Still, Alma hadn’t been able to fight back. Sometimes, like that, taken by surprise, since she’d been a little girl she just panicked, froze. Could hardly lift her arms to shield her face from harm.
Couldn’t scream for help. Couldn’t scream at all like rags were stuffed down her throat.
Afterward, Seigl had tried to apologize. Stammering how ashamed and sorry he was. Like Alma wanted to hear this! He said his sister “had a history of” breakdowns. His sister was a “disturbed” personality. A “borderline” personality. And she had a “drinking problem,” and she was on “anti-depressant medication.”
Seigl said it would never, never happen again. Because his sister would never be allowed in this house again. And especially so long as Alma was there.
Alma didn’t know what to say. Just stood there, frowning and staring at Seigl’s whiskers, not meeting his eye but hugging her rib cage with her upper arms squeezing her breasts like she’d have liked to flatten them out not knowing what she was doing and feeling the ugly tattoo on her cheek pulse and throb until at last Seigl caught on, he was making her as miserable as his bitch of a sister had made her, and let her go.
Later that day it was. A slow dull lonely day after the sister left and the house was quiet again and Seigl mumbling to himself and pulling at his beard back at the dining room table with his books. And Alma made sure he wasn’t creeping up on her like he did sometimes (without him knowing she saw him in the corner of her eye) and she was prowling restless and hot Hate hate hate both of you Jew kike bastards and her heart pounding like she’d sniffed the purest coke straight up into her brain and she watched seeing her hand open a glass-front bookcase in Seigl’s study and from a shelf she pulled a book that made her smile almost, small as a children’s book which was what she thought it might be, the title sounded like a children’s fairy tale, Anna Livia Plurabelle, but when she opened it and tried to read the tiny print swam in her eyes, fucking words made no sense like they were not English or any kind of English she’d been taught and her heart kicked in resentment and fury and her hands yanked the covers of the little book back until she heard the fragile spine crack and she smiled with childish satisfaction like a boy yanking a frog’s legs apart tearing the frog into two pieces. There! Fucker.
Fat Jew lips like a baboon’s asshole. Talking to himself and laughing and I think he’s calling for me but he isn’t. He’s at the dining room table reciting poetry I guess it is “Vir-gil” rocking forward and back in his chair his eyes shut not knowing anybody else exists. I turn off the vacuum and listen. I watch him, I’m disgusted seeing a man like that unaware of another human being in his house like my drunk old blind grandpa Busch in his undershirt that showed every jutting bone and his boxer shorts laundered flimsy-thin so you could see everything that old man had dangling out of his belly like goiters it’d make you gag to see. The Tattooed Girl flailing her bare arms making lewd faces and a gagging noise like a late-night TV comic and they laughed at her marveling she could be so funny and she loved it basking in their attention though such attention was fleeting as lighted matches and always there was a letdown later. And there were other girls as frantic to be loved as the Tattooed Girl, one of them sexy and straw-blond like the Tattooed Girl but younger.
It might’ve been that night. Or the next. She couldn’t stop sweating, and she was shivering, too. Which wasn’t a good sign. A smelly sweat oozing out of her pores like crackling fat. Dmitri’s friend Ermine (if that was his name, Alma wasn’t sure) had crushed and mashed the painkillers into a grainy white powder and tamped it down in a ruby-red curve-handled pipe. Firing up the powder and sucking in the smoke be sure to keep the smoke sucked in.
Ermine grinned at her. Don’t exhale, baby. You’ll waste it.
She knew! She knew how to fucking smoke she’d been doing it since ninth grade for Christ sake. And I’m a long way from ninth grade now.
A jolt to the heart. That was what Seigl needed not boring old mildew books books fucking books.
So drunk she kept the smoke inside her lungs too long, swallowed and choked and couldn’t breathe and began to convulse, thrashing on the filthy floor like a big hooked dying fish, in just her black lace bra and one of her breasts flopping out, Jesus did they laugh at her! One of the grinning guys prodded her ass with his booted foot saying in a singsong voice Al-ma Al-ma you dead or alive Al-ma?
It wasn’t her lover. There was that solace, that sop to her pride, it wasn’t Dmitri Meatte jeering.
