The Children's Book

by A. S. Byatt

  The little figures danced on the path, and stopped, and looked up at Dorothy.

  “Take one,” said Anselm Stern. “Move him.”

  Dorothy pulled back. Griselda held out her fingers and was given the mooncalf. Dorothy then took the wolfman. They sagged. Griselda twitched and adjusted and the mooncalf began a drunken dance. Anselm Stern put his hand over Dorothy’s.

  “Do not be afraid. Let him walk.”

  The strings were, after all, alive. Horribly alive. Once, with Tom at the brook, she had tried dowsing with a hazel fork, just for the fun of it, and had been terrified when the dead wood lurched at her fingertips, and pulled. She had dropped the thing and refused to have more to do with it. These strings pulled the same way. She let her fingertips listen, and the wolfman began to stride, and bow. He raised his paw. He threw back his head, to howl, or to laugh. Her fingers tingled.

  “You said,” said Anselm Stern, “you wanted to know who I am. I am a man who makes dancing dolls.” Griselda was tangled and did not translate, but Dorothy understood.

  “I see,” she said, and halted the wolfman and handed him back.

  Griselda would have expected the old, resolutely rational Dorothy to be worried, possibly even repelled, by the strangenesses and formalities. The garden walk was followed by an exploration of the cavern behind the stage, an introduction to all the hanging family, a disquisition on the character of every severed head, an exploration of the boxes in which they lay, decently, head to tail, all except Death, who lay back in his single casket until Anselm Stern raised him to bow deeply to Dorothy, to stretch out his arms to her, fold them, and lie back again. He talked only intermittently and Griselda could not translate all of it. The creatures had a purer, more essential existence than emotional beings. Griselda, the imaginative one, found it was she who was being half-sceptical. Dorothy wandered on in a listening dream.

  It was not only serious metaphysics of marionettes. It was cream cakes and coffee in Café Félicité, with Anselm and daughter leaning on their elbows and staring into each other’s eyes, and a long interrogation.

  “Your favourite colour, Fräulein Dorothy?”

  “Green. And yours?”

  “Green, naturally. Your favourite smell?”

  “Bread baking. And yours?”

  “Oh, bread baking, there is none better.”

  He gave her little gifts. Things he had carved. An owl. A walnut. A hedgehog. She frowned over the hedgehog. It reminded her of Olive’s Dorothy-tale, about Peggy and Mistress Higgle, the shape-changer, and in a way that appeared truly uncanny Dorothy received, on the day he gave it to her, a fat envelope from home, containing another instalment, a placatory peace-offering from the storyteller in Todefright, who did not know what Dorothy knew, who was afraid of what she was finding out, and could think of nothing better to do than to send a segment of fairytale. Dorothy meant not to read it. But did. Mistress Higgle’s hedgehog-mantle—and with it her magic—had been stolen, Dorothy read. It had been folded away, in its secret drawer, and Mistress Higgle had come home to find the window open, and the spiny jacket nowhere. All the dependent furry creatures in the house—the mouse-people, the frog-people, the little vixen—had lost the power to change shape, because the thorny integument had vanished. Who was responsible? The story stopped there. Olive’s accompanying letter was somewhat plaintive.

  I’m not sure, my darling, whether you still want the stories—maybe you are a grown-up lady now, and past childish things—but I thought about you a lot, and since writing stories is what I do, I wrote the one I still think of as yours. You don’t write to tell me how you are. We all miss you dreadfully. There is no one like you for good sense and understanding and getting things done. We are all a bit feckless and down in the dumps without you. And Tom is positively dirty with nights out in the woods. Please write, my darling. You don’t have to read the silly story if you don’t want to.

  Your bewildered and loving mother.

  There were now things Dorothy wanted to say to Anselm Stern without saying them to Griselda. She was picking up basic German but she could not speak it well enough to explain Mistress Higgle, or to ask him questions about her mother. She felt, in odd moments of solitude—like this one, sitting with the English schoolroom paper with writings on it about English furry creatures that were also human—that Anselm Stern had her under a spell. She was not happy now except when she was with him, or on her way to meet him, and yet she also felt fear, fear of a trap, fear of something unseen.

