The Dollmaker

by Nina Allan

  Cecily believed that Nelly’s marriage to Mason had been a reaction to her father’s death, coming so soon after Adrian’s, an attempt to insure herself against future losses.

  “You do realize what your fiancé thinks about people like Adrian?” Cecily had said to her just a week before the wedding. “He believes all homosexuals should be sterilized. How can you even think of marrying someone like that?”

  They had a huge row and then made up again, though Nelly found it impossible to forget some of the things that had been said on either side. For a while at least she stopped visiting Cecily quite as often as she had been used to, retreating instead to Konni’s shop, the place she felt most secure and where she knew that whatever happened she would not be judged. Nelly was in the habit of dropping in on Konni at least once a week, whether she had business to conduct with him or not, though on the day she first saw the soldier she had been on her way to his shop for a genuine reason: an evening bag of hers, a black, beaded creation given to her as a gift by Mason soon after they met, had snagged and broken its delicate chain-link handle on a protruding doorknob. Konni had promised to mend it for her, and Nelly was anxious to have the bag back, preferably before Mason noticed it was gone.

  “Here’s the fellow,” Konni said. He laid the bag gently on the counter, its glittering jet tassels clattering like ebony nails on the polished woodblock. “Good as new.” The handle was indeed as good as new, so flawlessly mended it was impossible to tell it had ever been damaged. “A pretty thing, certainly. Turkish, I believe.”

  Nelly nodded, smiling at Konni’s hesitancy, the familiar self-deprecation that belied a knowledge as extensive as that of many encyclopedias. As a student, Konni had been something of a firebrand, railing against the evils of capitalism and bent on leading a life of monastic seclusion, devoting himself to poetry and philosophy like his hero, Hölderlin. Then he met Liza and everything changed. Liza needed time to write, so Konni took over the family antiques business, just as his father had secretly hoped he would.

  “I’ve been happy,” Konni always insisted, and Nelly felt certain that for the most part he had been, as much as anyone had the right to hope for, anyway. Did he still sometimes dream of the other life he had once imagined for himself: the garret room, the brilliant friends, the slim volumes of poetry published to glowing accolades? Nelly had never asked him. She didn’t see the point. Hölderlin went mad and wasted away, in any case – everyone knew that.

  “How are you, Konni?” she asked him, once she had finished admiring the mended bag.

  “Mustn’t grumble,” he replied at once, though he sounded distracted. He cocked his head, as if he were listening for something, glanced quickly towards the door, though there was no one there. “Listen,” he said. “I found something interesting. Would you like to see it?”

  “What do you mean, interesting?” Nelly laughed lightly. She had that feeling again, as if events had been set in motion behind her back.

  “You’ll see. A dealer brought it in, one of my regulars. He said – well, none of that matters. Just have a look.”

  He dipped down behind the counter and retrieved the object, which turned out to be a small oil painting on a round canvas some twelve inches in diameter. The painting was of a woman in an ermine stole, seated in a baize-green armchair against a darkened background. Beside the armchair stood a dwarf, broad-chested and stumpy-legged, his luxuriant chestnut hair contrasting vividly with the sober, coarse-looking fabric of the cloak he wore.

  The dwarf’s cloak was fastened with a pin, in the form of a dagger.

  The woman in the ermine stole was Nelly Toye’s identical twin.

  Nelly drew in her breath. She had never seen a ghost – she had never believed in them – yet this was like seeing her own ghost in reverse, an image of herself from before she was born, her pale face gleaming mysteriously from beneath the varnish. The sensation was unsettling, like coming face-to-face with her own reflection in a muddy puddle.

  “Remarkable, isn’t it?” Konni said. “You understand why I wanted you to see it?”

  “Do you – know who painted this?” Nelly said. Her only thought was that the picture must be the work of a contemporary artist, something done on commission. For an overenthusiastic admirer, perhaps – God knew the theater attracted some peculiar types. The painting looked old but age could be faked, she felt sure. She even remembered Konni confirming as much, that even the world’s greatest museum experts were likely to be fooled by a forgery at least once in their careers.

