The Crooked Maid

by Dan Vyleta

  Robert nodded. “I know. I went to get his signature. For the visits. He is a dreadful little man.”

  He paused, dug in his pocket, and passed over the bar of American chocolate he had found hidden at the back of a kitchen cupboard. There had been a whole stash. Wolfgang took it greedily, unwrapped the chocolate, and ate it at once. It was only when he had eaten most of the bar that he remembered Robert and passed him a little square.

  “Here, take it. For coming to this valley of the lepers.” He licked chocolate off his fingers and crumpled up the paper. “You know, in all this time you are the first to come and visit.”

  “Eva says Poldi is afraid to. She thinks it’ll hurt your reputation. She also says you turned away Mother.”

  Wolfgang flushed with anger. “So you’ve discussed it all, Eva and you.” He pulled a face, ran a hand through his stubble. “Poldi may be right at that. About my ‘reputation.’ Father used to say, ‘Where did you find her, this twopenny tart of yours?’ If she does visit, they’ll never let me hear the end of it.” He nodded his head at the door in the direction of the guards. “As for your mother, all she was worried about was how I would testify.”

  “She says you are a martyr.”

  “A martyr? For the cause, eh?” Wolfgang chuckled and shook his head. “Still holding out for the Endsieg, is she? Funny how things turn out. When she came to us—”

  “Yes?” said Robert, aware of the catch in his voice. “Tell me.”

  “Well, you were there yourself. She started working at the factory at first. A pretty little widow. Packing goods or something, right on the shop floor. Then Mother got ill and we needed a housekeeper. She came as a maid, same as the hunchback. God, what a mouse she was then! Afraid of her own shadow. And every time anyone mentioned her dead husband, you would have thought she’d get on her knees and cross herself. I think Father married her out of pity.”

  “And then?”

  “She bought into it. The speeches, the newspaper, all that stuff on the radio. I did too. Joined everything I could, shouted all the slogans, hoping I’d dodge the draft somehow, especially once they’d flunked me out of school. It all made sense, you know: the more I shouted, the more everyone praised me. I remember sitting over dinner with your mother, swapping the latest stories from the Stürmer, Father looking on confused, like it was all very well to go on like that in public but wasn’t it time for dessert?”

  He chuckled, stroked his chin and moustache. “And then, when it all went to shit, well—I dropped the slogans, same as everyone else. Only your mother didn’t. She still had Hitler hanging in the hallway when I came home six weeks ago.”

  He cleared his throat and spat on the floor next to his chair, looked up and continued in an offhand manner. “You know, Robert, it is good talking to you. Like putting on clean underwear or something. I feel—what’s the word? Resurrected. And it’s all because you have such a sweet little face. And now, tell me, little brother. Did you bring any cigarettes? You did! Well, bless you, my little angel, I swear to God I want to kiss you again, only the guards, they wouldn’t approve.”

  He grinned, leaned back, and lit up a smoke.

  5.

  Silence fell between them as they shifted nervously in their chairs. Wolfgang looked over to the two men on the far side of the room and Robert half expected him to ask to be walked back to his cell. But instead he pulled a face and sat smoking his cigarette in quiet, methodical drags. When he had finished with it, he stubbed it out on the scarred surface of the table, reached across, and took hold of Robert’s hand.

  “Look here, little brother,” he said, his voice quite changed from the jeering note that had coloured it before and taking on a solemn tenderness that went straight to Robert’s heart. “In a few short weeks I will be in court. Don’t imagine for a second that it will just be about Father. They will put me under the microscope, mull over every little sin, and by the end I’ll have turned into a monster. No, no, don’t contradict me, it’s how it’ll be, and who knows, perhaps I even deserve it. But for now—while you still love me—let’s talk, even if it’s just for one little hour.” He reached over and tousled Robert’s hair. “Tell me about yourself. We are brothers after all.”

  “That’s just how I’d imagined it,” Robert answered, half embarrassed by the eagerness in his voice. “That we would sit here and talk about God and the world.”

  Gott und die Welt. Wolfgang smiled at the expression and lit another cigarette.

