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Two White Queens and the One-Eyed Jack

Page 29

by Heidi von Palleske


  Jack got up, agreed to go. After all, she had been good enough to do all the driving. He popped his glass eye out and reached into his pocket for his old nightclub standby.

  “Oh, mein Gott!” exclaimed the Punk Baroness.

  “You’ll get used to it,” reassured Sabine in a stage whisper. “It’s just his Bowie eye!”

  “You may be due for a new one soon,” Gareth advised, not realizing that he was sounding more and more like an ocularist with every passing day.

  “How do I look?” Jack asked, primping in front of a full-length mirror. “Do I have your approval, Baroness?”

  “Fantastic!” The Punk Baroness was delighted. Jack was lovely and, more importantly, had obviously moved on from Blanca some time ago. A different church now, she thought, and certainly a different pew, as they say.

  Outside the theatre the night progressed and nothing seemed amiss. People went about their business. There was no thought of the wall, the guards watching over it, or the people on the other side. It was life as usual, a city divided as it had been for twenty-eight years.

  “Look, it is the same as always. I think you might be wrong, Jack,” Sabine told him. “I don’t know where you got your crazy idea. Nothing is different at all.”

  “Yes, I might be wrong. I just felt that something was going to happen. Oh well, let’s go to the Underground Metro. I hear the best clubs are there. In the Metro!”

  The theatre space seemed much quieter without Jack and Sabine. Clara wondered how Gareth could live with their frenetic energy and secretly hoped that they would be out till very, very late.

  “We are doing an original opera of Antigone. Clara wrote most of it. I think it is perfect timing. The dead brothers representing the Cold War conflict, two ideologies, and both having to die. Eteocles is West Berlin and Polyneices is East Berlin. Yes? Do you see?” asked the Punk Baroness.

  “Which of us do you think is Antigone and which is Ismene? I bet he gets it wrong!” challenged Blanca.

  “That’s easy. You’re Ismene and Clara is Antigone.”

  “That is so odd. Everyone sees me as the stronger twin,” she laughed, giving Clara a sisterly shove.

  The casting was obvious to Gareth, and to the Punk Baroness, as well, he assumed. Of course, Blanca, who always seemed tougher and in control, would play Ismene, the more vivacious, more attractive sister who tries to shield her sister from danger. What a struggle and balance the loving sister has, trying to both support Antigone and protect her at the same time. It is a great role, he thinks, and so often overlooked. And then, Clara as Antigone, the shy sister, who was so close to having love in her life but then breaks a law that would seal her mortal fate. A rebel princess who chooses truth over happiness.

  “It is more interesting with twins because, really, they are two sides of the same woman. We hold two truths at the same time because we are more dialectic than men. Now, of course, I will be the gender-neutral Chorus,” announced the Punk Baroness. “The one who sees all, knows all, predicts what will happen, and informs the audience.”

  “You’re a bit like Jack, then!” Gareth noted, smiling at her.

  “I guess I have a type,” Blanca smiled, knowing that the transition from Jack to Martina had been fluid for her. A mere adjustment. How much more difficult life was for her twin with her rigidity.

  Clara cleared her throat, signalling the need for attention. “It is a play about free choice, moral obligations, shame, incest, and truth. The sisters are the product of incest; there is a tyrant uncle, their mother commits suicide. We ran away from the shame of our home, only to put it onstage for everyone to see.”

  Gareth was stunned by her admission.

  “I think it’s time for some coffee cake. Yes?” the Punk Baroness suggested. “Come Blanca, we will make something delicious together!”

  Gareth didn’t know how to get past the years of silence.

  “I am so sorry that I hurt you,” he said to Clara. “I hope one day you will forgive me.”

  “I’ll give you the odds on that. If the East and West reunite tonight then, maybe, there’s a small chance that I’ll forgive you.”

  “Then there is a small glimmer of hope.”

  “Well, our friend Jack thinks so,” Clara said, smiling.

  “And so does the Punk Baroness!” Martina announced, returning with a plateful of cakes and sweets. “Now, who is starving?”

  The following day, at seven o’clock on November ninth, Jack’s hunch becomes a reality because of a mistake in a televised interview, when the central committee spokesman, Guenter Schabowski, unintentionally announces that East German citizens can travel to West Germany immediately. Immediately! On both sides, the news rapidly spreads and everyone rushes outside and heads to the wall. Did he really mean immediately, as in right away? There’s both disbelief and a great desire to believe.

  Ten people, fifteen, one hundred, a thousand. And more and more coming. Guards try to discourage the Westerners from climbing up onto the wall, spraying water at them to knock them down, but umbrellas come out and the young continue to jump up, dancing, drinking on the wall in a display of the antithesis of the East’s ideology.

  Gareth decides to go up onto the wall, to see what is on the other side.