  That the painting showed Nelly in a role she did not recognize and had never played was disconcerting, but not so strange, after all, not now she’d had a moment to think about it. Didn’t people say the power of the imagination was infinite? The dwarf was a coincidence. His presence meant nothing.

  Konni was shaking his head. “Not a clue. The artist’s signature is here, look – Nikolaus Schilling – but the name means nothing to me. I could probably find out more, if I did some digging. The painting is old, but not as old as it looks, you can tell by the varnish.”

  “I don’t understand,” Nelly said. The facts were leaping away from her again. Konni gave her a look. He appeared to be as confused as she now felt.

  “The subject isn’t actually you, if that’s what you were thinking. That would be impossible. This woman was painted three decades before you were born at the very least. If I had to lay money on it, I would say this work is a modern interpretation of an historical subject matter, either a copy of an earlier painting, or a straight pastiche. A very good pastiche, mind you. Herr Schilling was certainly talented, whoever he was.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. The painting is clearly inspired by Velazquez, not just the subject matter but the colors, too – the red of the woman’s dress is unmistakable. But the influence is so ostentatious it’s almost as if the artist is inviting us to share a joke at his own expense. I rather like it.”

  “I’ll take it,” Nelly said. That was one of the advantages of being married to Mason – she could see a thing, and make it hers, no questions asked. So far, this was a privilege she had barely exercised. The house she now shared with her husband on Golovinsky Street was filled with furniture and objets d’art acquired by Mason during the first forty years of his existence, a time that had proved as inaccessible to Nelly as the locked room in Bluebeard’s Castle.

  “They’re his first wife’s things, probably,” Cecily had scoffed. Nelly had little interest in finding out. This painting, though – this would be hers. She even knew where she would hang it – in the small upstairs sitting room where she took her coffee when Mason was absent, where she went over her lines. It would look perfect there, on the wall just behind the sofa and above the old sideboard that had been the one piece of furniture she had brought to the marriage. The sideboard had been her mother’s, though the only person who knew that was Cecily.

  Did she like the painting? She had no idea. She only knew she had to have it with her.

  “Don’t feel you have to, Nelly.” Konni looked embarrassed. “It’ll sell in a heartbeat.”

  “No, I want it. Really.”

  Konni named a price, an amount that would have seemed exorbitant to her in the old days but that was now – not so much. She had the feeling the painting was worth more though, that if Konni hadn’t had his overheads to think about he would have given her the picture for nothing. The war had made such generosity impossible, at least for most people. She added twenty percent to the bill, because she could and because she knew Konni needed the money.

  Konni looked troubled. “I wish I’d never seen it,” he said.

  Nelly frowned. What a strange thing to say. Konni had seemed so animated about the painting earlier.

  “But I’m delighted to have it. I’m going to surprise Mason. He’ll find it amusing, I know he will.”

  Their eyes met, just for
a moment, and then they each looked away. The idea that Mason Gehrlich might find amusement in a work of art was a joke in itself, and both of them knew it.

  * * *

  —

  “Goodness,” Cecily said. “What a marvelous find.”

  She held the painting at arm’s length then leaned it upright against a stack of books and began scrabbling around in the top drawer of her writing desk. After a moment or two she drew out a watchmaker’s loupe on a metal chain. She bent down to peer at the artist’s signature.

  “Do you think she looks like me?” Nelly said.

  “You know she does, or you wouldn’t have bought the thing. You’ve never gone in much for acquiring art, have you, Mason or no Mason?”

  The remark might have stung more, had Nelly not understood that it was Mason Cecily was aiming her darts at, not her, though it was true she had no idea what her taste in art was, none at all. She knew how to choose clothes, a rug maybe. Anything more ambitious felt risky, as if she were liable to make a fool of herself at any moment. In any case, knowing about paintings had always been Adrian’s department.

