The Crooked Maid

by Dan Vyleta

  The man frowned. “It’s for the record. Surely you understand. I did not expect to meet in you a habitual saboteur.”

  Flushing, feeling the sting of the rebuke, Aleksei hastily gave his name.

  “Birthplace?”

  He named the village in which he’d been born.

  “Occupation?”

  It went on like this for a little while: simply, smoothly, without fuss.

  “You served in the war?”

  “Yes.”

  “With the final rank of?”

  He named the rank.

  “And your final command?”

  “Camp commander for Prisoner-of-War Camp 97.”

  “Number of prisoners?”

  For the next few hours the questions kept on coming, and little by little, in imperceptible steps, Aleksei’s confidence and comfort slowly began to fade and transform into quite a different feeling. The chair beneath his rump seemed to become harder and harder, and the light shining from the room’s single lamp appeared to him brighter and brighter and more and more painful to the eyes. Slowly, too, an irritation began to rise in him, and the more the interrogator made him dwell on this or that detail during his time as camp commander, the more Aleksei called to mind his years of service to the Fatherland and the gratitude expressed to him by the State. The young man across from him, by contrast, looked as though he had left school not more than a year ago; it was even possible, it struck Aleksei, that he had not served at all. As his irritation grew, the questions increasingly began to repeat themselves, as though his interrogator expected him to get entangled in the most elementary of falsehoods and was intending to accuse him of having fabricated the most basic facts of his life. In time Aleksei’s irritation transformed into a cold, towering rage.

  “But you know all this,” he spat at last, having been asked for the third time to describe his duties and responsibilities at the camp, and to name the number of prisoners at different stages of the war. “There, I can see it from here. You have my record in front of you.”

  His interrogator did not respond, in fact did not even look up, but simply repeated his question with a mildness that seemed calculated to fan the flames of Aleksei’s fury.

  “Look here,” he suddenly shouted. “My daughter is sick. It is clear that you are wholly incompetent. I demand to see—”

  He did not get much further. Even as he started raging, the investigator sat up, opened a little drawer in his desk, reached in, and coolly withdrew a small object and placed it on the table. It was a prosthetic eye, made of glass and fashioned in beautiful and astonishing detail. Without alluding to it, the investigator began to roll the eye—shaped like the head of an ice-cream scoop, at once semi-spherical and hollow—back and forth under one finger.

  “Comrade Kozlov,” he said, still in the same mild tone. “You insist on your innocence and yet you won’t lend assistance to our inquiry. Surely you can see yourself that this makes us suspicious. Incidentally, I have yet to accuse you of anything. Let us return then to the question. In October 1943, how many prisoners were transferred from—”

  And with one blow all confidence and bluster had been taken from Aleksei. He curled his head into his chest, forgot all about the little secretary behind him with the pretty, fleshy forearms, and answered every question quickly, ingratiatingly, all the while filling his clothes with rank, cold sweat.

  Two

  1.

  Three days after the trial of Wolfgang Seidel had come to a close, in occupied Vienna, a tall, broad-shouldered man, whose German was selectively marked by Czech intonation, was making the rounds of the city’s backyards and cellars, talking to workers, vagrants, ragpickers, and schoolchildren. He was not wearing an overcoat and was evidently freezing in his dirty shirt and waistcoat; walked with a certain furtiveness, his hands stuffed into the relative warmth of his armpits, a tatty rag tied around his face and head as though he were suffering from toothache. His inquiries led him to a former factory yard. The front building had been patched up and now housed a butcher’s shop; the inner courtyard looked out over a mound of rubble that marked the spot where the building’s back wing had once stood.

  He entered it hesitantly, scanning the yard with suspicion; approached the cellar door that, warped and broken, stood open no wider than a crack. He stopped at the door for some minutes, staring into the dark of a cellar stairwell, soft calls of inquiry issuing from his lips; then shrugged his massive shoulders and quickly left the yard.

  The man warmed up at a public house some blocks down the road, drank two shots of rowanberry schnapps with systematic small sips, asked the proprietor about a “bum with a red woollen scarf,” then continued his search out in the bitingly cold wind. By the time he returned to the section of town where Vienna’s shabbiest hotels had chosen to congregate, he was frozen to the bone.

