by P. G. Glynn
“I’m not!” Hugo retorted hotly. “That isn’t a very nice thing to say on my birthday.”
“Why should I say something nice, just because you’re five?”
“Because … I’d like it if you did.”
“I expect you’d also like me to give you a present … so here it is.” She fished in her coat pocket and produced a dead spider that she handed to him, suggesting: “Eat it.”
“No,” he protested, vividly remembering the day when Helga ate a live hairy caterpillar in front of him. He also remembered seeing her drink milk straight from a goat’s udder. Both were feats that awed him and he sometimes wondered whether the poor caterpillar was still wriggling inside her. “If I were to eat it I wouldn’t have it any longer, so it wouldn’t be a proper present. I’ll just keep it, I think.”
“I suppose you had lots of proper presents.”
“Yes, I did – including a violin.”
“Pooh – I bet I know who gave you that! And I bet your Mama didn’t give you Bobo.”
“No … she didn’t,” Hugo had to admit. “But,” he brightened, “I’m going with Papa to visit him in a minute.”
“It’s because of your sister.”
“What is?”
“Don’t you know anything? It’s because he didn’t guard Carla that your Mama won’t have Bobo in the castle … and it’s also because of her that that mad old man is locked up in your forbidden wing.”
At the risk of being belittled again Hugo said: “Which mad old man?”
“He’s your great-uncle, I think. His name’s Emil and he can’t speak.”
“Why can’t he?”
“Because of the terrible thing he did. The shock of it was too much, even for him, and he’s been dumb ever since. It’s a living death, my aunt says, and he’d be better off properly dead.”
Helga’s aunt was a scullery maid. Hugo had seen her once on the servants’ staircase carrying a supper-tray. As it wasn’t normally Wilma’s job to wait at table or take trays hither and thither, Hugo had asked if Loisy was ill. ‘Bless your heart, no’, she had answered him, ‘but we take turn and turn about with the poor old sod so that he doesn’t get sick of seeing the same face day after day’. And she had gone on her way clicking her tongue, leaving him wondering what a sod was. He had asked Mama later, only to be ticked off for his vocabulary. Now, though, he knew that a sod must be a mad uncle and wished Mama could have said so. He also wished she could have said a bit extra, saving him having to ask Helga: “What was the terrible thing my mad uncle did?”
“He killed Carla, giving her Death Cap to eat.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course!” Helga rather relished her role as informer. “She was dead by the time your Omama found her.”
“Where did he kill my sister?”
“In the pumpernickel house while your Mama and Papa were in Prague buying a doll for Carla.”
“Which doll did they buy her?”
“One that went with her into her coffin. What a waste of a doll that was!” Helga made a face to illustrate her outrage. Then she exclaimed: “Fancy you not even knowing you had a mad uncle!”
“I must just have forgotten that I had him.”
“I bet you didn’t forget. I bet … ”
Thinking it time to change the subject, Hugo interrupted: “I shan’t mind stopping being five and starting being six.”
“We could go to see him.”
“No, we couldn’t!” Hugo said, shivering.
“Oh, you’re such a baby … and will still be one on your next birthday.”
“I’m not … and I won’t be, not once I’m your age.”
“I bet when you knock on your Tante Lenka’s door you still run away.”
“I won’t run, the next time I knock on it.”
“Do it now, then, while I watch.”
“I can’t … not while I’m waiting for Papa to take me to the farm.”
“That’s just an excuse. You’re always making excuses.”
“No, I’m not.”
“And you’re always saying ‘no’ to things.” Her head slightly tilted, Helga considered before challenging him: “If you want to prove you aren’t still a baby, come with me.”
