by Keith Korman
When she came to him this way, Herr Doktor always felt he should protest, stop her somehow, and he would wake feeling shameful, Emma’s warm body beside him in bed. Why didn’t he just grope for it, spread her apart and let the pressure flow into her?
Because he saw only the black velvet on the mannikin in the window, the sparkling crystal buttons off its left shoulder — and later the youthful expanse of bosom that pressed toward him when he first saw her wearing it….
The shop was called Scheherazade. The dress glittered in the window as he passed the tiny boutique on the narrow Lindenhof Stairs, glittered the way beautiful fabrics do when they are very expensive, revealing remote depths in their color and texture. How many nights had he wandered out of his way so as to pass the narrow display, how many nights glancing furtively at it before mounting the courage to charge in and look? How many nights before he worked himself up to grip the cold metal knob and plunge inside? Then was shocked to discover the doorknob in his fist not cold at all — but warm. Heated from the room within.
He plunged into the gold and silver light. The shopgirl smiled coyly. “How do you do?” Her words searing him as he rubbed his frozen hands and wondered what to answer, He had imagined actually buying the thing would be nothing, but now he seemed to have lost all power to act.
“The dress in the window,” he stammered. “I’m the gentleman who put a deposit on it, by private messenger. I’d like to pay the balance and have it sent.”
“Oh, so you’re the gentleman …,” the shopgirl said. The flicker of a smile. “We were wondering when you were going to stop staring and decide to come in.”
“Yes, I decided.” His hands were warm now, but he kept rubbing them. The awkwardness seemed to cling even as he shed his overcoat across a chair. Still, he felt smooth and happy all over, ready for anything.
“When will Madame come and have it fitted?”
“She won’t.”
“Ah, then,” the girl concluded a little doubtfully, “you’ll want us to come to your home for a private fitting.”
“No, I don’t think so. You can wrap it just as is.”
“But what of the length?” the girl protested gravely. “What if Madame does not like the style?”
“Not like it?” he blurted. The pert shopgirl cast him a guarded look but agreed amiably. “Certainly, Monsieur. Madame would have to be quite mad not to love such a thing.” Then in a businesslike manner she found the shop’s deposit stub, took up a pen, and poised over the bill of sale. “May we have Madame’s name and address?”
A damning blank descended over Herr Doktor. The shopgirl waited. He groped for a suitable answer, completely at a loss — until the proprietress rescued them both, summing up his predicament in a single glance. Ah, for the gentleman’s mistress! Gently dismissing the shopgirl with “Thank you, Sabrina. Please fetch us the tissue and the box.” Then to Herr Doktor, in a quiet, accepting way, “My seamstress will do the fitting at Madame’s convenience, of course. A fitting here at the shop, or as you please.”
“Thank you.” Herr Doktor sighed, most relieved.
The shopgirl busied herself with the purchase, peeling the black dress tenderly off the display mannikin. She stuffed it with pink tissue paper, then hung it inside an elegant green upright box. She pressed her pretty hands around the body of the gown, crumpling in more pink tissue paper to keep it snug. How expensive and rich it looked,- she ran her finger along the edge of the shiny green package.
“A fine lady’s dress,” the shopgirl said with a touch of envy. “She must be beautiful to wear it.”
“Exquisite.” He had never used the word “exquisite” before. Now it sounded so right to him. The proprietress dutifully took down the address of his office at the Burghölzli. At once Herr Doktor realized all the pressure in his head had gone. And among the three of them a delicious understanding blossomed, an air of gay conspiracy. They all knew the black velvet dress wasn’t for Monsieur’s wife. The shopgirl’s eyes fairly glistened as she slipped the bill of sale into a gold-edged envelope. The proprietress delicately savored the final wrapping of the gift box: binding it with lengths of dark-red ribbon from a spool. Lastly, she tied a six-pointed bow and licked the gum of a glossy black opal seal embossed with the name of the shop. Every little act so skillfully performed. And Herr Doktor saw how the women silently approved of his buying the gown. Of the secrecy. Of an affaire d’amour. Both women wishing such a man as he would purchase such a gown for them …
The shop door clicked behind him. As the fresh air stole sweetly into his head, he thought about Emma lying silently beside him at night. He wanted to press himself into her now, press against her clenched thighs, forcing them to rub against him as she liked to do. Rubbing them back and forth until they warmed and opened, and she began to say things like “Come touch me … Touch me now.”
