Eleanor

by RA Williams

  Passing through the vestibule, he thanked Hattie for the iced tea before disappearing into the hallway.

  Her mother gave her a stern look before closing the office door behind him. Elle spoke up before she did.

  ‘I’m to be exiled?’

  ‘Call it a sabbatical.’

  ‘Malarkey,’ Elle said, and she lit another cigarette. ‘You didn’t raise me to be a sucker. You know it’ll be impossible to fund research as “abstruse” as mine.’

  Snatching the cigarette from Elle, her mother took an out-of-character drag from it. ‘A half-million dollars buys a lot of philanthropy.’

  ‘You’re buying me a position?’

  ‘I’m a German Jew, Eleanor,’ she said with just a hint of hubris. ‘You’re buying it yourself.’

  Elle huffed. ‘I’m sure my sabbatical gives St Dunstan’s tenured professors plenty of reason to smile.’

  ‘Scheißdreck.’ Drawing close to Elle, Mother took her hand and caressed it. ‘I imagine at this moment you feel the only right you can do by those privileged professors is suffocating in the Kacke of a crippled Schwein farmer?’

  ‘Don’t think I’m not appreciative of your colourful colloquialisms but—’

  ‘Darling daughter, I once was a bright young thing like you. All legs and lush hair.’

  ‘I’m forty-two years old now, Mother. I’m not as bright nor willowy as I once was.’

  ‘Point being, I understand your wariness. Those men, vacuous and arrogant, honours up their hindquarters, not too proud to accept our benevolence yet too proud to break bread with us in a deli because we’re Jews. What do they know? To them, Adam and Eve on a log is Bible verse.’

  ‘Two runny eggs over kosher sausage,’ Elle added, and smiled, remembering. ‘I miss those breakfasts at Hurwitz’s Deli with you.’

  ‘“The wisdom of the fool won’t set you free”. It’s a truism you must never doubt.’

  ‘You mean like “Mother knows best”?’ Elle asked, and she sighed. ‘Tell me the name of that museum, again?’

  ‘The Institut für Archäologie Berlin.’

  ‘God. It sounds like instructions for deploying a parachute in German.’ She looked out of the window, frowning incredulously, and then burst into tears.

  Her mother placed an arm around her shoulders, comforting her like only a mother could her own child. ‘You’ll be quite all right, Eleanor,’ she said, her voice so soft and heartfelt Elle felt it must be truth. ‘You think I bust balls? Spend a week with my sister. She’d laugh in the face of that frothing-at-the-mouth Hitler, simply for the fact he has only got one.’

  ‘One what?’

  ‘One ball, of course.’

  Eleanor let go her frustrations with a laugh. ‘Do you remember when I was a little girl and Father took me to the county fair every summer? I adored it. I’d sit at my bedroom window looking out at winter’s gloom, counting the days until you let me sleep with my windows open. I knew then it was just a matter of weeks until the fair came to town. There was a hawker selling bags of hot popcorn for two cents. Father never understood why I always asked for salted popcorn when I never much fancied it.’

  ‘Why did you?’

  ‘Because there were always one or two sweet kernels mixed into the bag. I would eat so much I’d come home with a stomach ache.’

  ‘I always thought you’d eaten too much candy floss.’

  ‘Eating an entire bag of salted popcorn in the hope of a single kernel of sweet was so much more satisfying than an entire bag of sweet. Father never understood. He was born in America, into a great family. But you… you were born a Jew. In Germany.’

  ‘And I was taught to savour the smallest of things.’

  Releasing her, Elle’s mother removed a pen from her purse, scratching a series of numbers onto a notepad on Elle’s desk.

  ‘You’ve a keen mental grasp.’

  Tearing off the top sheet, she handed it to Elle.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘A kernel of sweet among a bag of salty.’

  Elle examined the paper her mother had scribbled on: SI.3.524.1643.28. Call numbers. The Dewey Decimal System (DDS) was an ingenious scheme for categorising large collections of references into one of nine categories, using numbers and letters separated by decimal points. The longer the DDS number, the more specific the instruction to the reference’s location. St Dunstan’s version was unique unto itself, for one reason and one reason only: Mother had devised it.

