Caging Skies

by Christine Leunens

  Two down, one to go. Elsa. The fear of finding her unconscious again plagued me. I couldn't get more than an hour or two of sleep a night, and it took five or six of insomnia to get that much. The paint had left dark green lines between her teeth, and even after I scraped at it with a pin a residue remained. She complained of pains in her abdomen that came and went, stiffness in her joints. The veins under her eyes, fine and gently protruding like a leaf's, stayed with her too, and gave her a round-the-clock tired look.

  She could give me no coherent reason for her act; she didn't know why she'd done it — just did, that's all. She sat on the edge of the bed, looked at the walls, looked at the ceiling, looked at the floor, but never at me. I shouted, 'Why, why? Give me one good reason why!'

  'Why not? Why do I have the right to live? What is the meaning of hundreds, thousands, millions dead, those I loved deeply dead and I left alive?'

  I could ask her all the questions I wanted, all I got back were more questions. She was an expert at counter-questioning, playing stupid when she didn't want to discuss a matter, playing the smart alec when she did, and on those rare occasions when her back was against the wall she was a master of quotes in one of her handy dead languages that she could translate into meaning whatever she wanted, or recitations of some abstruse mathematical law some ancient nitwit had come up with x thousand years before technology.

  I paced about, kicking at the pile of dirty clothes and sheets — her subtle way of reminding me her laundry needed to be done. Something shiny caught my eye: a family brooch I'd given her, still pinned to a blouse. I didn't know where to walk any more; the walls were oppressive, seemed to confront me every way I turned. I stopped in the middle of her room, feeling sick and dizzy. 'Elsa. Pay attention. I have something to confess to you. Don't say anything until I'm done.'

  I became aware of myself through Elsa's dark intelligent eyes, which put me at a gross disadvantage. I went to rub my hands together and for a split-second thought I felt my other hand.

  'Now . . . Elsa . . . I'm sure, I'm quite sure you would rather have been somewhere else all these years than in this house with me, and you probably were all the while, in your mind. I tried to make you happy, do everything I could to please you, but I'm afraid that was never enough. No. You're not happy.'

  I secretly wished she'd deny it but she didn't, so I bent over to pick up some laundry, slamming the bunched-up material into the basket over and over to help me pursue my words. 'You can't imagine what I feel when I open your door every morning. It's like my heart is about to explode. I'm two people — I'm the stupid servant boy who obeys your every command, but I'm also the other who is wanting to hold you, to keep you. I love you, Elsa. I love you more than I do my own self, and I will prove to you how much, for I'm willing to give you happiness that will lead to my own unhappiness. I know this doesn't change anything for you. For you, I guess I'm just your bread and butter, your room and board, you think you need me to survive . . .'

  She raised her palm. 'I must stop you.'

  'Don't interrupt! The truth is, you don't need me at all! Not one single bit! But before I go on, I want you to know that everything I did up until now, I did only because I love you, even if it was wrong because it was based on a lie. The truth is, I'm not helping you at all, I'm destroying you. The other day, with what happened . . . I don't need more proof. It's long since time for me to tell you . . .'

  She rushed to me and hugged me. 'No, don't say it. It's not your fault!'

  I was by then sobbing. 'Yes, it is my fault, it's all my fault because . . .'

  'No, no!' She covered my mouth. 'You've been kind to me! And I doubted you. I was thinking, just before everything went black, that if what you said about the war wasn't true, if there was any way to escape, I would be on my jolly way. You'd take me to the hospital if it was at all possible, to wherever you had to, to save me. Me, I thought only of me.'

  Her eyes were full of compassion; mine were wild with trouble. I shook my head and was owning up to my guilt in measured, solemn words, but she clenched my mouth until it hurt and, holding me thus, gave me a sharp warning look not to speak further.

  'I've been selfish these past years,' she said. 'You were perfectly right: only dwelling on my own miseries, never giving a thought to you.' With her free hand she fingered my scars. 'Oh, just look at you! You've had your share of pain and hard facts to face and you're not wallowing in it! All these years you've never thought about going to see a medical specialist, when you've spent so much money on my every whim. Don't say the contrary, Johannes, when you've been so good . . .'