Next time I won’t. I will keep control of myself. I will make him love me like in the beginning.
AFTER THE WEEKEND, returning to the house on the Hill it seemed she hated her employer more than ever! Like vomit rising at the back of her mouth, her hatred tasted.
Ask why? For the Jew himself, and for his crazy bitch of a sister.
The sister! Who could figure such a glamorous woman, had to be thirty-five years old, or more, just the look of her enamel teeth and fingernails and her styled hair, such a woman turning crazy, going for Alma’s throat? Slapping and clawing like a street whore and she’d have strangled Alma except Seigl was there to drag her off.
About the sister she’d told Dmitri Meatte not a word.
Why not?
Ashamed.
I can’t. can’t fight back. They’d see, then. How I want to kill them. Tear their throats with my teeth.
Hate hate hate him twice as much now for he reminded Alma of the sister and since the sister’s departure there was beginning to be a weakness in the man like cracks so fine you can’t see them yet but can sense they are there. Like Seigl was recalling the sister in certain rooms of the house. Like some days when he was trying to work (call what he did “work”!—a grown man sitting on his ass for hours scribbling on sheets of yellow paper) he could not concentrate but drifted into staring at the windows, and his mouth moved shaping words not meant to be heard. This behavior Alma observed in the corner of her eye. Since the sister, Seigl’s hands shook more. His step was less steady. She’d see him leaning against a wall, panting. And he used the cane, because he needed it. Not every day, but some days. There was no joke about the cane now. (Alma would hand it to him, silently. And he would take it.) And now Alma accompanied him down the nineteen stone steps as well as up the nineteen stone steps and assisted him as he sank, half-falling, grunting and cursing into the driver’s seat of his car and more and more frequently now in mid-winter Alma accompanied him in the car on errands in the village and across the river into the city and she was beginning to be seen, and known, by Joshua Seigl’s acquaintances who spoke of her as Seigl’s assistant and often smiled at her calling her “Alma” but Alma refused to respond, would not be suckered into smiling back or mistaking such gestures for kindness knowing that these people—especially the women!—didn’t give a shit for Alma Busch, didn’t care if she lived or died only that she was Joshua Seigl’s assistant for as long as he wished to hire her.
And Alma knew to help Seigl with doors. Anticipating which door was going to give him trouble, and which would probably not. But always the car door which was heavy and inclined to swing back onto Seigl where the man was vulnerable hauling his bulk up and out of the car with brawny trembling arms.
Seigl’s arms and shoulders were getting muscled, Alma could see.
Probably not his legs, though! He’d be looking like her wasted old grandpa Busch, in time.
“THANK YOU, ALMA.”
That quiet voice of his. She hated such weakness! You wanted to cry hearing such weakness in a man, fuck it.
“Alma, what would I do without . . .”
(WHAT HE’D DO: hire another assistant. It didn’t take genius to figure that one out.)
SLOW DULL LONELY winter days and she was stone cold sober. And the delirium of the weekend was eclipsed behind her like soiled clothes she’d stumbled out of, kicked off her feet. And the weekend-to-come sickened her with its uncertainty for it hovered before her teasing as a slice of moon in the night sky you can�
�t be sure if you are seeing but might be imagining. For if he had another girl. If he had other women. Not ugly-tattooed and fat-assed.
She believed she could make him love her, though. It would only just take time. He would see her devotion.
Like with the checks. He was interested in the checks, at first.
There were numerous checks Seigl had never gotten around to endorsing and cashing, that Alma had discovered in his mail. Some of these were months old and a few were years old. Seigl had asked Alma to make a stack of these checks on his desk and so she had but on the sly she’d selected a choice few (for sums beyond $1,000) to give to her lover. See? What I have for you?
It added up to $6,340. She’d counted.
But Dmitri disappointed her. Shaking his head. No good.
Like the tarnished pieces of silver, the checks were. In theory they were worth money but not in fact. You couldn’t cash them, only an asshole would try forging Seigl’s name. And so long after the checks had been issued.
Alma said, pouting, why couldn’t she try? She wasn’t afraid.
Dmitri pinched her breast. Just teasing.
