by Naomi Holoch
The classes waited until the Head and her guests had left the hall, then they stormed out. Everybody was clutching at Lela. Everybody wanted a hand, a kiss, a word.
Lela was pining to be left alone. But that was out of the question. Everybody was pushing to get near her. She had become unreal to the other children: they all wanted to touch her and speak to her as if to reassure themselves that it was really Manuela. Mademoiselle Oeuillet, too, after acknowledging endless compliments on the excellent performance of her pupils, felt a need to address a few words of appreciation to Manuela. She was indeed amazed at the child’s powers of acting, flowing elegance, and musical enunciation, which had never been displayed at rehearsals to such a degree as tonight.
Manuela had first to be disentangled from a mass of girls.
“Eh bien—you did very well, Manuela.”
“Do you really think so, Mademoiselle? Now that it’s all over I have a feeling that I ought to have done it much better. Don’t you think so?”
Mademoiselle was unwilling to let herself in for a serious discussion.
“Mais non, mais non, que pensez-vous? It was very good as it was—we’re not a dramatic school—we’re not actors here—much better?—but that wouldn’t have been the thing at all—not ladylike—mais Manuela—quelle idée—you’re not thinking of becoming a professional, surely?”
“No, I would never dare to try that. I haven’t enough talent for that. I was only thinking….”
“Tut, tut … never mind that … go off with the others and enjoy yourselves….”
Obviously there was nothing to be gained from her. But now Manuela thought of something else. Without paying the slightest attention to the fact that both “shouting” and “running” were forbidden in the large corridor, she did both and ran calling for Ilse. Ilse came into sight. Manuela put an arm about her and bestowed a kiss on her, which Ilse accepted, unaccustomed as she was to kisses from Lela.
“I’m all right again, Lel. I’m not needing any more comfort. At the first go-off I was simply bursting with rage, but then—then the Bernburger turned up….”
“Ye-es?” asked Manuela, lingering on the word. “And then?”
“Oh—well—then I just went down among the others.”
“Where were you sitting?”
“Just behind the ladies.”
“I say”—Manuela dragged Ilse into a window bay—“what did they say? …”
“Oh, Gaerschner thought you had learned your part very well, but your costume wasn’t quite respectable….”
Manuela was hardly listening.
“And Evans?”
“Evans, she said: ‘Oh, sweet! Isn’t she a darling?’ But of course she didn’t understand a word of it.” “And … the other ladies?”
“The Head went so far as to say that you had a very nice pair of legs.”
Manuela stamped her foot. “Oh, leave my legs alone….”
“But nice legs aren’t to be despised. I never really knew that you had nice legs!” and Ilse circled round Manuela, who irritably aimed a kick into the air.
Then Lela seized Ilse by both arms, and half laughing, half imploring, gazed into her face.
“Ilse, darling, please … what …?”
Ilse screwed her eyes up.
“What did she say?”
Manuela nodded energetically, and Ilse replied, looking her steadily in the eye:
“Well, this is just the remarkable thing: Fräulein von Bernburg didn’t say a single word.”
Manuela blenched. Deep dejection was visible all over her face. Then Ilse grabbed her.
“But you should have seen what eyes she made! Such eyes, I tell you….”
At this moment Marga appeared.
“Girls, what are you doing? We’ve all been in the dining room for ages, waiting for Manuela….”
XIII
… Marga warned her.
“Manuela, we’re supposed to have only one glass apiece….”
“Oho!” came an indignant chorus from the others.
“Leave Manuela alone—let her, if she wants to,” and Marga felt herself outvoted.
Manuela thrust her arm under Marga’s.
“Come on, Marga, I’ll drink this glass all by myself to the health of my foster mother and forgive you this day all the good you have ever done me. Here’s to you!”
Everybody laughed, and Marga, protesting still but no spoilsport, returned:
“All right then, do it, you mad goose!”
“Oh!” and Manuela threw out both her arms. “Why shouldn’t I be a little mad?” And then, thoughtfully: “I think I’m really a bit off my nut, for I’m feeling amazingly happy—gloriously happy!”
“Well, we’ll have to mark this as a red-letter day in our calendars.”
This time it was Oda who had interpolated the remark. Since her last encounter with Manuela Oda had avoided her, but when she now sent a glance over the table Manuela lifted her glass again.
“Prosit, Oda—let’s make it up, shall we?”
At any price Manuela wanted to be reconciled with all her fellow creatures that evening. Oda stood up, ceremoniously carried her glass round the table, and begged in a low voice:
“Lela, tell me one thing: can’t you really like me a little bit?”
Manuela recoiled slightly but then cried aloud so that everybody could hear it:
“Yes, of course I like you—I like you all, without a single exception….”
She turned and embraced Edelgard.
“Doesn’t Edelgard look sweet?”
Edelgard’s hair was very fair, and, indeed, the light veil and flowing white robe suited her admirably.
“She looks marvelous. But she’s not nearly such a good actress as you are. She didn’t speak loud enough.” That came from Oda, who had returned to her seat.
“Oh, Oda, she had to speak low. She was a girl.”
