Kindergarten

by Peter Rushforth

  THE LITTLE boy and the girl, who was even younger, stood hand in hand at the edge of an immense dark forest, towering high above them, dressed in the fashion of the 1930s, the little girl with an elaborately woven shawl around her shoulders. They filled most of the picture, standing in the centre of the scene. The girl was looking in front of her, into the forest, and seemed frightened. The boy was looking over his shoulder, back the way he had come, looking straight into the face of anyone looking at the picture. The details were as intensely observed as in a Victorian genre painting, and the boy’s open, unguarded face could be studied in the detailed way that one could only give to a face in a painting or a photograph, or the face of someone who was loved, and who returned that love. He looked as though he were trying to memorise what was behind him. A few crumbs of bread were lying on the ground just behind him. On the outer side of the two children were the shadowy figures of adults, enclosing them, grasping their arms, and leading them away.

  CORRIE was Lilli Danielsohn’s grandson, the grandson of somebody famous, somebody who had been forgotten and was being remembered again.

  There had been a revival of interest in Lilli’s work over the past year. There was an illustrated article in one of the Sunday newspaper colour magazines. A large-format colour paperback, The Paintings of Lilli Danielsohn, one of a series of art books, had been published some months earlier, and there were new editions of several of her books. Next year, another firm was producing Lilli Danielsohn greeting cards and posters, and there would be a Lilli Danielsohn calendar.

  It was part of a fashion at this time, a nostalgic return to a rural past. In clothes, interior design, food, perfection seemed to be a re-creation of an idealised country cottage: tiny floral designs, simple colours, uncluttered interiors. There was a retreat from the present into the childhoods of another age, the illustrations from Victorian and Edwardian children’s books.

  Safe inside the ordered silence, people seemed to believe that the world beyond the window-panes would be sun-filled cornfields, empty of all but birdsong.

  two

  “FITCHER’S BIRD” was the first story from the Brothers Grimm to be illustrated by Lilli Danielsohn. The book was published in Berlin in 1929, the same year as Emil and the Detectives.

  ONCE there was a magician who could assume the appearance of an ordinary poor man. In this form he begged from door to door, and took away pretty girls. No one knew where he took them, or what happened to them. They were never seen again.

  One day he knocked on the door of a man who had three pretty young daughters. He looked exactly like a poor old beggar, with a basket on his back, as if to carry away any food or other gifts given to him. He begged for just a tiny bite of food, and the eldest daughter, moved for pity, came out to give him a piece of bread. He touched her once, gently, and she was compelled to climb into his basket. At once he sped away like the wind, leaving no tracks, and took her into the heart of a dark pathless forest, where his house was hidden.

  It was a lovely house, and he surrounded her with everything she desired. He said, “You will be happy with me for the rest of your days, my love, for I have given you everything you can ever wish for.”

  Seven days later he said to her, “I must go on a journey, and leave you by yourself for a few days. Here are all the keys of the house. You may go anywhere in the house, and look at everything there is, but you must not go into one room, the room which is opened by this little key. If you go into this room, you will die, my love.”

  He also gave her a white egg, and said, “You must also protect this egg very carefully for me. You must carry it around with you at all times, for grave misfortune would result if you were to lose it.”

  He gave her the keys and the egg; and she promised to follow his instructions exactly. She watched him leave, and then began to explore the house, from room to room, from the cellars to the attic, looking closely at everything. The house was rich with silver and gold, and as she walked through the gleaming quiet rooms she thought that she had never seen such beauty.

  Finally, she came to the forbidden door of the room she must not enter. She thought she would just walk past it, but she began to wonder what was behind that door. It was a door like any other door. She examined the little key carefully. It was a key like any other key. She put the key in the keyhole, turned it only a little, and the door was open.

  What did she see inside that room?

  An enormous bloody bowl stood in the middle of the room, piled with the dead bodies of human beings, hacked to pieces. Beside the bowl was a wooden chopping-block, and an axe which gleamed as brightly as the gold had done. She was so terrified that she let the egg fall from her hand into the blood-filled bowl. She quickly pulled it out, and tried to wipe the blood off with the corner of her dress, but the blood would not be removed. All day she washed and scrubbed, but the blood remained on the egg.

  After seven days, the magician returned from his journey, and the first thing he did was to ask for the keys and the egg. She gave them to him, but she was trembling, and there were tears in her eyes. He saw immediately, by the bloodstains, that she had been in the forbidden room.

  “You have been into the forbidden room against my will,” he said quietly. “Now you shall go back into it against your own will. Your life is over.” Calmly, he threw her to the floor, dragged her by her long hair, cut her head off on the wooden chopping-block, and hacked her body to pieces, so that her blood ran along the ground. Then he threw the pieces of her body into the bowl with all the others.

  “Now I will go for the second daughter,” said the magician, and again he went to the house in the form of a poor old beggar, and begged for just a tiny bite of food. The second daughter, moved for pity, came out to give him a piece of bread, and he caught her as he had caught the first, by touching her once, gently, and then carrying her away.

  The same thing happened to her as had happened to her

  sister.