  He walked quickly, hurrying home, and it was only by chance that, passing the establishment two doors down from his destination, he noticed a woman standing at the reception desk, talking in loud, broken German at the bored youth who was on duty. It struck him as curious that he would recognize her from the back: there was nothing very remarkable about her silhouette. She wore an expensive coat and had a certain way of tossing her head.

  He hurried on past, ducked into the doorway of his own hotel, walked up the stairs. The door was not locked. Eva was sitting on the narrow bed, a newspaper open on her lap. They had taken turns sleeping on the floor. She looked up as he entered, pushed the paper away from her.

  He read the page’s rubric, then attempted to read her face. “Obituaries? Still worried, are you? There’s no need.” He unwrapped the rag from around his head, his hands clumsy with cold. “If he were dead, it’d be all over the papers. His brother’s a celebrity after all. As are you.” He bent down to her, tried to catch her eye. “He’s probably sitting at home, pining for you. Go home and he’ll eat out of your hand.”

  She refused to look up, ignored his words. “Did you find him?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “What if you don’t? Or if he refuses to help? All this time, and he hasn’t asked them for a dime.” She looked hard at him, her eyes full of pent-up anger. She had been looking at him like that ever since she came. “We don’t even know it’s him.”

  “We need the money,” he said phlegmatically. “No money, no papers.”

  “We could steal it.”

  “Steal it? Stealing is hard work.” He gestured her up, his eyes taking inventory of their meagre belongings. “In any case, we have to move.”

  “Again?”

  “I saw Sophie just now. Snooping around, asking after me.” He smiled. “One thing about me, I’m hard to miss.” He collected their few things.

  “What does she want from you?” Eva asked.

  He considered it, a hint of buffoonery creeping into his voice. “I don’t know. Must be she misses me. Because of charming personality.”

  “Just go down and tell her to leave you alone.”

  “I thought about it. Too dangerous.” He took her by the arm, hurried her along the corridor and down the back stairs. “She’s jilted lover. No telling what she’ll do.”

  Eva refused to share in his joke.

  2.

  Robert came to her mid-morning in November, the trial ten days past. Anna received him in the kitchen, as she did with all her callers. When they sat down, it occurred to her that the last time they had been in the room together, they had parted with a kiss. She could see he was thinking about it too, his eyes on the spot where she’d cornered him. Anna smiled but did not comment. It would have been cruel to make him squirm.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked blandly, studied his face. The right eye was marked by the late stages of a shiner. Other than that he looked dapper and well fed.

  “Eva has disappeared. You know—the maid.” He blushed over the word, hurried on. “You saw her at the trial. We were about to get engaged, but then—” He recou
nted to her the story of his woes. “I asked Mother, why did she kill the crows? She point-blank denied it. I’m no longer speaking to her.”

  “You should save your anger for the girl. It’s a wonder you didn’t break your neck.”

  He shook his head, unwilling to hear any criticism directed at Eva. “That’s just it,” he said. “She might think I’m angry with her. I can’t find her anywhere. Then today it struck me that maybe she came here. She knows your husband, you know.”

  “She met him when she was ten years old. And now she’s decided he’s a saint. Her father died and Anton put her up for a week—but I don’t know the details. In any case, she hasn’t been here.”

  He nodded glumly, looked around himself, noticed for the first time the trunk that sat open in one corner, half packed with household things. “He hasn’t come back?” he asked her gently.

  She feigned unconcern. These days it was awfully easy to feign. “The police tell me he’s in Russia. Back in a camp.”

  “Do you believe them?”

  “Sometimes I think he’s right here, in the street, looking up at this window; a shabby figure in a shabbier coat. Lost in the world. Have you noticed how many men like that are walking around the city these days? I turn a corner and that’s all there seems to be: shabby, lost men, looking at me with vacant eyes. Oh, there must be women like that too. But I don’t seem to notice them. Perhaps they are hiding indoors.”

  He listened, looked again at the half-packed trunk. “Don’t go,” he said, entreatingly. “Not yet. Give him more time.”

