The Pearl Thief

by Fiona McIntosh

  ‘You need to find a smell that reminds you of apricots,’ Lotte told us, sniffing a beauty she’d picked. ‘And if they’re leaning towards orange rather than yellow, ever-so-slightly darker at their centre …’ She bent down and picked one from the ground. ‘This is what we want – only the genuine chanterelle with wrinkles but not gills.’ She sounded so like our mother I had to smile.

  Hana was grimacing at the basket full of mushrooms the colour of egg yolks. ‘Why they can’t look entirely different is stupid. What’s the point?’

  Her twin, Ettel, grinned. ‘Well, we’re not identical but most people can’t tell us apart, can they? And there’s surely some point to us.’

  ‘Two delicious ripe mushrooms,’ I remarked absently in response as I moved in on a rich clutch of the fungi.

  For some reason this tickled the girls and they peeled off in gales of laughter. Lotte and I threw each other a mildly exasperated glance that turned to chuckles, mostly I think from the novelty of hearing laughter coming from our siblings. It was a rare sound.

  We wended our way slowly back to the villa and could see the red tiles of its roof glimmering through the tall trees as the terracotta caught autumn’s thinned sunlight. The rain had coaxed the forest floor into yielding its mushrooms but the sun was warming it and the trees releasing their oils. We walked through a perfumed cathedral that reminded me of citrus peel as much as fresh herbs and newly mown grass.

  We arrived back at the house chattering, with steam billowing from our mouths, pinched cold cheeks and much warmer, fuller hearts than a few days before.

  Our mother seemed pleased to see our basket; it caused her to smile, which in itself was a balm, but when she touched the cheeks of the twins I teared up and had to leave the kitchen as talk of soup began in earnest. This was to be followed by stuffed goose necks that my father had managed to purchase. And he’d also hunted down enough ingredients – I don’t know how he acquired them – for a fruity sweet bread that he’d assured us he was going to bake. Its real name was bublanina but we called it bubble cake. Us girls were banished to go off and read, play – whatever we felt like – and our parents were going to prepare tonight’s feast. I decided I would provide music for the preparations and so I lifted the lid on the piano, and after many weeks of not feeling like creating sound from those keys, I closed my eyes and allowed a complex piece – it was Liszt – to emanate from our music room. ‘Un Sospiro’, it was called. I was aware that I was a gifted and indeed ambitious pianist with a private dream to give concert recitals around the world but this was a solo that I was yet to master, especially its rolling melody that was passionate, searching, desperately romantic …

  Everyone else in the villa would have only heard its beautiful music but for me it was about all that was lost to me. ‘Un Sospiro’ means a sigh, and that was precisely my mood. All that could have been: the romances, my career, falling in love, sharing a life, building a family, the fashion I loved, my music, my art, my passion for antique jewellery … All of it lost. All of that sadness somehow turned into an uplifting but simple melody that was nonetheless complicated by the need to cross hands constantly across the keys.

  My left mostly played the harmony while my right took care of the main melody – like two halves. My life had become that. One half of me allowing myself to dream because in dreams lives hope, but the other half of me that faced daily life knew there was no hope.

  I was into the most complex part of the solo when I thought I heard the bell on our door jangling.

  Before I could end my piece, my father stepped into the room with a visitor … and this was the moment I remember with more clarity than any other, for it was the moment all of our lives changed irrevocably.

  Katerina realised that Daniel was sitting forward too and he’d lightly covered her gloved hand with his.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  She nodded but it was a lie.

  ‘Come on, let’s move or we’ll seize up.’

  ‘Move to where?’

  He shrugged. ‘Let’s just walk. It will warm us up. How about we make for the Hôtel de Crillon? We can —’

  ‘Are you mad? I’m not dressed for the Crillon.’

  ‘Katerina, you are always dressed for the Crillon! Even going to work you look like you could step right onto a catwalk.’

  She gave him a look of soft exasperation.