  The school library was housed in the same hall as Elle’s office. Over the years, her family had bought up vast collections of books on almost every subject. There wasn’t space enough in the library, so books were housed wherever space was found. The more esoteric, the further from the library they were kept.

  SI.3.524.1643.28.

  The first two letters identified the building on campus. Whatever her mother wanted her to find, it was certainly esoteric. SI: science institute.

  The lead took her deep into the bowels of the institute. She had visited the basement before and dreaded going again. It was deep, dank and dark.

  The first call number referenced the level: 3.

  The lift lurched to a halt. Sliding back the cage gate, Elle hesitantly took a step onto the labyrinthine network of darkened catwalks hanging above the boilers. Beside the lift hung a white plaque. Block letters informed her: CATWALK LEVEL 3. LIGHT SWITCH BELOW. TURN OFF WHEN EXITING.

  The knife switch was composed of a wooden handle with ominous positive and negative connection wires.

  Pulling the handle up, she locked it into the positive position, a hum rolling along the catwalks. Light bulbs in hanging sockets burned dimly. Although she often found herself at the science institute, she seldom ventured down here.

  In librarian-speak, archiving in a cellar was just above the refuse heap. Her finger cut through a thick layer of dust as she trailed it along the rail. It had been ages since anyone had ventured here.

  Ahead, another sign. Another knife switch.

  Throwing it cast a spiral staircase in spectral light. An arrow on the sign pointed down.

  500 to 550.

  She checked the next set of numbers on her DDS: 524.

  Peering over the edge of the walkway, she spied an enormous, idle boiler. Descending the latticed stairs, she arrived at another level, edged by rows of bookcases packed with cardboard boxes. The familiar mildew odour of old books hung heavy in the air. She glanced at the bookcase numbers before she continued on.

  The pressed cardboard boxes on all the shelves were marked with numbers. She found 524 halfway along the catwalk, and 1643 on a box stuffed into the third shelf. Sitting down on the latticed iron floor, she pulled off the box’s lid.

  Books. And an open box of white powder.

  The lights were too dim for her to inspect the books within, but at the end of the row stood a wooden lectern, a reading lamp balanced atop.

  Hefting the box into her arms, she carried it there, clicked on the lamp, dust on the bulb burning as it heated. Sorting through the large cardboard box, she first inspected the small box of white powder within.

  Church & Dwight ‘Flu’ Bicarbonate of Soda

  Elle’s mother had fed similar stuff to her – a preventative for warding off influenza during the pandemic of 1918. As she looked closer at the box, the penny dropped.

  ‘Mother,’ she whispered with a smile. She hadn’t fed Elle from a similar box, but from this exact same one. Bicarbonate of soda also kept books mould-free. She took out all the books, becoming disheartened as the pile increased. With only two remaining, she found it.

  SI.3.524.1643.28. Book 28. Box 1643. Archive bookcase 524. Catwalk level 3. Science institute physical plant.

  It was an insignificantly small, leather-bound book with embossed borders. She had found it. Six inches in length, no more than four inches wide. The calf-leather folio binding cracked. Opening it, she felt its spine strain. It had not been read for a long time. The title page was delicate,
paper yellowed and brittle.

  A Brief Account of fome Travels in Germania with King Ferdinand von Hapsburg.

  It was hard to read, the pages stained with damp, but the hand-blocked writing was Early modern English; the date at the page’s bottom confirmed it: 1634. Authored by a William Harvey Folcanstan. Physician in Ordinary. His Majefty Charles I.

  ‘Who are you, William Harvey Folcanstan?’

  There came a distant hum. She looked up and saw the lift going up.

  Returning to the book, she flipped through its stiff yellow pages. A chapter heading caught her eye: A vifit to the ftrange Tor Externsteine, cwicseolfor mine.

  ‘A visit to the strange Mount Externsteine quicksilver mine,’ she whispered aloud. She knew the Tor only too well, a mountain long worshipped by Germanic pagans. Elle had spent a good amount of her academic life studying it. But a mercury mine? She had no knowledge of it.

  The lift was on the move again. Someone was coming down. She hastily read through the page.

  At the foot of a strange tor, I did descend one hundred and thirty fathoms into the Pit of Hel.

  She read it again.

  Pit of Hel.

  Hel. The pagan demigod of the underworld. And a Sentinel.