  I freed myself, went to deny what she was saying, but she meant business. 'No! Shut up! I let you speak! Now let me.'

  I was shocked; I'd never seen her fierce like that before. I think she realised she'd shown some part of herself I hadn't known existed, for when she spoke again, her voice was more prepossessing than I'd ever known it.

  'Compared to others, I've gone unharmed, isn't that right? Thanks to you I survived and I remain intact inside these four walls. What do you have me to thank for? You can blame me for the deaths of your mother and father. That's all. They are the direct results of my being here. The consequences of my remaining alive, of my life, of my having ever lived. The truth is, I don't know if I would have risked my life for anyone, the way you and your parents did. Frankly, I don't think I would have. I've had many years in here to think about it, you know. I never could have been as selfless. You know what that little thought makes me feel like? That thought tickling me every day like a dove feather in the ear and eye? A cuckoo! I feel as if I threw warm, fluffy birds out of their own nest. I'm cold and hard and unfeeling because most of the time I'm quite frankly glad to be the one who's alive.'

  'Elsa, nothing is as you think . . .'

  'Shh!' She put a finger to her lips, pretended to glare at me. 'You really think I'm so blind? You think I don't know? I don't hear? I don't see? Oh Johannes, stupid, stupid Johannes . . . It's a prison sentence I've been given from on high. It's no coincidence I've been put here and made to live on.'

  'When will you let me finish what I'm trying to say?' I implored.

  'Never!' She pressed herself against me, held both sides of my face, peered up into my eyes. She felt me resist, tilted her head back with closed eyes, parted lips.

  Bewitched though I was, I made the decision to hold back until I had said what I came to say. But it was as if she read my thoughts, for at that very moment she tore my shirt open and stood up on her toes to kiss under my chin. She did so with an overt abandon that showed that stifling my words was her priority. It was like heaven and hell — she was offering me a taste of what I had longed for since time out of mind, yet did not feel free to accept. My each and every sensation was tainted: I knew I wasn't the one she thought she was kissing. Most ironically of all, a fraction of me didn't trust her, felt that she'd known all along I was deceiving her, which meant she was the one deceiving me. I scrutinised her face mercilessly for any telltale sign, but it expressed undiluted kindness, and I soon dismissed my nonsensical theory. How could I have entertained such suspicions?

  She stroked my hair, repeated how horrible she'd been, how she'd just woken up to how badly I was doing. I went to kiss her neck, but she dropped her chin to stop me. Now she was the one resisting. No, I told myself, don't misinterpret. She just wants you to kiss her face, which I did, but my kisses were too ardent and she turned away, or was she just offering me her other cheek?

  We fell to our knees and it felt as if we were sinking into the earth, that loving each other we would die together, and dying gave us only that much longer to love each other. I had never seen her before — or any woman, come to that — and yet what I saw for the first time I simply recognised. She was so incredibly soft. Our arms and legs enlaced and I ached to pull her against me forcibly until she crossed through the skin, bones and flesh of my chest and remained inside me.

  'I love you, I love you,' I openly confessed.


  'I love you, I love you.' Her songlike echoes were sincere, but I could've sworn that one barely perceptible false note lingered in the air, and before it went away succeeded in injecting a tiny doubt into my heart.

  xx

  For as long as I'd known her as an adult, Elsa had been confined to a space behind a wall, under the floor, in the smallest room above. She had been there years before I'd even known of her. Too many years in all. That may be why her notion of time was so unlike mine. She didn't divide it into weeks, months and years. So many of her days had been undivided by light and darkness that she just didn't divide. To her it was all part of one life, hers, and though her past could still be caged and kept safe in her one mind, her present didn't have to be. She might have been condemned to these spaces physically, but she'd learnt to let her mind wander out of them. Her life situation was the opposite of mine. I was physically mobile, but my mind remained with her constantly, captured within these same spaces. I envied her mental freedom as much as she did my corporal freedom. Little by little, my imagination suffered. In my mind I could visit her, but she couldn't come out to visit me. Hard as I tried, my image of her died as soon as I freed it from her confinement. One step out the door and it faded. Elsa was dying in my memory because I had too few memories of her on this side of my life. I began to feel walled in alive, grew claustrophobic even in the open air, where her room forever shut its wooden mouth on me, as well as the window, its only eye.