  She thought, as she had often thought, that it was all right for Cecily, who still had both her parents, this commodious, book-lined apartment at the museum. How could she fully grasp what it meant to her, the house on Golovinsky Street, the red velvet cushions on the daybed in her sitting room, the polished parquet flooring? Her lovers before Mason had been other actors, a stage manager, once – disastrously – the brother of her understudy in the part of Iphigenie. Mason Gehrlich had been another proposition entirely: powerful, self-confident to a degree that made him seem dangerous and attractive in equal measure. And rich, of course. Rich in spite of his divorce, his almost-grown children, his recreational gambling habit.

  Nelly had stopped believing in love, or so she told herself, when Adrian died. In exchange for love she had Mason, and the bulwark he provided against the world. He didn’t give a damn about her acting career, but so what? If she knew nothing about finance, Mason knew even less about the theater, and Nelly felt secretly glad that once the first, frenetic months of their courtship were over, he barely even took note of where she was playing.

  “Do you recognize the artist?” Nelly said to Cecily.

  “Nikolaus Schilling? I’ve heard the name, but that’s about all. Why he isn’t better known I have no idea.”

  “Is he any good, do you think?”

  “Absolutely. He’s so indebted to Velazquez it’s almost brilliant. A lesser artist would have tried to impose his own, inferior ideas. This Schilling fellow flaunts his indebtedness, like a red rag to a bull.”

  “That’s what Konni said.”

  “Well, Konni was right.” She continued examining the painting’s surface through the loupe. “I can’t tell you who these people are. Not yet, anyway, you’ll have to leave it with me. A painting like this would most likely have been a commission. Just look at them,” she said. “There’ll be a story, I’m sure. He was probably her lover. Court dwarfs often ended up in bed with the queen. You won’t find much about that in the history books, but it’s a fact, nonetheless.”

  Nelly laughed nervously. The subject made her uncomfortable, though she could not have said why. “You’re not serious,” she said.

  “I most certainly am. You know what aristocratic families are like – hardly a healthy gene pool. A good number of queen consorts found themselves married off to men who were impotent, or homosexual, or who had longstanding mistresses already. These women were expected to remain sane, and produce heirs, and yet if they were caught out taking a lover they could end up facing banishment or even execution. A court dwarf wouldn’t count as a lover though – he barely even counted as a person. Certainly he had no rights. Court dwarfs were seen as possessions, part of the household inventory. What a lady chose to do with her possession, in private, was no one’s business but her own. Not that these liaisons were always a secret. There’s a famous account in one lady-in-waiting’s diary of the ménage à trois that existed between her mistress, the court dwarf and the king himself. The king was incapacitated as the result of a war wound, but he still liked to watch. He used to pay the lady-in-waiting to let him conceal himself in a window alcove, so he could spy on his wife having sex with the dwarf. The diary reports that after the dwarf had finished pleasuring the queen, he would help himself to a plate of stew in the palace kitchens then sneak up the chimney stairs to the king’s apartments and give him a right royal seeing-to.”

  “That can’t be true, surely?” Nelly’s heart pounded. She felt the space between her legs ache then contract. What on Earth was wrong with her? She gazed upon the painting, upon the glowing chestnut hair of the dwarf as he stared out at her from the frame.

  Who are you? Nelly thought. Don’t I know you from somewhere?

  Which was impossible, of course, but again, his eyes…

  “Why shouldn’t it be true?” Cecily countered. “Can you begin to imagine how boring it was, being queen? Boring and dangerous. Apart from anything else, you’d need someone to talk to.”

  Yes, you would. But that would be like…

  What?

  Nelly sighed.

  Your own perfect, secret existence. A kingdom of two.

  “I’m so tired,” Nelly said. “The Duchess of Malfi must be getting to me. I’ve not been sleeping.”

  “Are you sure that’s all it is?”

  Nelly nodded. “I wish we could go away for a week, to Salzburg, just the two of us.”

  “And bring an end to those marvelous notices you’ve been getting?”