  She handed him—they were sitting in his workroom—the sheaf of papers from Olive. She said, expressionless, in German

  “Ein Brief von meiner Mutter. Ein Märchen. Ich habe meiner Mutter nichts von Ihnen—von Dir—gesagt.”

  He gave her a long, sombre look, and picked up the papers. Dorothy was in that state human beings passed through at the beginning of a love affair, in which they desire to say anything and everything to the beloved, to the alter ego, before they have learned what the real Other can and can’t understand, can and can’t accept. Griselda sat pale and vanishing. Anselm turned over the pages, with their little drawings of hedgehogs and frogs and underground kitchens with rows of pannikins. He said to Griselda

  “What is this?”

  “Tell him—” said Dorothy. “She writes a story for each of us. This is mine. It is a whimsical story about magic hedgehogs.”

  “I can’t translate whimsical.” She looked at Dorothy. “Dorothy, don’t cry. Why did you bring it?”

  “She’s in this story too. I brought it to bring it together. Don’t translate that.”

  But he nodded, as though he had understood. “Higgle,” he said. “Mis-tress Hig-gle. What is Mistress Higgle?” “Eine kleine Frau die ist auch ein Igel,” said Griselda. “Ein Igel,” said Anselm Stern. “An eagle?” asked Dorothy.

  “No, no. Igel is the German word for a hedgehog.”

  “‘Hans mein Igel.’ That’s a story from the Grimms. He says he played it for her.” She turned to Anselm.

  “Für die Mutter?”

  “Genau.”

  “So. Mrs. Higgle is Hans mein Igel. I have not played it for many years. The Hedgehog-human puppet is one of my finest, I think. We will find him out, and tomorrow I shall perform the story. I think she must have named you Mistress Higgle for Hans mein Igel. The story is strange. It is the tale of a woman who so desired a child that she said she would give birth to anything, even a hedgehog. And in tales, you get what you ask for. Her child was a hedgehog above, and a pretty boy below, and he revolted her.”

  Griselda had trouble with “revolted.”

  “So he slept in straw by the stove, and rode out into the woods on a fine cockerel, playing the—I can’t translate Dudelsack.” Anselm Stern mimed.

  “Ah, bagpipes. He sat in a tree, and played the bagpipes and looked after herds of swine, and prospered. By and by he came to the attention of a king lost and bewildered, to whom he showed the way, and the king promised him whatever first met him on his way, which was of course, as it always must be, his daughter. And the daughter must marry the half-hedgehog swineherd, for promises in tales must be kept. And she was greatly afraid of his spines, and did not respond to bagpipe music. So we move to the bridal chamber and there in secret the hedgehog takes off his hedgehog-skin, and servants of the king rush in and burn it in a fire. This is a fine scene for puppets to play. And then he is wholly human, but black as coal. So they wash him, and dress him as a prince, and the princess runs into his arms and loves him—very much—mightily—and all is well. I think, Dorothy, your mother was thinking of the half-alien child, and the hedgehog—who is a trickster, a clever Hans, a German character—when she named your Mistress Higgle. You are the much-desired child who is half from somewhere else, a different child.

  “In this story she sent, someone has stolen the hedgehog-skin. In this story, she needs it, it is magic, it makes her smaller, or invisible.”

  Anselm Stern found out the old puppets from “Ha
ns mein Igel,” the spiny-coated changeling, the prancing red cockerel with his golden comb, the mother with her face that perpetually wept, two painted tears on her wooden cheek—first, because she had no child, and then, because her child was uncanny. A few days later he put on the old play, with Wolfgang as his assistant. This play was not silent—the two men spoke all the parts, and Wolfgang played a tripping tune on a primitive bagpipe. They all came—Joachim and Karl, Toby and Griselda, Leon and Dorothy. Dorothy had noticed that the artist was quietly disappointed if she was not at every performance in the Spiegelgarten. Light glistened on the half-hedgehog’s lively spines. She thought, I shall never pass my matriculation, if I spend all my time in here, watching dolls dance. And yet, as the hedgehog came blackly out of the thorns, like a butterfly out of a chrysalis, and was washed white so he could bed his princess, she was moved to tears, she felt liquid inside, she was pulled about like tides by the moon. She had not bargained for all this.

