The Devil's Madonna

by Sharon Potts

  “Here you go.” Kali handed Lillian a glass of water.

  She took a few sips, then handed the glass back to Kali.

  Her granddaughter was scowling as she sucked in her lower lip. She seemed to be debating saying something.

  “I’m fine now,” Lillian said. “Thank you.”

  “Would you like to walk around upstairs a bit? I think a little exercise would be good for you.”

  “Maybe later. I’m very tired.”

  Kali nodded. “The man said that’s normal. I’ll let you sleep.”

  The man? What man? Lillian tensed, then relaxed. Her granddaughter probably meant the nurse at the hospital.

  Kali went to the door. “Call down if you need anything. I won’t leave the house without telling you.”

  Lillian listened to her granddaughter going down the stairs, more slowly this time, but still with a childlike bounce. She leaned back against the pillows. Her abdomen felt bloated, just like in the dream.

  She couldn’t get it out of her head. It was as real to her at this moment as it had been then.

  St. Aubin, Jersey, late December of 1938. The cold, sterile examining room. The harsh disinfectant smell of carbolic acid. The doctor’s office with its dark paneled walls and diplomas.

  “I would estimate you’re three months,” the doctor said, folding his hands and resting them on the large mahogany desk.

  Leli tried to concentrate on the black hairs on the backs of his hands, his clean, straight fingernails. Not on what he was saying.

  “You probably conceived sometime in September.” The doctor handed her a piece of paper. “Here’s a prescription for something that might help with your nausea, Mrs. Troppe. But it’s very important that you eat properly.”

  Mrs. Troppe? There must be some mistake. Then she remembered. Astrid Troppe was the name she had given for her appointment.

  She left the doctor’s office, fumbling with her headscarf as she tried to tie it beneath her chin. The strength had been sucked out of her and her knees shook. Despite the cold afternoon air, she felt like she was going to pass out. She leaned against a lamppost.

  Impossible. She couldn’t be pregnant.

  She took a deep breath in, then let it out slowly. Deep breath in, slowly out.

  How could she not have guessed it? But she’d been so worried about Mama and Papa that she thought her missed periods and nausea were due to the stress of waiting for news that didn’t come.

  A woman pushed a pram up the hill, against the wind. Her cheeks were full and rosy.

  Leli looked back at the doctor’s office in one of the two-story painted row houses. Her own boardinghouse was almost a mile away through winding, hilly roads. But there was no one there for her.

  Mama, she thought, choking back tears. Mama, help me.

  But her mama couldn’t help her. Leli wasn’t even sure Mama was still alive.

  She started walking down the sloping street toward town. It had snowed the day before and the streets were covered with a dirty slush. She had only her cloth coat and leather pumps, which provided poor traction, and she knew she must look like a drunk as she wobbled along.

  She’d go to the tea shop. Maybe that nice American, Harry, would be there. He had said he wanted to help her. But surely he hadn’t meant with this. There was no one who could help her with this.

  She tested the word out loud.

  “Pregnant. I’m pregnant.”

  The bile rose in her gorge. There was no time to find a lavatory. She vomited in the street.

  An old woman climbing the hill stopped. “Are you all right, dear?”

  The kind words caught Leli by surprise. She blinked back tears and tried to smile, as she straightened back up. “Must be catching a bug. I’ll be fine. Thank you.”

  The old woman studied her for a moment, then continued her slow trudge upward.

  Alone. Leli was all alone. Her face had broken out in a sweat and she wiped her cheeks and forehead with her headscarf. She couldn’t have this child. She wouldn’t have this child.

  She tottered down the street. Icy water seeped into her shoes, numbing her toes, making it difficult to walk. She stopped by the stoop of a small building and opened her purse. The tiny painting was still there. She took out a couple of folded lace handkerchiefs. Just like the one around the painting, her mother had given them to her. She slipped off a shoe, wrapped one handkerchief around her toes, then put the shoe back on.