  ‘Anyway, who cares? All right, we walk and we can double back onto the Left Bank. I know a tiny hotel in St Germain where we can sit by a fire and have another coffee.’

  ‘All right.’

  They stood and stretched, and Daniel gestured up the gardens so they could trace a path to the northern end, where Katerina recalled that centuries previous Marie Antoinette, deposed Queen of France, had been driven on a cart pulled by two white horses.

  ‘I thought the guillotine was closer to l’Orangerie?’ Daniel queried.

  ‘The guillotine was moved to near the steps we’re walking towards,’ she confirmed. ‘Here she was able to look at her former palace and gardens, above which stood the glinting guillotine on a clear autumn day. King Louis XVI was executed the previous year and shown courtesies that she was not,’ Katerina noted. ‘She stepped onto the scaffold unassisted. The story goes that she even had the composure to apologise to the executioner for accidentally treading on his toe, although I often wonder if it was the former Queen’s final defiance. She lost her head to cheering crowds a fortnight before her thirty-eighth birthday.’

  ‘She had a trial, at least. Not like our people, persecuted and executed because we somehow offended a single man’s ideal.’

  They were approaching the Octogonal Bassin. More people had gathered here on this fine day; a small troupe of children were floating paper boats.

  ‘We’ll go up the steps, trace around Place de la Concorde and move back onto the Left Bank. Look in on some of the booksellers.’

  ‘Sounds good. Talking over the past feels cathartic, although I wonder if we spoke to the girl on the cusp of womanhood, whether she would be more anxious about missing school and her friends than worrying about the loss her future dreams.’ She sighed. ‘Shall I continue my recollections?’

  ‘Only if you want to,’ he lied, trying to keep the desperation from his voice, as they began to ascend the northern stairs and move towards the Left Bank.

  It was Ruda Mayek who had entered our home.

  ‘Oh, my darling, don’t stop on my account,’ he urged, that familiar unsettling gaze arcing across the room to land upon me: all of me. I’d never fully understood if he despised me or found me attractive, but if we were ever together in a room, his impaling look never strayed far from me.

  Ruda had been visiting our villa since before I was born. As a boy he had come with his father to hunt; his father, perhaps two decades older than mine, was full of wisdom about the region that my parents had purchased into as their summer playground and was somewhat of a father figure to them. Before our villa began to fill with the sounds of children and he began to suffer some illnesses, he was a regular dinner guest. I never knew him but his son and only child continued the family friendship as he became a man.

  Most of us change in looks as we grow from children into adults; some of us begin chubby and become gangly, while other infants don’t show any of the promise of the beauty to come. Ruda Mayek seemed to be in a special class, though. According to my parents he was ‘the most beautiful child they had ever laid eyes upon’.

  My mother said his hair as a youngster could appear white sometimes, it was so fair, and in his early years his eyes always seemed too large for his face, but the oddity served him well, making him appear angelic and other-worldy. ‘His eyes possessed a crystalline quality like the waters of our spring in the mountains but rimmed by a thin, defining circle of navy,’ she’d explained once.

  ‘Yes, it gave the impression that he was always looking into you,’ my father had commented with a baffled shake of his head. ‘It could be disco
ncerting to be looked at so intimately by a youngster. Even when he was silent you always knew when Rudy was in the room; you could feel his gaze upon you.’

  Rudy – his affectionate childhood name had remained with us – was in the middle of the music room now, his secretive smile touching me with the underlying suggestion that was always there when he looked at me, his curious, pale eyes still ringed with darkness, still looking into me but also through me.

  He was into his twenties when I came along, and was often charged with watching over me as the new gurgling baby while our parents ate together; his mother died young from influenza, as I recall. By the time Lotte was born, and I was nearing four, Rudy was heading back into the military for another few years, having already done his service. His father mentioned that he may become a career soldier and essentially he disappeared from our lives, other than rare visits. When he returned for good we were all closing in on a decade older and he was past six foot with a muscled frame he carried surprisingly lightly on his long, lean legs. Now the yellowy-white hair that had hung in careless waves when he was a youngster was trimmed short, glistening against his scalp, and his pale skin took the sun surprisingly easily so he appeared healthy from its glow. The squarish face that I remembered as a little girl had turned squarer still and his jaw had lost its youth to become defined, shaven closely to reveal the neatest of mouths – thin, actually – behind which I knew sat two equally neat rows of small teeth that I recall he always took great care with.

