The Doll’s Alphabet

by Camilla Grudova

  Edward Little

  Paul

  Susan

  Joyce

  Beatrice

  Louisa

  Jane

  Juniper

  Wilbur

  The “Edward Little” frightened him as much as his reflection, Edward-in-the-Mirror, did. He took coins when he could from Bernadette’s pile, to prevent Edward Little/Wilbur/Jane as best he could.

  He never added to it. Never.

  One baby and they could be rid of Horace, two and the Child would have to go too—but first the machine, or else they wouldn’t be able to afford it, Bernadette said. She wanted her baby.

  There was the Child, wasn’t she good enough, said Edward, wouldn’t she do? He had dreamt of the sewing machine many times, he was convinced Bernadette and the machine would somehow become one being, a silver needle coming out of Bernadette’s mouth where her teeth should have been. In his dreams, he lay flat on her lap, and she sewed his hands to his feet and so forth. Her neck bent her face almost touching her thighs, but for Edward in-between.

  Edward was worried that Horace would interfere with the Child, that was a great enough responsibility. Horace once said to Edward, of the Child: “She got no hairs on.” Horace told Edward he had a number of girlfriends, and that he sodomized them, it was the only clever way to do a woman, he said. Edward followed his advice, though it made Bernadette weep.

  The bathroom had a large, long skylight, it was horrifically cold. Edward hated to use it, and so kept a chamber pot underneath the bed. He often said out loud that he would be more inclined to bathe if he had a fur coat to slip into afterwards. Yes, he dreamed of someday owning a long, brown fur coat, to wear over his suit. He would no longer sleep in the bed, but simply take off his coat wherever and lie down on it. He would sew treats into the lining (peanuts, gum, playing cards, toffee) and cut them out in the middle of the night when no one else was awake using a tiny pair of scissors no one else would know about, and he would keep them under the loose floorboard in the hall which was his secret. Ideally, Bernadette would use her sewing machine savings to buy him the coat, it was the only way he could ever have one. The last Christmas she had been frugal, she was saving her money for the machine, and gave Edward the same gifts she gave to Horace and the Child: boxes of cherry-flavored chocolates, and boxes of cigarettes.

  For Bernadette, he had bought a side of bacon and a kettle and for Horace, a box of licorice wheels and a toy pocket watch, a piece of thin metal with a paper face and hands that didn’t move on it. Horace was greatly impressed, real watches were the most expensive thing, a fake one gave him a feeling of status, though it told him nothing. Fake clocks and pocket watches were sold everywhere, cheap popular things, most children had fake pocket watches like Horace, who put his in his suit pocket and often pretended to check the time on it with such seriousness Edward could not laugh at him. He deeply regretted the licorice, as it turned Horace’s spittle and boogers a dark brown. The dried snot on his wall looked like crushed flies.

  Edward had bought the Child a set of paper dolls for Christmas. She didn’t dress them, but put each individual piece up on her wall, like a wallpaper design, surrounding Rudolph with hats, trousers, and people in their underwear. Horace bought her a toy piano. He didn’t buy anyone else a present, not even Bernadette. It was an upright white plastic children’s piano with colorful music notes and birds painted on the sides. Whichever key you pressed, it played “Pop Goes the Weasel.”

  Edward became fearful that the piano would attract tiny men the way a piece of cheese left on a countertop attracted mice, or perhaps even that a tiny man lived inside it and would come out at night. He went out to buy rodenticide. There was a risk the Child would eat the rodenticide and become sick, he knew, but he had to distribute it around the apartment. He knew of an exterminator’s shop, with a bright pink sign. The exterminator’s children were covered in scratches, and drooled. One of them wore a small square cage over its head. They hung around outside the shop, using brooms to beat the dead rats, pigeons, and raccoons nailed across the shop front. Beside the exterminator’s shop there was a bakery, the window display a row of green and pink blancmange. Edward bought himself a pink blancmange, which they wrapped in newspaper, and tied with string. It was covered in grey marks when he unwrapped it. He ate the whole thing in his and Bernadette’s bedroom with the door closed, he did not want to share it.

  The box the rat poison came in wasn’t well made, it had left a fine dust of poison on Edward’s fingers, and of course he did not use a spoon to eat the blancmange, but sat it on his lap and scooped handfuls into his mouth. Bernadette had to feed him a mixture of baking soda and vinegar when he showed signs of poisoning. The blancmange came up like bits of organs no one ever hoped to see, pink and gelatinous. The sight of Edward throwing up in the kitchen made the Child also throw up, thick yellow spittle, three black buttons, and a penny.

  Edward retired to bed and stayed there longer than necessary.

  When he was better, he wrapped the piano up with newspaper and string, put it in a bag, and threw it into a canal. Bernadette cleaned up all the poison.

  The note was delivered to Bernadette at eleven fifteen the next morning. She had been at work since eight, in the variety store. It was a Sunday, and she had sold a great deal of cigarettes.

