The Dollmaker

by Nina Allan

  Marielena. Mila seized on the name triumphantly. That’s the au pair.

  “Well, that’s fine then,” Mila said. The inside of her mouth felt painfully dry. “Just so long as you think she’s happy. That’s the main thing.”

  The encounter had drained her of all energy. She managed to escort the Mauriacs back along the corridor to the main entrance and then she went in search of Varvara Pilnyak. She was in the staff room, drinking coffee and catching up on her marking.

  “I’m feeling like hell,” Mila said. “Would you be able to take my afternoon classes if I go home?”

  Varya, who had a free period, agreed at once. Varya was forty-five and lived alone. She’d had an abortion when she was eighteen, the unsavory side-effect of a fortnight at the Black Sea resort of Sochi, a holiday Varya described as two straight weeks of accidental sex and intentional mayhem. When Mila asked if she regretted the abortion, Varya said no.

  * * *

  —

  By the time her husband Niklas arrived home that evening Mila had a raging headache. She didn’t feel hungry but she knew she must eat, for the baby’s sake. She warmed some leftover chicken broth in a saucepan and added some vegetables. The smell of the soup against the metal pan made her feel queasy.

  “I can’t stand that Mauriac child,” Mila said once they were seated. “She should be in special needs.” She pushed away her half-eaten soup and covered her face with her hands. She’d hoped that telling Niklas how she felt would help to disperse her anxiety but it had not.

  “Is she interfering with the rest of the class?” Niklas asked. “If she is then you must speak to the head. You shouldn’t be made to take on extra work.” He carried on eating his supper, his spoon rising and falling in the bowl like a mechanized tool. Mila thought with irritation of Zhanna’s immaculate exercise books, the dense, crabbed hand that made her assignments look as if they had been completed in a foreign language.

  The girl couldn’t seem to master joined-up writing but so far Mila had been unable to find so much as a single spelling mistake.

  “She’s not behind, so I can’t say anything. I don’t want people thinking I can’t do my job.” She rested her cheek against the polished surface of the table. Its smoothness seemed to block the pain in her head, at least for the moment. “I’m going to bed,” she said. “I’m exhausted.”

  “I don’t want you getting upset,” Niklas said. “Remember what the doctor said?”

  “I’m not upset, I’m just tired.”

  The doctor had told her repeatedly that she needed to relax, that her anxiety was becoming part of the problem. She had not exactly accused Mila of sabotaging her own pregnancy, but Mila thought she had come pretty close.

  Stop fretting about the baby. The baby will look after itself if you leave it alone.

  The doctor kept leafing through Mila’s records, her striped green smock stretched tight over breasts the size of cow udders. Dr. Beck had four children, two of them grown already and attending medical school. Mila thought she could afford to relax. She tried to imagine a future in which her visits to Rosa Beck’s surgery were part of her past.

  “I’ll bring you a cup of tea,” Niklas said. He reached for her hand. Mila tensed.

  “I don’t want tea,” she said. “I think I’ll just read for a bit.”

  “Well, let me know if you need anything.” He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. His skin was rough, corroded by the repeated actions of turpentine and masonry dust. Niklas was doing overtime on the construction sites, ostensibly so there would be money for when the baby came. He hadn’t been out on the town in more than six months. He insisted he didn’t miss it, but sometimes Mila wished he would just go. Not just out with his comrades and cohorts, but completely away.

  Perhaps if she were left in peace her child would survive. An image rose in her mind of Zhanna Mauriac, coming down the school steps one at a time, seemingly oblivious to the sniggers and catcalls that followed her progress. She’s a tough little beast, Mila thought. I wonder what keeps her going. A child no one wanted, yet so obstinately insisting on being there. She read three pages of The Kreutzer Sonata before falling into a fitful sleep. She kept dreaming that the curtains were open and that people were staring in at her from outside. When she woke the next morning she felt more tired than she had been when she went to bed.

