And Jack, he was right about him, as well. Hadn’t he seen the courage in him, even as a boy? And now he was going to every place where he felt there was change about to happen. A sensitive boy who could see the world through a prism of understanding. Always walking on the precipice of history. How lucky he was!
Everything that had seemed like a misfortune in his life had ended up being a blessing. Oh, to hold on to that with every exhaled breath. It had been almost eighteen years since Hilda returned to his life and ten years since he showed up, unannounced, on her doorstep, only to share a bed and a life with her. And even in the simplest of moments, in the most common tasks of life, he had no desire to be anywhere but where he was, with her. How very lucky he was!
Oh, how beautiful the garden was in the autumn. Hilda’s flowers were still blooming. There were some roses and asters and marigolds, of course. The leaves seemed to be on fire, something he could never get used to but had learned to love with all his heart.
All his life he had strived for perfection, to make replacements that were so perfect they would be seen as originals. But now his work was done and the world seemed to wrap its arms around him in an embrace where every loss, every struggle, brought him here. Here to a life with the woman he loved. His heart ached, it was so full, so close to bursting.
How like the glass decorations of his childhood the leaves looked in their rich colours! Perhaps one day there would be a way to go to the East with Hilda, show her his home village, Lauscha. Buy Christmas decorations there, with her. Had he gone back there when the war was over he would have been kept in East Germany, behind a wall built to keep people in. He never did go back to see the Christmas decorations, the vases, and the many, many glass eyes. He had a memory of sunlight reflecting off a blown-glass ball, hanging in someone’s window, the light bouncing off, holding the colours of the glass’s refection. As brilliant as Ontario autumn leaves, he thought. The colours danced all around him. He looked up, through beams of sunlight. Crimson and orange and yellow and green.
His heart kept filling until it could fill no more. It pained him, being so full of love and joy and gratitude. Who knew that at sixty-two years of age he could finally achieve perfection in life itself? But the pain of that perfection, the pain of that joy, was just too much. He put his hand to his chest, tried to slow the pounding, tried to calm the noise, but his heart could not be contained. Siegfried dropped down onto his knees, the colours of the leaves blurred above him, red bleeding into orange and swirling all around him. His breath caught and shallowed and he knew, he knew, he knew he was dying. Dying there, in the garden where he had opened his heart to accept his happiness, held open his arms to love, and then was about to lose it all at the height of his contentment. No, no, no. He fought against it. Just give me one more Christmas with her, one more year, one more night, even. He felt a surge of incredible pain. A sharp stab into his heart, wrenching it fully open. And then, then there was nothing at all.
Three times she called and he didn’t answer, so Hilda went out to find him in the garden, lying still, beside the row of marigolds.
“Siegfried!” she called out. Nothing.
She went over, wondering why on earth he was lying down. Was the gardening too much for him and he was just resting for a moment? Silly old goat! He was having her on. Waiting till she got close then, like so many other times, he was going to jump up and laugh as he startled her.
“Come on now. The coffee will get cold! Stop playing games!”
He stayed still. Not a movement. She knelt beside him, touched his face, held his hand. Then she tried to tickle him. Nothing.
Something was terribly wrong. She felt for a pulse, put her face near his to feel his breath. Nothing. Not the slightest hint of his breath on her cheek.
It was unthinkable. It was a joke. How could he be so unmoving, so unresponsive? Hilda pushed her fear and panic deep inside of herself. It could not be. She would not let it be!
Two quick rescue breaths. Then a two-palmed compression to the chest. Slow and steady, do not panic. Press and press. Press and press. Press. Two more breaths. She continued till sweat poured from her, working as his heart and lungs. Two breaths, press and press and press and press.
“Come on. Goddamn it! You cannot leave me. You cannot!” She ran into the house and called for an ambulance, then hurried back to the garden, where she continued to be his lungs and heart. Again and again. And with every shared breath, every straight-armed press, she became more and more sure that it was pointless. But she would not give up. She would breathe for him and push down on his heart for as long as it took for a miracle to happen.
Only when the paramedics arrived and told her it was too late did she sit back on her heels, exhausted. Tears streamed down her face. She kept wiping them, but more would appear to take their place. There was an endless supply. There would always be an endless supply.
“Do you have a funeral home arranged where we can take him?”
“Yes, and there is something else that must be done.” She remembered. She had made that promise to him. It was important to him. At the time, she had said that she would be too grief-stricken to do what he wanted, but he insisted. Now, it was the time to keep that promise. She ran into the house, then ran up the stairs, two at a time, to retrieve the velvet pouch from her bedroom. She would take it with her to the funeral home.
As soon as the death papers were signed at the funeral home, the harvester arrived and was ready to work. There was a limited time to harvest once the donor had died.
“You may want to go outside for this,” he advised.
“No,” Hilda said. “They made me wait outside when they removed my son’s eye. I can’t let that happen again. I will hold his hand while you do this.”
“We really don’t allow it.”
“Do you want the eyes or not?” Hilda insisted.