I know you’re not, baby. But we can make a lot better use of you if you’re not in jail.
Hate hate hate the Jew because she caught him looking at her with pity. Her hand flew up to cover her cheek. Sometimes she felt a hot blush there, and at the nape of her neck. And across the backs of her hands. Her ugly hands! No fingernail polish could make those hands glamorous. For the fingers were stubby, and the nails were brittle. He wanted to ask (she could see he wanted to ask) was the thing on her cheek a birthmark or a tattoo? But he could not. He was shy of her at such times—this man who’d written books!
And the morning she overheard him on the phone. This impatient voice like he was trying to hide something beneath it: fearfulness. Talking to his doctor Alma gathered. He had warned her months ago not to ask about his health and for sure Alma would never yet she was curious, inclining her head to listen through the doorway where Seigl was leaning back in a chair scowling at the ceiling, and his eyeglasses (these were new, and made him look prissy) glinted with reflected light, and he was digging his fingers into his hair not knowing what he did. He was angry, anxious, saying, “This God-damned medication. The side effects are driving me crazy . . .”
Alma bit her lip. Wanting to smile.
Not that she cared if the Jew lived or died, for sure she did not.
(Wondering: what was wrong with him, exactly? And was it getting worse?)
Hating the man for his weakness. Any weakness.
But most of all she hated this employer for giving her orders in his prissy backward way. Like he needed to be polite to Alma Busch! Almost, it was like a joke: “Alma, would you have time to—?” or “Alma, if it isn’t too much trouble perhaps you could—?” or “When you have a chance, Alma, I wonder if—”
Alma mumbled some kind of reply. Why the fuck didn’t he just tell her what to do!
And the things he came out with. Out of nowhere. Like they meant something she could comprehend like he’d taken for granted she knew the alphabet and could “alphabetize” his papers.
“You’ve heard of Primo Levi, Alma?”
Alma worked her mouth staring toward a corner of the dining room table. She’d polished it the day before, she liked how it shone. What was this guy saying? Who?
“. . . in Auschwitz he never thought of suicide in two years. While always before, he had. And, after . . .”
Alma shifted her shoulders uncomfortably. Felt like her bra straps were cutting into her flesh. Why the fuck was Seigl telling her this?
“Levi did actually commit suicide, in 1987. He’d been freed from Auschwitz in 1945. That’s quite a long time, I’ve always thought, for any suicidally inclined person to have endured . . .”
There was an awkward silence. Alma was fearful that her stomach would growl. Self-consciously she’d folded her arms tight and was squeezing her rib cage hard, lifting her breasts that felt heavy and raw, staring at the polished surface of the mahogany dining room table that was strewn with Seigl’s papers in a way that suggested drowning. Alma could not have said which of them, Seigl or herself, was breathing so audibly and wetly.
Seigl removed his glasses and rubbed at his eyeballs. That habit of his! You could actually hear the eyeballs make a squishing sound.
Some bad habits, like Alma picking at her face, at her nose, biting her fingernails till they bled, her mother used to lunge out and slap away her hands. Cut that out!
When Seigl opened his eyes he seemed mildly surprised to see Alma standing there. Had he summoned her? Was it lunchtime?
“Alma! I don’t mean to sound gloomy. I think I meant—it’s a profound insight into human nature. In a camp surrounded by death you need not think of suicide. You never think of suicide when life is precarious and precious, when life is reduced to mystery. Only when it isn’t.”
He smiled at her. His fleshy lips inside the whiskers like wires. She found herself staring at him. She hadn’t even heard what he was saying. The mark on her cheek burnt as if he’d touched her.
LATER THAT DAY, a Friday, the Mount Carmel Laundry & Dry Cleaners delivered. Alma took the items from the delivery man, not meeting his eye. Fuck these bastards coming on to her, and this one some kind of Hispanic not even white, like Alma Busch was somebody’s live-in whore.
Straight-backed and trembling with indignation Alma tore off the cellophane wrappers from Seigl’s laundry and dry cleaning. Put away his things in the bureau drawers in his bedroom, careful to keep them separate: pajamas, undershirts, shorts, socks. She hung his shirts, trousers, a tweed sport coat in his closet. Never in all these weeks of working for Seigl had she grown to tolerate the lavishness of his spending which she surmised to be out of ignorance.