  She sensed a change in the air, like a sudden drop in the air pressure. She looked back up the street. It seemed that someone had been behind her, but now there was no one. At least no one she could see.

  She took off her other shoe, wrapped her toes in the other handkerchief, then put the shoe back on. She felt a presence in the alley between two houses in the street just above her.

  She tried to act naturally, but her heart was pounding.

  Was someone following her, or was she imagining it?

  Ever since arriving in Jersey, she had been conscious of everyone around her, always on the alert for anyone inordinately interested in her. But there had been no disturbing attention, and she had almost believed she was safe.

  But what if he had found her?

  She began walking slowly down the slope. A truck was parked in the street. She crossed in front of it, stopping when she was no longer visible to anyone behind her. Then she took a step back and looked up the street.

  She caught only a flash. Dark overcoat, broad shoulders, black hat. But in that instant, she saw the light eyes, and she knew. He was here.

  Leli took off down the street, slipping and sliding as she went. How could she possibly outrun him in her heels? But she had to try.

  She darted into an alleyway. She pulled on the back door to one of the buildings. Locked. She kept going and tried the next door, then the next one.

  He was probably just behind her, but she dared not stop to check.

  She got to the next door and pulled. It opened. She went inside, locking it behind her. Then she ran through the hallway, down a flight of stairs, and came out on another street. She looked both ways. No sign of him.

  But where could she go? If he was here on Jersey, he surely knew where she lived.

  A taxi was coming up the street. She signaled to it. He braked, skidding on the slush, but able to stop a couple of feet from her.

  She climbed in the back.

  “Where to?” the driver asked.

  Leli was breathing so hard, she could barely speak. “Just drive. Away from here. Quickly.”

  She slumped down in her seat and went through her purse. She had very little money. But she still had the painting.

  She could no longer do this alone.

  The taxi was heading up, away from town.

  “Please take me to the Somerville Hotel,” she said.

  “Certainly, miss.”

  It was where Harry was staying. Now, if she could only persuade Harry to help her get away from here. Quickly. Before he found her. Because there was no doubt in Leli’s mind that when he did, Graeber would surely kill her.

  36

  Javier couldn’t get the granddaughter out of his mind. The grace with which she held her head on her slender neck, the startlingly blue eyes. Stunning. No, beyond stunning.

  After first seeing her early this morning, Javier had gone back over his original research on Lillian Campbell. He wanted to kick himself for his sloppiness the first time through. It had taken him several hours to learn that Lillian Breitling had been born in London in 1916, moved to Vienna as a child, then returned to England around 1938 and worked as a secretary in an international bank. It was a perfect cover to explain her meeting the American banker, Harold Campbell, and then leaving with him on the Normandie out of Southampton. Records showed Lillian Breitling arrived in New York in January 1939, exactly when Javier’s father had lost track of Ilse Strauss in the Channel Islands.

  But of course, Lillian Breitling’s story was exactly that—a story,
a cover. Campbell with his connections must have arranged the false identity and the British passport. By the time Lillian Breitling married Harold Campbell in New York, Ilse Strauss aka Leli Lenz aka Astrid Troppe, had effectively disappeared.

  Until today.

  Javier had returned to her house, this time masquerading as a geriatric specialist. He waited for the granddaughter, then made his play. He was confident he’d succeeded in establishing a bond, or at the very least, that he had created an option for her. Someone to call in time of need—a concerned, knowledgeable health-care professional ready and able to help her and her grandmother.

  He leaned back against the credenza, the vision of the grand-daughter branded into his mind. Für Elise played in the background. There was still so much more he needed to learn.

  He let his desk chair spring forward and clicked through the old documents. There it was. Lillian and Harry Campbell had one child—a daughter named Dorothy, born in June 1939.

  Javier froze. June 1939. Was it possible? He did the math. Not just possible, but probable based on the timing of events. The date of this daughter’s birth suggested that she had been conceived in September 1938. Vati had told Javier all about the sexual encounter. How could he and his father never have realized that there might have been a child?