  The Pit of Hel, where the most virgin cwicseolfor is found. ℑungfräu. Dark in colour, mixed with violet, this strange cwicseolfor can be mined only through excessive labour, requiring extraction by fire.

  Elle gripped the amulet under her blouse, the vial within containing globs of cwicseolfor she now knew to be ℑungfräu, a German word whose meaning she knew.

  ‘Virgin.’

  This was pure, virgin cwicseolfor.

  The lift came to a stop, its cage sliding open. Footsteps echoed along the catwalk above. Elle continued to read, quickly.

  Committed not presently to fire, the cinnabar ore is powdered grossly, and becomes once more solid. Then did I so take forty faumes of ℑungfräu. Each faume containing three hundred and fifteen bushels. The pit exhausted, I so carried away the cwicseolfor to the Church of St Emiliana, for Holy Anointment.

  ‘ℑungfräu,’ she said.

  Finally, she had a clue after so many lacunary years.

  The footsteps grew louder, descending the stairs to where Elle stood. Turning off the lamp, she tucked the book into the hip pocket of her blazer.

  ‘Headmaster Bowie, you’re just in time.’

  St Dunstan’s headmaster stood before her, the very image of an unimaginative prig, no doubt there to personally escort her from campus. ‘I’m happy to see you,’ she said, brushing past him, heading up the catwalk in the direction of the lift. ‘I could use your help.’

  Turning, she flashed her most mischievous smile. ‘If I hurry, I can just catch Graf Zeppelin before it departs for Berlin.’

  ❖❖❖

  26 AUGUST 1939

  TOR EXTERNSTEINE,

  TEUTOBURGER WALD,

  GERMANY

  The tree stump clung to the edge of the excavation site. Seven months earlier, it had been indistinguishable from the forest, fringing a meadow beneath a cluster of tors. For a thousand years, these towers were a place of worship for ancient Teutonic tribes. Rough-hewn staircases riddled the towers’ fissures and crevices, leading to mysterious chambers.

  As a young girl, Elle had picnicked with her aunt on the gentle meadow beside the Externsteine, mesmerised by the tors’ fantastical shape. Later, after the rise of the Third Reich and their fascination with mysticism, the Externsteine became known throughout Germany as a sacred place where Teutons once worshipped Aryan supremacy. Of course, the Germans lacked proof. But what did that matter to them?

  The once peaceful meadow now ploughed under, the sheer walls of the ever-deepening pit were lined with scaffolding to support precarious switchbacks, where endless Reichsarbeitsdienst labour-trains pushed wheelbarrows filled with spoil from below. It was back-breaking work, and the Reich labour corps were largely unskilled.

  All available strong backs had taken up the Fatherland’s calling and joined the armed forces. What remained were the stiff, greying country Volk, with little interest in Elle’s discordant theories and none of the finesse of skilled diggers.

  But time was of the essence, and she stuck with them. Germany had descended into the frothing febrility of National Socialism and it was only a question of time before she was chucked out. Despite the protection of the Institut für Archäologie and Elle’s hard-as-you-like demeanour, she was a Yank. And everyone knew which side America would take up arms with when the balloon went up.

  Each morning, she sat with a cup of tea and the day’s first cigarette, overseeing the increasingly enormous hole in the ground. And each morning, with each cubic metre displaced, she grew more disheartened.

  A distant shout. Adjusting the threadbare brim of her Detroit Tigers baseball cap, she shielded her eyes from the morning glare. At the bottom of the hole stood Herr Dietrich, the dig foreman. A slight man with fair hair, blue eyes and large, all-hearing ears, he spoke excellent English, smoked heavily and hummed American swing, despite it being verboten in the new Germany.

  He didn’t wear a party armband, but still Elle didn’t trust him. She felt sure he reported everything going on – or rather, not going on – to his boss in Berlin. She watched him make the arduous trip up the switchbacks to the rim of the pit. Even from a distance, she could see he wasn’t pleased.

  She took a final drag of her Enver Bey. After three years in Germany, she was yet to develop a taste for their Zigaretten. But watching her foreman make his way up to her perch, she knew the six pfennig of bitter tobacco she’d smoked wasn’t nearly as bad as the National Socialist Scheiße sandwich she was about to be served.

