Caraliza

by Joel Blaine Kirkpatrick

  “Oh, no darling. We are not here for dinner. Please can we see the photo of the young lady?”

  Shelly was surprised. It was the most energetic response to the photos she ever dealt with. But then, it should have been the most moving part of the experience for any guest who enjoyed dinner in the place. It was perfectly natural the legend itself was drawing people, and they would not care a bit about having dinner to hear it.

  Evan suddenly wondered, however remote the possibility might be, the ladies could by chance be Dutch relatives. Perhaps from the family who lost Caraliza? The Studio enjoyed some renown for the lovely and tragic history, it was very possible it would make its way back to Amsterdam that a beautiful Dutch youth lost her life so long ago in a small New York shop. He instantly offered to let the two ladies sit on the divan, which Shelly forbid to guests over the age of ten, and he ran to get them some wine, begging them to let him get back before they said another word.

  Shelly was clueless, but she politely seated the ladies and waited for Evan, only to see him return with the best framed print they made of Caraliza, in his hands. It took him a moment to convince her to sit down so they could finally hear why it was so important to the desperate women from Chicago.

  “The staff can take care out there,” he insisted with a nod to the front. “This may be very interesting.”

  So they sat finally and Evan put the framed image of the Angel in the older woman’s hands. Her gasp sounded like a sigh and her daughter put her hands to her mouth. The mother gingerly touched the frame and the outline of the graceful arms in the photograph.

  Shelly noticed instant tears. This woman knew the girl somehow, but this was deeper than recognition. It gave Shelly sudden chills she had never felt. A profound emotion swept the two women as they looked at the beauty in the frame, and Shelly never saw the image have such a powerful affect on anyone.

  Evan was nodding his head and smiling.

  “Do you know her?” Shelly asked with her hands to the woman’s as they held the frame. Both women were smiling, but so sweetly as to be so very sad as well.

  “Oh, dear darling Ms. Reisman. Yes, I know her. We both do.” And Shelly was stunned. How could they have known this child?

  “Ms. Reisman, this is my mother,” Rachel whispered.

  “I don’t know how that is possible,” Shelly struggled to say, “Who are you?”

  “I’m Rachel, this is my daughter Elizabeth. This is my mother, Liesl Kogen.”

  The smile she gave, was Caraliza’s smile.

  Evan and Shelly both went pale, and the ladies gazed very sweetly at them.

  “Caraliza Kogen, she always used Liesl after she and Papa moved to Chicago. My Papa, we call him Joseph but his given name is Yousep,” Rachel said, touching the young woman in the frame.

  Shelly was pouring tears from her eyes and was visibly trembling. Evan was barely in control as well.

  The lovers had lived!

  “Ms. Reisman, our neighbor told us nothing of what they learned here, we came to see because they said we must, you had a photo we needed to see. We have been searching frantically, for any clues to Mama and Papa’s lives before they came to Chicago, they refused ever to say. It grew to be almost a joke with us, but your family is very old as well, you can imagine wanting to find things out, how very hard we looked!”

  Rachel laughed, but she noticed Shelly was overcome, and she was moved suddenly in a similar way. Evan broke the spell between them and excused himself; he would only take a moment and be right back. When he returned he had opened the case under the mirror. Rachel and Elizabeth cried in joy at the photo in his hands.

  “Papa! My Papa!” and Rachel wept to see Yousep’s smiling face and hugged the photo to her breast. “We have never seen images of their youth, and he was a photographer, can you imagine it?”

  Evan laughed with them. He understood perfectly why Yousep would have become a photographer. Elizabeth lovingly traced her grandfather’s features, and Rachel could hardly grasp the photo to hold it, she was so overjoyed.

  “How can you know her?” Shelly finally asked in a strained whisper. “We have believed them dead since this image was taken. Since 1919!”