The gown arrived at his office at 10 A.M. the next day. Fräulein had gone down to the garden to sit. From his office chair he saw her on the stone bench in front of the ivy-covered wall. Overhead, a cloud unfolded into a mountainous gray ceiling and the wind picked at the ivy leaves.
Upstairs, he opened the door to 401. The bed had been made, the sheet neatly turned over the blanket. Her trunk dusted. The copper bathtub shined. He sat the elegant green gift box in the chair by her window. Then slipped a note under the red lacquer ribbon.
From Me to You
For Everything
When Fräulein came back upstairs, she paused at her room door, suddenly wary of Zeik and Herr Doktor standing expectantly at the end of the hall. “If you’re waiting for me,” she said, “don’t bother.” And without further ado vanished into her room.
The minutes passed…. No sound of tissue paper tearing. No cry of delight. Herr Doktor and the orderly stared at each other. Zeik shrugged, confounded. They had imagined her ripping off the ribbon, laying open the box, and reaching inside. A fine swooshing, crackling sound. Then holding the gown to herself, waltzing one-two-three! around the tiny room. But no — only obstinate silence.
After ten minutes, Herr Doktors curiosity got the better of him. He went to the door and knocked. Come in.
She held her palm against the shiny green box as if silently worshiping its beautiful, perfect form. His note lay on her lap. “Why don’t you look inside?” he asked. A chasm of hurt had opened at his feet.
“Not now,” she said softly. “I will, though. I promise I will.”
An irresistible force urged him to push her, make her open the thing, acknowledge his buying it — as when he marched her to the dayroom. But this time he swayed at the lip of the chasm and held back. Asking, “Don’t you want to know?”
She gingerly touched the black opal seal with Scheherazade engraved in raised letters. “It’s a dress from a dressmaker’s,” Fräulein said in a husky whisper. “It’s a beautiful lady’s dress. One I have to take care of. One to go to the theater in. And to dinner. And act normal in. You’re saying you want me to put on a dress and act like a lady.”
“You are a lady,” he told her.
She examined every crevice of his face to see if he lied, had any doubt, betrayed any jest in his words.
“I’m not a lady yet. But you want me to be, don’t you?”
“Is it such a bad thing?”
Her hands roved over the box, feeling the smoothness of its top, the fine construction of its sides. Her fingers glided over the long expanse, tenderly petting it with love and pain and sadness — not daring to believe the magic glory of it all. “Scheherazade …,” she whispered into its green depths. “I’m so scared.”
Chapter 3
Cinderella
They had invited her to a dinner party. A party for her! The engraved invitation came on Herr Doktor Frau’s personal stationery, hand delivered by Orderly Zeik. A creamy white card with blue piping around the border and a watermark on top, back-to-back capital J’s with given-name initials on either side.
Fräulein replied at once, in her ne
at, careful handwriting. She gave her RSVP to Zeik, who waited like a footman in the hall. After he left, she stood in front of the dresser mirror. Her hair had grown since winter. Falling in thick, lustrous tresses to her shoulders, by May it was long enough to braid in a twist.
On her dresser lay the silver hairbrush and matching mirror from home, long buried in her trunk. They were made of solid sterling, their long fluted handles molded in fruits of the vine, with bunches of grapes and other berries growing among the leaves. Each handle ended in the knob of a ripe fruit: the brush in a peach, the mirror in the plump bottom of a pear.
Fräulein picked up her brush and put it down. In the corner sat the gift box, the seal unbroken. She had not dared open it. Each morning she said to herself, “Today I’ll do it. I’ll open it today.” Sometimes she’d even get as far as plucking the red ribbon with her finger, but finally she always shrank from it, saying, “Not now … later.” And went to the window, staring below. Before long, sitting on the stone bench in the garden, promising, “I’ll open it when I get back to my room. This time I really will…. Maybe tonight.”