  “How long do you want me to wait?”

  He frowned, stood up, started pacing. “I started praying again,” he said abruptly, not pausing in his step. “I used to pray a lot, you see. Before I came here; I even wanted to become a priest. Sometimes I think everything went wrong because I stopped.”

  She laughed, lightly she hoped, and rose from her chair. “Go,” she said, leading him out into the hallway. “Find your girl. If she wants to be found. And leave God out of it.”

  He followed, took heart. “I will find her,” he said. “After all, my father was a detective. It must run in the family.”

  “Ah, yes. The famed Inspector Teuben. You never told me how he died.”

  “Mother says it was a stroke. While he was out and about. In the line of duty.” Anna could tell he liked the phrase. “That’s all she ever said.”

  “You should ask her. But no, I forgot: you’re not speaking to her.”

  He almost shared her smile. “She got a letter the other day,” he said. “She was very upset.”

  “What was it?”

  He shook his head. “She didn’t show it to me, and I didn’t ask.”

  “And you didn’t sneak into her bedroom to read it on the sly? No, I suppose you wouldn’t. It’d be dishonest.” She smiled again. “You really are a very funny little man.”

  The phone started ringing. It was there in the hallway, not two feet from where they were standing, unaccountably shrill. She let it ring until it fell silent.

  “Someone had it fixed,” she explained while Robert slipped into his coat. “A policeman. He showers me with attention.” She wrote her number on a used envelope. “Call any time.”

  He flinched when she gave him the envelope and let her hand linger for a moment on his.

  “God,” she said. “It was just one little kiss.”

  He nodded and ran out the door as though stung.

  3.

  The silence burdened her. Not a squawk came through the ceiling. She had tried dispelling it with records but had found that she had lost her joy in opera. Besides, Wolfgang had complained. She had spent hours at the window, hoping for the sight of some survivors. But it was the season of flight, not of return.

  “We should move into a bigger room, Wolfie.”

  She said it quietly, more to herself than to her husband, who lay stretched out on the bed in his underclothes. The pillow framed his unshaven face. His upper body was wrapped in crumpled blanket, his legs sticking out, dirt stamped into the heels of his old military socks. She stood on the far side of the bed, both hands pressed into the small of her back, rubbing warmth into sore muscles.

  “There’s no space for a cot in here. There’s the big bedroom downstairs.” She paused. “Frau Seidel won’t say nothing. You’re in charge now, en’t you? The master of the house.”

  She used the phrase awkwardly, pinning an odd hope to it. The thought had been on her mind of late, that she was now mistress. She’d played with it shyly, in her pocket as it were, not daring to bring it to the light.

  “Shut your hole.” He never so much as raised his head from the pillow.

  “At least get out of bed, Wolfie. I’ve got to change the sheets. They smell. It’s been two weeks.”

  Wolfgang neither moved nor answered. After two days of drunken celebration he had fallen into a black funk, not leaving the bed for more than a moment, let alone the house. He had even stopped drinking; ate little, stared at the wall.

  She stepped closer, lowered herself onto the far side of the bed. “It’s all right to go out, you know. They let you off.” She paused, considered reaching for his hand, but did not dare touch him. “So what if people talk. People always talk. Let them.”

  He rolled onto his side, turned his back on her; a wedge of dark hair poking from the elastic of his underpants, marking the cleft of his buttocks. Poldi stretched out next to him, cast around for a topic that might capture his interest.

  “Frau Seidel got a letter today. Second one this week.”

  She studied the nape of Wolfgang’s neck but could discern no reaction.

  “I had a look at it. While she was washin’.” She paused for effect. “It’s from that Jew. The one that used to live here, in the basement. He wants money.”

  “There were no Jews living in no basement.” There was, in Wolfgang’s irritation, just a hint of curiosity.

