The Crooked Maid

by Dan Vyleta

  “I should leave you two alone,” said Robert, already retreating.

  “No, no, stay,” Wolfgang instructed him, his eyes still gathering in his wife. “I insist. My whole life is played out before an audience these days.” He gestured to the judge’s assistant and the guard, who were standing by the far wall and whispering to one another in low voices. “You might as well join the crowd.” He shifted his gaze to Robert. “But I forgot. You want to leave. You are terribly disappointed with me. After all you’ve heard, I mean.” He pointed at Poldi, a stabbing motion, sharp and accusing. “Was she there?”

  Robert shook his head. “She didn’t want to come in. Besides, there were no tickets. She waited outside the door.”

  “Look at her blushing, though. She knows. She eavesdropped.”

  Robert did not reply. All at once he remembered where she’d waited for him, pressed into the shadows of the wall, like a child pretending she’d been good.

  “Well, screw it. So everybody knows.”

  Neither Robert nor Poldi made any movement to sit down. Robert looked very pale in his dark suit.

  “Go on, little brother. You have something to say?”

  “How could you?” Robert asked meekly. “Beat a little man like that?”

  “What, the one with the cracked glasses?” Wolfgang gave a crooked grin. “And what do you bet he has another pair at home? Without any crack. You can picture him at his sink in the morning, trying out both pairs. Or maybe he dropped the glasses on the way over—by accident of course. But look, the Herr Assistant-Court-Official is getting nervous. We mustn’t discuss the trial.”

  He shook his head in mock exasperation that nonetheless seemed to bleed the anger out of him; flicked away a curling inch of ash and ground the cigarette into the tabletop.

  “You remember, Robert, when we were children, Dad would take us fishing sometimes. He insisted we clean our own fish. First you slit them open with a narrow knife. From asshole to gills, so to speak. And then—” Wolfgang hooked two fingers, mimed the process of wrenching out the guts, then wiped his hand upon his tie. “I remember you didn’t like it at first. You may even have cried. But after a while—” He shrugged, sour, amused. “You got to be pretty good at it, little brother. The blood didn’t bother you at all.”

  Wolfgang turned his attention back to Poldi. He rose from his chair and walked over to her until they were no more than a foot apart. “You’re sure it’s mine, eh?”

  She nodded, dry-eyed, hands folded over her stomach.

  “Ah, give us a kiss, then.” He pulled her towards him, kissed her lips in a greedy, forceful manner, then immediately pushed her away again; swore, rounded the table, dropped back onto his chair. “Time you went, kid. You need your beauty sleep.

  “That’s my wife,” he added, much too loudly, as though yelling at the guard. “Tits out, preggers, half her teeth missing. Wasn’t me, in case you wondered.” He flushed in renewed anger, bared his own teeth, raised one fist in a mock punch. “And they say I called them filth. What if I did, though?”

  He lit a new cigarette, turned once again to Poldi, looked pained. “You’re still here? Stop staring at me with those cow eyes. You heard it: I throw old men out the window. Me, the father of your child. Sleep on it, I tell you, see how it sits with you in the morning.”

  Calmly, not rushing, Poldi turned and walked to the door. Robert made to follow her, but Wolfgang stopped him.

  “How is Mother?” he barked at his back.

  “She is well. She sends her regards.”

  “Does she now? Any special message perhaps?”

  Robert shook his head. “She says you are sure to be acquitted. She is praying for you.”

  Wolfgang grinned. “Praying? That means she’s nervous. Tell her I’m thinking of testifying. Making a clean breast of it, once and for all. And Robert, tell her I’m parched in here. Can she send me some bottles? She’s rich now, isn’t she? She can afford to splurge. One can’t take it with you: make sure to tell her that. She’s the type who thinks you can.”

  Robert ran out then, caught up with Poldi, crushed by the feeling he did not know his brother at all.

  Three

  1.

  He told Eva about it later. They were sitting on the floor of his bedroom, her legs splayed, her back against the bed frame, Robert sprawling with his bottom between her hips, leaning lightly on her chest. These days they often sat like that. She could not see his face this way but, then again, he could not see her back. He had a lovely, narrow, upright neck. She liked to breathe him in: stick her nose in the space where the collar gaped at the nape and inhale. It was the smell of being cared for, sweet, a little sweaty, suggestive of bedtime as a child. To believe in it was like believing in God, or Father Christmas. She reached around with both her hands and laced her fingers across his chest; held him tight against her doubt.