The day of the party came, and the box remained unopened. As she climbed the stairs from the garden, all the strength and courage went out of her. It’s too late nom, she thought.
In her room, Nurse Bosch had gone to her trunk and laid out some underthings. The big woman looked at her with soft, dismayed eyes. “Bless me, child. You haven’t even looked inside!” Just like a fairy godmother, come in her hour of need to help her dress for the ball. Only, Fräulein knew no handsome prince waited … no glass slippers. She felt light, and a dizzy pain went through her head.
“I’m not going,” Fräulein said, braver than she felt. “You can’t make me.” For a moment she expected Nurse Bosch to turn into a bee or a pig. But the woman merely pulled a silk slip from the trunk and shook it out in the direction of the elegant gift box.
“Open it, child.” i wont.
“Open it.”
Fräulein stamped her foot. “It won’t fit.”
“How do you know?”
“He doesn’t know my size.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know!” Fräulein wrung her hands. She began to weep. “It’ll never fit. Why did he buy it? People will laugh.”
In the end Nurse Bosch opened the box and peeled back the rustling pink tissue. She held the black velvet gown against her stout body. Her huge breasts plumped out the bodice, making the dress look even more slender and willowy. The four crystal buttercup buttons twinkled fitfully in the light from the window.
“It’s the new style,” Nurse Bosch said knowingly. “Off the shoulder and no more bustles. If you have a buttocks you show it. If you have a buttocks like me, you don’t wear this style.”
Fräulein looked doubtful. She had never imagined owning a dress like this, one she could go places in and be seen. Her hands strayed to her behind, speculating on the fit. In a moment she forgot her fears. “Let me see! Let me see! I want to try it on!”
Alas, when poor Fräulein pulled it over her head the bodice proved too loose in front and the backside too tight by far. Nurse Bosch almost had to yank it over her derrière before the dress squeezed into place.
“I told you so! I told you!” she cried, her tears spotting the velvet.
Now Nurse Bosch lost her temper. “Stop it this instant, you silly goose! Didn’t your mother ever teach you anything worth knowing?”
“Nooooo!” Fräulein wailed mournfully. ‘‘Nothing. Never!”
‘Then stop crying and listen. You may be crazy, but you’re not a fool. No dress fits at first.”
“None?” Fräulein sniffled suspiciously.
“None. Now, there’s no time for the dressmaker’s, but we have some laundry girls who can sew you up in a sack before you’ve said Hans Christian Andersen! Just peel yourself out of that.” Nurse Bosch was gone before Fräulein thought of protesting the idea of strangers seeing her without clothes — when the woman scolded from the hall, “And don’t you dare cry on the fabric!”
Fräulein worked her way out of the dress and glared resentfully at the closed door. “Sew me up in a sack,” she muttered. “Well, they didn’t invite you to dinner, did they, Nurse Fatso?”
The laundry girls oohed and aahed so appreciatively, Fräulein let them admire her in the dress and out of it as well. One of the girls had been apprenticed to a seamstress. “At least the length is right,” she said. “And that’s a help. But you’ll need a quarter inch at the bosom and half an inch at the rear.” For a fleeting second Fräulein wondered how to grow a quarter inch on such short notice. But the two laundry girls looked at each other and giggled. “Begging your pardon, we don’t expect Fräulein to grow it herself. We’ll take it in and out as needed.”
“Have it ready in an hour,” commanded Nurse Bosch.
“Yes, Ma’am, but we’ll need another half hour to steam out the creases.”
“Don’t explain it,” Fräulein pleaded. “Just do it. We’re almost late already.”
“And whose fault is that, missy?” replied the nurse.
“Oh! Please don’t be angry. Just help me do it. Help me now.”
The laundry girls stood dumbly at the door. “Well, be off!” Nurse Bosch barked. They vanished in a swish of the gown. Then, more gently, “All right, young lady. But you have to promise me, no more crying. Save your red eyes for the end of the night, not the beginning.”
