Leave Well Enough Alone

by Rosemary Wells

  “Uhm” was the reply. It would, of course, be at least an hour before Mrs. Hoade had anything ready. The girls seemed to know this as well as Dorothy. I have time to write to Kate, she thought. Poor Kate must think I’m dead. I haven’t had a chance to write for the whole summer.

  Dear Katey, she began, I’ve been so busy every second that I haven’t had a minute to write (or do much summer reading either). Dorothy stared out her bedroom window into the leaves of the oak tree that stood outside. How far away Kate seemed to be from this spot. I’ve been helping the lady I work for write a cookbook. You won’t believe it but even I am a little more organized than she is. My name is going to go into it in print. Won’t that knock Sister Elizabeth out! Surely Sister had not said much more than hunky-dory. Surely Mr. Hoade had overheard nothing. Why would Sister even mention a labor union to Dinna? You won’t believe this either but these people have the most fabulous parties. Every week I have to order at least two hundred bucks worth of food and booze over the phone. I’ve never seen a hundred dollar bill before. I’ve actually paid out one or two hundred every time the caterer delivers, because Mrs. H. doesn’t trust the maid with the change. Why would he show such interest in a silly phone call? Particularly if everything was hunky-dory, as Sister had said. I’ll just have to find a way of calling Sister back. All the phones are on this one line though. The best thing about the whole summer is riding horseback. ME! The girl I ride with is very rich. She owns a horse. Can you imagine! We go all over the countryside, which is gorgeous. Even more beautiful than the Catskills. The simple explanation for them using such a big coffin is that they probably couldn’t get a little one this far out in the country. You’ll never guess who your best buddy met last week at one of the parties. Desi Arnaz! He’s a gambling friend of Mr. H. I don’t like Mr. H. one bit. He gives me the creeps. The reason I was told not to go out to the cottage is that the surrounding area is full of rotting timbers, rusty nails, and snakes. You remember how we always talked about marrying millionaires and having dinner in the Waldorf Astoria? Well, these people have all the money in the world. This lady did just that. I can tell. She married for money and wait ʼtil I tell you how that works out. Of course it would be different with David Niven or somebody. But there really aren’t any rotting timbers, rusty bits of iron, or snakes down there. There’s only a fairly substantial cellar. Anyhow, tell you all in September. Take care of yourself. Love, Dot. Sister Elizabeth was much too smart to let the cat out of the bag on the telephone. Dorothy folded the letter and licked the envelope. No, there was just nothing to worry about.

  Of course Dorothy was hot and tired after she had done all that big pile of dishes. Mrs. Hoade had used every pot and pan in the kitchen again to make her turkey croquettes. She didn’t mind in the least if Dorothy went out to the mailbox on Route 8 to post her letter, and if she took a swim on the way back. Mrs. Hoade seemed unusually preoccupied that evening; perhaps with no guests and only Mr. Hoade to contend with, she was not very happy. At nine o’clock, Dorothy dried the last dish, changed into her bathing suit, and letter in hand walked down the driveway to the road.

  She could see only the bulky shape of the cottage, a square of blackness, blacker than the woods that surrounded it. If they hadn’t turned off the telephone down there, the call to Sister Elizabeth would be easy. Mrs. Hoade had never buzzed the phone in the cottage, she’d given the number to the operator. That meant a separate line.

  Dorothy felt for the door handle. She gave the door a push as she depressed the latch. It opened so easily that she nearly tumbled in upon the door. The darkness in the little house surrounded her like a muff. Holding on to the wall with one hand, she rotated the other in wobbly circles to find a telephone, or at least a light switch. A light would not be seen at the big house, as the windows had been shuttered over on that side. Her fingers touched the top of a silk lampshade. She steadied it. Then the palm of her hand came directly on the soft lips of a human mouth.

  Chapter Eight

  DOROTHY FOUND HERSELF GRASPING the side of Miss Borg’s bed, kneeling and then crouching beside it as if the walls at any moment might cave in around her. When Miss Borg had shouted whatever she was shouting in German for the third time, Dorothy managed to open her eyes and say, “I’m so sorry, Miss Borg. I didn’t know you were still here. Please, I’m so sorry.”

  “Was machst du hier?” Miss Borg repeated. She hoisted herself upright against her pillow and began fussing with her hair. She used little bits of colored cloth as curlers, Dorothy noticed, and she wore a winter nightgown of white flannel. Some of the fright had left Miss Borg’s eyes. “Gott im Himmel!” she said in a grumpy voice.