  At assembly the headmistress told the children she had a surprise for them: a former pupil of St. Saviour’s would be coming to pay them a visit and give a special concert.

  “She’s the pianist Naomie Walmer. Some of you may have seen her name recently in the newspapers. We’re very proud she was once a member of our school.”

  The children, prompted by Varvara Pilnyak, started to clap. Mila saw to her amazement that Zhanna Mauriac was clapping too. It was the first sign of animation she had ever shown, although Mila could not believe she had even the faintest notion of what she was clapping for. She closed her eyes, overcome by a sudden vertigo, the sense that her insides had become the world and that if she didn’t climb out of them soon she would be lost forever.

  She had more or less stopped listening to music after her first miscarriage, but she remembered hearing Naomie Walmer on the radio once, playing the barcarolle from The Seasons by Tchaikovsky. The announcer had referred to her as a child prodigy.

  Cecilia, Mila thought restlessly. The patron saint of music and divination.

  The edge of the wooden seat was digging into her back. She didn’t know she had fallen asleep until one of the other teachers nudged her awake.

  * * *

  —

  The following morning she and Niklas went to the clinic for her five-month check-up. When the scan technician asked if they wanted to know the child’s sex Niklas looked uncertain but Mila answered yes almost at once.

  “It’s a girl,” said the technician. She used a pencil to point at the murky little screen, indicating the baby’s heart and lungs, the bunched-together knees, the heartbreaking curve of her spine. Mila was not surprised by any of it. She had felt her child’s presence for weeks now. The baby’s sex she had known all along.

  Elisabeth, Mila said silently. Elisabeth Cecilia Sayer.

  She had not discussed the baby’s name with Niklas yet. It didn’t feel safe. The technician was still talking but Mila found it difficult to focus on what she was saying. She kept her eyes fixed on the monitor, on the flickering point of light that said Elisabeth was really there and really alive.

  “Are you OK, Mimi?” Niklas said. He was standing very still, and Mila had the sense that he was holding his breath, even though normally Niklas never seemed to worry about anything. He had always insisted that once her body was ready things would work out. Perhaps he’s right, Mila thought. Niklas stroked her hair and asked the scan technician if everything happening inside Mila was happening normally. The technician nodded her head emphatically and then said yes.

  “There’s really nothing to feel anxious about, Mr. Sayer. At this stage you should both start thinking of this as just an ordinary pregnancy.”

  She asked Mila about her morning sickness and Mila said it was very much better. There were questions she wanted to ask but she held them back. When the only question that mattered could not be answered with absolute certainty, what was the point of asking anything else?

  The first miscarriage had happened just ten days after Dr. Beck confirmed that Mila was pregnant. She still grieved for the child, but secretly, as if admitting that it had ever existed was a source of shame. Her second failure had happened at eighteen weeks. Niklas had come home from work to find her curled up on the bathroom floor covered in blood. She had lain there for what seemed hours, terrified that she was bleeding to death and that her half-formed baby was dragging itself towards her across the tiles.

  That child still haunted her like a revenant. She couldn’t help believing she had l
et it down.

  This third child had hung on inside her for twenty weeks. Everyone insisted it was third time lucky.

  * * *

  —

  She had lunch with Niklas in a café near the clinic and was back at school in time for the junior book club. They were reading Friedebert Tuglas’s The Little Witch. The children sat in a circle on the floor while Mila read aloud and asked the children questions. Zhanna Mauriac sat slumped forward with her legs apart and her head lolling in a manner Mila found faintly obscene. She could not rid herself of the thought that Zhanna was staring at her swollen belly.

  She wants to take my baby, Mila thought. I know I must be crazy to think that but I know it’s true.

  Varya had told her that the Mauriacs were moving abroad, that Dunia Mauriac had landed a post at some foreign university. Mila hoped the move would happen soon. She felt certain that if they were gone before Elisabeth was born then everything would be all right.