  It was a stuffy, mosquito-infested summer night when I told her the whole house was hers on condition she kept clear of the windows and stayed down on all fours. Beads of sweat ran down her temples as I followed along as a sort of guide, indicating the rooms. At first she stopped advancing every four steps (mine) to swat at mosquitoes on her cheeks and legs, but I think it was her nerves for so many could not have been real. Then she picked up the pace, but stopped in her tracks like a startled horse after she'd rounded each corner, as if she'd come face to face with someone standing there — or had thought she might. If anyone was watching us from outside, all they would've seen was one silhouette, my own, wandering aimlessly about.

  Her shyness didn't last long. After her tour of the bottom floor she knocked her head into my shin and brushed past me. Her hair had fallen over her face, and her laughter came from her throat so she sounded like some unearthly animal. With thumb and index finger she encouraged my desire, poking fun at the easy result. Half of me hoped she'd continue, while the other remained tense, expecting her to tweak me there. With uncontrollable giggles she undressed me down to the socks and pulled me down. Before I'd let my weight down on her she scuttled off, leaving me with my arse naked against the cold. I reached for my clothes to find them gone.

  Telltale echoes of where she was came first from upstairs, then downstairs: she would not stay put. I began to regret my decision — didn't put it past her to sneak outside. I reminded myself only I had the keys to get out, but then realised they were in my trouser pocket. At one point, when her silence lasted too long, I cried out her name and sensed that I was alone in an empty house. My fear was answered with more giggles and uncanny sounds I couldn't pinpoint, and for a second I scared myself into believing she was a spirit come to haunt me.

  I headed down the hall that led me past Pimmichen's room. The bathroom door was open and I found her half submerged, her big toe sticking up the tap as a trickle of water ran noiselessly over her foot. On seeing me, she kicked her bow-shaped legs about ecstatically, her heels thumping in the water. I saw my trousers balled up under her head and took them back as if my concern was not wanting them wet. The keys were still there: my anxiety was dispelled in a heartbeat.

  Moonlight shone through the steamy window, and the water made the light jiggle on her narrow face as her ear-to-ear grin danced about like a boat bouncing on a sea. She was just having fun: it was a joy to witness. I had trouble understanding myself. Why did I suspect her of acts that never would have occurred to her? Why could I not believe what was in front of my own eyes?

  'Comb my hair!' She paid for her order in advance with a wet smack on the pucker and the honour of drying her.

  There were too many knots for me to undo, so I simplified matters with a pair of scissors. She cast tense glances down at the locks landing at her feet. I had to nag her to keep her head straight. I was trying to get the sides even when, in thinking I must be careful not to cut her ears, I remembered I'd still never seen them up close. I snipped away until her hair matched their shape — two fragile question marks. They existed, even if they seemed to supplement her beauty rather than perform a function. She was at last complete. Feeling her ears exposed, she fingered my work and scolded me from top to toe. I replied what did it matter? I was the only one who could see her.

  I know this will make me sound as mad as a March hare, but the constant threat of discovery and execution heightened our sense of being alive. Given that I couldn't keep the curtains permanently closed without drawing attention, Elsa was forced to cross the house as if her life depended on it, scuttling along on her elbows like a soldier, and sometimes stayed put in some recess until the coast was clear. The tiniest details most people ignored in life had great importance in ours. We lived among ominous clouds of what ifs. What if I weren't home and someone were listening at the door? What if someone was controlling how much water we used? What if someone went through our rubbish? What if a neighbour saw only me through the window, but with my mouth moving because I was talking to her? These ominous clouds were foes, but they were our friends too. Thanks to them, putting out the rubbish, hanging her clothes on the line at night was enough to bring adrenalin to my veins, and hers as she waited inside for me, holding her breath. Common chores, tedious, demoralising and destructive to other couples, on the contrary, vivified our existence. Once accomplished, they cast us into embraces.