  Javier got up and paced in the narrow space in front of his desk, trying to absorb the import of his findings. So Leli/Ilse had to have been pregnant when she left Berlin. But no one had suspected that.

  He sat back down at his desk and continued clicking. More on Dorothy. She married a John Sullivan in 1972. John died in ’78 of leukemia, then Dorothy in a car crash in 1990.

  Javier paused, took a breath, then continued. The Sullivans had had one child in 1977. Just the one. A girl named Kali.

  There it was. A granddaughter. Most likely HIS granddaughter. But how could he establish this for certain? And then he remembered the painting. Dear God. The painting was the link that could tie everything together.

  His granddaughter. A living link. The implications were staggering. “Oh Vati, Vati. If only you were alive to witness this.” He swiveled his chair around and picked up the old book from the top of the credenza. Mein Kampf. How his father had treasured this!

  But Javier had to get control of himself. Without the painting, he had nothing.

  He tried to light another cigarette. It shook in his trembling fingers. The flame caught. He took a deep pull, let it out slowly. The music crescendoed around him.

  Stay calm. Think. He needed that painting. First, he had to get the mouse out of her hole.

  But how?

  He went to the closet and took out the small trunk. His fingers were steadier now as he unlocked it. He had a plan. He took out the hat, the doilies, and the gold, heart-shaped locket with its broken chain.

  Start small, he thought. Let her be uncertain. Everyone will think she’s going crazy. Wear her down.

  Then pounce.

  He held out the doilies, the lace dangling from his fingers like spiderwebs.

  He was ready.

  37

  Kali opened her sketchpad on the kitchen table. The light wasn’t particularly good with the shrubs blocking the early afternoon sun, but the acoustics were such that she’d be able to hear Lillian calling if she needed something. She lifted her head and listened. It was quiet in the house except for the hum of a window air-conditioning unit.

  Her grandmother was deteriorating rapidly—speaking in German, imagining things, becoming agitated and fearful, and sleeping too much. Although that man who’d come by earlier had mentioned such symptoms, Kali wondered if Lillian’s behavior was more than just the aftermath of her stroke. It was almost as though she was trying to fight off devils from her past while she still had strength.

  But what devils?

  Kali had a sick feeling that she knew wasn’t related to her pregnancy. It more resembled the sense of loss that had enveloped her after her mother had died. And Kali had a premonition of another death. Her grandmother? Her marriage? Something else?

  She rested her hand on her abdomen. At a little over three months, the tiny baby inside her was just over two inches long, weighing half an ounce. She glanced at her phone. Seth still hadn’t called. Lillian had mentioned she’d almost had an abortion. Why had she even considered it? Had her grandparents also had a major argument when Lillian was pregnant?

  She glanced down at her sketchpad. It was open to the drawing that Neil had remarked on when they sat on the seawall in the vacant lot. When was that? Only a week ago?

  Kali tore the page out of the pad. Neil said that it resembled a fetus, and of course, now that she studied it, she realized he was right. Large head and torso, underdeveloped arms and legs. Was she externalizing her pregnancy to her drawings? No. Kali had been making cherubim that looked like this for many years. They’d become her trademark along with beautiful fairies with their many reaching arms.

  But Kali couldn’t really claim the fairies as her own. They were much like the fairy her mother had once painted on the inside of her closet door.

  A memory was forming in her mind.

  Sitting at the kitchen table, a crayon in her hand, scribbling on a piece of paper.

  “Not like that, silly,” her mother had said. “Hold it like this.” She demonstrated with her own crayon.

  Little Kali tried, but the crayon wobbled. She hit the table with her tiny hand. “I can’t do it.”

  “Sure you can.”

  Her mother placed her hand over Kali’s and held it tightly, guiding the crayon over the paper.

  Kali could almost feel it now. She put one hand over her other and squeezed, trying to recreate her mother’s touch.

  Had her mother really taken her hand or was that a wishful memory? She couldn’t remember any other time her mother had held her, hugged her. Would Kali be that way with her own child?