Hugo went because he could do nothing else. He had to prove to his friend that he wasn’t the silly-billy she thought him to be. But he dreaded the test she was about to set for him. Whatever would he have to do, to give her proof? She led him unerringly through the scullery to the kitchen, where two plump countrywomen were sitting talking to Dora, the cook. On the table in front of them were big baskets containing crayfish displayed among fresh green leaves. Hugo knew that these would have been caught in one of Bohemia’s sparkling brooks … and that they would still be alive when cook lifted them from among their greenery and dropped them into boiling water. That seemed so cruel to him that he preferred not to eat crayfish, though he liked the taste of it. “Here comes the birthday boy!” Dora told the women. “Hugo’s five today. Isn’t he big for his age?”
While they were exclaiming over his size and Dora was cutting some slices of cake, Hugo saw that Helga – who was behind cook – had climbed on to a chair and that she was reaching for a key which hung from a hook above the big wood-burning range. Perhaps Dora would turn and see her before it was too late … or perhaps the key was still out of reach. But, no, Helga’s fingers were closing round it … and now she was back down on the ground. Knowing that the key must be for the door to the forbidden wing, Hugo thought he was probably going to be sick. “Can I have cake today or must I wait till Saturday?” Helga asked cook with her impish grin, slipping the key into her coat pocket.
“So you’re here too, are you?” Dora said comfortably, having seen nothing amiss. “I never saw you come in. Since you’re with Master Hugo, of course you can have some of this cake. Let’s all have a slice and wish him a happy birthday, shall we?”
Hugo felt far from happy and had no appetite for his cake, which was the third cook had baked. By far the largest was for the village party, although the one to be shared among the family tonight was big by most standards and then there was this one, with blue icing, ‘for the kitchen’. Hugo had never understood quite why cook baked things for the kitchen but now that he was five he did. She had to be ready for people dropping in.
“So this is where you are!” said Papa, appearing in the doorway with Onkel Rudolf beside him. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you, Hugo. You haven’t changed your mind, have you, about going to Mohren to visit Bobo?”
“Oh no!” Papa could not have arrived at a better time. Hugo was so relieved that he felt almost dizzy. “I haven’t changed it. Are we going this very minute?”
“Yes, we are, as it will soon be dark. Would Helga like to come with us?”
“No thanks!” she said emphatically. “I have some unfinished business.”
“That was an odd expression for her to use,” Otto said to Hugo as, wrapped up against the March wind, they set off for the farm, “wasn’t it?”
“I’ve heard the Herr Gaertner saying the same thing,” Hugo told him, hoping Papa would not ask any more questions.
“Ah!” observed Otto, noting that his son seemed reluctant to look at him. “Yes, now that you mention it, I remember hearing her grandfather too. How very astute of you to make the connection, Hugo! Well, apart from receiving the wrong sort of horse, are you enjoying your big day?”
“I didn’t mean to sound as if I didn’t like him.”
“You’re entitled not to like things and on reflection I think a real horse might have been an improvement on a toy horse that walks. It’s obvious to me, now you’ve pointed it out, that rockers are best … unless you’d prefer to have your own pony?”
“Oh no!” said Hugo, with feeling. “I wouldn’t prefer it one bit.”
“Then he’ll have turned into a rocking horse in time for your party.”
“Will he? Will he really?”
�
�He certainly will!”
“That’s settled then,” said Onkel Rudolf who, in his floppy hat and flowing cloak reminded Hugo of a picture he had seen of Rasputin. “So now we can get down to the important question of when you wish to start lessons on your violin.”
“Anyone would think,” Otto grinned, “that with your gift and mine we were deliberately trying to ruin Hugo’s birthday, which isn’t at all the case.”
“Of course it isn’t,” Rudolf agreed good-naturedly. “We’re doing our best to give him a memorable day. And he will remember it, won’t he, if he can look back on it as his entrance into the world of music?”
“That’s still your dream, not his,” Otto told him. “A boy must dream his own dreams in my opinion. But what does our birthday boy think?”
They were close to the farm and Hugo was saved from having to answer because Bobo was barking. All thoughts of violins and of entrances went straight from his head as he heard his dog … and then saw him. Bobo was running from the direction of the hayloft and was coming straight towards Hugo, his paws almost flying and his tongue lolling as it always did. Then Hugo was kissing and being kissed. Oh, the wonder of this!
