Kaleidoscope

by Dorothy Gilman

  "What a treasure," murmured Madame Karitska.

  With a mingling of anger and passion the girl said, "But my mother never told me—never mentioned—that she ever knew Charmian Cowper, and it sounds as if they knew each other since childhood. I mean, anyone else would have loved to brag about knowing such a celebrity, but my mother never mentioned it, not ever, even to me."

  Finding this strange, too, Madame Karitska only nodded and waited.

  "Now I want—having adored her in films, and now this—I want to write her biography; I have to, I must, it's why I've taken a year off from my very good job in advertising, and why I've moved to Eighth Street before I run out of money doing research. I mean, here is this trunkful of old playbills and photographs, a few costumes, a gorgeous fan, a rather odd necklace, and I find I don't know what any of them mean. Or meant to her. There's never been a real biography written— lots of articles about her work, yes, but nothing of her personal life, and all I find are facts. She was always so private, you know, and my landlady said you can pick up feelings and reactions from holding things, and receive impressions?"

  Madame Karitska said with relief, "At last I begin to understand."

  "Yes, and I so hope— But not even the facts agree. All the movie magazines say she was born in Hungary in 1923, Who's Who in America says she was born in Austria in 1922, but her obituary said she was born in Hopetown, Pennsylvania, in 1921."

  "In America! In Pennsylvania!" exclaimed Madame Karitska, remembering an exotic and inexplicably European charm.

  "Yes," said Kate, and added pointedly, "And my mother was also born in Hopetown in 1921."

  This met with a startled silence, until, "You've begun to interest me very much," admitted Madame Karitska. "I enjoy mysteries—"

  "It's more like detective work," sighed Kate. "Also expensive. I've made two trips to Hopetown, and spent a small

  fortune on movie magazines; did you know they're considered collectors' items now? except I also found some in flea markets, mercifully. Did you know Charmian Cowper married four times?"

  "No, I had no idea—four times?"

  "Yes, and not until she was thirty years old, and then to a director thirty years older than she was. She was so beautiful and magnetic, there could—must?—have been love affairs, don't you think?" Returning to the practical she brought out a memo pad. "I've made notes about her husbands; I'll leave these with you. I looked them all up, it needed a whole month and wasn't easy . . , movie magazines again."

  "You have been busy," agreed Madame Karitska.

  "Then when—I mean, may I make an appointment for two hours with you? I can bring some of my mother's things over here; I've several boxes of hers, but I don't quite know how to get the trunk here."

  Madame Karitska smiled. "It might be much simpler if I come to your trunk."

  "Oh, would you?" she said eagerly. "My place is still a mess. . . . And you must call me Kate. I'm in apartment number two-oh-two. When are you free?"

  Madame Karitska walked over to her desk to her appointment calendar. Some of her clients came in once a month, some twice a month, others she never saw again, but definitely there was a welcome block of time tomorrow. She had planned to visit her favorite thrift shop uptown, hoping that an old Chanel suit there was still in good repair, but definitely Charmian Cowper and Kate were proving far more interesting than Chanel.

  "Tomorrow," she said, "from one o'clock to three?" Kate looked radiant. "Wonderful," she said. "I can't wait to see what we can learn."

  Madame Karitska, watching this exuberant child leave, found that she, too, could scarcely wait to see what might be learned.

  The next afternoon, a few minutes before one o'clock, Madame Karitska was buzzed through the front door of the apartment house where Kate lived. She was waiting for her at the top of the stairs. "I've gotten organized," she told her, "I've been so busy researching Charmian that my mother's personal papers remained in storage until yesterday. My furniture's still there, as you can see," she added, pointing toward a room furnished with only three filing cabinets, a computer, a typewriter, a desk and a small trunk, and, in a corner, a card table heaped with magazines and a box, with two straight chairs pulled up to it. "I thought—for your visit—I should pin that photo of Charmian on the wall; I bought it in New York. To inspire."

  Madame Karitska had already noticed it on arrival, for it dominated the room, a large glossy photograph with the remembered bone structure of the face, the subtle slant of her almond-shaped eyes with a hint of sadness lurking in them, and that passionate mouth that a million men had longed to kiss. . .. Yet how those eyes could flash, she remembered, and the lips part in a radiant smile.

