by Keith Korman
He pulled an old volume of Pausanias down from the shelf, thumbing through for the part about Aphrodite and her promiscuous activities. Or was it Hera who renewed her virginity in the sea? He glanced at the gruesome print of Actaeon and the hounds that hung crookedly on his wall. Oddly, he recalled that the huntress Artemiss name meant something like “Source of High Water.” The rushing mountain stream of Fräulein s dream tale? Artemis hunted stags, And men.
Coincidence? Had Fräulein read the classics too? Then she read them closer than an adolescent boy of sixteen who still dreamed of the warm place between Nanny Sasha’s thighs. Might the girl have gotten this from that special book of hers? Did she make it all up?
Or did she see things that really happened long ago? When troglodytes changed from animal to man and back again at will … Seeing them through the lens of her hysteric mind? For how else could the buried past arise through her? Boiling up like lava in the throat of a volcano, with no heavy core of sanity to keep the ancient fumes from leaking out — or to keep the visions trapped inside her cells?
Maybe that’s why he dragged her toward the crazy dayroom, As if asking the girl for everything at once — to be his window into the lost past and be cured as well. Let me use your mind to see, but don’t end up a dayroom lunatic…. He quaked with a forbidden knowledge,, that her dream tale, her ancient memories, were mankind’s stories stored in the chemical makeup of her body, living in the nerve cells of her brain. Locked away and calling for him to tap them. How could a sane man want to cure that?
Halt!
Get a grip on yourself. Thinking things like mankind’s stories in her cells! What next? That crazy people were primitive savages in disguise? Soon he’d be having dreams like hers himself—-waking with a string of bear claws around his neck while Emma squatted by the bed rubbing sticks together for a fire.
But the details of the girl’s dream story must mean something. Obey the rules of dream interpretation. Take the old man in the potter’s hut. The potter the pater, the papa? He began a case note.
The potter and the Hag are her father and mother. For she cannot actually say the words in context. Either disguising them (Mother of Stone) or rendering them harmless (flatter and matter). Perhaps implying that your father is a cheap flatterer; it’s your mother who really “matters.”
He stopped writing. All the cutting and slicing … An idea toyed with him.
The flint knives, the bound child, the bound stag — all point to her personal past. An innocent victim brought for slaughter. Lacerations of her childhood, hidden wounds with the power to drive her mad.
He put down his pen again. And the antler spike at the close of the dream tale?
The horn she marks with each passing moon is her childhood. A bone cut over and over — but a bone is also hard and unyielding. Just what the girl wishes she were. Invulnerable. Yet her very own hand marks the antler, becoming the instrument of her pain….
A fierce headache clamped its fingers onto his brain. He heard the echo of her words “all my fault…” Where was Freud’s damn letter? Ah — under a stupid book. The headache blinded him to all else as he held the quivering page before his eyes. It had meant nothing to him until now. The only solid piece of advice Herr Professor had offered.
What of the number 13? These strange dolls she made. This is no coincidence. Take the number alone and see what you find.
Oh, God! How many times had he meant to do just that? Why had he never done it? Because deciphering the code of her words had been his sole obsession. Forget the code, the crazy talk. Take the number alone.
Thirteen cowled infants in a shoe box.
Suppose a sick young woman of about nineteen years of age peered back along the span of her life? She would perceive herself as a child. The number 13 signified time, the number of years her torment lasted. Thirteen the long imprisonment of her illness.
Time remembered.
Time served.
Time endured.
And how cleverly the number 13 fitted into the flayed body of the hooded Green Man. That he should be buried for a year (thirteen lunar months!) and dug up again. The Green Man was Fräulein. Asleep in the earth … Yet long hoping to be woken from the prison burial of a thirteen-year life sentence. But when the People of the Wood flayed the old scarecrow to death, and flecks of his body wafted off into oblivion, the girl denied herself even this hope. Preferring to hide in the dismembered safety of madness …
He sighed and looked at his watch. Near eight o’clock. He had sat there almost three hours. He glanced at his notes,- a single page of Freud’s letter had turned up unexpectedly. The page with that matchless phrase the secrets of her dreams. The headache had left a faint graininess in the corners of his eyes. All his insane devotion, all her awkward steps, all the risks — all ending in an imaginary fire from long ago and a forbidden memory long suppressed. Had he at last caught the Queen of Sparta with the hot rear end? Or had she once again slipped away, like an echo that fled from him as he searched for her in the dungeon of years … ?