  Wolfgang, a few days later, caught at Griselda’s sleeve as she was leaving the lunch table in the Pension Susskind.

  “A word with you—” he said, in English. “Some quiet place,” he said.

  Griselda felt his fingers electric. She had been aware that he watched her—her skin was warmer in his searching stare. He was both a mocking and a serious young man. He made wry jokes about Bavarians and beer, about the Kaiser and his wardrobes full of uniforms, about King Edward in England, his harem of ladies, and the Boers suffering stolidly in South Africa. He was at home in this strange new world of satire, skits, innuendo and sudden plangent sentiment. He watched her, Griselda. When he saw she saw him watching, he curled his wide mouth in a deprecatory grin, and looked away.

  She followed him out into the garden, and they sat at a table, under a vine sprawling over an arbour.

  “I want you to see this,” he said.

  He handed her a large sketch-book. It was filled with drawings of female heads, very occasionally with bodies attached to them, seen from every angle, with every possible expression. They were done in charcoal, in pencil, in chalk, in ink.

  They were herself and Dorothy. They studied their bones, their hair, their attitudes, their habits of mind.

  For a moment, Griselda thought Wolfgang had done them. Then he said

  “What have you done to my father? He is verzaubert—bewitched. Is he in love with you? People have been speaking—to me and my mother. He has never been like this, never. Have you made him mad?”

  Griselda stared at him in horror.

  “It isn’t that, at all. Not at all.” She thought furiously. “I think you must ask him.”

  “How can I? He is my father. He has always been—rather serious, a little distant. How can I ask him if he is in love with one or two English girls? People have said—spiteful—things to my mother.”

  He looked gloomily at the table.

  “We want you to let him go,” he said, slowly.

  “I only translate—”

  “So it is the other, the Dorothy—”

  Furies flapped in Griselda’s head. The secret was not hers. She said “There is a secret. It is not mine to tell you.”

  “What have you done?”

  “Listen,” said Griselda. “It is their secret. If I tell you, it will only be so as to stop you—thinking wrong things. It is a secret.”

  “So?”

  “She is his daughter. She came to tell him she had found that out. He—he believes her, you can see. They—they are—you see how they are. I only translate,” she was compelled to add, though she was covertly studying the repeated recording of her thin and pale beauty in the sketch-book. She said

  “And you are her brother. Half-brother.”

  Wolfgang put his head to one side and considered Griselda. She said “I think you should tell him you know. I think—” I think it is all too intense, she wanted to say, and could not. Wolfgang said

  “I am glad you are not my sister.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  Griselda flushed and looked away.

  “Will you come with me, to him—?” said Wolfgang.

  Anselm Stern, confronted by his son, his sketch-book and a deprecatory Griselda, was briefly taken aback. He had been controlling a story, and one of the actors had taken the strings into his own hands. Wolfgang asked, politely and implacably, whether what Griselda said was true. Then he said that his father must speak to his mother, because people had been saying unkind things. He had always intended to speak to her, Anselm said. He had wanted—time to himself, time to think how best to go on, what to say to his sons. He smiled ruefully at Wolfgang.

  “Now you know, there is no further reason to hesitate.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Griselda.

  “Why?”

  “It wasn’t my secret.” A child both spoiled, indulged and neglected, she had never before for so long been simply ancillary to someone else’s drama.

  “No, it is good,” said Anselm Stern. “Now I reflect, I must thank you.”

  Angela Stern sent hand-decorated cards—with wickedly grinning cherubs—to the Pension Susskind to invite everyone—Joachim, Toby, Karl, Griselda and Dorothy—to supper in the Spiegelgarten. Dorothy looked at the cherubs and said that Frau Stern had a sense of humour. She put her hair up, carefully, for the occasion.