The harvester had seen it all. People so filled with grief that they changed their minds. Few people saw eyes as functioning organs, as he did. Loved ones always attached some magical thinking to them. Beauty is held in the eye of the beholder. The eyes are windows to the soul. Love is understood in the reflection of the eyes. But the eye was no more than a lens that carried impulses to the brain to register images. And so, to do his job, it was always easier to leave the sentimentality outside the room.
“It is quick. We really only use the cornea, but I will take the whole eye. It does not disfigure the shape of the eye because I will put a placeholder in the socket. He will look like he is resting, with his eyes closed.”
Hilda held Siegfried’s hand and spoke to him, believing that perhaps his soul was still close to her. She told him how much she loved him, how it wouldn’t really hurt. How brave she thought he was. But she had to look away as the optic nerve and the eye muscles were cut. She stared at their entwined hands, hers warm and lively, his cool and still.
“Done,” the man said and reached to close Siegfried’s eyes.
“No,” she said, “not yet.”
The man hesitated. He looked kindly at Hilda.
“He has done a great thing today. He has given someone the gift of sight,” he told her.
“Oh no, you are wrong. He always gave sight, to everyone. But today, he gave someone the gift of vision.”
Hilda took the pouch from her pocket. She opened the box and inside were the two eyes she’d put under her pillow when he was away from her. One eye, the left eye, that Jack had stolen in order to bring Siegfried to her, and the other eye, the right eye, that Siegfried had given her the day he had proposed to her. Both eyes made the year that she had come back into his life.
“My son lost his eye when he was six. Siegfried was an ocularist and he made him the most beautiful eye. It gave him confidence and beauty. It gave him a new lease on life. But it couldn’t give him vision. That pained Siegfried. Pained him that he could make such beautiful objects that would never be of use. Eyes that were for looks and not for looking.”
The harvester watched as she took out the glass eyes and gently pried Siegfried’s lids fully open so that she could lay the glass eyes over each placeholder.
“Here, my love, these are for you. Take them with you to the other side so that you keep an image of me while you wait. I’m just on the other side of the door, like always. But this time you will have to do the listening for me because one day, one day soon, I will come back to you again. As I always have.”
She took one last look at his eyes. They truly were his eyes. And for just a moment he seemed alive again. Like a last glance at love. She kissed his mouth and then ran her fingers over his eyelids, closing them to the world.
The harvester put his hand on her shoulder as an act of kindness. “I am so sorry for your loss.”
“I was the luckiest woman in the world.”
When Hilda went home she was greeted by silence. Silence, the thing she always valued and loved. Silence, which had seemed to be a luxury. But how hollow is the gift of silence without the possibility that it might be interrupted.
She walked into the garden, looked up into the dark, cloudless sky, clear and cold. She stood for a while where Siegfried had fallen. A day can change everything. The garden had lost its aroma, the leaves suddenly seemed to have fallen, and the coyote wasn’t there to soothe her. She stepped back, inhaled deeply, but the breath was just a breath and nothing more. Beside her the rabbit hutches contained six or seven bunnies, nibbling or sleeping. Hilda went to them and they reacted, expecting food. She unlocked the cages and opened the hutch doors wide.
“There, have your freedom. Have life,” she told them.
At first, they hesitated, not sure if they should hop away or stay in the safety of the cage.
“Go on. Be free!”
One after the next, they crossed the threshold and hopped into the garden. Perhaps they would all be eaten. Perhaps some would survive. It was up to them now. All but one was free and nibbling what was left of her garden. Only a large brown bunny, with a black smudge on its nose, remained in the hutch. A male. A buck.
“Go, go now!” she exclaimed. “Go be free! Go on, you stupid, stupid rabbit!”
He stayed, seemingly content where he was. He had no interest in the garden or the great exodus to freedom. She left him there to choose for himself. She’d just go to bed and check on him in the morning.
Back inside, she stripped down to her undershirt and panties, then wrapped herself in Siegfried’s old, worn cashmere sweater. How many times had she suggested he throw it out and she get him a new one? Now it will never be thrown away. It will wrap its arms around her, as he had done, embrace her in familiar warmth, and she will, night after night, press her face into the sweater, breathing in his scent, feeling close to him. Until the day when she’s breathed all his scent away and he is exhaled forever.
She slept in his sweater, restless without his head on the pillow next to hers, knowing that it will never be again. She chose the pain of quiet, refusing to call those she loved most …
She sleeps, dreamless, unaware of the events unfolding in the world.
* * *
Humpty Dumpty saß an der Wand,
Humpty Dumpty fiel schwer,
All die Pferde des Königs
und alle Männer der Könige
konnten Humpty nicht wieder zusammensetzen.
It’s the biggest party Europe has ever seen. On both sides of the wall, people are gathering. Eager to cross from one side, ready to welcome on the other. There’s champagne and dancing. People are singing in celebration. Strangers are hugging. Bare hands, chisels, and pickaxes are assaulting the wall. And cheers in unison of “Let us in. Let us in!” ring out across the West …
Jack had predicted that something was going to happen, possibly in East Germany. On the seventh of November, just two days earlier, he got up, threw down his newspaper, and suggested a road trip to Berlin.
“The writing’s on the wall. Excuse the pun!”
“Why?” Gareth had asked.