  “I’ll go right now, Miss Borg,” said Dorothy, pulling herself up to a standing position. She was about to back out the door when Miss Borg kicked aside her covers and strode over to the kitchen asking, “Etwas Kaffee?”

  That sounded like coffee. Dorothy reckoned she’d better sit down and accept some hospitality, or Miss Borg, whatever her reason for staying on, might be further insulted and would be sure to tell Mrs. Hoade, perhaps Mr. Hoade.

  “Yes, thank you,” Dorothy answered, sitting on the bed. The kitchen was as tiny and efficient as a ship’s galley. “Was willst du von mir?” Miss Borg asked, taking a small jar of Sanka from the shelf and putting a miniature kettle on to boil.

  “Excuse me?” asked Dorothy.

  “Was willst du von mir? Was?” Miss Borg asked again, more slowly.

  Was was the word she’d used before, the day Dorothy had come down to the cottage in search of Lisa. Well, of course she must be wondering what I want, Dorothy reasoned. “I want to use the telephone,” she said. “I want to call up a nun,” she added, noticing that Miss Borg wore a small silver crucifix around her neck. “A nun...a”—What is the Latin for nun? Maybe she knows Latin—“Nonna.”

  “Nonne?” asked Miss Borg, pointing to the cross around Dorothy’s neck. “Du wolltest mit einer Nonne telefonierien?”

  “May I make a telephone call to a convent?” Dorothy asked again. Miss Borg looked at her peculiarly. She motioned that Dorothy might use the telephone. Then she spooned two teaspoons of the coffee into the cups.

  “Oh, thank you, so much,” said Dorothy as earnestly as she could with as big a smile as she could manage. After a very long wait and several switchings of extensions, Sister’s voice crackled through the receiver.

  “I stayed up in the library, Dorothy,” Sister said. “In case you called back. Everything’s all right with your union, you know. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Thank you, Sister. You didn’t say anything about unions over the phone this afternoon, by any chance?”

  “Most certainly not. I know what an elementary precaution is, after all. So it seems your Mr. Hoade was only a bit crude. However, he was not lying.”

  “I guessed so, Sister. I found Miss Borg, by the way,” Dorothy said with a smile at Miss Borg. Miss Borg smiled back with comprehension. “I’m right in the cottage now. She’s making me a cup of coffee.”

  “Wonderful! So you see?” Sister laughed a little. “People aren’t as awful as all that. We should remember to leave this sort of intrigue for the gothic writers. So it was a baby after all and the nurse is staying on until she finds another position?”

  “That must be it, Sister. The nurse only speaks German so I can’t really ask her.”

  “Deutsch,” said Miss Borg pleasantly, stirring the coffee.

  “A difficult language,” Sister went on. “At any rate, Dorothy, although I admit to being attracted to melodrama, I am relieved at what you say. I shouldn’t want any of my students to come to a violent end.”

  “No, Sister,” said Dorothy.

  “However,” Sister Elizabeth continued, “had you found yourself in a position that could have been described as unsavory, I’m sure you would have faced it with equanimity. An unsafe position you would have faced with courage. Any of my students would have done. ‘Courage mounteth with occasion.’
That’s King John. You’ll have it senior year.”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  “Was there anything else?”

  “Not really, Sister. I didn’t tell you that they buried the baby in an adult-size coffin. I guess they could only get a regular size one out here in the country. But there was something you said over the phone this morning, something that didn’t fit in?”

  “No doubt there’s a mundane explanation for the coffin size,” said Sister Elizabeth slowly. “No, this morning I was only thinking of a name. Your employer’s maiden name. Krasilovsky. It reminded me of the back of my father’s store. That’s because he had a safe there, which he allowed me to open every morning before school. The brand name on the safe was Krasilovsky, and if you gave me a day I could probably remember the combination, as I did it every morning for seven years. Oh, dear. My memory is not what it was. At any rate, you are all right and whatever her name in the grave is, is resting in peace?”

  “Miriam Coburg, Sister. Yes. And I’m going to enjoy the rest of the summer. Finishing Nicholas Nickelby, of course, and Ivanhoe.” Dorothy could not hear Sister’s reply to this statement. Miss Borg had dropped a coffee cup and was signaling furiously. “Excuse me, Sister, just a second, the nurse is very upset.” Dorothy watched helplessly as Miss Borg rattled on in rapid German. “Please,” she tried to interrupt, “I can’t understand. Wait until I get off the phone.”

  “Dorothy, Dorothy,” Sister called through the wire at the same time.

  “Yes, Sister?”