  In the course of the past two months, Eva and Robert had established a pattern for their relationship. They spent the day apart, hardly talking, he busy playing messenger between Wolfgang and the world; she procuring necessities on the markets, running the household, avoiding his mother. At night they met, shyly, in the corridor outside her room. On the whole there was little talk, or rather little conversation. He liked to speak, upend his mind. She would listen and ration her responses, from caution, habit; because she distrusted the contents of her head. Lately she’d found a better foil for the darkness of her thoughts.

  “So it looks like he’s found some joy in it,” she said, when Robert had finished his account of Poldi’s prison visit. “Being a villain. At least she didn’t cry. Almost dignified. Or did she start howling once you were outside?”

  Robert shook his head; a twist of bone and tendon in his neck. She stuck her tongue out, touched a mole straddling his hairline; withdrew it again to listen to his answer.

  “I found her outside the courthouse. She was tearing the sleeves off her dress, tearing at the seams, but she had sewn them on so hard, the fabric tore instead; a crowd of people around looking at her like a madwoman. When she noticed me, she set off for the tram stop. I tried to console her, but she wasn’t listening. All of a sudden she turned and said, ‘He needs me.’ She said it so tenderly, it nearly broke my heart. ‘He was horrible to you,’ I said, but she shushed me, fingers to my cheek. ‘Don’t you see?’ she said. ‘He’s ashamed.’ I thought she meant the dress, she’s not much of a seamstress, after all, and it did look a bit of a mess. ‘We can buy you a new one,’ I started, but she just laughed. ‘Oh, no, not like that,’ she said. ‘He’s ashamed. Because of what he did. Before you. But also before me.’ The tram came; we sat across from one another, and now her eyes were filling up. ‘The way he looked at me,’ she kept on saying. ‘He still wants me.’”

  Robert paused, obviously moved. It distracted from his smell, fanned a spark of cruelty in Eva.

  “He wants her. Wolfgang leers at her across a room and she thinks it is love.”

  “Well, perhaps it is.” He turned so he could see her face, his cheek now level with her mouth. “She stands by him in any case. She wants me to take her back tomorrow, ‘so he can shout at me some more.’ When we got back to the house, she climbed the stairs like a queen.”

  Eva snorted: warm breath into the windings of his ear. “You will, of course. Escort her back and watch him insult her some more. Because in your heart you’d already forgiven him the moment you left his cell. It didn’t take ten steps.” She paused, her mood suspended between tenderness and anger. “The thing is, you think he repents. It comes out all wrong, of course, but he repents. And you know what, he probably thinks so himself. That he’s—what’s the word you like so much?—‘resurrected’; ready to acknowledge the ‘blot on his soul.’ But it didn’t bother him, that blot, not when it was just him who knew, him and his victims, and the people who paid his wages. Even last week he didn’t care one ounce about that blot; he might even have prided himself on it, that he had the strength where others were we
ak. But now it’s in the papers—and he, he is shaking in his boots.”

  Robert did not contradict her. She felt like punishing him but kissed him instead: slipped to his side, turned him by the chin, and crushed his lips with hers. For a moment it won out against everything else, and a softness crept up in her that she longed for and feared.

  “You love me, then?” Robert asked, his voice shy, light, boyish. They had played this game before. She had long rehearsed her line.

  “Why not?” she smiled. “Any day now you’ll be rich.”

  “Say that you love me.”

  “Love?” she said, no longer quite so playful. “I’m an orphan. They cut out our hearts at the gates. Didn’t you know?”

  A crow cawed, flew in through the half-open window, the curtain catching on its wing. It was Yussuf; she had raised him from a chick. He landed on the headboard of her bed; hopped onto her shoulder, then settled on his.

  “You’ve stolen his heart,” she complained, then realized it was true.

  “I think it’s my jacket. Black. I remind him of his mother.”