Now Hans Berger limped from the milking sheds to greet his guests. As well as having just one eye and a badly scarred face Hans had legs of substantially different lengths. These were the work of surgeons who had made clumsy repairs after he was injured in a boyhood cycling accident and now his longer leg curved outwards, almost like an archer’s bow. Today Hugo didn’t notice his disfigurements though. He had eyes only for Bobo.
“So, you are both happy now?” Hans said as he led them indoors to where Tante Gretl was busy cooking in her warm kitchen. “Your dog is never happier than when you’re here, Hugo … and has been waiting all day to wish you a happy birthday.”
“Has he? Has he honestly?”
“Indeed he has!”
Positively glowing with pleasure Hugo said, after kissing Tante Gretl: “And he barked when he heard me arriving … so he’s a good guard dog now, isn’t he?”
“Now?” Otto queried.
“Helga said that he … didn’t used to be.”
“Did she, indeed?” Noting that Hugo was still having difficulty in meeting his gaze, Otto asked him: “Did Helga have anything else to say?”
Hugo bit his lip. He didn’t want to risk Helga calling him a tell-tale-tit. So he avoided giving a direct answer. “Bobo didn’t guard Carla from the poor old sod who poisoned her.”
“I see,” said his father as the other adults exchanged startled glances. “Helga used that word, did she?”
“No, she didn’t. Someone else did. Sod does mean mad uncle, doesn’t it?”
“Not exactly … although, I suppose, in certain circumstances it could be construed to have that meaning. Who was the ‘someone’ who called your uncle a poor old sod?”
“It was Wilma,” Hugo whispered, “except that, back then, I didn’t know who the sod was.”
“But now you do know, although ‘sod’ isn’t a word for general use. What else do you know, Hugo?”
It suddenly occurred to him that if Helga let herself into the forbidden wing, his mad uncle might kill her just as he had killed Carla. And if Helga were dead, Hugo would no longer have a friend …
He must do something … say something to stop such a terrible thing happening. He said: “Helga has cook’s key. My mad old uncle won’t poison her … will he?”
37
Otto’s telephone call had come too late. By the time it came cook had heard Helga’s screams and gone to investigate them. Oh, how she had subsequently scolded herself for her shortsightedness! Marta had told her, though, that she must not feel guilty about the key … that in a sense the episode’s outcome had been a blessing.
Helga, the little minx, had gone to Emil’s wing and had used cook’s key to let herself in. It was not clear precisely what happened after that. All that was known for certain was that Helga had seen Emil and had run away from him … and that he had tried to follow her to freedom. But, accustomed as he was to living on one level, his feet had faltered on the stairs down from his prison … and he had tumbled to the bottom of them, cracking his poor muddled old head in the process. Helga, who had been watching from a safe distance, had been frightened half out of her wits and her screams had brought cook and Loisy to the scene, with Marta not far behind them. But by then Emil was already dead.
Marta had mixed feelings about his death. Helga should not have done as she did … and Nurse should have been in attendance. She had been writing a letter, however, at the far end of the wing and – as she had said in her own defence – could not have been expected to anticipate such an event. Feeling a draught and hearing Helga scream, she had then found her charge beyond help. Well, dear Emil was finally at rest! Marta now wished that, latterly, she had spent more time with him except that, truth to tell, it had been a great strain trying to communicate with a man who resolutely refused to communicate back. Had Emil in fact refused to speak, as Marta had come to believe, or had speech been impossible for him? She would never know now. All she knew was that from the day Carla died right to the day of his own death not one word had passed Emil’s lips.
And he had changed toward Marta. Sometimes she had had the impression that he hated her. She supposed that he had blamed her for his virtual imprisonment, little realising that but for his sister he would have been shut away in a place for lunatics. His mind had been in such a state that he had had no grasp of facts – and, presumably, no understanding of the harm he had done Carla. He had just looked blankly at his visitors and nobody who had visited him could wish for his existence to have stretched too far into the future. He had of necessity existed, not lived, and was better off with God than locked in Schloss Berger.