  “You’re always telling me you never read the papers.”

  “Usually I don’t. I’ll let you know about the painting.”

  “Are you sure you can spare the time?”

  “Even if I couldn’t I would. I’m addicted to mysteries. I know all the Sherlock Holmes stories by heart, remember? Leave it to me.”

  * * *

  —

  After saying goodbye to Cecily, Nelly went to the theater by way of Süssmayr’s Pâtisserie. She expected the soldier to be gone – homeless people never seemed to stay in any one place for long – but he was there, after all, pressed up against the grating with his tin plate in front of him just as before. He looked dirty and cold. He glanced up as Nelly approached.

  “Good day,” he said. In the world of a week ago, he would not have dared to greet her in such a fashion – as if he knew her, as if the two of them were acquainted. Now everything was changed. How this had happened she did not know. She felt her cheeks burning.

  “Did you mean it,” she said, “when you said you’d seen The Duchess of Malfi?”

  The soldier nodded. “I’ve seen it twice. You were magnificent, both times.” He stared at her levelly, daring her, she supposed, to contradict him. Beneath the smuts and grime of the street his face was fine, handsome even, she could see that, but what good were such thoughts, what was the point of them? Whatever he had been before, he was ruined now. It came to her that it might have been better if he had died out there in the mud, instead of being found and sewn together and dumped out here on the street like so much garbage.

  “I know the doorman,” he was saying. “I used to work at The Majestic. Before the war, I mean. We were friends, sort of. He lets me shelter inside the theater sometimes, if the boss isn’t in. There’s a place you can go, a little cubby hole under the circle. It used to be the lighting man’s room, my friend says, only it isn’t used now. You can see right onto the stage. It’s like,” he paused, inhaled, “being offered a fleeting glimpse of another world.”

  “That’s from Anthea.” Nelly found herself smiling, in spite of herself.

  “I’ve seen them all.”

  Nelly straightened up. “Wait here,” she said, cursing herself inwardly for her tactlessness. What else was he supposed to do? She dive
d into Süssmayr’s, where she purchased a fragrant, still-warm Zwiebelbrötchen and a slice of apple tart, wrapped in the ocher-colored, rose-stenciled paper that was a hallmark of Süssmayr’s. She laid them carefully on the boards of the wooden cart beside the tin plate. She saw the way his eyes fixed on the food, the way he continued to hold it at arm’s length, mentally. He would not touch it until she was gone, Nelly realized. He still had his dignity, at least for a while.

  “Is there anything else?” she said, suddenly terrified of what he might ask of her.

  “Cigarettes,” he said. “I never used to but my comrades all smoked so I took it up. Awful habit but I miss it.”

  She nodded and hurried away without turning back. The following morning, when she returned with the cigarettes, she asked him why his former employers at The Majestic had not seen fit to offer him aid. The soldier laughed, and for the first time she noted an edge of bitterness in his voice.

  “My old boss would have helped me for sure, but he’s gone. Left for the United States. Said it wasn’t a good time for people like him to be in this city. People like him – whatever that means. Herr Bakst was a gentleman. The new manager doesn’t give a damn. Told me to clear off and if he caught me begging anywhere near their hallowed portals he’d call the police.”

  The soldier’s name was Harald Leiermann. Before the war, he had studied civil engineering part-time at the university, working night shifts as a hotel porter to make ends meet. He had wanted to build bridges, he told her, magnificent bridges, which would grace their rivers and alpine valleys as intricate silver bangles might grace the ankles and wrists of a beautiful woman.

  “I expect you think that’s ridiculous,” he said. “People like me, we don’t get to build bridges. Even without this.” He made an angry gesture at his missing legs. “My father was a railwayman, a guard. My mother takes in sewing. There were six of us at home.” He took a cigarette from the cardboard carton and lit up with one of the matches she had also brought him. “They think I’m dead, my mother and sisters, and I’ll let them keep on thinking so. I can’t go home – they can’t afford to feed me. With my father gone they barely get by.”