  “Darling, No! Dead? No! Sweetheart they were married in 1921, soon as Papa turned seventeen! His parent insisted. And she converted. We never heard about her Dutch family, she always just said she lost them in the war. They even spent a year in Amsterdam, searching. They seemed so sad about the past, but they were the happiest people otherwise.”

  “I’m sorry, I still don’t understand!” Shelly was pleading.

  “We buried Papa six years ago, Mama passed in ’93.”

  Shelly was sobbing through her smile, the understanding finally warming her heart. She reached for Evan’s hand and drew him close. They were both trembling, but with joy. Yousep and Caraliza returned to the shop, after wonderful, full lives, and found Shelly. They chose to be there; they were free as they wished to be.

  “I am so sorry, I haven’t let you say anything at all, and bless you, you’re making me cry!” Rachel laughed again.

  Evan enjoyed knowing why she had been so familiar to him; that beautiful smile, he loved it so long and so well.

  “We have their last photo together,” Rachel said to Evan, and pulled her pocketbook from her purse. The photograph she handed him was a bit frayed, but the two old people were so recognizable, Evan laughed as he cried.

  He took the photo and showed it to Shelly, pointing to a bright spot in the photo under Caraliza’s chin. The pendant! Yousep’s treasured gift. She kept it always with her. And she looked so happy. They both looked out of the image as if to say ‘It is okay to understand now, it is okay to know.’

  “Please, Ms. Reisman. What can you tell us? How did you know my Mama and Papa? We’ve waited so very long to come and ask!”

  Evan stood up and kissed Rachel and her daughter both on the cheeks. “Ladies, first let me get dinner. You will join us at our table. I will bring some more wine.”

  “Please, we really did not mean to just crash. This is such a beautiful place, we should not expect to stay!”

  “Rachel, you are family. You will never pay for dinner in our house,” Shelly said. Evan returned a little later, and the table was set with dinner. Shelly regained her poise, and the subject turned to the baby, nearly due.

  “Ladies, we are so very glad you came tonight. This is going to take a while, so please, feel at home,” Evan said with another kiss. Shelly noticed he returned with the lovers’ little notebook, but she knew perfectly well he would let her tell the tale.

  As the hostess outside began the play for the other guests, Shelly poured Rachel another glass of wine and began the same tale, slightly changed.

  “Your mother came to America in 1917. She has been a cherished member of our family for seventy-eight years….”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  When Caraliza fell lifeless to the boards Yousep became an astonishing creature in the big mans hands. Doubtless, the brute was more than twice his match still, but an unexpected fight, from the fifteen year old had not been planned. It was hoped the boy would be dragged terrified from the room and locked in the studio so the girl could be taken out the front of the shop. A serious fight was not in the bargain that was struck. The girl only was the prize, but this young man was a wild bull to hold and the larger man could not keep his grip.

  Worse for having lost his hands on the insane Yousep, the brute was shoved backward and was soon tumbling into the shelves in the middle of the room, another obstacle that prevented the kidnap as he had hoped to carry it out. He was tangled into jars, boxes, and fallen planks and the boy was free to gather his plan with some rage behind it.

  That rage was released, as was one of the heavy glass jars of liquid, which was more to hand for Yousep than were the tumbling jars around the brute. Yousep had decided to murder before his terror squeezed the very breath from his Angel, Caraliza. If he murdered the man, he did not car
e to check. He brought his weapon jar down upon the man's forehead with such a blow the brute did not move again.

  Yousep was instantly upon his love in the corner, and was streaming his tears onto her eyes when his prayers before the fight were answered in Heaven. If God chose to punish him for the life taken behind him, it was not to be done with keeping life from Caraliza. She did stir in his tears and met them with her own as she breathed piercing cries into the darkness of the room. She held him as dearly as he held her and they wept from fear and the pain of the hiding.

  The man behind Yousep was unseen to her and she was still terrified. They sat and soothed themselves with kisses and joy until she was quite able to sit again next to him, and her eyes became saucers at the form in the middle of the room and the ruined shelves around him. There was no hint of blood, but he did not move, and would not. Not for them.

