watch him on Saturday afternoons as he stood up on the podium, holding up objects for the public to see. All I saw was him, effeminate as he was if you grasp my euphemism. It wasn't the person I made up, it was our love story.'

  'I assure you, I've never kissed my wrist. I don't even have one on this side.'

  She tousled my hair, strands fell over my face. 'You're too shy; you don't know how to go about it. With what's happened to you, you don't believe anyone would love you, but you're wrong, mein Süßer. I've been thinking about it. Why don't you join a Catholic youth group? You'll meet some nice ladies who'll learn to appreciate your special qualities, who'll help you forget about the girl upstairs. As you get older, don't worry, your face will give in to gravity. Look at mine.' She pulled the loose skin of her face down and made an expression worthy of a dead bass. 'Time heals everything, even scars. They get stashed away in the pleats.'

  The onrush of emotions got the better of me. First, intense fear at her having come close to the truth; then the unexpected, violent slackening of it. Self-pity from her telling me how I must feel, my sudden self-awareness: small and mutilated in a big empty house, with no mother, father, sister.

  Pimmichen sat down next to me, using her yellowed handkerchief to pat my eyes. Her head vacillated involuntarily from side to side. She grew older; the house bigger, emptier; I, smaller, smaller, and she couldn't wipe fast enough.

  ***

  Pimmichen decided painting would be a healthy outlet for my accumulated energy. I took advantage of her good mood to announce that I'd used up the last of the money in my parents' safe. She said I'd done well, she'd help me to purchase whatever material I wanted, she believed in trial and error. Art courses taken too soon could stifle the development of anything new. With that, she told me she'd reserve, for my use only, a bank account she'd inherited from her aunt, who in her youth had lost two suitors in one of the last duels to take place in the Austro–Hungarian Empire. They took ten paces, turned around, shot each other.

  She groaned as she bent over to remove a long black hair caught in the join between the bottom step and its supporting framework, rolled it into a tiny knot. 'Don't worry. When you're famous, they'll be fighting over you.'

  After that, I had a recurring dream of Pimmichen needing an extra pillow to prop up her legs. I took one from Elsa's room. As soon as Pimmi touched it she gave it back. 'Oh, sorry, I thought there were others. I don't want to take yours.'

  'It's not mine.'

  'That's strange, for it's still warm — how can that be?'r />
  I could get no sound out of my mouth in order to lie.

  But the nightmare that unsettled me most, though I dreamt it only once, was of her confronting me with letters addressed to Baumeistergasse 9, 1016 Wien. 'They're for someone named Elsa Kor. Do you know an Elsa Kor?'

  My heart skipped a beat. Who knew she was in this house? Maybe one of her brothers from America? I said, 'It's just a mistake, somebody has the wrong street. I'll hand them back to the postman first thing in the morning.'

  'How in the world can it be a mistake when they are the fruit of your hand?' She thrust the letters out for me to take.

  To my astonishment, they were in my own handwriting. Not only had I been stupid enough to write down a return address, none other than Baumeistergasse 9, but in place of a stamp, someone had glued on an old school photo of me with a bowl cut. I noticed that the envelopes had been opened, and, even worse, were postmarked from three years ago! In the dream I realised my grandmother had known about Elsa all these years, had intercepted every letter, but had said nothing.

  xvi

  I gave Elsa the cashmere coat my father had bought my mother in Paris on their honeymoon during the summer sales. It had been an old joke between them, how she'd lugged it all the way from Montmartre to their hotel in Saint-Germain in what was to be a record heatwave. Elsa was still cold. The heat escaped under the roof and, with her door closed, the warmth of the house penetrated less. The price of wood did not stop me from buying it, but, as I told her, it was not always available, and when it was, it was in limited bundles of chips and quartered logs. She asked me why I didn't just go to the forest and chop down a few trees myself if the French were keeping all the good wood for themselves. This got my pride. I gave it a go at dusk, but the axe was unwieldy and, after missing the tree but not my boot, I abandoned the idea.