  DARLING COME HOME QUICKLY! SOMETHING

  DREADFUL HAS HAPPENED.

  She paid the post person, shuttered the shop, and told her superior, who was unpacking boxes of mint cakes in the storage room, that she must leave immediately, as something dreadful had happened to her Edward.

  Edward lay on the floor beside their bed, half covered by a blanket. He blinked when he saw Bernadette.

  “Bernadette,” he said, “I have died.”

  It was true.

  Bernadette wept for a while, sitting on the bed, before leaving the apartment to use a telephone to make the funeral arrangements and find a church where he could lie. An ash-colored suit was purchased at Edward’s request, and flowers, and food.

  The Child and Horace did not know what to do. The Child cried, while Horace said, over and over again, “A shame.”

  The Child was not a child, she was just small. She was older than Edward, Bernadette, and Horace, but kept this to herself, and cried in a most childish manner when Edward said he had died.

  Edward did not cry during his own funeral, but blinked solemnly. His glasses were folded and placed in his jacket collar, but he did not really need them, he could see perfectly fine.

  The Child wore her black suit, and Horace wore a brownish green one he must have purchased for the funeral. Edward had never seen it before, but it certainly was not appropriate for such a serious, sad event—he even had a bright blue kerchief in the top pocket.

  On a table there was a small marbled pound cake, a bowl of foil-covered chocolates, some white bread spread with margarine, and sardines arranged in circles with their tails all meeting in the middle, so they looked like silver flowers. Edward recognized the food, they were all things that could be bought in the shop where Bernadette worked. Bernadette made him up a plate and brought it to him as he was meant to be lying down in the coffin the whole time.

  He hadn’t asked them to line his coffin with fur, and felt a melancholic pride in his own economy. He had always wanted a fur coat, and now he would never have one.

  He put one of the sardines and two of the chocolates from his plate behind his coffin pillow to have for later. All in black, Bernadette resembled a sombre funeral carriage. Her veil was made from a bit of sheer black stocking. She has ruined a pair of stockings to mourn me, thought Edward to himself, and felt loved.

  Bernadette visited him every day after work in the church he was placed in. She brought him two slices of toast with mustard spread on them, his thermos once again filled with tea, and an egg when she could spare it.

  Edward often sent notes to Bernadette such as:

  BRING ME BOILED EGGS AND A THERMOS OF
TEA PLEASE MY DARLING

  When she visited him, Bernadette could see Edward’s large nose and his long thin hands holding a cigarette, poking out of the coffin as soon as she walked into the church basement, where his coffin was, along with many others. There were large boxes of cigarettes, newspapers hanging on sticks, plain toast, a large tea urn full of lukewarm, weak tea. That’s all they were provided with.

  “The newspapers we get are a few days behind, they are donated by charitable persons, I have read them all,” Edward told Bernadette, hinting that she could bring him one of the magazines with colored photos from her shop.

  In the coffin next to his lay a pregnant woman. Her face was covered in warts, her hair was very greasy and cut short, like an upside down brown bowl. Her stomach was very prominent and firm, there were spots on her shirt where her nipples lay.

  “The poor baby, to be born dead,” Bernadette whispered to Edward, and pressed her veil against her cheek to dry the tears that formed. Edward was silent, for he hadn’t noticed the pregnant woman before.

  “Will you fetch me a newspaper from the counter Bernadette, preferably a fresher one?”

  When she returned with the paper in hand, Edward placed it over his head, like a small tent.

  “Tomorrow, may you bring me some fish and toffee Bernadette?” he said, and said no more. She left, sobbing.

  In the church basement where Edward lay, there was a sign made with embroidery that said

  DO NOT PAMPER THE DEAD

  Most of the dead were elderly people who wet their coffins and spat into the newspapers, as they didn’t have hankies.

  The Child visited him just once. She told Edward that she thought her eyes were ruined. Valentino was just a blur of green and grey now, and would he give her some advice on purchasing glasses? Edward advised her against it, saying glasses were unflattering for a woman—he’d hate to see her wear them—and difficult to maintain, they needed to be polished all the time and so forth.

  He wagged a long finger at her.

  “Do not come here by yourself again. Remember you are a vulnerable person.”

  The Child obeyed. She did not come again, though he missed her.

  The last time Bernadette went to visit Edward, she was wearing a pair of men’s boots. Her stocking veil had runs in it, she had not cut herself a new one. He could see little sores all around her mouth.

  She would quit her job at the variety store soon, she said, as she was pregnant. The Child had moved in with an organ player from another cinema. The baby was Horace’s.

  Ah, with small movements of her thighs and hips, a finger slipped from one orifice to the other, she had managed to procure a pregnancy out of Horace, thought Edward. He was paying for half of the sewing machine, it was being delivered later that day, said Bernadette. She would sew nightgowns.

  “With the baby, they won’t move anyone else into the house, it will be just like it was when you were young and lived with your father and mother,” she said. “Now, goodbye, Edward. I won’t have time to visit you.”