“Look, they just announced that there will be a change in travel policy for the GDR. No one knows what that policy will be. It may lead to revolution. It’s either going to be bloodshed or celebration. Either way I’m going to be there. I was right about Tiananmen Square and I missed that.”
“Thank God you did.”
“Sabine, you can drive us. You’ll want to be there, just in case, to cover it for the TV station.”
“Hardly an entertainment feature, Jack.”
All Gareth could think about was a trip to Berlin, three hours of driving with Sabine and Jack, and then maybe, just maybe, Bleach would be playing somewhere and he could see the twins again.
“Ah, ja, I saw that girl who came over that night on the music video channel. She has a sister, yes?” Sabine added.
“Yes, twins,” Gareth reluctantly informed, but it was unnecessary. Anyone who had ever seen Bleach would realize that the two sisters were twins. There had been so much press about them over the three years. Features on the opera company, pictures of their band, Bleach. They had become ubiquitous.
“They are extraordinary with their white skin and pink eyes. Like sweet little bunnies.”
“They are extraordinary because they are wonderful musicians. Trust me, they are anything but bunnies!” This from Jack, who remembered being caught in their song all those years ago. Only Tristan was able to break that spell for him, to untangle him from their enchantment, but Gareth, he knew, was still caught by the sirens’ song. He wished it wasn’t so. The weight of too many secrets could suffocate his friend.
“We should go to Berlin now and stop by the theatre. Maybe they can put us up for a night or two,” Jack suggested, a glint in his seeing eye.
“No, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Why not?”
Gareth looked at Sabine. Sure, she had found someone new to share her bed. That wasn’t the issue. But it was just too awkward to imagine confronting Clara again, especially in Sabine’s presence.
“Don’t worry about me. I knew you still held feelings for her from that time she came over. Besides, I have a new lover on the horizon.”
“You always have another lover on the horizon!” Jack joked.
Gareth slumped into a chair and shook his head. How could he possibly go to Berlin and see her again? Twice he had disappointed her and both times because of his own selfishness. What right did he have to be offered another chance?
“Sometimes you just have to accept that some things are not meant to be,” he said to Jack.
“Do you think that anything worth having doesn’t take courage? How easy do you think it was to admit to myself that I love your brother? How easy do you think it was to kill for him? Now get off your lazy fuckin’ ass and let’s go on a road trip. If she rejects you again then, only then, can you say it wasn’t meant to be!”
Sabine already had her keys in her hand.
“What do you mean you killed for him? That is a metaphor, no?” Sabine whispered to Jack.
“No.”
Sabine put her hands to her cheeks. She could feel heat rising from them. Yes, there were many lovers, but would any actually kill for her?
From the moment she met him, the Punk Baroness was completely taken with Jack. His desire to bear witness to history in the making, his belief that a new world, a world of hope and freedom, would emerge soon, was all music to her ears. She secretly hoped for revolution. She was ready to fight, if need be. She was just four years old in 1961 when the wall went up, seemingly overnight. She could remember sidewalks leading nowhere, ending mid-step where she had walked just the day before. And a grandmother she would never see again on the other side.
“But what will these travel laws mean, exactly? We can cross there or they can come here?”
“It means that Germans who have been frozen in time on the other side of the wall might be able to cross into West Germany without going through a third country. Your friends, your relatives. It would
mean the end of the Cold War. But, if not, if nothing happens, then we can drink beer, eat pretzels, and nothing is lost.”
“Why today and not next week?” asked the Baroness.
“Because there is a televised interview with the committee spokesman tomorrow evening and there will be press from all over the world.”
“Then we should be in East Berlin!” chimed Sabine.
“We are right where we need to be,” insisted Jack.
The Punk Baroness went into the wardrobe room, started to pull out leather costumes, with bustiers and lace. She found knee-high boots with pointy toes and equally dangerous heels.
“Then we will dress for it! We will go to the wall right after the announcement is made and we will do performance art! If it is good news we will sing in victory, if it is bad news we will sing in rebellion. Either way, we will sing!”
Blanca was keen. She imagined herself at the wall, a sentinel of freedom, an angel presiding over their chosen city. She could be anything she wanted to be, without judgment. She was a new woman in Berlin. A goddess! But Clara sat there, unimpressed, not speaking. She pretended to have no interest whatsoever and refused to so much as acknowledge the guests, let alone contribute to the conversation, until the question of costume came up and the black, signature punk clothes were laid out for them.
“Absolutely not! No! I always wear white in public. I’m not wearing your punk circus clothes!”
“Okay. Fine. I will wear the leather and you two will wear tons of white gossamer and we will either sing for freedom or we will sing against oppression!”
“Or we will just drink beer,” Gareth said with a laugh. He glanced at Clara. She met his eyes, held his stare, and crossed her arms.
“Who wants to go dancing? Clubbing?” Sabine lifted her arms above her head in a shoop-shoop dance move. She expected a vigorous response but they all claimed to be too tired; it was late. “Come on, I didn’t drive all the way to Berlin just to talk! Let’s go out, have some fun! Dance!”
Two White Queens and the One-Eyed Jack Page 28