  “I cannot guarantee that the German I studied at Trinity College in Dublin twenty years ago will stand up, but perhaps I can reassure your friend, or understand what is happening.”

  Dorothy held the telephone out to Miss. Borg, who with a great heaving sigh placed it against her ear. “She speaks German,” Dorothy said to the doubt-filled blue eyes. The German did not slow down, nor did Miss Borg seem less agitated after ten or eleven minutes’ talking to Sister Elizabeth.

  “What is it? What’s she upset about?” Dorothy asked when she was able, at last, to snatch the receiver back.

  Sister sighed. “My German is really very elementary,” she admitted sadly. “She’s a Catholic.”

  “I know she’s a Catholic.”

  “Nearly all German Catholics come from the south. Bavaria,” Sister explained. “I’m sorry to say they are far more excitable and less methodical than their Prussian neighbors. Also, she uses a dialect.”

  “Oh,” said Dorothy.

  “I was only able to make out the last part where she slowed down a bit. The first part was all medical, I believe. She is apparently leaving to live with her sister in Munich. I suggest you ask her to write down, in an orderly fashion, whatever it is that is consuming her passion, and then translate it.”

  “But Sister, I don’t know a word of German.”

  “Use a dictionary. Is there one handy? Use your considerable gift for languages.”

  “Yes, Sister, but...

  “Dorothy, one day you will find yourself at a very fine university. You will have to read Goethe and Schiller. So you might as well start now. There’s no sense in reading Goethe and Schiller in English. Can you imagine how ludicrous Sir Walter Scott would be in German? I will see you in September and you’ll show me the results of your efforts?”

  Dorothy glanced over at Miss Borg. The nurse was still talking, still explaining in German, now to no one. Her voice, under the impossible-sounding guttural syllables, was as crushed as a frightened child’s.

  “I’ll do it, Sister,” said Dorothy. “Poor Miss Borg is upset. Even if I don’t get a word, maybe it’ll make her feel better, anyhow.”

  There was a very short pause at the other end of the wire. Dorothy thought perhaps the line had gone dead. “God bless you, Dorothy,” said Sister, never for an instant losing the crispness in her tone. “I think you’ll find your way.”

  Dorothy hung up without being able to reply. Nobody save her parents had ever said “God bless you” to her before, certainly not a teacher. How funny teachers could be outside the classroom. They actually seemed to have lives and feelings like real people.

  The coffee was lukewarm. Dorothy scanned the bookshelf. Her eye came to rest on the small German dictionary that Miss Borg had brought with her on their walks among the flowers. She removed it from the shelf and, taking a writing tablet and pencil from the bureau, indicated to Miss Borg that she should write down what she was trying to communicate.

  Miss Borg wrote. She crossed out and rewrote furiously. Dorothy watched her, dictionary in hand, and thought about Sister Elizabeth. Surely Sister knew about her upcoming punishment for what had happened at the Assembly. The whole school knew about it. Sister Elizabeth must have been just as shocked as Reverend Mother. Maybe, Dorothy thought, looking through the pages of German words, this will be much tougher than taking the Latin exam over again, even if no one gives me a grade on it. I’ll do the best I can, she decided, even if I’m not interested in what this poor old lady is upset about. I guess I’d rather die than let Sister down.

  Dorothy’s interest in what the poor old lady had to say was sharpened the minute she looked at Miss Borg’s block letters. There was not a single word on the whole paper that resembled any Latin, any French, not to mention English, save one, and that was Autopsie. Dorothy smoothed out a sheet of paper from the writing tablet. She drew horizontal lines on it. “I can’t think without lined paper,” she said to Miss Borg. No recognition appeared in Miss Borg’s face. I’ll just pretend it’s like a French exam, Dorothy decided. I’ll translate the big words to get the gist of it and try to fill in the little ones and the grammar later. If I have time, she added to herself, looking at the clock.