“Well,” he said to his empty office. “I suppose it’s a beginning.”
How tired he was. How truly tired.
Chapter 2
The Black Velvet Dress
“A beginning …” the old man said, nodding to himself. He raised his bleary eyes from the stone windowsill. Nothing had changed in the hearth room. He moved stiff fingers, then clenched his fist to bring the feeling back. So his second seizure hadn’t killed him either. He felt a twinge of regret: all his fancy notions about the afterlife, seeing other peoples lives and being chauffeured about by flies — just so much fluff. Too bad, too bad … “It was the beginning,” he repeated quietly. He remembered everything now.
The door of his private cabinet stood ajar, the ring of keys still hanging from the tiny lock. The compartment had been pawed over, and a mess of papers lay on the floor. Old letters … a secret store of unpleasant reminders. Bad book reviews, hate mail he hated too much to throw away, and worst of all the letters he never intended to answer. Invariably, ones from the old Faker. And that last letter she wrote him long after her return home. A final good-bye …
The creased envelope lay on the stone sill. The stamp bore the stern, bold face of Lenin, handsome and indomitable, gazing into the vast Soviet future. The postmark showed it had been mailed in Rostov, January 10, 1933. Over six years ago now. A letter he had immediately sent into exile. He saw her slow, well-paced handwriting — a languorous, voluptuous hand. The script of a person who had all the time in the world. Trying to tell him an intern from the clinic might visit him in Zurich, a deranged child in tow. Could he see his way to helping them? She hoped to get away before the authorities came for her.
Christ, he had stopped taking on new patients decades ago, even for consultation. And especially not from her. Not for any reason. And so when her letter came, his eyes went blind, fierce hands squeezed his brain, and he banished it to the little compartment of unpleasant things, Yet now, as he squinted — trying to focus — he saw her words in a slightly different light. Not that she hoped to get away _ hut wished she could. So she hadn’t been threatening him with a personal visit at all. Pity he didn’t realize this at once, he might have received her intern, perhaps even seen the child. Or had he? Funny he couldn’t remember one way or the other….
À pale-golden butterfly floated to the windowsill. Just looking at it seemed to ease the pressure in his head. What was that tale about butterflies? They were the souls of heroes? No, but close. Not heroes — Herakles. He had seen butterflies in the Herakleion museum. À carved ivory butterfly from Knossos, the size of his palm. The ivory a cool blue, its wing markings two circles like eclipsing moons about to touch, etched into the piece and painted oxblood red. What kind of butterfly he couldn’t guess. One that flew over Cretan pastures four thousand years ago … The tour guide in the Herakleion museum had said that the word psyche meant not only soul in Greek but also butterfly. That on some ancient a
rtifacts a young girl was shown with butterfly wings. And that perhaps this carved butterfly was a symbol for the soul.
Perhaps?
Later on the tour he had seen a royal signet ring engraved with miniature figures. The golden ring showed the goddess standing between two men. All three figures were partly insects: the men’s legs barbed and jointed, their hands tapering to pincers. The same with the goddess: her arms tapering to insect arms. In none of the three could he distinguish a human face. All had small insect heads, with tiny feelers for eyes and beaks for mouths. In the sky above the goddess, two butterflies and a chrysalis floated in the air. The tour guide seemed reluctant to speculate on the purpose of the royal ring. Instead the guide praised the workmanship and left the content of the scene alone. Were these symbols for the soul?
Why make a symbol for the soul?
The golden butterfly from the meadow flitted to the letter, setting down with quivering wings. Whose soul was this? The old Faker’s? Some lost patient’s? His own?