  She looked down at the paper, at the image she hadn’t been conscious of drawing. A beautiful fairy was fluttering her arms and wings as a cherub floated toward her. Two of the fairy’s four arms reached forward, the tips of her fingers almost touching the cherub’s golden curls.

  No. Kali was different from her mother and grandmother. Her child would know her mother’s touch, her mother’s warmth, her mother’s love. No matter what happened with Seth, Kali would always be there for her child.

  There was a knock at the door. Kali closed her sketchpad and went quickly to the front foyer so the knocking wouldn’t disturb her grandmother.

  Through the peephole she could see Seth’s parents standing under the portico, too close to the door for Kali to make out if Seth was with them.

  She opened the door. It was just the two of them. Kali was surprised by the surge of anger she felt at them. But maybe she was just angry with their son.

  “Hi, angel,” Mitzi said, her wild auburn curls bobbing over much of her freckled face. “We were in the neighborhood and wanted to drop off a few things.”

  Mitzi was holding a cakebox tied with a pink ribbon, and Al had two brown shopping bags labeled Epicure, a nearby, high-end grocery store. He was wearing a golf shirt and shorts and his white hair was helter-skelter, as though he’d spent the morning on the links.

  “Come in,” Kali said quietly.

  “Are you sure we’re not disturbing your grandmother?” Mitzi asked, lowering her voice to a stage whisper. Her gaze went past Kali, up the winding staircase. Kali realized that the Millers had never been inside her grandmother’s house.

  “I think she’s sleeping, but it’s fine.”

  They stepped inside and Kali closed the door after them, relieved that neither of her in-laws had tried to hug her.

  “We were just having lunch at Epicure and thought you might have trouble getting out to shop.” Mitzi adjusted the strap on her tank top and the gold charms on her bracelet clanked against her thin, corded arm. “We brought some Danish, a couple of stuffed Cornish hens for your grandmother, vegetarian chili for you, an
d a few other small items.

  “Thank you. That’s very thoughtful of you. I’ll put them in the kitchen.” Kali reached for one of the shopping bags.

  “Oh, no,” said her father-in-law. “You lead; I’ll carry.”

  Mitzi glanced into the living room. “Hmmm. I didn’t realize she had such a formal house.”

  She and Al followed Kali past the dining room, through the dim hallway, then into the kitchen. It seemed to Kali that Mitzi was taking in all the details. Kali wondered if her mother-in-law noticed the residual smell of smoke, not quite masking a musty odor, like from a leak that hadn’t completely dried.

  Al put the shopping bags down on the table, glancing at the sketchpad, pencils, and the sketch Kali had torn out.

  Kali gathered up her things and put them on the étagère beside a stack of mail.

  “I see you’re getting a little time for your own work,” Al said.

  “A little.”

  Mitzi began unpacking the shopping bags.

  “I can do that.” Kali reached around her mother-in-law.

  “No, no,” Mitzi said. “I’ve got it.” She opened the door to the refrigerator and put the large glass jar filled with chili on one of the almost empty shelves. “Looks like we got here just in time.”

  “I haven’t had a chance to shop.”

  “Oh, angel. I wasn’t blaming you. Of course you haven’t. That’s why we came.”

  Al cleared his throat and pushed his sparse white hair back over his bald pate. He and Mitzi exchanged a look.

  “Oh, what the hell,” Mitzi said, slamming the refrigerator door. “That’s not the real reason. The food’s a ploy. Not that we wouldn’t have brought it anyway.”

  “Kali, honey,” Al said. “We’re worried.”

  So they were here about Seth.

  “I remember when Mitzi and I were first married.” Al sat down on a kitchen chair. It creaked beneath his weight. “I was doing my residency and not getting much sleep. Believe me, when you’re physically exhausted, it’s hard to be patient and understanding.” He tugged on the pink ribbon and opened the cake box. “I came home from the hospital one night and—”