  She did not show her hurt at once. It was another lesson of the orphanage: that one is a fool to divulge one’s tender spots. They kissed again, her eyes wide open, Yussuf cawing in her ear. She chased the bird, jumped up, made for the door. Mechanically, Robert stood up to follow.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “To piss. You want to walk me to the bowl?”

  Her irritation spent itself in the slamming of the door. By the time she’d reached the stairs, her anger had already flown.

  2.

  Eva did not go to the toilet, but rather downstairs, to the kitchen, wishing to eat and to collect a bundle of food. It was past nine o’clock at night. She walked along without turning on a light, the hallway carpet crusty under her naked feet, opened the kitchen door, found a shadow pressed against the window. Frau Seidel turned momentarily, just long enough to ascertain who had come. Then her attention wandered back into the moonlit night.

  Unperturbed, Eva went through the cupboards. There was a drawer to which only she had the key. She took out the bundle she had come for, put it ready by the door; reached back into the drawer for a tin, spooned corned beef onto salt crackers. In the quiet of the kitchen her chewing sounded very loud. She wondered sometimes what Frau Seidel ate; most of the cupboards were empty of food. Not that she cared if the woman lived or starved.

  “What is it?” she asked at last, curious despite herself. “Still looking for ghosts?”

  “I saw him,” the older woman replied after a pause. “I saw him clear as day. He’s out there somewhere.”

  Eva failed to mask her interest. “You saw him tonight?”

  She received a grunt in reply.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t got a shotgun there. Ready to pick him off.”

  The shadow shifted, pressed something to her bosom. For a glum moment Eva considered whether she had accidentally hit the mark. Surely the woman was not as crazy as that.

  “The moon’s too bright,” Frau Seidel said presently, though she remained standing at the window. “He won’t come back.”

  She turned around at last, saw the half-eaten plate of crackers, reached for it then stopped her hand.

  “Go ahead,” muttered Eva. “Have it. I’m done.”

  She walked away, stopped, watched Frau Seidel stuff her face.

  “The trial took an interesting turn today. Robert told me. Wolfgang’s sure to be convicted.”

  Frau Seidel grunted, chewed.

  “You know,” Eva carried on, “I didn’t understand at first. For the longest time I thought that all you wanted was for Wolfgang to get off and come home. But that’s nonsense. He’s not your blood, after all. Better if Robert gets it all. The factory, I mean.”

  Frau Seidel moved a hand. At first Eva thought she was shaking her fist at her, or making an obscene gesture. But she was just chasing a cracker that had got stuck to her teeth.

  “He says he’ll testify, Wolfgang does. He told Robert to tell you. That he wants to ‘make a clean breast of things.’” Eva paused. “Of course, it mightn’t get to that. They called me as a witness, you see. Tomorrow afternoon.”

  “What will you say?” It came out muffled, soggy, between fingers, shards of cracker flying through the dark. Then: “There’s money.”

  Eva snorted. “Yes, I suppose there is. And a berth to Ecuador. Or the Argentines. I imagine you’ve already packed my suitcase. How much will you pay me? No, tell me, I want to know what I’m worth.” She waited, received no response, Frau Seidel hiding behind mastication. “You know what I want,” Eva added at last.

  “You can’t have him.”

  “We’ve had this conversation. And look whose bed I’ll be sleeping in tonight.”

  Eva picked up the bundle, left the kitchen, and the house, without another word. Outside, in the pale light of the waning moon, a ghost made water in the thorny shelter of the hedge.

  3.

  It was a cold night, cloudy, each inhalation thick with rotting leaves. Still buttoning her coat, Eva hurried down the hill. She had timed it well: the tram arrived as she approached the stop. She found a seat, watched the people around her. There was a fat-faced boy who was holding his dog by its collar; his knees bright red where he’d scraped them and had them daubed with iodine. A drunk hung in the leather handles that were fastened at regular intervals to the ceiling; he had threaded his wrists through their hoops, lost his footing in every bend, then pulled himself upright in the straights. A GI in uniform climbed on two stops down the road; he found her face, smiled, then caught sight of her hump; grimaced and passed her a cigarette in consolation. She found some matches in her pocket and lit it at once; spat smoke at her reflection in the glass. For the whole of the journey she never once glanced back at the tram compartment behind.