  “Be careful,” Clara calls over to him.

  “Why, are you worried I might get hurt?” he tests, jokingly.

  “Of course, you idiot! I love you,” she blurts out. And why not take the risk? The world’s turning upside down and nothing will be the same ever again.

  Gareth takes a run at it, springs up, hoisting his body up the wall. From here he can see the chaos, the confusion, the revelry.

  Below him are his childhood friends, two white queens and the one-eyed Jack. The twins are clapping their hands, singing, happy to be one with the crowd. To belong, if only in this moment of history.

  “You have to see this, Jack, you have to take a picture!” Gareth yells down. “Capture the moment, Jack!”

  Jack looks up at his friend. He had scaled the wall so easily. One, two, three, up. And from there, he knew that his friend was witnessing it all without him. His friend, who was always better balanced.

  “Come on up, Jack, you can do it!”

  Jack steps back, shakes his head. Gareth sees Blanca hug Jack. She whispers into his ear, but Gareth has no idea what her words are, only sees that Jack comes closer to the wall. People bump him, some trying to climb, others just dancing and partying.

  Jack attempts, loses his footing. Cyclops hangs, disappointed, around his neck. He tries again, holds on to the wall, halfway up, his legs kicking, scrambling for position.

  “Come on, Jack, higher! Higher! You can do it!”

  Higher, higher, the words hang in the air between them.

  “I’ve got you this time Jack,” Gareth says, reaching a hand down from the edge of the wall. “Take my hand. I won’t let you go. I promise.”

  One, two, three, up!

  Jack stands, king of the castle, high up on the wall. It’s late in the day and there is no letting up; the party will go on till dawn. The guards give up. What can they do? There are too many now. They open the gates and hordes of people surge through, met on the other side with cheering and open arms. Jack sees it all. The past begins to slip away with all its dark deeds, and the future presents itself with a breath of optimism. This is the moment. Right here. Right now. It has all led to this moment. Jack lifts Cyclops, frames his shot. He waits. He waits. Steadying his hand and holding his breath. Now. Right now. He holds the image in his one eye and captures the shot, immortalizing the moment forever.

  A New Germany

  A New Europe

  A New World

  Hilda wraps Siegfried’s old sweater around her shoulders, opens the door, and retrieves the morning paper. It isn’t until the coffee is brewing that she glances at the front page. The headline stops her in her tracks.

  A New Germany

  A New Europe

  A N
ew World

  And there, below the words, is the image Jack had captured. An image transmitted around the world. Hilda steadies herself, plants both hands on the rectory table for support.

  Siegfried is gone. The wall is down. The rabbits are all free.

  It is time to go home.

  EPILOGUE

  Aber zerrissen von der Tragödie,

  Oder in der Nähe von rhe, die es brechen kann,

  Kann mein Herz niemals verhärten.

  Solange ich Augen habe zu sehen,

  Und Fenster towrts den Garten.

  However torn by tragedy

  Or near the breaking it may be

  My heart can never harden

  As long as I have eyes to see

  And windows toward the garden.

  — Anonymous

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I APPROACHED THIS BOOK in a very dedicated way, forcing myself to write every single day without fail. I would like to thank those friends and family members I ignored during my writing time.

  I gratefully acknowledge my dedicated team at Dundurn Press. Rachel Spence, my acquisitions editor, for championing me and believing in this book from the very start.

  Shannon Whibbs, the most thoughtful and precise editor a writer could ever hope for.

  Designer Laura Boyle and project editor Jenny McWha for making my book gorgeous inside and out. The publicity department, specifically Elham Ali and Heather Wood. Also Kendra Martin, Lisa-Marie Smith, and Kathryn Lane.

  Thank you to my agent, Rob Firing at Transatlantic Agency, for his guidance, advice, and the best coffee meetings.

  A big thank you to my cousin in Germany, Frauke Palleske, for reading an early draft, and for verifying and suggesting many of the German references in this book.

  To Daniel Matmor for believing in the book and staying out of my way.

  And thank you to the muse, who is very demanding and often quite cruel.

  I quoted poetry throughout the book, and would like to acknowledge the following poems: “The Stolen Child,” by W.B. Yates; “Jabberwocky,” by Lewis Caroll; and Gertrude’s speech from Hamlet, by William Shakespeare.

  I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  HEIDI VON PALLESKE was raised on a small farm on the shores of Lake Ontario. At seventeen she moved to Toronto to train as an actor, and is known for her roles in independent Canadian and American films, most recently starring in the feminist western Bordello. Heidi has also written poetry, screenplays, and articles for both print and radio, and won the H.R. Percy Novel Prize for They Don’t Run Red Trains Anymore. She loves swimming in ice-cold water and spends time on both the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts, but calls Toronto home.

 

 

 


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