  It seemed an hour before they felt recovered enough to move down the stair. Clothing had come with them and Yousep had them dressed should they need to bolt the shop from other dangers. Water was more soothing than were the clothes, they both had terrible thirst.

  They were still holding each other very tightly near the darkroom closet when there came another sound at the top of the stair; Caraliza began to wither in Yousep's arms again. But the sound was not one of something trying to come down; it was the sound of something falling without control from the very top. Yousep had not brought the death of the brute, but had injured him to the very lip of that darkness. The man killed himself by trying to get to the stair with his brains nearly bashed, and finished the job in the fall completely down. He was dead as he bounced the final step and Caraliza screamed until Yousep’s ears were to burst from it.

  He gathered her tenderly into his embrace and spoke the softest words he knew to speak in her Dutch. “My love you are safe.” Mijn liefje je bent veilig As he spoke sweetly to her lips, her shudders began to ease and he knew she would not be fearful again.

  He left her standing at the closet, she did not want to approach, and Yousep crept to the bulk of the big man and checked that the fall had done a complete job. Two bundles were there near the brute, thrown out from the pockets of his shirt as he had crashed down the stairs. Yousep gathered them both and hurried back to Caraliza and they sat down on the floor to put on their shoes.

  When the lock of the shop door turned moments later, they were stunned and made no sound. Yousep knew it must be Mr. Reisman returning to check they were safe, but before he could cry they had been saved, Yousep heard his employer cry out himself. It was not a cry of relief to find the body on the floor across the shop, the two lovers were hidden behind the display on the floor at the cabinet and he did not see them.

  Mr. Reisman cried in anger and shock, and ran to the stair with curses and surprise. Then lunging over the body on the floor he rushed up the stair to see what had been done. Not a cry did he make for Yousep's sake, nor one for the girl. His frustration was his only concern; something he had planned was more terribly amiss than he had been prepared to find in the shop.

  His return was not quiet, but cursing the body on the floor, that it could not control a frightened boy and retrieve the girl as they had bargained. Mr. Reisman spoke to the body as if he would not have been surprised to hear it rise and witness for itself it had tried to do as they had bid. Yousep was aroused to more anger than he could control, but his Caraliza knew the better than their discovery. She kept him quiet with her fingers and the shopkeeper raged at the unanswering corpse. Yousep remembered all his dreams; the body always spoke and put him in terror.

  This body would never speak such a way to him again, neither in any dream.

  Mr. Reisman was in panic for something he expected to find, but could not. He sought the man's pockets and sought under the heap when he shoved it over to look at the boards. It was growing near to light, just an hour before dawn and the two beneath the closet were shocked to see Mr. Reisman run from the shop and across the street. The hideous stair swallowed him; to look with great intent in the awful basement for something he could not bear to loose.

  Yousep was fully informed of the deed done against them as his employer plunged down that hole. Yousep was intelligent enough to understand, Mr. Reisman had known for a time the great dreadful man who lived there and tormented Caraliza. Papa’s concern for her then would have been she might have died at the hands of the brute he allowed to keep her. With her murder, two men would have swung on the gallows.

  They must have waited until she was recovered enough to steal back away and frighten the poor Yousep out of his right mind. Whether hatred or pity was felt for the old man over in that darkness, Yousep truly did not wish to know, he only knew he could love the man no longer and would hope God would judge the deed for what it was. Yousep would not seek judgment, nor would he stay.

  He gathered his love into his arms and took the bundles, which were surely sought across the street, as they crept out the back stair. Whatever those bundles were, they were dear…and if so dear, then valuable. If valuable, then payment enough, for the price nearly paid with her life.

  Yousep would not take his love home straight away; they needed a better place to hide. His parents would grieve until he walked safely into their arms with his love, and Mr. Reisman would never know. They would never tell, at Yousep's request. Only God would punish Mr. Reisman. Yousep and his Caraliza would not waste a moment of the life they were escaping to share.