  She changed trams when she reached the Gürtel, then got off and walked the last few hundred yards. It was one of the city’s least salubrious areas, home to hookers, pimps, drunks, and vagrants. Outside a public house there stood a crowd of men watching two adolescents fight. They might have been sixteen years old: knives out, one arm cut and blood-slick from bicep to the bone-grip in his palm. She pushed straight through the crowd, ignored the stares of the men. Her back offered her protection: if her face drew them to her, her hump chased them off.

  There was something else that gave her confidence. For the past three months, ever since Robert had brought her the photo of her younger self, she had nurtured the fantasy that the stranger had been watching her. Not the house, not Robert, nor yet his mother, but precisely her. So precious was this hope, and yet so fragile, that she took care never to ascribe to the man his proper name. He was as elusive to her as a dream. No one but Robert had ever seen him, and even Robert had not clapped eyes on the watcher since the night they had wrestled in the mud. There were times, to be sure, when, out running errands, she thought she’d caught a glimpse of him from the corner of her eye. He looked just like Robert had said: a shabby figure in a long red scarf. Initially she had turned at every street corner and tried to catch him out, but had since decided that he had reasons to be shy. In some childish recess of her heart she had long supplied him with a role. He was her guardian angel. Nothing could happen to her. He foresaw the future. He could walk through walls. One touch and he’d uncoil her spine.

  Another twenty steps brought her to her destination. She climbed the steps, cleared the threshold without hesitation. It was an establishment somewhere between hotel and flophouse: a half-lit lobby, the air bitter with cold smoke. The concierge raised a greeting hand. He recognized her from previous visits; she did not know whether he took her for a whore. She climbed the naked stairs to the fifth floor, walked the narrow corridor nearly to the end: peeling wallpaper, dark halos scorched by bulbs screwed high into the wall. Seven rooms, some reverberating with the squeak of beds behind their flimsy doors; metronomes of coin-timed love.

  Th
e room at whose door Eva stopped was quiet. She knocked and turned the handle with one motion, found the door resistant to her push. She tried again, pushed harder; earned a yelp, the dance of agitated paws, the door flying open on a narrow, dirty room. Two beds stood side by side. One sheltered a sick man covered up with blankets; the other a giant who sat, dwarfing its frame, cradling a yelping three-legged mutt.

  “Grüss Gott, Anneliese, ahoj, and welcome!” said Karel Neumann. “Come in, but be gentle. You almost hacked off tail of my new friend.”

  Eva nodded a greeting, and took two steps into the dirty room.

  4.

  He started talking at once, not even waiting until she had closed the door, dropping articles in his familiar manner, and all the while stroking the little dog, first its back, then, once it had rolled over in his giant hands, its pink and almost furless belly.

  “How do you like him? I named him Franz Josef, after emperor. Something about whiskers. He came in this morning, when I was eating breakfast, cold sausage on dry roll. Put his snout right in my crotch, like a right little strumpet. Manager wants to throw him out, give him a good hiding. But why, I ask you, he’s just looking for scraps, just like the rest of us. Got into a fight, see?” He grabbed the dog’s hindquarters and showed her the stump. “A proper Austrian: three paws and an appetite. Until a year ago he was German, and had a pedigree certificate to prove it. Now he’s a patriot. Applying for damages, for the thrashing he received in war. For all that, he’s good boy, frisky. Gets around just fine. It’s only when he pees he’s in trouble. He has to squat, see, like a girl. If he tries to lift a leg, he lands on his ass.”

  Neumann smiled, tossed the dog onto the floor, where it immediately set to licking its tail, then picked up a newspaper that lay crumpled by the side of his bed.

  “Have you seen this?” he carried on without transition. “The evening paper. Got it hot off the press. The ink was still wet. The whole thing is about the trial: blow by blow, who said what, and what did the ladies wear. Only, the spelling’s pretty crummy. Look here, they wrote ‘sensationel.’ And every other time, ‘Herr Klein’ becomes ‘Herr Kleun.’ They do better with the pictures. I open the paper not an hour ago, and look who I find, third row from the front? Frau Anna Beer.” He stabbed with one finger at a half-page illustration depicting the courtroom audience. The scene was rendered with draftsman-like precision. “Does her justice, no? A handsome woman. Pretty hat. You think she got it in Paris?”