  * * *

  —

  That night she dreamed she was sitting up in bed in what she thought was her bedroom but turned out to be a hospital. The ward was filled with the sounds of people sleeping. Their snuffles and groans were frightening in the darkness. There was someone close by, perhaps a nurse. The nurse pressed a button in the side of her head and a light came on.

  “We can’t have you nodding off,” she said. “Not when it’s time for her feed.”

  Mila recognized the voice of Dr. Beck.

  That’s not the real doctor, she thought. It’s a copy. Her bulky body loomed beside the bed. A wicker basket stood nearby on a metal trolley.

  “Are you ready?” said Dr. Beck. She tugged at Mila’s nightgown, exposing a breast. Mila tried to ignore what was being done to her because she knew she needed to concentrate on the basket. Dr. Beck kept forcing her back against the stack of pillows.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” she said. “Just try and relax.”

  She turned aside. The pale rounds of her fat cheeks gleamed in the half-light as she leaned over the basket and reached inside. She lifted out a squirming bundle and held it towards her. Mila felt her terror rising. She knew her baby had been taken away and replaced with a monster.

  The thing in the doctor’s arms was white and naked like a grub. It opened its mouth in a blank wide scream and Mila saw it meant to close upon her breast. She tugged at the blankets in an attempt to cover herself but the blankets were gone and so was her nightgown. The creature thrusted towards her, swiveling its bulging head on its fat white neck.

  “Maggoty,” said Dr. Beck brightly. “This is one hungry little elephant.”

  Mila’s eyes filled with tears. She found that she could no longer move, that she was attached to the bed somehow. In the instant before she woke she realized the thing in the doctor’s arms was Zhanna Mauriac.

  She lay there in the darkness, heart pounding. Her face was wet with tears, but she couldn’t get away from the thought that they were not real tears, they had strayed over from the dream, which meant that at least part of the dream must really have happened.

  She shuddered. She drew her arms across her belly and breasts and found she was naked. She could not remember taking off her clothes. An image came to her of the fat white doctor, tugging at her nightgown, hot hands groping.

  It was three o’clock in the morning, always the worst time. Niklas lay unconscious and faintly snoring at her side. It came to her that Zhanna was out there somewhere, that she was responsible for her nightmare, that she had made it happen.

  Why, though? Mila thought. Why would she do that? The answer came back at once: Because she’s jealous. She wants the whole world to be as ugly and awful as she is.

  She switched on the radio on the bedside cabinet, using headphones so as not to wake Niklas. The Home Service came on, a concert featuring the pianist Maria Yudina. Yudina had made radio broadcasts from Moscow throughout the war. Mila didn’t believe in God, not really, but she thought she could believe in St. Cecilia. She listened to Yudina playing Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia and tried to imagine what it had been like, recording Bach’s music in a tiny basement studio while German soldiers poured over the border in a dull gray flood. It’s what St. Cecilia would have done, Mila thought. She could almost believe it had been St. Cecilia herself who had given Yudina the strength to stand up to whatever the world and its tyrants happened to throw at her.

  The thought calmed her and she was soon asleep again. When she woke the next morning the headphones lay beside her on the pillow, chattering out the news in tinny voices. She supposed they must have come adrift in the night, but when she asked Niklas if he had heard anything he said no.

  * * *

  —

  Naomie Walmer’s visit was the lead item on all the local news programs. A news team came to the school and made a short film that showed Naomie Walmer arriving at the school gates in a black Trabant. After that the photographers had to go away because the headmistress hadn’t wanted them filming inside the school. The seniors had decorated the lobby as part of their term project. There were pictures of Naomie Walmer on stage at concert halls all over Europe, images from her album covers, short essays on the life of Chopin or Medtner or Naomie herself. There was a photo of her as a junior at St. Saviour’s, sitting on the floor of the sports hall at morning assembly, a wafer-thin, nervous-looking child with an appealing smile.