So Marta should have no regrets for the manner of his death. She should be joyful instead that his soul had been freed from his tired old body … and that he would now know she had acted for the best. Wherever it was that souls went, having gone from their earthly endeavours they were possessed with infinite vision, infinite wisdom, these being gifts of spirit. Yes, Emil would now understand that, far from doing wrong by him, his sister had simply been protective …
+++++
Hugo watched from his bedroom window as the ornate domed coffin containing his great-uncle’s body left the castle courtyard in a cortege led by Herr Beck’s horses. Now he would never see the poor old sod. It seemed wrong to have had a mad uncle and not to have seen him. Could Onkel Emil see out of his coffin? Hugo supposed that dead bodies didn’t want to see, or breathe, or do any of the things that live bodies did … and he hoped they didn’t since it looked to him as if there wasn’t much room in a coffin. And it would be dark in there. Hugo didn’t like to think about how dark it would be, but he did like thinking about how glad he was that the old sod and not Helga was dead. If Onkel Emil had killed Helga, the same as he killed Carla, Hugo would have felt terrible.
As things were, Helga was still his friend. Well, he thought she was. She had been mad at him for being too much of a sissy to go with her to the forbidden wing, but had seemed to forgive him after he told Papa and Omama that he was as much to blame as she for taking cook’s key. Then she had been friendlier … except for insisting that Hugo must now prove his bravery. Helga said that unless he did she wouldn’t come to play with him.
He knew which proof she wanted. What he didn’t know was whether he could do it, though he had promised. Could he do the thing that scared him stiff? Even if he did, it was not as brave a thing as Helga had done in going to the forbidden wing, but then a boy of five was surely not supposed to be as brave as a girl of six …
At the very thought of doing it Hugo felt horribly sick. Why did he always feel like this when scared of something? It didn’t help one bit.
Onkel Ludwig had gone with the cortege but Tante Lenka had gone to bed with a bad head, so now would be the best time to do it. He could knock on her door knowing that
her headache would slow her down and stop her catching him when, after waiting for her door to open, he ran off. Yes, he should knock today … now … this very minute.
It would soon be over, he told himself as he left the Rosenzimmer and set off for Tante Lenka’s corridor. And once he had done it he would be brave enough for anything. Before long he would be braver than Helga … and then she would marry him when he was big. Wives liked their husbands to be braver than they were. At least, Hugo believed they did. Oh, for his legs to feel as if they belonged to him!
He could now see her door. Coming here was a bad idea. He shouldn’t be doing this while the old sod was being buried. But if he did it – and told Helga when she came home from school later – she might smile at him. He liked seeing her smile. His legs, weak as they were, would run, wouldn’t they, once he had kept his promise?
+++++
Lenka heard the knock but could not be sure she was hearing it. She was no longer sure of anything. And the black pit was waiting … Worse, there was now the worm twisting and turning. More a serpent than a worm, it lived in the pit, feeding off her. Yes, it fed off her flesh and in her worst moments she saw its huge, toothless head. Horrible, knowing that only she could see it, just as only she heard certain things.
If she went in answer to the knock, as she had so often gone, nobody would be there ... yet again. So she would know that the sound was in her head and that at any second she would be carted off and incarcerated as she had been long ago, in Berlin. Was it a long time ago, or last week that Ludwig took her to that horrific clinic in Germany? She wished she could distinguish between one day and the next. Whenever it was, she had been treated inhumanly … and the people she was put with had scared her witless.
They were loonies, all of them, even the doctors who were supposed to be helping her get well. She had preferred being shut on her own in a padded cell to being among the others, who kept trying to hug her or to converse in gibberish. Their faces still haunted her, for their features had been distorted into degrees of ugliness she had not known existed. Oh, the horror of it … oh, the fear of being dragged back to Berlin!