  ‘Fräulein-Doktor Annenberg?’ Dietrich approached, brown work shirt stained with sweat. It was August. Hot. And humid. She knew too well how brutal the climb from the bottom of the dig was.

  ‘Guten Morgen, Herr Dietrich. Warm today, ja?’ Why not start with pleasantries? She reckoned the conversation would deteriorate soon enough.

  ‘We have excavated for seven months. There is nothing here.’

  ‘Cup of tea?’

  He shook his head, wiping his neck with a handkerchief. Civilities aside, he said, ‘We have shifted fifteen thousand Kubikmeter of earth. The labourers are to the point of exhaustion.’

  ‘Analysis of the soil?’

  ‘The ground is undisturbed. There is no mine here.’

  Dietrich had already been a foreman for three previous pseudo-science quacks seeking evidence of Aryan tribes sacrificing virgins, and goose-stepping about the Externsteine, so he knew the tors better than anyone. The expeditions had not found a thing.

  But Elle had a new theory. A theory of Germanic tribes not only worshipping at the tors, but mining a most peculiar Flüssigmetall: Jungfräu.

  In the Third Reich, a mere mention of virgins and Teutonic tribes piqued interest. With her funding easily secured, she had organised a new dig. Her dig.

  ‘There is a mine,’ she said, more to reassure herself than Dietrich. ‘Just not here.’ She refused to accept defeat. Germans didn’t react well to it. ‘I need a minute.’

  ‘We should—’

  ‘You should,’ she cut in. ‘You should, at this moment, do nothing, Herr Dietrich.’ Leaving her cup on the stump, she slung her rucksack over her shoulder. ‘I’ll take my ablutions now.’

  She left the rim of the dig and followed a trail through a shallow wood. In one direction, it led to what the Germans called a Reichsarbeitsdienst Lager – a fancy term for an encampment, rather like summer camp at Interlochen on Lake Michigan, complete with tents smelling of mildew. She headed in the opposite direction, wandering between the Externsteine’s rock towers and down to Lake Wiembecke, where she could bathe.

  The lake wrapped itself around the tors. It was not dissimilar in shape to Lake Jonah back at St Dunstan’s. The part of the lake nearest the tors was assigned to the labourers for their evening bathing; the lower
one for Fräuleins during the morning hours. As Elle was the only such Fräulein at the dig, she had the entire lake to herself.

  Kicking off her work boots, she lowered her feet into the soothing water. From her rucksack, she retrieved the old journal she’d wagered her reputation on and thumbed through its pages.

  ‘So, William Harvey Folcanstan, where have you hidden this Pit of Hel?’

  Raising her head to the dense forest on the far bank, she listened to the cooing of the turtle doves, unseen amid the leaves of the beech trees. It wasn’t hard to imagine herself at St Dunstan’s; August in the Northern Rhine region wasn’t much different to Bloomfield Hills. It was hot and humid. She swatted at mosquitoes, buzzing at the back of her neck.

  ‘Get away, damn mozzies.’

  She unbuttoned her dungarees and slid out of them, pulling her work shirt off over her head before leaping into the water, instantly free of the marauding insects. Surfacing with a satisfying splash, she brushed her wet hair back to look along the lake’s length. Save for birdsong it was quiet, and her thoughts subconsciously took her back to a rainy spring night in ’26, treading water in Lake Jonah, the lake built by her father.

  A sudden frisson of excitement jolted her mind. Man-made.

  Wading to the shallows, she climbed up the bank of the lake, scurrying naked across the wet grass and pulling her work shirt over her dripping wet body before slipping her dungarees back on.

  ‘Dr Annenberg?’

  She turned, momentarily startled.

  Dietrich appeared along the path cutting through the trees back to the Externsteine. Upon seeing her wet and half-dressed, he quickly looked away.

  ‘Are you quite all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, what do you want?’

  ‘Your permission to begin backfilling the dig site.’

  Quickly tucking the journal into her rucksack and tying her wet hair back, she realised Dietrich was doing his very best to not look down her shirt at her breasts. Fastening two buttons, she asked if he knew how deep the lake was.

  ‘Deep,’ he replied, eyes still hesitant to look at her. ‘For a long time, Lake Wiembecke was believed to be bottomless. A few years ago, a sounding line was dropped down.’