“And you, Lela, I suppose, were a man? Your voice was quite deep, and you suddenly had all the right movements …. We were inclined to believe tonight that you—that you’re really half a boy….”
“Here’s to Oda!” and they both emptied their glasses. Lela was standing upright by the table, while all the others were sitting down.
“Oh, it was lovely, anyhow, to be able for once to yell out one’s feelings….”
“How’s that? They weren’t really your feelings,” remarked Mia. “Yes, they were….”
“Go on with you. Edelgard wasn’t your sweetheart at all; it came out that she was only your sister….”
Manuela smiled.
“Yes, my sister—but that’s lovely too, isn’t it?”…
“Oh, girls, there’s something I simply must tell you….”
“What is it?” They all came crowding about her.
Manuela bent to steady herself on Oda’s and Edelgard’s shoulders, for they were standing nearest her.
“She made me a present of something….” The words came tumbling out.
Single voices called:
“Who? What? …”
They were all beginning to feel interested.
“She gave it to me,” and Lela stood upright again. “To me. A chemise, and I have it on at this minute. I can feel it here on my breast, on my body, cool—pleasant….” And since she still encountered nothing but incomprehension and questioning looks, she shouted it aloud: “Fräulein von Bernburg’s chemise … she gave it to me….”
At that moment Bunny’s small gray figure appeared behind the backs of the children. Nobody remarked it. All eyes were turned toward Manuela, who stood high above them with flying hair, glittering in her silver sequins.
“Yes, to me …” and then, in a lower voice, very rapidly: “She went to her wardrobe and took out a chemise and gave it to me, I was to wear it, to wear it and think of her…. No, she didn’t say that, but I know all the same….”
“What? What do you know?” came in agitated voices from the crowd.
Fräulein von Kesten v
anished again. But Manuela spread her arms wide.
“That she loves me … that’s what I know.” Shaking her head in humility, she went on: “She laid her hand on my head, her lovely white hand. That thrills through and through you and is so solemn that you want to kneel and …”
Now the Headmistress came in, followed by Fräulein von Kesten. A few of the girls caught sight of them and stood as if turned to stone.
Lela laid both hands on her breast.
“To feel it here makes one good. From now on I want to have only good and pure thoughts. I want to be good,” and louder and louder: “There’s nothing can touch me now—she, she is there—she …” For a moment Lela faltered, and then, as if recalling the original purpose of her speech, she hastily snatched up a glass. “To her we all love, to our holy, our good, our one and only Fräulein von Bernburg….”
Then at last she observed an uneasy agitation among the children. The Headmistress was thrusting aside those who were barring her progress until she came to a halt close beside Manuela, who, summoning her last strength, gazed fearlessly into her face.
“The whole world must know it—she, she is the miracle—she is the love that passeth all understanding….” With that her glass fell from her hand and splintered. She herself shut her eyes and swayed into the arms of Edelgard and Oda, who caught her.
An uncanny hush spread in the room. Horrified, the girls cowered away from the Head. Fräulein von Kesten ran bustling around.
“Water … lift her up … carry her away….” Loudly the Head’s stick beat on the floor. “A scandal … a scandal …”
XIX
“The girl must be made an example of.”
The Head’s stick thumped on the floor. The Headmistress was stumping up and down the room. Fräulein von Bernburg, pale and composed, was standing by the lamp.
“That girl’s a pest. She’ll infect all the others. That kind of thing sets fashions. She’s a danger to the house, to the reputation of the school.”
Fräulein von Bernburg did not flinch.
“Reputation?” she repeated, with a faintly questioning inflection.
“Our reputation is more important than anything else.”
“May I ask what you have decided?”
“Decided! What is there to decide? … Decide!”
Fräulein von Bernburg remained waiting. In a correct posture she stood before her superior, waiting to hear her sentence—her sentence, for whatever verdict was decided on would strike at her too….
“You, my lady, are responsible for all this. If you can take the trouble to remember, I mentioned it to you before. You are encouraging for your own ends an hysterical devotion.”
“Ma’am …”
But Fräulein von Bernburg was not to be allowed to speak.
“You should have nipped that kind of hysteria in the bud. There’s a limit to everything. You see now what it leads to.” And then, as if speaking to herself: “An unhealthy business…. Decide?” She sat down and stared at the motionless face of the young woman before her.
“Above all things, of course, she must be separated from you. Full stop. Finish. The end. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” The answer came like a breath.
“And from the other children too. Isolated. Locked up. Not to make the other children as bad as herself. I’d like best of all to write to her father and tell him to take her away. But how could I explain such an unusual step to Her Royal Highness? That’s the difficulty. The affair must be hushed up. The servants are gossiping too much already.”
“The servants!” said Fräulein von Bernburg, and in spite of herself her tone was bitter.
“Certainly, that kind of gossip can have the most unpleasant consequences. Scandal. Rumors … Well, to stick to our point: Manuela must be isolated….”
“But even so, ma’am, I beg you to consider—what if the child has a nervous breakdown? She’s a very nervous child—sensitive—she….”
Fräulein von Bernburg twisted her slim hands together.