  She was left with the keys and the egg, and opened the door of the forbidden room. She paid for it with her life when the magician returned.

  The magician then went and brought the third daughter.

  Seven days later he said to her, “I must go on a journey and leave you by yourself for a few days.” He gave her the keys and the egg, and gave her the same instructions as he had given her two sisters.

  The third daughter was thoughtful and intelligent. When the magician had gone, she hid the egg away very carefully, and then began to explore the house. Finally, she opened the door of the forbidden room.

  What did she see inside that room?

  Both her beloved sisters lay heaped there in the bloody bowl, murdered, and hacked to pieces. Weeping, she began to gather the pieces of their bodies together, and lay them out in order on the floor: the head, the body, the arms, and the legs. When all the pieces were lying together, they began to move, and the bodies were made whole again. The two sisters opened their eyes, and were alive once more. Then all three kissed and embraced each other very lovingly.

  After seven days, the magician returned from his journey, and the first thing he did was to ask for the keys and the egg. There was no trace of any bloodstains on the egg, and he said, “You have passed my test: You shall be my bride.”

  He no longer had any power over her, and had to do whatever she told him.

  “I shall be your bride,” she said, “but you must first take a gift of gold to my father and mother, and carry it yourself upon your back in your basket. I will remain here, and prepare our wedding-feast.”

  She ran to her sisters, whom she had hidden away in a little secret chamber, and said, “The time has come when you can be saved. The magician himself will carry you home again, but as soon as you are home, send help to save me.”

  She hid both her sisters in the basket, and covered them over with gold, so that they were quite hidden. She then called for the magician, and said to him, “Here is the gold you are to take to my father and mother. C
arry the basket to them. I shall be looking after you through my little window, and I shall see if you stop on the way to sit and rest.”

  The magician pulled the basket on to his back, and began to walk away with it through the forest, though it weighed him down so heavily that the sweat poured from him. After a time, he was so tired that he sat down, and wished to rest, but as soon as he did this, one of the sisters in the basket cried out, “I am looking through my little window, and I can see that you have stopped. You must go on again at once.”

  He thought it was his bride who was talking to him, got to his feet, and began to walk on.

  He had walked a little further, when he felt tired again, and sat down, but the other sister immediately cried out, “I am looking through my little window, and I can see that you have stopped. You must go on again at once.”

  Every time he paused, or tried to sit down, the sisters cried this out, and he was compelled to move onwards. Finally, groaning and breathless, he arrived at the parents’ house, with the gold, and the two sisters.

  In the house in the forest, the magician’s bride prepared the wedding-feast, and sent invitations to all the magician’s friends.

  Then she took a skull with its grinning teeth, put rich jewellery around it, flowers in its eye-sockets, and decked it with a garland, and carried it upstairs to her little window, so that it looked as if it were looking out. Then she cut open the feather-bed, covered herself in honey, and rolled herself in the feathers until she looked like a strange and wonderful bird, and could not be recognised.

  As she walked away from the house and through the forest, she met the magician’s friends on their way to the wedding-feast. They asked her:

  “Fitcher’s bird, how did you come to be here?”

  “I have come from Fitcher’s house, quite near.”

  “Where is the young bride, and what is she doing?”

  “From cellar to attic all’s sparkling and new,

  And from her little window she’s looking at you.”

  Further along in the forest she met the magician, who was coming slowly back from her parents’ house. He asked her the same questions as the others:

  “Fitcher’s bird, how did you come to be here?”

  “I have come from Fitcher’s house, quite near.”

  “Where is the young bride, and what is she doing?”

  “From cellar to attic all’s sparkling and new,

  And from her little window she’s looking at you.”

  The magician looked up, and saw the disguised skull in the window. He thought it was his bride, and called up to her. Then he and all his friends went into the house for the wedding-feast.

  At this moment, the brothers and all the relatives of the bride arrived, sent to save her by her sisters. They locked all the doors of the house, and closed all the shutters, so that no one could escape, and set fire to it.

  The magician, and all his friends, perished in the flames.

  three

  LILLI DANIELSOHN’s illustration for “Fitcher’s Bird” was a water-colour, a double-page spread of a quiet interior flooded with warm light, a meticulous representation of a middle-class German bedroom in the late 1920s. On the extreme right of the picture, a beautiful dark-haired girl, the second sister, was beginning to open a door set into the bedroom wall. The curtains over the window were about to billow outwards into the room as the door opened. Plants on the window-ledge, a carved table, an oil-lamp, the individual threads in a woven bed-cover.

  Beyond the bedroom door, unseen and unrecorded, was the mutilated body of her murdered sister. No blood seeped beneath the door into the image of domestic peace. In her left hand the girl held the fragile egg, which, when stain with blood, would mean that her life was over. Her face, in intense close-up, the eyes very large, did not look towards the forbidden room, but gazed out of the picture, towards the onlooker. She was very young.

  AFTER CORRIE had poured the boiling water into the teapot, he sat down to wait for a while before pouring out the tea.

  The Kate Greenaway playing-cards Mum had fixed on the fridge door were still there. The six of diamonds had a picture of three little boys at the entrance to a churchyard. We’re all jolly boys, and we’re coming with a noise. Mum.