No, he didn’t appreciate his own soul staring back at him across the ledge. “Raus mit din” Scram! He shook the letter, and the golden butterfly leaped away. It hovered outside the window, then lazily dipped and soared into the blue. Her banished letter had fallen to the grass below the hearth room window. He stared dumbly at it. What did she really want from him? They both knew what the letter said anyhow. Hadn’t he read it a thousand times? Hadn’t it begged him through the locked cabinet door? Why was it he could never find her in real life? But if he closed his eyes and dreamt of her, he always found her waiting? Close his eyes and she was his…. What was she saying? Ja, ja, that he should fetch the letter. Go pick it up. And listen to what she said.
He staggered to his feet, the room gently swaying. Far below, the floorboards seemed to ooze beneath him. His left side felt numb, but he could still walk a little, dragging himself forward half a step at a time. Hours it took, hours and hours to cross the floor and pass the threshold. Outside, he sank to his knees. More hours passed as he crawled painfully around the base of the building.
He paused for a moment to catch his breath. Directly overhead, a great drop of dew clung to a bent blade of grass. The dewdrop a huge glass ball that reflected the entire world. He saw his reflection in the glistening drop and knew why he crawled so slowly. He had no face,-no legs, no arms,- his back was a stripe of wafting green fur, tipped with handsome black-haired spikes. He had become a fat green caterpillar. And he was so thirsty after his long crawl! So he lifted his head and drank his own reflection, drinking deep, cool swallows from the clinging dew….
When he had slaked his thirst, he looked ahead through the forest of grass. Her letter lay in the distance. He plodded through the tall blades like a stubborn bug. The sun burned his back. Under the corner of the letter he saw a cool patch of shade where he might rest. He was almost there. Ah, to rest in the shade of her letter, to sleep.
He struggled into the shade and rolled on his side. Her letter lay overhead, and he curled comfortably beneath it. Time to wrap himself in a blanket and go to sleep. Yes, time to change into something else. He felt a rumbling down his body,- something coming out. A fine gossamer thread that he squeezed from his tail. First he attached his head to the paper, spinning the thread round and round…. His bug face went first, then his neck, his shoulders, his handsome green fur. Winding himself into a chrysalis, woven right into the grainy paper. He slept long and deep, and through his long sleep the tides of her mind in that lost letter came to him like a melancholy sigh. Her whole being crushed by the fate of her Soviet Burghölzli. As if speaking sadly to herself.
“One child out of twelve. Not so good, is it?”
He tried to console her. If you save just one, Fräulein, that’s what counts. I taught you that….
At last his black sleep came to a close in a ravenous hunger. He chewed a large hole in his cocoon and began forcing his way through. The silk thread slowly split apart. His wings were wet, and he spread them out to dry. Not the sturdy practical wings of flies, but gauzy paper ones. Fragile rice-paper wings covered in gold dust, too thin for flying in strong winds but just right for tumbling toward a run-down town house in a damp part of town … Across the yawning darkness Fräulein s school took shape,- it pulsed with a radiance that made his body thrum with strength. So he circled and dipped and soared, always swooping closer to its alluring glow. Then Frau Direktors clinic opened its front doors, taking him inside….
Petra had just helped Madame put the children to bed. Now she too could rest…. Madame watched as the housemaid lay on her cot in a wandering doze. She should take a turn herself. The waiting seemed like Christmas Eve, not being able to sleep or close your eyes. The wind outside moaned its troubles, stealing about the eaves and making them groan. The house, too, slept uneasily.
But not all the children had gone to bed. Marie, their sugar-eater, stoutly refused. Maximilian had failed to coax her from her wooden desk, so he let her sit up late, with crayons and paper, in the empty common room, finally slumping down himself at a desk nearby.