  We used the toilet one after the other before we flushed. I proposed the same system as far as our bath was concerned, but with her indefatigable logic she asked, 'Why can't we each have our own half bath?'

  Offended by what I took as a sign of rejection, for I had hoped she would suggest we bathe together, I replied, 'I'm afraid I'm not used to half baths.'

  She said, 'With the greater mass of your youthful muscular body, a quarter bath would become a half bath, a half bath would likewise become a three-quarter bath, and a gentleman doesn't discuss fractions with a lady.'

  It was no use arguing with her, she knew how to wrap a sour word inside a sugary compliment. In a nutshell, the hours' worth of chores I was in the habit of performing in the service of her bodily needs — the same needs as any infant but, I'd say with all respect, on a greater scale — she could now do on her own, and that made me happy.

  She was like a toddler discovering a home: every object had to have a history. She'd look it over until I half expected her to stick it in her mouth. 'What's this?' 'How about this?' Wherever the commonplace truth stopped, I adorned it with tales. She found her way to Ute's door, which I didn't want to open, but her eagerness got the upper hand. She picked up Ute's Tracht — the faded green dress of her childhood — and held it up against her chest, where it looked farcically shrunken. She crossed the room to Ute's violin case. 'This?'

  I removed the violin and studied the ribbed markings on its back. 'Yes, this first belonged to an Italian, Dante Molevare, who used it to seduce women. He looked in their eyes as his fingers teased the strings, his bow loving the instrument. He seduced Olivia Tatti, an orphan turned nun whom he refused to marry, despite the fact that she bore his child. Unable to endure the rejection, she set herself on fire under his villa. To protect his reputation he rushed down, tearing off his cape to smother the flames. Misinterpreting this show of heroism for love, she threw herself at him one last time. The only place he wasn't scorched was where her face had pressed into his, and it was said that when he walked the streets of Rome, her face could be made out as clearly as if she'd thrust it into clay.'

  Elsa's parti
al smile, mocking yet a pinch entertained at one corner, urged me on. 'Sixty-three years later, the violin was inherited by his nephew and kept in his attic. Upon his death, his wife sold it to a widower from Como. One day the widower came home early to see his only child, Clara, weeping, with the governess striking her knuckles for every imperfect note. He dismissed the governess on the spot and the violin was untouched for eleven years. Clara married a Swiss man. None of their children wanted to play, so Clara donated it to a Romanian so he could make money for his family in the streets. But for a quicker profit he sold it at a Viennese fair, to a luthier who put it in the window of his shop at a reasonable price, because of the chip off the side from Clara's once having dropped it. One day . . .'

  Elsa picked up where I left off: 'A man happened to be walking by and was struck by the workmanship. He worked long years as an underpaid tailor and spent more than he earned to buy his child this violin. He warned the child, "The violin is a spiteful instrument. If you don't take care of it every day, warm up all its strings, it will sing only nasty things to you." The cost of the lessons was draining his family, the soup was thinning, his two sons were of age to go to yeshiva. He was pressed to sell the violin to the business associate of an acquaintance whose daughter wished to take up music. The girls were the same age, but the poor man's daughter had five years of lessons behind her. The rich man's girl saw how sad the poor man's daughter was at handing over her instrument. She told her that if she helped her learn, she, in turn, could practise on the violin. In no time they became best friends; the violin was what it had been made to be: a source of harmony.'

  Elsa twisted the pegs, plucked the strings. 'Once upon a time, after many years of not touching it, Elsa remembered her father's words.' She swung the violin into place under her chin.

  'Don't! The neighbours will know it can't be me playing with only one hand!'