  ‘Brush your teeth diligently, Katka’ – his friendly name for me that I privately resented – ‘because your smile is what gets noticed first … and then your beautiful hair, of course.’ He said this to me when I was around eight and he was a man approaching thirty. He’d arrived for supper and had come up to say goodnight. As the eldest I got a room to myself and the privacy it afforded.

  To be fair, I had liked Rudy as a small child. He was as interested in me as he was in the adults; he found time to push me on my swing, teach me how to climb trees. He seemed to enjoy my childish conversations, took genuine interest in my musical ability and made me laugh. But, for the first time, in my quiet room, the other children asleep, my parents’ voices drifting up from the kitchen, I felt deeply uncomfortable. For the first time in my life I felt cornered … hunted.

  I was in my nightdress, my hair plaited either side, and he smelled of the forest, bringing a sharp, fresh bouquet of the resin from the pines and spruce. He sat on the bed I was yet to clamber into, his clean smell matching his precise, neat clothes. His family were not wealthy but Rudy took pride in his appearance, and as young as I was I sensed he enjoyed all the attention that his striking appearance won him.

  ‘I came up to give you a kiss goodnight, Katka. Is that all right? I didn’t want to miss you.’

  He looked huge in my small bedroom, as though his shoulders could touch either wall. What could I do but nod?

  ‘Here, let me help tuck you in?’

  I hesitated mainly because it was unusual; Rudy may not have been a stranger to our family but something inside was giving me pause. I was too young to understand what it was warning me against. ‘Is my papa coming up? He normally tucks me in,’ I said, animal instinct taking over. His hand lay motionless on the turned-back covers in a gesture of welcome.

  ‘Yes, of course. He’ll be up shortly. In you go,’ he said, his tone light and friendly.

  I had no choice, and as I clambered in I felt that same hand running up my calf. At first I just thought it was him assisting, accidentally grazing my skin, but then the pressure changed and I could feel him reaching as high as my naked bottom beneath my nightie. It caressed and squeezed. I froze and it was removed quickly, as though his hand had indeed simply slipped as he’d helped me in. ‘There,’ he said, tone still light and affectionate. ‘Comfy?’

  I nodded. I wasn’t scared yet so much as confused. I was having bad thoughts about someone who surely didn’t deserve it; the doubt made me tense and silent. But then I felt his hand slipping beneath the covers again and I knew it was real and the family friend we were meant to trust was breaching it in the most unimaginable way. I couldn’t cry out, I couldn’t move; I stiffened in terror like the tiny creature I was beneath the bulk of the huge predator that was stroking my leg, getting closer to the top of my thigh and what sat between my thighs.

  ‘You are so beautiful, Katka. Who will rival your looks in years to come?’ he cooed. His voice had lost its lightness and now sounded thick, as though he was fighting to keep it under control. ‘You are going to be the most desirable young woman in all of Czechoslovakia, do you know that?’

  I didn’t answer; I couldn’t shake my head, let alone voice anything. I was as chilled as the snow crystals that hung on the branches of the fir trees outside. That smell of the conifers I would thereon always associate with Ruda Mayek.

  ‘Little Katka, such a tease. You used to excite me when you bounced on my knee as a tiny, giggling girl, and I used to love standing at the bottom of the tree watching you climb … you had such lean thighs beneath your frock. Pushing you on that swing – it’s why I liked to face you, Katka; you’d scream with pleasure when I pushed you hard and you’d open your legs to steady yourself as you rushed back towards me.’

  All of this was said in a soft conversational tone as though he were soothing me off to sleep.