  He stared at the painted enamel eggs in the egg-cups on the pine dresser as he poured milk, and then tea, into Lilli’s teacup, and poured out some orange-juice for Matthias. The nearest one to him was of two boys in sailor suits carrying a model yacht.

  He too the cup and the orange-juice through into the sun lounge. The sun lounge ran the full length of the back of their house and Lilli’s, and their kitchen and living-room both opened into it. He liked to hear the rain rattling against the glass roof. His parents had always referred to it as the sun lounge—ludicrous though that term was on a day like this one—perhaps thinking that the word “conservatory” had grandiose overtones, appropriate though it might be in an Edwardian house. Jo, his eleven-year-old younger brother, was more accurate when he called it the grot-hole. The floor was littered with Matthias’s toys.

  He pushed his way through carefully, bricks and model cars rattling across the tiles. He noticed a model soldier stuck in the soil of a plant pot near Baskerville’s basket and wondered how it had got there. They had never been allowed toy guns, or any toys connected with war or war-games.

  He peered through the glass, masking his eyes against the reflected light. He saw a torch approaching through the gravestones in the burial-ground, ad the pointed hood of Jo’s anorak as he skipped exaggeratedly along the path.

  The connecting door between the two houses was in the sun lounge, and he walked through into Lilli’s house. The floor of her sun lounge was equally cluttered.

  Matthias, his three-year-old youngest brother, was there, kneeling on a chair up against the table near Lilli’s hand-loom, leaning over a painting with immense concentration. His nose was dull green with dried paint. He was three years old, three feet high, and weighed three stone, a pleasing symmetry which Jo regarded as a strong argument against metrication.

  The smell of cooking came through the open door from the kitchen.

  “How’s Horrible Horace?” Corrie asked, handing him the orange-juice. It was in a covered tumbler, with a little raised rim to drink from. He liked the special little things made for small children.

  Matthias fell back into his chair, and surveyed the overall effect of his painting, like an artist checking his perspective, and then, very seriously, as though he were a French general bestowing an honour, he kissed Corrie on the cheek to thank him for the orange-juice. He was very lavish with his kisses with people he knew well.

  “I’m not Horrible Horace!” he said.

  “Murderous Matty? What have you done with my grandmother?”

  “Making a German Christmas! I’m going to stay up late tonight!”

  Matthias’s voice always became very high and shrill when he was excited or amused.

  “I bet you’ve eaten her. I can see a bit of her shoe in your teeth.”

  “What big teeth you’ve got!” Matthias shouted, adding, a moment later, “I’m not hungry.”

  Corrie walked round to look at Matthias’s painting. There was a preponderance of green, applied in thick vertical strokes, and a large red blob at one side.

  “What is it a picture of?” he asked.

  “A havverglumpus,” Matthias replied, with withering contempt. At least Corrie had looked at the picture the right way up this time.

  He glanced around for somewhere safe to put Lilli’s cup of tea, away from Matthias’s paintbrushes. He noticed that her easel was out, at the edge of the sun lounge along from the loom, and wondered why Matthias wasn’t using that. He eventually placed the cup on the bench in front of the loom.

  This was the day when, in term-time, he and Jo came after school to have tea with Lilli. It was a tradition that had started some months ago, on a day free of orchestra practice and other school commitments, and they ha
d carried it through into the holidays. Lilli would set out the table in the dining-room with flowers, a hand-woven cloth, and her best china, and they would spend an hour or so talking about the week at school, playing some of the new pieces they had learned on their instruments. He had grown to need those times with Lilli. Today they had suspended the custom, as Lilli was preparing the dining-room for her Christmas, but he had promised to bring her some tea.

  He went further along the sun lounge, and then through the door into the living-room. Lilli’s house still had two separate rooms downstairs, the dining-room at the front, facing out on to Dunwich Green, and the living-room at the back. In their house the two rooms had been knocked into one, and they had one long room running the full depth of the house, with an arch in the middle where there had once been a wall. Lilli’s living-room was still waiting to be redecorated, bare and echoing, like a room in an empty house, the floor-boards uncarpeted, and the furniture under dust-covers.

  He went through into the hall, passed the dining-room door, and picked up the evening paper from the floor beneath the letter-box. “CAROLS AT SIEGE SCHOOL.” The subheadings in the report stood out: “POLITICS” “TERRORISTS”; “HOSTAGES”; “DEMANDS.” It seemed as good a summary as he had ever read of modern life in Western Europe.

  He knocked on the dining-room door.

  “Tea is served, modom.”

  “Thank you, my good man,” Lilli said as she came out, using the phrase that Jo normally used when Corrie did something for him.

  He offered her his arm, and they went through the kitchen into the sun lounge. Matthias sat sucking at the orange-juice as though he were plugged into the tumbler. He was always entirely self-absorbed when he was dealing with food or drink.

  The sound of the rain on the sun-lounge roof was louder than it had been all afternoon. There was to be a carol service round the tree on Dunwich Green at eight-thirty. Jo was going to sing a solo.