  "Tell me about your visit to Hopetown," suggested Madame Karitska, "since you feel that's where your mother knew Charmian. Did you learn—"

  "A lot about very little," quipped Kate. "I spent four days searching through court records. No listing of any Charmian Cowper among the birth records for 1921.1 found in the local library some very old 1928-to-1930 directories, and my grandparents were listed there, but no Cowpers. I couldn't even find the two-family house where my mother grew up; it's become a mall now, full of stores and restaurants."

  'A long time ago," Madame Karitska reminded her, and added thoughtfully, "the thirties would have been Depression years. ..."

  Kate nodded. "I realized that when I remembered what my mother told me about my grandfather. I never met him . ., he was a minister, and Mother said rather tartly that he gave half his money to the poor, and intentionally lived in a poor neighborhood—positively saintlike, but a bit frustrating for my mother. My last bit of research before I left was to visit the Historical Room at the Hopetown library. I xeroxed the first two pages of each 1930 through 1931 newspaper—it was only a weekly in those days—and I included an old map."

  She placed the map on the table and they each sat down in a folding chair and she spread out the map. "I've circled where my mother grew up at 124 Speedway Avenue

  ." She grinned. "My mother used to call the street a Speedway to Oblivion, but it has to be where she knew Charmian Cowper, darn it. My mother lived there until she went off to college."

  "And what's this?" asked Madame Karitska, pointing to a large blank circle adjoining Speedway Avenue

  .

  Kate referred to her notes. "It was a swamp until they filled it in; during the Depression they called it Camp Town. Before that—probably before any bankers ended up broke and retreated there—it was known as Shanty Town."

  "If no Cowpers were listed in the city directories they could have been renters and not listed," pointed out Madame Karitska. "What do you have there?"

  "Photos of Charmian's husbands. One, the director whom she first married, Vladimir Mirkov, and very distinguished, as you can see: white hair and goatee. Unfortunately he died five years later. Next the two Pretty Men—that's what I call them—very young actors, Hayden Marsh and Peter Hastings, but each of those marriages lasted only about a year, and then much later came Dr. Ralph Palmer, a cardiologist. Since she died of a heart attack, she may have met him because she went to him for treatment when she began to have trouble." She handed the photographs to Madame Karitska. "She must have touched them, fingered them, can you pick up any hints of how she felt, any impressions?"

  Madame Karitska reached for the photograph of the first husband, Vladimir Mirkov, and became very still, her eyes closed as she concentrated until, soon, she was filled with a deep sense of sadness.

  "What is it?" asked Kate anxiously.

  "She didn't love him," said Madame Karitska, frowning. "Something very poignant had happened to her before this marriage when she was thirty, there is a vivid impression of her turning to this older man, this friend, for comfort. A sense of great loss haunted her; I'd guess that he accepted the little she offered and was grateful."

  "How awful," Kate said soberly. "Then we must try the earlier years, go back to—"

  Madame Karitska nodded. "—to befor
e she married without love at thirty? This is your mother's box of personal papers?"

  Kate reached over and lifted off its cover for her. "Feel free to explore, I've not had any real time to do that."

  It was not a large box, roughly sixteen inches by ten inches, and Madame Karitska first drew out a thick collection of Christmas cards bound in yellow ribbon. Untying the ribbon she spread them out on the table. There were no envelopes. As she opened one of them a faint scent of flowers assailed her nostrils; there was no signature inside, only a large K scrawled under the usual "Happy Holidays." Opening each card—and there were at least twenty of them—she met with the same signature of K and the same remnants of what had been a dried flower. "I can identify this fragrance," she said. "It's the herb rosemary taped inside each card," and glancing at Kate she added, " 'Rosemary for Remembrance.' "

  "It couldn't be my father, his name was Charles. How mysterious—and who is K?"

  "A pity the envelopes are missing. What's that you have from the Cowper trunk?"