  ‘I used to imagine you screaming as a grown woman beneath my touch.’

  He seemed to shudder and then his hand touched the most secret part of me. I seem to remember being grateful for the small mercy that his lids closed over his penetrating stare in that moment. He let out a sigh, and while I didn’t understand what the frightening bulge in his trousers meant, my instincts told me this was my chance and I finally found the courage to draw back a breath to scream.

  Perhaps he heard that intake, or rather he sensed its potential, but while his hand whipped away from me, the other covered the yell and I tasted the pine forest. His stare forbade me and he shook his head slowly with what I felt was menace, although I couldn’t articulate that then. I know I felt more frightened by his narrowed gaze, which had turned so cold and forbidding it was like the promise of winter for the rest of my life if I said anything, and I began to tremble.

  Then, suddenly, the Rudy my family knew was back and he was smiling, busily tucking me into my sheets, making sure the feather coverlet was plumped around my chin to make me feel safe. My breath was still trapped in my chest but I carefully watched him reach for a book from the nearby shelf to place across his lap and within moments he was reading aloud to me. His voice had lost that tight, throaty quality and his eyes were wide open now. From time to time they glanced at me as if to check I was enjoying the story but no doubt to ensure I was returning from shock. It was a surreal situation: I was tired, the story – ‘Rumpelstiltskin’, my favourite – was so familiar and comforting it was lulling me into a stupor that kept telling me what had happened was my mistake. I didn’t need to be afraid any more, and when I heard the creak of the stairs and knew it to be my father’s tread, relief washed through me. The pale gaze that gave me a final glance carried a nuance of warning that I guess all children understand, no matter how young we are.

  Yes, I understood – Our secret, it said. I hadn’t imagined it and I hadn’t misunderstood. I knew I could never speak of it to anyone because he made me feel complicit in what had occurred.

  11

  She stopped talking. Silence trapped them in front of one of the second-hand booksellers and Daniel had the grace, she noted, to give her a moment to regroup her thoughts, while he no doubt feigned interest in the dusty tome he reached for.

  The bouquiniste began talking to him about it being a first edition. Daniel glanced back at her as the man spoke and in that moment of heightened awareness Katerina could swear she felt his sorrow reaching out to offer comfort. Then he put halting words to it after smiling at the man and handing back the book.

  He touched her elbow lightly
and they continued walking. ‘I don’t know what to say that might help. I’m so sorry to hear this, Katerina. No child should …’

  No. No child should, she thought as he left his remark unfinished. Katerina lifted a shoulder slightly, trying not to feel pity for herself. ‘It was a long time ago,’ she dismissed, masking how much it mattered.

  ‘Your parents never knew?’

  She shook her head. ‘Because I never told them.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘How do you put that into words as a young child? Who would believe me that our family friend, so trusted, would do that to me? It’s so shocking too that as the victim – especially one so young – you’re not sure what it is, or why it happened; sometimes even if it happened. He made me feel that I caused it. Even now as I try and make sense of it I do so with an adult’s perspective. But I was still a baby, really.’

  ‘Did he … I mean how far …?’ Daniel couldn’t even say it.

  She helped him out. ‘No. But if we’d been alone for any longer …’ She swallowed. ‘I certainly sensed he was losing his inhibitions.’

  Daniel murmured a curse of sorts that she couldn’t hear but didn’t need to in order to understand his revulsion.

  ‘Late twenties, you say?’

  ‘Thereabouts. And privately enraged with unfulfilled ambition.’

  ‘To be what?’

  ‘Rich and powerful; what else? His family came from modest means but their desire for wealth and status was tangible. It’s why they befriended us, I’m sure. And looking back I can see how that whole family, including the mother when she was alive, coveted the world my parents lived within, both at Hvozdy and more so in Prague at the big house in its leafy neighbourhood of wealthy Czechs. One occasion when they visited – his father and he – I remember how Rudy’s eyes in particular had burnt with something intangible. I think now that it was envy, and also anger that we, silly little children, had so much to look forward to.’