And so with that, the nurse sat Fräulein down before her dresser mirror and began to put up her hair. Suddenly the girl realized just how foolish she’d been to delay. “What about shoes?” she despaired.
“Show me your feet.”
Reluctantly the girl revealed her paper-white feet; long gray toe-nails grew out like dragon claws. Cracked nails, the skin around them chapped and flaking. “Narrow …,” the nurse muttered. And, as she left the room, snapped, “Clip ‘em! You’re not Puss in Boots, y’know.”
In a few moments she waddled back into the room with a pair of black satin ballet slippers. To Fräuleins delight, the slippers fit. “Fine,” Nurse Bosch remarked. “Frau Horst will have to dance Swan Lake without them tonight.”
Frau Horst was an elderly woman, rich as sin, in a private room nearby. “Does Frau Horst dance Swan Lake every night?”
“No.” Nurse Bosch calmly finished pinning Fräuleins hair. “Once in a while she wears white slippers and does The Nutcracker with the Bolshoi.”
Fräuleins pinned hair swept up in a wave, curling into itself at the base of her neck. But she didn’t notice any of that. Instead she saw a sallow, yellow face stuck in the dresser mirror like an old cheese in a cupboard. She gaped at her horridness, realizing the worst: “No powder, no rouge, nothing for my eyes …” Her hands rose to tear out the pins, fingers working like spiders’ legs.
Nurse Bosch’s heavy face appeared in the mirror. “Don’t you dare touch that, missy,” she scolded. “Don’t you dare undo my work, or I’ll really show you Tragedy!”
Fräuleins hands hovered about her head, not daring to pluck at the pins. “You can’t talk to me like that — you’re not my m-m-m! You’re not my f-f-f !” Shouting, “I’ll tear them out if I want to. Tear out the pins and cram ‘em down your fat throat, you —”
Just then the laundry girls returned with the dress.
“Won’t need it,” Fräulein snapped savagely. “Nothing for my face. Take it away.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” The first laundry girl took a small pot of kohl from her skirt pocket and put it on the dresser. “You don’t think we’d let you go out looking like a dayroomer, do you?”
Fräulein stared dolefully at her reflection, but her spidery fingers had fallen from her perfect hair. “Are they laughing at me?” she asked meekly.
“Put on the gown,” the big woman told her softly. “While I fetch some rouge for your face. And as for you two imps” — she scowled at the laundresses — ‘lend her a hand if you’re not too f
ey.”
Nurse Bosch borrowed a purse full of cosmetics from one of the young women in Accounting. After a little skillful application, Fräulein gazed at herself in the dresser mirror. Her hair and face and shoulders emerged from the black velvet gown like a lily from a dark stem. Nurse Bosch fished a string of pearls from her uniform pocket and clipped them around the girl’s neck.
“They were my mother’s. They’re real. Don’t lose them.”
The laundresses gawped at Fräulein with open mouths. She was so radiant, so … When she touched the pearls around her neck, tears started to her eyes. How was this possible? She hid her face, unable to look at her reflection. “I —-1 don’t know what to say,” she stammered. “Everyone at the party will stare at me. And I won’t know what to say”
Nurse Bosch stepped back, quietly admiring her work.
“Say nothing, then.”
The time had come.
Zeik cleared his throat, announcing the arrival of the carriage. “Ladies, the coach awaits….”
They wrapped a light cloak about Fräuleins shoulders and took her to the carriage in a sheltering flock. A stranger might not have recognized the looming hospital but seen instead a fairy palace, with countless lights winking behind high windows in the gathering dusk. Seeing not the inmate of an asylum but a young countess stepping daintily down the wide marble steps, while her footman and ladies in waiting helped her into the carriage, and the horses stamped their feet and their silver breath wreathed the coach lamps.
The whip cracked over the horses’ heads,- carriage wheels clattered away down the drive. Was the beautiful countess but a dream? Who could tell? Only the four servants remained, like mice at the huge palace door, waving the young lady farewell….