  The headmistress made a little speech, welcoming Naomie back to the school and to the new assembly hall, which hadn’t yet been built when she was there. Afterwards, Naomie came onstage and played Chopin’s Opus 34 Waltz in A Minor. She was wearing a shift dress in plain blue cotton and Mila couldn’t help noticing the way it showed off her arms, graceful and white, smooth and polished-looking as the arms of a porcelain ballerina. Her hair was fine and curly and amazingly fair. It stood out around her head like a corona. Mila had expected her to play something light and cheerful but the waltz was almost painfully slow. The children sat and listened in what felt to Mila like an uneasy silence. One of the senior boys, a shy child called Stefan Reisz, who was president of the school chess club, started to cry. The tears on his cheeks looked sticky, like melting sugar.

  Faintly and for the first time, Mila felt Elisabeth kick.

  This can’t be real, Mila thought. She wrapped her arms around her belly, wanting to seal the moment in with her forever. She could still hear the music, the long meandering coda that had always seemed to her like the sounds of someone talking in their sleep.

  She had been able to play the piece by heart once. Hearing Naomie Walmer made her realize all over again how fruitless her efforts had been but the difference was that this time she didn’t care. She shut her eyes. She could feel a presence in the room, a compassionate, all-knowing soul that was as old as time. Cecilia, she thought. Cecilia, in the body of Naomie. She came to me after all. But it was never me she wanted to speak to, it was Elisabeth. She thought she might faint with happiness and terror.

  After what seemed a long time, the music stopped. Some of the other teachers started to clap.

  “I’m sure you’ll all agree that was very wonderful,” said the headmistress. “It’s not often we have such magic in our midst.”

  Magic, Mila thought. That’s what this is.

  The children filed out of the hall, and the headmistress whisked Naomie Walmer off to the staff room. It had been arranged that she would spend some time with each class in turn. The children were restless, high on the break in routine. Mila handed out drawing paper and a variety of crayons and told them to make thank you cards for Naomie. There was a lot of swapping of seats and excited noise.

  Only Zhanna Mauriac remained quiet. She sat hunched over her desk, scribbling intently with a plain lead pencil. When Mila passed by her on the way to the stationery cupboard she saw her paper was covered in musical notation.

  It was the first thirty
bars of Chopin’s Opus 34 number 2.

  “What are you doing, Zhanna?” Mila said. “We’re supposed to be making cards.” She snatched at the paper, wanting to get a closer look at it. Zhanna Mauriac pulled it away with a little grunt. The corner of the paper tore off in her hand. The girl at the next desk looked across and stifled a giggle.

  The little freak, Mila thought. How did she do that? Zhanna Mauriac gazed up at her, open-mouthed. Her eyes wet and brown, like mud puddles. Mila suddenly realized she was crying.

  “Don’t get yourself in a state,” she said. “I’ll fetch you a fresh piece.” She turned away, for some reason terrified that Zhanna Mauriac was about to start screaming.

  At that moment there was a knock at the door.

  “Hello everyone,” said the headmistress. “I’ve brought someone to see you. I hope Mrs. Sayer doesn’t mind us interrupting her lesson.”

  The children whispered and fidgeted as Naomie Walmer came to sit in a chair at the head of the class. The girls in the front row sighed, as if in the presence of majesty.

  “You won’t remember Naomie from when she was at school here,” said the headmistress. “She started playing the piano before you were born.”

  Naomie Walmer stayed and answered questions for the rest of the lesson. At first it was only the more talkative children that would speak to her, but by the end they were all doing it, shooting their hands up and talking over each other in the hurry to take their turn. Mila had to tell them twice to simmer down.

  Zhanna Mauriac stared blankly into space, the torn piece of drawing paper discarded on the desk in front of her. From time to time her lips twitched. When the bell went she got straight to her feet, stumbling after the others in her shapeless dress.