  “Go on, then, tell me a secret. What, no secrets? Surely there must be at least one. Let me guess, you are in love. No? Not even a little bit? Something else, then. You’re running off to be a sailor. No, better yet, a monk!”

  Robert blushed and shook his head, and began to talk about his years in the boarding school, the teachers and his schoolmates and their boyish little pranks. The brothers spoke for another twenty minutes, until the guard stood up from his bench and escorted Robert outside.

  Three

  1.

  On the fourth morning after her return to Vienna, at eight-thirty in the morning, Karel Neumann rang the bell to Anna Beer’s flat. She was not entirely surprised to see him. For the past two days she had, on various occasions, been privy to the neighbourhood gossip which held that a young widow, “an American, and some sort of journalist,” who was lodging in Anna’s apartment building, had taken to receiving a man at all hours of the day and night, disregarding all rules of propriety. What was more, the man was not registered at this address and often arrived in a state of advanced inebriation, waking up the other lodgers with his knocking and outbursts. The neighbours, and especially the landlady, were deliberating on what was to be done. The issue was far from simple. On the one hand such criminal behaviour could hardly be tolerated and there was little choice but to call the police and have both of them turned out. On the other hand the woman was a foreigner and as such subject to “quite a different code of law,” as the shopgirl at the bakery explained to Anna, taking obvious pride in her polished turn of phrase. Besides, it was rumoured that the widow paid more than twice the rent of the other lodgers. Thus far, in any case, neither Frau Coburn nor her visitor had been asked to leave, and there was even some evidence that the other lodgers had started taking a liking to her beau, who was described to Anna as “very presentable, if not exactly handsome,” and “in any case tall”; a man of some humour, whose drinking habit could be excused with reference to the privations he had experienced as a prisoner of war.

  Despite all this talk about “Herr Neumann,” Anna had not actually seen him these past few days. After her aborted visit to Herr Kis, she had spent her time looking up friends and acquaintances of old and inquiring whether they had seen her husband. The results were meagre. An old colleague of Anton’s, a neurologist who was working at the hospital, reported that they had passed one another in the street about a week ago. The two men had tipped their hats in greeting, but—walking on opposite sides, and both of them evidently in a hurry—they had not actually stopped to talk. The old doctor had been sufficiently struck by this chance encounter to call Beer on the telephone that same afternoon, only to learn that the number had been disconnected.

  Other than him, only the bank manager had seen Anton. He had come into the branch ten days previously, to withdraw money from his account. The bank had been crowded just then, and the two men had no opportunity to speak or even shake hands; a clerk had handled the transaction. Beer had looked well enough, if thin and dressed “a little below his usual standards.” When Anna asked if it had seemed to the manager that Anton had been drinking, she was met with a professional smile. “Out of the question,” the man had said, brushing lint off his jacket sleeve. He’d served her an apple brandy and stared at her bottom when she got up to leave.

  None of her other visits uncovered anything further. It seemed that Anton had talked to nobody at all.

  Unless, that is, he’d talked to Kis.

  She’d gone to bed the previous night wonder
ing whether she must, after all, take upon herself the tiresome chore of paying a visit to her husband’s lover. Now her doorbell was ringing, the spy hole showing Karel Neumann slouching on the other side.

  She opened the door just as he’d abandoned the bell and started knocking. He was dressed in his cotton vest and trousers, held a bundle tucked under his arm.

  “Can I wash here?” he asked.

  Anna looked him up and down. “Did she kick you out already? Three nights. Not much to shout about.”

  He grinned. “No, no, things are just fine. But there’s a queue for the bathroom as long as my arm.”

  “This is not a hostel,” she said, but she let him in all the same. He threw down his bundle and locked himself in the toilet; emerged a few minutes later, walked over to the bathroom, and started running the hot water. Anna lingered in the hallway, wrapped her dressing gown closer around her frame. She heard him climb out of his clothes and test the temperature of the water. After a few minutes there sounded a deep sigh as he lowered himself into the bath.

  “Come in,” he hollered, “it’s boring all alone.”