“That means nothing to me. Nervous breakdown—what kind of expression is that to use? When I was a child no such thing was ever heard of. Fräulein von Bernburg, we are here to educate soldiers’ children.”
“I’m afraid for Manuela, ma’am; she is not strong. She’ll take terribly to heart a separation from me and from the other children.”
“And that will be her punishment. Fräulein von Bernburg, I expect you to obey me.”
“I know my duty. But, ma’am, I beg of you, let me wean the child gradually from her devotion to me….”
“Gradually? Devotion? Are you aware what we are really dealing with? Manuela is sexually abnormal.” The Head took a step toward Fräulein von Bernburg. “And perhaps you know what the world thinks of such women—our world, Fräulein von Bernburg?”
Fräulein von Bernburg did not evade the look that was fixed upon her. Her mouth was closely compressed. Firmly she looked the old woman in the eye.
“I do know, ma’am.”
And then, in a low voice, as if she were speaking only to herself: “Manuela’s not a bad child. But she has to grow into a free and independent woman … and therefore I want to detach her from myself.”
“I’m glad you’re able to see it. I think there’s nothing more for us to say to each other tonight.”
Fräulein von Bernburg remained standing as if she had not heard her dismissal; it was only the continued silence that told her the Head was waiting.
Still as if she were meditating on something, she walked slowly to the door.
“Good night, ma’am.”
“Good night, Fräulein von Bernburg.”
But in the very doorway fear clutched again at the heart of the departing woman—dreadful fear.
“Ma’am, suppose Manuela … suppose she can’t bear it…. I mean, if the child falls ill …”
“Then we’ll make that an excuse for sending her home.”
And as if this were the final solution, the Head laid her stick on the table to intimate that she wished to be alone.
Translated by Agnes Neill Scott
Achy Obejas
The Cuban-born Achy Obejas gives a complex portrait of an emigrée’s return to her homeland in her story “Waters” (1996). Born in Havana, Obejas came to the United States by boat as an exile when she was six years old. Both this early experience and its resulting dislocations have provided the basis for a rich literary exploration of loss and reconstitution. For Obejas, as for many other writers in this collection, the power of memory shapes personal history into fiction. This search to find meaning both in a cultural past and a present lesbian self is represented by the narrator of “Waters” as she encounters current-day Cuba.
WATERS
THE moon burns. I had imagined it would dance across the water in Cuba, swing gently from one wave to the other, but instead it simmers, pale yellow flames blistering on the water.
I pull the black cotton T-shirt I have on away from my body. It’s still dry. I can feel the soothing talc on my skin after my shower but I know this feeling of release will be short-lived. In an hour or so, I will be damp and glowing. Unlike some other travelers—who wring the sweat out of their shirts after an afternoon walk and wheeze and worry about their hearts—I am comfortable in this state of humidity, as at home as if it were amniotic fluid.
It’s steaming here but I still welcomed the hot water for my shower—my first in Cuba. Until I got to Isabel’s house in Varadero, every shower had been more of the theoretical sort: little bursts of icy liquid from rusty showerheads in tourist hotels in Havana, or cupfuls of cold water drawn from a bucket while standing chicken-skinned in otherwise dry tubs. These experiences only added to my admiration for the Cubans who live on the island; when I rub against them on the old, tired buses or in crowded streets, they always smell sweet and fresh.
Here at Isabel’s, as soon as I spied the tiny water heater in the bathroom, I begged her to light it for me. She shook he
r head but smiled. “All right,” she said, telling me without words how unnecessary and excessive it is to take a hot shower in Cuba. “But it won’t last very long anyway,” she warned me, a precious match trying to catch the heater’s hissing gas. Its flickering seemed to pump up the temperature. Even Isabel’s brow grew moist.
In the shower, I exercised my privilege: I luxuriated under a mass of lather on my hair, felt the streams of soap running between and down my newly browned legs. I imagined the salt of the ocean water from the afternoon’s playful bath on the shore racing alongside the salt of my own sweat as it drained through flaky pipes and back into the land of my birth.
The day before the hot shower at Isabel’s, I was invited for coffee to the home of one of Cuba’s leading poets, a large, impressively built man with a long and thin, perfectly manicured mustache in the style of the patriots from the early twentieth century. As he talked to me in his Havana apartment—a magnificent place with a view of the Malecón and the broad boulevards that make Havana seem so French sometimes—I imagined him a man in a time warp, caught between his real existence, in which he whispered profundities with José Martí in a café, and ours, looking down at the crumbling revolutionary city, its baroque façades raked by the wind and the constant onslaught of sea salt.
The poet leaned against the windowsill. “I believe that you, of course, are a Cuban poet, a poet of the nation,” he assured me, “although I do think the issue of language is very important.”
We were talking in Spanish. He handed me a recent edition of one of the periodicals put out by the Cuban writers’ union. Like all the other publications on the island, the pages were thin and limp, as if wilted by the heat and humidity. The front page featured an essay in which the poet, contrary to everything he was saying now, drew a definitive line between Cuban writers on the island and those living abroad, regardless of whatever language they used. I thought immediately of Martí, who wrote in a New York tenement not far from my own home.