  “Ik zal niet wachten tot ik dood ben om hem te achtervolgen,” she said.

  “I’ll not wait to die, to haunt him.”

  End

  Also from Joel Kirkpatrick

  Breathing into Stone

  Eighteenth century priest, Father Furio Novia, hates his employer, the Archbishop of Modena; almost as much as he hates Italian master sculptor, Antonio Lisi. When Novia discovers that Lisi uses his beautiful daughter’s likeness in nearly every figure he carves, the priest realizes he can make accusations to the Archbishop that the sculptor has an incestuous knowledge of his daughter, Anoria.

  Novia begins to haunt their lives, and every family in their village of Resceto, not because he believes they have sinned, but because he desires Anoria for himself.

  For two years their lives twined around one another’s, destined to clash in Rome; Novia, committing murder to stay free of the church; Anoria, nearly killing him to escape his lust.

  www.breathingintostone.com

  Harmony’s Passing

  Somewhere on the edge of the solar system, a new danger lurks. While the earth wonders at the spectacular aurora that suddenly appears, a single physicist wonders why every satellite in orbit has just moved.

  Only after exhausting work, does he realize; he has witnessed something so dangerous, it could undo the very structure of the solar system itself.

  Dr. Dennis Felt braces himself to tell his colleagues that his evidence points to the existence of a wandering black hole; and it is destined to plunge into the surface of the sun.

  But when? What damage will it do before it meets its own end?

  www.harmonyspassing.com

  Shared: The Search for the Origins of a Soul

  Seeking help from colleagues around the globe, Victorian physician, Dr. Liam Gilbert, is desperate to discover what is wrong with little Rachel Ellingswood. The child has faints that bring her near to death without warning. Only child; heiress to a huge fortune in Devon, England, four year old Rachel will not survive without some miracle of discovery.

  Yet, Gilbert does not believe in miracles.

  When a single clue sends him on a harrowing voyage across the globe in search of answers, his discovery, about the impossible child, will alter his life forever.

  Rachel Ellingswood is not a simple child who is ill; when she is ill – she is not truly there.

  www.brownbrushbooks.com

  Joel Kirkpatrick lives with his lovely wife

  and two boys in Southwest Colorado.

  He can be contacted thro
ugh his websites.

  Acknowledgements:

  To the wonderful family that waits for me to share the computer, I offer my love and thanks; my wife and boys, Andrea, Miles, and Colin have endured some terrible loneliness while my eyes were on these words, and other books I have struggled to create.

  To Mikela, it was a pleasure to hear this tale unnerved you. Thank you for being the first person scared by my ghosts. (Yes, it was difficult to write and edit at night.)

  To readers who wonder about the Dutch text, and the wonderful process which brought it to life, I sought excellent help – Irma van der Staal came to my rescue, and brought her daughter’s stunning design work to my attention. They share the joy of seeing this published, and their notes follow.

  JBK

  ***

  Mijn naam is Irma, ben op dit moment 52 jaar, woon in Nederland en ben al 34 jaar getrouwd met René. Samen hebben we 2 volwassen dochters, Kelly, de oudste, is 25 en Ellen, de jongste, is 21 jaar oud. Als tiener vond ik het al leuk om te corresponderen en schreef toen o.a. met een jongen uit Tunesië. Sinds een paar maanden ben ik op zoek naar correspondentievrienden in andere delen van de wereld. Het leek me leuk om in het Engels te mailen en meer te leren over andere mensen en hun landen. Op één van die penpalsites kwam ik een bericht tegen van Joel, die iemand zocht om wat Nederlandse zinnen te vertalen, althans om de Nederlandse zinnen in correct Nederlands te zetten. Dit leek me ontzettend leuk om te doen en zo werd ik hierbij betrokken. Ik werd gegrepen door het verhaal van Caraliza en vond het fantastisch! Het voelde als een voorrecht om je te mogen helpen Joel. Dank je wel dat je me de kans hebt gegeven om dit te mogen doen.