  She stuck her head through the door, saw he was sitting in the bath with his head, shoulders, and knees sticking up above the rim. The water was milky; he had taken liberties with her Parisian soap.

  “I’ll make some coffee,” she said, and disappeared.

  When she returned, he was running more hot water, then settled back into its warmth. She set a cup down on the rim for him, cleared the bathroom stool of his clothes, and sat down. Neumann’s big shoulders stuck out a full foot beyond the edge of the tub. His massive hands were resting on his knees. She pictured his bulk alongside Sophie Coburn’s tiny frame. It wasn’t an easy thing to do.

  “So, how did you charm her?” she asked, sipping her coffee. “I hear you went down to her flat and hammered on the door. The same night I told you to get lost.”

  He grinned, scooped up some water, and poured it over his hair. “Do you remember how drunk I was? Four sheets to the wind. Barely made it down the stairs. Some lass had to help me, a young thing with a hump on her shoulder. I was trying to talk my way into her bed, but she had other takers I suppose.”

  He chuckled, fished with his hand for her washcloth. His accent grew stronger as he launched himself into the story. “So there I am, banging on door. It isn’t late, mind, eight, maybe nine o’clock. One of the lodgers opens, a little old man, stares up at me, and I shout that I want to see ‘widow journalist’ and something stupid about jam and eggs. Before I know it, all the lodgers come out their rooms and are crowding in corridor. The landlady’s there too, some nasty old crone with dyed yellow hair, getting ready to tell me off.

  “Who are you? she yells, and I tell her—why wouldn’t I? I’ve got nothing to hide—I’m Karel Neumann, I tell her, here to see my Sophiĉka. Sophiĉka? she says. Who is this Sophiĉka? I have never heard of such a person. And I say, You don’t know Sophiĉka? She lives here with you, they shot down her husband, the pilot, now she’s lonely and rich, and all sorts of nonsense in the same vein. We don’t make any progress one way or the other, the landlady and I, until Sophie herself comes out her room, dressed in a little silk dressing gown. Christ almighty, it’s the kind of thing you see at a good brothel, and she’s covered her bosom with a shawl. I know this man, she says, real prim, like she’s learned sentence from a language book, which I suppose she has. She takes me by the hand and leads me to her room, puts me in bed, takes my boots off, and tucks me in, like I’m five years old. The landlady’s after her, shouting at her back, the two have conference right in the doorway, with all the neighbours craning over both their shoulders. It’s all the same to me. I’m tired, I fall asleep; pass out, as a matter of fact, it’s like someone’s slipped coal sack over my head. The last thing I remember is finding her nightie, it’s crumpled up next to the pillow, something frilly and smooth, so I press it to my face and off I am.

  “When I wake, everything’s quiet; moonlight in window, Sophie sleeping on a wicker armchair she’s pushed into one corner. It’s a tiny room, packed with bed, desk, mirror, and dresser, you can hardly turn around in it, and she’s found for herself the corner that is furthest from the bed. I get up and she wakes, holds her blanket tight against her chin. I pick her up like a child, she weighs nothing at all, and I carry her to bed. And then, well …” Neumann smiled, scratched himself beneath the waterline. “I’m afraid we woke neighbours. She’s a widow, you see. Grateful.”

  Anna watched him rearrange his hips in the water. Amongst the soap bubbles floated his penis, large and flaccid, in proportion with the rest of him. She turned her eyes back to his face. “Is the landlady still giving you trouble?”

  He shook his head. “Sophie told her I was her brother-in-law. She’s agreed to making an exception for a relative. Not a cheap exception, mind, but an exception all the same.”

  “You’re a pig.”

  “Yes, yes, naturally,” he said. “But then again, one has to live.”

  He reached forward, turned the tap, let in some more hot water. His indolence and sense of ease were not without charm to Anna. Her husband, Anton, was a creature of discretion and duty. It had tired her sometimes, back in the days when they’d been young and were courting.

  “So now that you’ve become acquainted—what do you make of Frau Coburn?”