  "Passports, old ones," and Kate handed three of them to her. "There's also a book of Emily Dickinson's poetry, a battered old doll, a gorgeous medieval gown of brocade from one of her Shakespeare plays, and under it—" She glanced at Madame Karitska and stopped. "What has startled you?"

  "This passport," she told Kate. "In 1939 Charmian Cow-per made a trip abroad, and to Poland, of all places, a dangerous place to visit in 1939 when Hitler was about to invade the country. And if you're accurate about her being born in 1921 she'd have been only eighteen years old."

  "You're kidding," said Kate, and frowned. "I know she was 'discovered' at fifteen, singing in a crummy New York café while going to acting school, but J939?" Consulting her notes she added, "She made her famous Broadway debut when she was seventeen, in Romeo and Juliet, and the critics went crazy over her Juliet. How could she have gone to Europe when still playing Juliet?"

  Turning a page of the passport Madame Karitska said, "One might also ask how she got there in such a troubled year. According to this she was there only two weeks and returned to America two weeks later; there's a reentry stamp here." Frowning over this, "Did she go for publicity? The offer of a role in a new play? If so, the political situation in Poland in 1939 would have quickly dissuaded her. And," she said, startled, "she visited Poland again in 1945—just after the war."

  "More mystery," sighed Kate. "Let's see if any explanations can be found here," and delving into the trunk, "Here are playbills. She was Ophelia in Hamlet, Portia in Julius Caesar, Rosalind in As You Like It, Katherine in Taming of the Shrew.., and after that a Noël Coward play, and there are the three films, The Duchess Misbehaves, Song of Love—that's where she sang—and Wild Is the Night. What are you finding?"

  "This," said Madame Karitska, bringing from Kate's mother's box a snapshot of five children squeezing themselves into a line and obviously giggling. "A very old photograph, and somewhat faded," she said, remembering ancient Kodak cameras, but she held it close for a moment, not sharing it yet, her glance drawn to the child second in the line: a ragged dress, a smudge of dirt on her cheek, her hair a tangle of black curls.

  This could have been me as a child, she thought, unwashed, ragged, a beggar child. The boy at the end of the line looked equally shabby; the two were a contrast to the others.

  "There's writing on the back of that," said Kate, pointing.

  Madame Karitska turned it over to read in a childish scrawl, "Me, Kitta Sinka, Gert Brown, Betsy Palmer, Jai Kostich." Then Kitta was the ragged child, and why does she look familiar, she wondered, because she reminds me of myself, or ... ? To Kate she said, "There are two 'K's here, a Kitta and a Kostich." and she handed Kate the snapshot without comment.

  "Isn't she darling!" exclaimed Kate. "That's my mother on the left, the little blond girl . . , but what company she kept! Are those two," she said, pointing, "from Camp Town, do you suppose? I've a 1931 news clip from the Hopetown Bugle about Camptown, and how they were finally trying to clear it of squatters. No doubt for a mall," she added with humor.

  "I think we should see that clipping," Madame Karitska told her.

  Kate nodded. "I'll dig it out in a minute but first I want you to see this necklace; it caught my eye right away when I opened the trunk for the first time. I even took it to a jeweler here in Trafton to evaluate, it's so unusual. "

  She held it up to admire. Hanging from a long gold chain was a heart-shaped turquoise-colored stone in which five tiny gold stars had been set, the turquoise framed by a hammered-gold heart-shaped frame, from which were suspended three gold coins.

  "Unusual, yes!" agreed Madame Karitska.

  "The jeweler said the coins are Austrian, and twenty-four-carat gold, but he hadn't the slightest idea what the turquoise heart was made of; he'd never seen anything like it and offered to send it to Sotheby's in Manhattan, hoping they could identify it, because it isn't a turquoise at all. Here," she said, and handed it to Madame Karitska.

  Grasping it, at once Madame Karitska felt a shock. "Oh!" she said, and then, "Oh dear."

  "What?" asked Kate. "You look weird, what is it?"

  Catching her breath she told her shakily, "There's no need to concentrate on this, it's all here, and all at once . ., that passion you looked for, Kate. And grief. And the love of soul mates. Dear God, yes, the love."