  Frau Stern received them standing by the fountain. She was larger than her husband, in every direction, and seemed a little older, solid-featured, with a crown of greying fair hair. She wore a lace-trimmed blouse and a full grey skirt, nothing fancy. She shook everyone’s hand, Dorothy’s no longer than any other. She had one of those faces that in repose looks heavy, but can be transformed by a smile, or an eager sense of interest. When she smiled, she resembled Wolfgang, the same wide grin, the same concentrated glee. She served salmon and cucumber, sour cream and potato salad, accompanied by a choice of beer or Riesling. She said that the carvings on the fountain and the mirrors were her own work. Griselda watched her watching Dorothy, when Dorothy was not looking. Dorothy was sitting next to Leon, who said composedly that he had been talking to his brother and was happy to have his news.

  When they had finished eating, Angela Stern invited Dorothy to come into the house and look at her work. Everyone—even, by now, the tutors—understood the importance of this. Anselm Stern brought the figure of a black cat out of his pocket and began to dance it on his knee.

  “I shall show you my atelier,” said Angela Stern, who spoke English, in her own way. They climbed steep stairs and went into a large, largely empty room, with an easel set up, and two tables of modelled clay heads, some in progress, some finished.

  “These are my sons,” said Angela Stern, pointing to three heads of very newborn babies. “Here Wolfgang, here Leon, here Eckhardt, who did not live. I love my sons, and I love my work, and I’m happy to see you in my house, Fräulein Wellwood.”

  “Dorothy?”

  “Dorothy.”

  “It is kind of you to invite me.”

  “I do believe that we should all be free to love when—where—we must—that we should not be constrained. What we believe and what we feel, you will understand, are not always the same. I—I did not know you—you—existed. I met your mother when she was here. She is a beautiful woman, full of life. She was very unhappy, in that time. We tried to comfort her.

  “I believe I ought to be happy to see you—Fräulein—Dorothy—and now that I do see you, I believe I shall be happy. Come to see us, often. I shall show you my work. This is the room where I am myself. I should like you to know me—me also. I think I need say no more.”

  “You are incredibly kind.”

  “If there is any fault, it is not yours. These are my sons, as cherubs, and here, beginning to be young men. This is Anselm. I could not model him without a model in his hand. I have never got his look to my own satisfaction. I also do caricatures, and there I do better, I can make a simplified—how do you say—edge—outline of his look�
�”

  Thinking about this conversation, later, Dorothy thought that the older woman was determined both to behave well, and not to be left out. Later still, she came to see that there were many ways in which Angela Stern resembled Olive Wellwood. “This is the room where I am myself.” Dorothy was at an age where she was still amazed to be able to describe to herself the movements of the minds and feelings of others. If you knew how somebody’s mind worked, did it mean you liked them? She was not a person of fierce affections or spontaneous emotions. All this bubbling up of excitement and delight and fear over her found father perturbed her. Angela Stern’s lovingly modelled heads of her boys were like Olive’s family tales—a form of love, a form of separateness.

  Good sense is both a curse and a blessing. Dorothy sat in Munich, and thought everything out. If she was to be a doctor, she must return to Todefright and matriculate. She thought briefly about trying to stay in southern Germany and become a doctor there, but German women had more restricted options for study than the British, at that time. And she realised she had no idea what her new-found family would say if she asked to be taken in. And then she realised that she did not want to stay, not yet, not really. She was homesick even if she was happy. She missed both the Tree House and the convenience of Queen’s College, Harley Street and the lectures in Gower Street. There was also the problem of the tutors. Griselda and Karl knew what was going on and had accepted Wolfgang and Leon as proxy cousins. She made a plan. She asked Griselda to tell Toby Youlgreave, in very strict confidence, what had happened. And she asked Karl to tell Joachim Susskind, in even stricter confidence, the same story. They would be part of a circle who knew the truth about Anselm Stern and Dorothy Wellwood, and they would preserve the convention that Dorothy was indeed Dorothy Wellwood, and thus she could go home. She wondered what Toby would think, who had loved her mother so long—she was trying to rethink, revisit, what she surmised of the relations of those two. She rejected the idea that he might always have known that Dorothy was not Humphry’s child. She would have noticed, if he had looked knowing in any way. He did not. He looked baffled.