  “Ah,” said Karel. “Sophiĉka. She’s a lost soul. Came here because this is where her husband died; shot down by flak. Left the hotel and rented herself a room so that she’d meet the natives. And now she has no idea what there is for her to do. Write stories, naturally—but what about, God only knows.”

  He stood up all of a sudden, stood naked and dripping, gestured for a towel. She gave him the one hanging from the hook on the wall. His nakedness did not frighten her. She had seen her share of naked men. He dried his hair and shoulders first, then wrapped the towel around his hips.

  “You know what she says to me last night?” he went on. “We were talking with our hands, you understand, her jabbering in English, and me making sense of it best I can. Vienna is finished, is what she says. Finito. For journalists, she means. No more stories here. She even heard they are going to do a movie. In the fall. With Orson Welles. She was really quite upset.”

  He bent over, prised a pack of cigarettes from the trousers on the floor, lit up.

  “All the same, she has some interesting ideas. About Beer. She says a lot of people are being picked up by the Russkies at the moment. It’s piqued her curiosity. The Cold War, she calls it, the Soviets taking on the West. ‘Vienna is turning into an Intelligence playground.’ She liked the phrase so much, she found a pencil and wrote it down.”

  Anna frowned and shook her head. “It’s exactly what the detective said to me, that Anton might have been ‘requisitioned.’ But the very idea is ridiculous! They only just released him. And besides, what does Anton know that would be of interest to them?”

  “Ridiculous,” Karel mused. “Is it really? Well, listen, in the camp Beer spent a lot of time with this officer. Oh, no, not like you think. He was, you know, curing him. Head-shrinker stuff.”

  “So?”

  “So I don’t know. Sophie thinks it’s relevant.” He chuckled at the word, spat smoke. “It’s just an idea anyway. I’ll ask around. See what I can find out. Of course, I’ll need some money—”

  He smiled at her, clutching his towel, smoked his cigarette in even drags. All at once she was annoyed by his brazenness. She turned away from him.

  “You’re clean,” she said. “Now get dressed and get out.” Then a thought occurred to her. “There’s one thing you can do for me,” she said. “To pay for your bath.”

  “Go on.”

  “I’m going to see someone. I need a chaperone.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Kis,” she said. “My husband’s—friend.”

  “I’d be delighted.” Karel Neumann yawned, stepped into his underwear. “But first, do you have an
y more coffee? No? Well, I’ll just pop down and drink one with Sophie. She gets lonely when I’m not around. And then, later, we can go and see this Kis.”

  2.

  Anna had arranged to visit an old school friend for lunch and felt it was too late to cancel. Karel agreed to meet her mid-afternoon in front of Kis’s apartment building. Lunch was uneventful. Her friend, Gerlinde, had lost her husband in the war and had reverted to living with her parents. They sat across from each other eating the poor fare while her mother fussed over them like a servant. She actually winced when Anna started cutting the gristle out of the morsel of pork she had served up. Both mother and daughter praised Anna’s attire in a manner that ill concealed their envy. They might have accepted a gift of money, but Anna decided against it, not from delicacy, but from some incoherent feeling that she must uphold a sense of pride that they themselves had long abandoned. All she left them with was a box of French chocolates that they took care not to unwrap. There was no telling what price it might fetch on Vienna’s streets.

  Anna arrived at Kis’s house with time to spare and found a bench not far from it, sat down to rearrange her makeup. Neumann was some minutes late. He strode up with his loafer’s walk, kissed her hand in smirking imitation of a ballroom cavalier. His cheek was dark with afternoon stubble, the smell of beer tart on his breath. Here he was, the only person in the world with whom she shared her husband’s secret: a drunk buffoon with hands as big as hocks of ham. Still, it was better than seeing Kis on her own. She accepted Karel’s arm and they strolled over to the open door.

  “Have you met him before?” Karel asked.

  “Once. You be quiet now. I’ll do the talking.”

  This time there was no cleaning lady mopping the floor. Instead the house was alive with the shouts of children playing in the yard. They mounted the stairs, found Kis’s door. She hesitated, gathered her thoughts. Beside her a mighty fist reached out, hammered boldly on the door.