  An awed Kate stared at her. "She did love, then, and was loved?"

  "By whomever gave this to her, yes."

  Kate said in a whisper, "The lawyer—he wrote later that she was wearing this when she died."

  "I think it was always with her, and years before her death."

  "I'm so glad," Kate said simply. "I don't mean that she died, but she gave so much, affected so many, I'm so glad she had . . , except that's why ..." She reached for the book of Emily Dickinson poems. "She underlined one of these poems," she said, handing it to her. "I so wonder what happened to them, and I did wonder why this particular poem. I'll find the news clipping about Camp Town that you want," and she crossed the room to her folder of sorted papers.

  But Madame Karitska, with a glance at her watch, said, "Kate, I really must leave now, you've not noticed the time."

  "But, oh how sad!" she complained.

  "Do you mind if I take the book of poems with me? If you come at four o'clock I'll brew Turkish coffee and we can continue this." And with a wave of her hand she hurried down the stairs and crossed the street to find her three o'clock client waiting impatiently for her at the door, a plain little round-faced woman clutching her tweed jacket. With apologies she unlocked her door, and if she had feared that any impressions might be overshadowed by her thoughts of a glamorous Charmian Cowper the tears in this woman's eyes at once captured her full attention. "Do come in, give me a minute to reheat some coffee for you, you look as if you could use it. You’re Madeline, aren't you?"

  "Yes. And thank you," and while Madame Karitska headed for the kitchen Madeline seated herself on the couch.

  "You do know how I work," she called from the kitchen. "I need something of yours that you've worn a long time."

  "My wristwatch," Madeline told her, and once she reappeared she handed it to Madame Karitska and accepted the cup of coffee with eagerness.

  Holding the wristwatch, concentrating with closed eyes, she said, "I feel that you're under much tension and it's reflected in your lower back, which is causing you much pain."

  "That's for sure," Madeline said, sipping her coffee.

  "And," continued Madame Karitska, "you've a very important decision to make, and I will be frank with you; I cannot say whether it was in the past or ahead of you—past and future can often blur—but it has something to do with your husband .., his first initial is M?"

  "Yes," she said, startled.

  ".. , and he is in some sort of legal situation that has separated you—by your choice. So much tension! You are in doubt whether to join him or not; you are each living alone?"

  The woman nodded miserably. "I don't k
now what to do."

  "You have recently spent much time in a courtroom," continued Madame Karitska. "That's very clear. And now he is far away. Do you love him?"

  Madeline nodded. "Oh yes . . , it's just—you see, I've always lived in Trafton, I grew up here, all my friends are here, even my mother. I don't like change but suddenly everything's changed, even his name."

  Ah, thought Madame Karitska, sensing the meaning of the courtroom. "He was testifying, am I right?"

  Madeline nodded.

  Witness protection, thought Madame Karitska, but to query this might frighten her, and she was already in a state of terror at leaving Trafton. She said gently, "You have to choose, don't you."

  "Yes. Can't you tell me? It's why I came to you, I hoped you'd help me choose."

  Madame Karitska felt a stab of pity. "No one can help you with such a choice," she told her. "It's up to you .. , two very clearly defined paths lie before you."

  "Yes, but—"

  Very gently Madame Karitska said, "Try to picture those two paths, neither of them easy Which do you feel is the greater sacrifice? Your husband, or your friends and family here? Try." And thinking with some humor that this was a day for poetry, she closed her eyes again and recited from memory two verses of a favorite poem. " 'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth,' " and skipping to the last verse, " 'I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence; two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.' "

  There was a long silence and then Madeline said, "So I'm not the only one to— that was beautiful, was it a poem?"

  "Yes, by Robert Frost."

  "I'd like a copy of that," she said eagerly. "Maybe if I read it again and again I might dare—not be so frightened."

  Madame Karitska rose and walked to her bookcase and drew out a paperback volume of poems. "If it moved you, as I think it did, take this with you, you'll find the poem there." She opened the book to "The Road Not Taken." "As a gift. In fact," she said with a smile, "he may be of more help to you than I. For there's always choice, you know. Limited by character and your history and personality, but always there's choice."