  Ich bin eine gute Christin und eine gute Krankenschwester. I something something Christian and nurse? Yes. “Gute Christin,” Miss Borg was saying. It certainly sounded like “Good Christian.” All right. She was a good Christian and a good nurse. Ich habe nichts Schlechtes getan. Die nächtlichen Besuche waren schlecht. Das Kreischen und das Anschreien waren schlecht. Außerdem war es eine Sünde, etwas ganz Schreckliches... Awful! Dorothy thought. She stared at the sentence. On the other hand there was a word repeated several times. Schlecht. She pointed to it and Miss Borg looked it up for her. “Ja,” said Miss Borg. Wrong, bad, it turned out to be. Miss Borg indicated the second sentence. Ich habe nichts, that was the key. Nichts was nothing. Ich was I. Getan, probably done. I have done nothing bad. Okay. What was bad, or wrong? The Kreischen, shouting and Anschreien, shrieking? yelling? Keep going, Dorothy, Dorothy reminded herself....überhaupt jemand in dieser Hütte—something in this cottage. “Schlecht,” Miss Borg said emphatically, tapping a pen at this particular sentence—gegen ihren Willen zu halten. Willen was intent or will, halten was stop or hold, yes, and Hütte, like hut, was cottage. Dorothy looked at what she’d now translated. The good Christian and nurse, the bad shouting and yelling and now this. A guess, but maybe it would come clear later. Kept in here against her will. Well, a young baby wouldn’t care where it was kept. This must mean Mrs. Hoade did not approve of the baby’s being stashed away in the cottage. She hurried down the page.

  Das Einzige, was ich getan habe, war Medizin zu einhalten, die ihr Leiden verlängerte. A better sentence. Two words to look up. Leiden and verlängerte. Suffering and prolong. The medicine was halted and the suffering prolonged? Come back to this. Dorothy made a small asterisk. Sie nahm massige Dosen ein. Something about massive doses. The German grammar was unfathomable to her. At least, however, most of the important words, the ones Miss Borg kept pointing to and looking up for her, were capitalized. Sie wollten ihr Leben natürlich solange wie moglich verlängern, selbst wenn es sich nur um ein paar Tage handeln sollte. Something about wanting to prolong her life again. Der Arzt, that meant doctor, behauptete, das neue Medikament, something this new medicine, würde ihr Leben um 48 Stunden verlängern—the doctor something this new medicine prolong her life by 48 hours. Getting somewhere, now, Dor
othy thought—aber ich konnte mich nicht dazu bringen, ihr noch eine schmerzhafte Spritze zu geben. Miss Borg was now making plain gestures. Her two fingers and thumb worked an invisible hypodermic. She indicated an enormous needle. Then she grimaced horribly, shaking her head, and pointed to the paper again. I can (could?) myself not bring to something these horrible injections. So that was the “medicine halted.” Miss Borg could not bring herself to give another painful dose of the medicine. Dorothy winced. And with only forty-eight hours for the poor little baby to live, at the most. Well, of course not. What an awful word Spritze was for an injection. Sie weinte immer und sträubte sich so dagegen. How awful. Something about struggling and crying against it. But here was the interesting part about the autopsy coming up. Anstatt noch ein oder zwei Tage länger zu leben, starb sie in Frieden. Instead, that even sounded like Anstatt. Something about a day longer, died in freedom, not in peace. Now. Here it was. All dies kann natürlich leicht bewiesen werden. Bewiesen—shown by evidence or proof. Die Autopsie wird aufzeigen, daß die verschriebene Medizin nicht gegeben war. Dorothy looked up at Miss Borg’s very agitated face. She understood, after looking up just a few words. The autopsy was written down. A copy of it would prove that the prescribed medicine had not been given. “You could be in trouble,” she said to Miss Borg. Miss Borg looked at her uncomprehendingly. She pointed to another sentence. Kein anständiger Mensch könnte das laute Anschreien—something about loud angry shrieking—aushalten—endure—wenn sie abends herüber kam. No decent person angershrieking endure when something here came, came over here. Herr Hoade—aha! said Dorothy. So there it is. What does she say about him? The word angershrieking seemed to fit him well—hat meine Rückfahrt nach Deutschland bezahlt und mir eine Menge Geld gegeben. Mr. Hoade has return passage to Germany paid and a lot of gold? The same word, Geld, meant money. Ich wollte das Geld nicht, aber von irgend etwas muß ich ja leben. Ich habe nichts geerbt und nicht veil gespart. I didn’t want the gold, no, money and then something about no inheritance and no savings. Dorothy guessed that Miss Borg had been forced, somehow, by her own straitened circumstances to accept money from the Hoades. Well, at least she was going back to Germany. Sister Elizabeth had found that out too. Dorothy peered at the clock. She would have to run in a couple of minutes. Her pencil paused over the part she had just translated. I wonder why Mr. Hoade wanted to pay her and send her back home, Dorothy mused. Miss Borg seemed to notice Dorothy’s hand, which was now doodling slightly around the word Geld. She opened her bureau drawer and produced both a steamship ticket for the Bremen and a cashier’s check for the sum of $10,000. This seemed to confirm something for Miss Borg. She was nodding as if Dorothy had asked her to prove the validity of the sentence.