Ironed pajamas! Fucking ironed underwear and socks!
11
AND THEN SUDDENLY Seigl was well.
Overnight, it seemed. Amazing!
In the scintillant snowy light of early February as his thirty-ninth birthday veered toward him like a wayward comet Seigl wakened in his bed to find himself strong again in all his limbs. And clear-minded, and suffused with happiness.
“Can it be? My God . . .”
Trying to remain calm. Being the son of Karl Seigl he was no natural optimist. He would carry himself cautiously. He would test his legs and his strength through twenty-four hours, at least. For perhaps this was some mysterious spike of energy having to do with his new medication.
Friedman had said it was a less powerful medication than the previous. No steroids. Research into central nervous system disorders and diseases was continuous, always there were new theories, new medications and treatments. Yet Seigl seemed to know, his recovery had little to do with medication: no more than the sun easing out of a solar eclipse has anything to do with mere optics.
“It’s over. I am well.”
Wanting to sob with relief. Wanting to laugh aloud. Like a shy suitor he approached his bathroom mirror to examine his face for the first time in months without flinching.
Much of the color had returned to his skin. His cheeks were almost ruddy. His deep-set eyes seemed less blurry and bloodshot than they’d been in memory and he looked less fatigued, and depressed.
Daring to smile at himself: for he wasn’t bad-looking, really.
Almost, you could see how a woman might be attracted to him.
A line of poetry came to him like a happy cry: When at last after long despair our hopes ring true again and long-starved desire eats, O then the mind leaps in the sunlight— Strange, for Catullus was hardly Seigl’s favorite Latin poet.
“Sondra.” He would call Sondra Blumenthal whom he’d been avoiding for weeks and whose feelings he knew he’d hurt. “Sondra. My dear.” A wave of desire for the woman hit him. Or was it sheerly desire. He had not made love to a woman in a very long time and he was not going to allow himself to think (was he?) of the young woman dwelling now in his
house for he understood that his assistant Alma Busch though hardly fragile-seeming was yet fragile in her emotions and so Seigl must not, must not . . . He would call Sondra Blumenthal. He owed this sweet kind patient woman several calls. He was eager to show her his Virgil translations. Oh, he wanted to take Sondra’s hands in his, wanted to look into her eyes, kiss her . . .
“But don’t mislead her, Seigl. That would be cruel.”
Chastising his mirror-face. A lewd winking expression like a mask of Pan had slipped over it. He made a kissing-sucking noise with his lips. Hot with blood, rather full, fleshy, Seigl’s lips reminded him of, of what, reminded him of genitalia, thin membranous skin rosily cast with blood . . . He laughed. He wiped at his mouth. Well, it was so. Why deny it!
Except: the whiskers.
God damn, Seigl was tired of those whiskers.
He’d let his beard grow out of negligence and despair. Like a wild ragged Hebrew prophet of old. And the beard was threaded with silver and gray wires.
Seigl laughed heartily. The idea came to him in an instant.
Myself again. But more than myself, a new man.
“Oh. Mr. S-Seigl . . .”
When Alma Busch saw her eccentric employer with his whiskers shaved away, his face naked and exposed, bleeding from a half-dozen small scratches, and his heavy cheeks, jowls, and chin red-smarting and swollen, she stood staring at him astonished. What a sweet comical simpleton the girl was, Seigl laughed in delight.
“Alma. I see now I should have warned you, dear. This is what the illustrious ‘Dr. Seigl’ looks like.”
Alma stammered, “But—Mr. Seigl—your face is b-bleeding—”
It was true, Seigl had had to assault the thicket of whiskers. He’d needed a pruning shears! But he’d managed, with two pairs of scissors and more than one razor, trying to be patient initially but then with growing impatience until finally he was scraping away at his oddly tender skin not giving a damn how much it was hurting, or how he was lacerating the skin. Once he’d made up his mind to be clean-shaven again, that’s to say to regain his old, youthful appearance, Seigl was ruthless.
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