  “Were too. I saw the bed and all. But I bet they didn’t tell you. Afraid that you’d blab. Bein’ still in school and all.” Pleased at having got Wolfgang’s attention, Poldi stroked her belly and carried on. “I’ve been thinking about it since she told. How come he left his wife and child.” She closed her eyes as though she were literally trying to picture it. “Maybe they got sep’rated in all the mess, while they was being rounded up. People yelling at them, everybody scared. Or maybe they had a fight the evenin’ before, a bad one, and he spent the night away, hooked on a bottle.” She shook her head, saddened by her inability to step into their lives. “He must have come here feeling so ashamed. And every minute he stayed—”

  Wolfgang turned around at her, looked at her with something more than condescension. Wonder, perhaps. “My wife’s a romantic,” he said. “Who would’ve guessed?”

  It was her turn to ignore him. “I know how it was,” she went on. “My father was a union man. Red as they come. They locked him up too, you know.”

  “Next you’ll tell me you’re a Communist yourself. Spent the war in the resistance. That titty-bar was just a front.”

  Poldi bit her lip. “She wants to see you, Frau Seidel does. In the drawing room at three. She said to tell you it’s important.”

  This drew a chuckle from her husband. “In the drawing room at three? It appears I’ve been summoned. Did she say I should wear a tux?”

  He rose from the bed very suddenly, stepped into his trousers, and, still in undershirt and socks, left the room.

  4.

  There were two sets of curtains, one behind the other. The inner was a sheer curtain made from cotton lace; the outer, a heavy velvet drape in a vivid shade of bronze. It proved impossible to shut the window with both curtains hanging out: the velvet was too thick. She tried several times, putting her weight against the glass. In the end she used a piece of string to tie the handle to its neighbour. It would prevent the window from blowing open but left it gaping a good few inches. Outside, the curtains billowed in the wind until the weight o
f the rain settled them, the velvet’s bronze turning a flat brown. Her hands felt raw from the cold and the exertion; arthritic pain deep in the joints. Without looking back, Klara Seidel left her late husband’s study and hurried back into her bedroom.

  She settled down to lighter work; sat at her vanity and saw to her hair. There was a brush she liked that Seidel had given her for their first anniversary: solid silver, its handle and back inlaid with ivory, the horse-hair bristles a light, speckled grey. Her eyes avoided the mirror. She worked by touch alone, each movement the echo of some childhood original, her entire life measured out in five-inch strokes. On occasion she caught a glimpse of the woman sitting across from her, frightened eyes and bloated jowls. It would have been good to reapply her makeup, but to do so required a longer meeting face to face. Powder served as a stopgap; hid her face, obscured the mirror in fine mist.

  Soothed, her face a blank, a trail of particles shadowing her every movement, she reached into the vanity’s drawer and withdrew a leather-bound album of photos. In recent weeks she had often had recourse to its comforts. Setting it down required the rearranging of bottles in front of her; a clink of glass on glass. She lined them up along the mirror’s base, arranged them by size; arthritic fingers making order with exaggerated care. She paused over a particular bottle, removed the stopper, took a pinch, and dropped it quickly on her tongue. Eyes closed, she opened the album to a random page.

  There was no chronology to the progression of pictures. She had arranged them quite recently, by size, mood, and association; had cut herself loose from the tyranny of sequence. Nonetheless it was all there: her childhood, both weddings, Robert’s christening, the time Herr Baron von Schirach had shaken her hand. A reception of the National Socialist Women’s League; the mayor’s birthday; a commemorative postcard of the Führer’s visit in 1938. Mum, Dad, three brothers; an albumen print of Grandpa, looking young and dapper in his Sunday suit.

  There were pictures she lingered over. A picture of Robert, taken at school, dressed formally in jacket and tie; he had sent it one Christmas, a declaration of love neatly written on its back. A Sunday outing with her first husband, Franz Teuben, holding a gingerbread heart against his breast. The picture had been taken at the Prater amusement park; from his hat there grew the spokes of the great Ferris wheel. It might have been 1934 or ’35; they were, neither of them, yet wearing their Party pins. She studied his face quite without emotion. Her love for him resided on the level of pure fact. True, things had been imperfect. Franz had drunk and gambled; had beaten her; had strayed, other women’s smells clinging to the inside of his underwear, a half snatch of memory of her sniffing, crying, scrubbing at stains with a brick of soap. Nor had Franz had any real commitment to the Party; it merely suited his career.