Head resting on his folded arms, he saw the eternal Nile. A basket of woven reeds floated along the sheltered bank. A lazy crocodile gazed with jasper eyes over the mudflats and blinked. Maidens washing their clothes waded in the shallow bay. They brought the woven basket to the reed-hidden shore. The crocodile smiled widely at the sun. When the dripping maidens hefted the basket from the blue Nile water, Max awoke and murmured, “Moses in the wombrushes …”
He rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Marie had finished the last touches of a drawing. “Can ! see?” Max asked. The girl had titled it in a scrawl of letters: The Debt of the WreckShip, It showed what looked like Noah’s Ark but with many more windows and gables, much like their own town house. Sad children’s faces peered out. One small child clung to the prow by a single finger. The dangling child was crying, his tears becoming big teardrops, which turned into pools and the pools into oceans.
The butterfly found Frau Direktor alone in her office, writing in a cone of light. He settled on the warm green lampshade and let the sense of her surround him. The black velvet dress enhanced the whiteness of her throat and bosom. He felt the heavy calmness of the woman now — the asthma attack a dim event, as if all her troubles had been honed away. Her hand slipped across the paper in that steady, graceful script:
Mein Lieber Herr Doktor. You keep silent well. But it’s too late for reproaches. Doubtless you know of conditions here. The children have finally grown to like the place, and just at the moment when we’re coming apart. Madame, my oldest intern has chosen to remain. If my friends reach Zurich, do what you can for them — and I’ll always be grateful….
No, those weren’t her words! She’d written in some silly code. Escape. Sick kid. Therapy Help. What was this, an early draft? He couldn’t stand any more. What right had she to burden him? All about, he felt the blasting cold lurking beyond the walls. “A butterfly in winter,” she sighed. She meant that they were both doomed. So fragile — existing in the same bubble of time but never coming together now that he might finally tell her things to make a difference. She rose from her desk. The window creaked and the cold stabbed in. “Go on,” she said.
Oh, God! One gust from the open window and he’d vanish like the school itself! She waved her arms and he sailed helplessly out of the warm light. He grappled on the window ledge for a moment, trying to hang on against the bitter wind. “Good-bye,” she said. He beat his way back to the window, crawling on the ledge. Trembling in the cold, he pressed himself to the warm glass.
“Let me explain!” he cried. “Explain!”
But his small voice perished in the air. A staggering gust came and swept him into the icy, agonizing sky.
He saw now that in buying the black velvet dress for her, he had committed an improper act that he could never set right. For it was both a secret promise to a young woman that no young woman could possibly misunderstand, and a secret betrayal of his wife that no wife c
ould ever forgive, But he could not help himself. God, how he loved buying her the black dress. Doing it, he felt more tenderness, more passion than any lover.
He’d gone crazy…,
Day after day, hour after hour, a powerful sexual pressure building up in him. While they merely talked in the garden below her window or sometimes just sat in silence, gazing up at the April clouds gliding high above the Burghölzli turrets. Their talk made him a teakettle on a slow flame, coming to a boil with little wisps of steam escaping from the spout. When he bought the dress one of those little wisps escaped.
But in the meantime the ravenous lust ate him alive: an appetite for women, all women, any woman but his wife. Didn’t Emma satisfy him? Or was there simply too much of him to draw off in one bed alone? Sudden opportunities presented themselves at every turn. Often starting in some innocuous way, then darkening an innocent encounter with a knowing laugh. The way a flower girl picked out buds from her bucket of tangled stems, or the way a laundress walked with a load of folded linen on her hips, deigning him a smile in her unhurried way.
The mounting steam followed him through his waking hours like women’s eyes. On a street corner or when he picked up a fallen umbrella in a trolley, knowing eyes met his with silky words: “Why, danke, sir …” Making him hear other words in their place: “Come home with me,” or simply, “Come along….”
The pressure flowed in and out of his daydreams until he saw a constant parade of women offering themselves. A young nurse lifting her dress for him as he passed in the corridor, while the toothless old charwoman cackled as she mopped the marble floor. No escape, not even in his sleep. For in the deep middle of the night, he imagined ragamuffin Fräulein bending over his sleeping body, putting her wet lips to his mouth, panting over their first midnight kiss.