  HUNGARIAN SPRATS

  On his first voyage to Europe, Baron Dąmbski had lost his monogrammed leather luggage and all it contained. He was not a Baron, just as his younger brother was not a Count, and his older brother not a Prince, but those were the first names their wealthy industrialist father had given them. His monogram was an intertwined B and D contained in a diamond shape.

  Many of his belongings, including the lost suitcases, were made in Europe. The movement of products back and forth over the oceans gave him a great feeling of anxiety, and every night since the loss of his luggage, he had dreamt of being on a sinking ship stuffed with delicious, alluring things, not knowing what to save. The dream ended with him floating on an Italian Mannerist painting of a long-necked woman, surrounded by whales and octopuses laughing at him.

  The humiliating loss of his possessions and his beloved luggage prevented him from returning to Europe, though he longed for it. One morning, while struggling to open a can of oysters, he hurt his hand with his golden can opener. “Impossible to open without great strain!” he said to himself, and called one of his servants who managed, with some effort, and the bleeding of his fingers, to open the can with a large knife. “How safe my possessions would be from thieves if they were in a can!” Baron exclaimed.

  The canning factory he approached with his idea, the Hungarian Food Company Inc., was owned by a friend of his father. The owner was not Hungarian and nor were his products, but he wanted to evoke the glory of Budapest and the confusion people often had between Hungary and hungry. Behind his desk was a poster of a can with a label depicting a globe on it. Above the can were the words

  CAN THE WHOLE WORLD

  The factory canned: asparagus, turtles, mushrooms, water chestnuts, clams, peas, herrings, sardines, snails, peaches, oysters, ham, anchovies, tuna, eggplant, salmon, white beans, mussels, caviar, pearl onions, pears, rice wrapped in grape leaves, gherkins, pigeon, peppers, bamboo shoots, octopus, pineapple, crab, artichoke hearts, pig hearts, calf hearts, chicken hearts, beets, beef, sausages, apples, duck, corn, livers, carrots, pine apple, soups of all kinds, custard, goat meat, mutton.

  Canning whole calves and turkeys proved to be disastrous, as the meat was too large, the can too big for everything to be cooked and preserved. Canning a whole chicken or a whole piglet in jelly proved very successful.

  The owner of the Hungarian Food Company Inc. wanted to move beyond food, to take in all the world’s chaos, and to spit it out again in uniform shapes. He created a line of novelty toy cans with jack-in-the-box-like spring clowns inside of them instead of food, sold in joke stores.

  Perhaps Baron’s idea could catch on. Secure and discreet luggage, secretive storage—no thief would steal a dented can of sprats, would they? Thus all of Baron’s possessions were canned in sizes ranging up to five pounds, and for extra security, labeled “sprats.” Out of vanity, Baron had a well-known graphic artist design a label in the style fashionable at the time, a nude faun grappling with a fish.

  In his enthusiasm he did not think that he would need anything on the long voyage itself, his cans packed below deck. His beard grew long, he did not take his fur coat off, and he was rumored to be an exotic animal from Central America on its way to a European zoo. Baron’s servant, Otto, had in his modest pigskin suitcase the following: a package of dried apricots, three pairs of underpants, the complete short stories of Tolstoy, a can opener, a razorblade, an extra pair of trousers, a pair of grey socks, and an Italian dictionary. Baron was too proud to borrow the razor or underpants. His clothes were sent to the ship’s laundry facilities daily, and as they were being cleaned, he wandered the ship with his fur coat held firmly shut.

  Otto spent the voyage in dreadful anticipation of having to utilize the can opener hundreds of times under Baron’s gaze in the suite of a London hotel. Baron planned to have his possessions recanned before heading to the continent, and again before heading home. The canning factory in his home country had factory contacts all over Europe, cousins of his—they would discreetly and securely bring his possessions to their factories, where they already had the labels made. Baron had paid them in advance. The Hungarian Food Company Inc. had contacts all over Europe and Baron had limitless pockets.

  Baron waited at his hotel. His metallic luggage, packed in boxes, did not arrive. Instead, through some miscommunication, the boxes of “sprats” were brought to a warehouse, and from there distributed all over Europe for consumption.

  Baron thought to take out newspaper ads calling for the return of all cans, but Otto advised him against it considering the many discreet items within. All over Europe, people opened cans, expecting to find fish, but instead finding the following: a single hanky, a container of licorice-flavored lozenges, silver shirt cuffs, a pocket English-German dictionary, a pocket Polish-Italian dictionary, a pair of opera glasses, silk underpants, a pipe, a set of erotic cards depicting women with exotic animals (lion, elephant, etc.), a sing
le shoe, a tangle of black suspenders which the opener first thought were eels, a box of lambskin condoms, reading spectacles, small golden scissors shaped like a heron, large silver scissors, an eighteenth-century Harlequin figurine, a maroon celluloid dildo, twenty white dress shirts, all in their own cans, which resembled ghosts when pulled out, causing at least five nervous attacks and one death, a bottle of hair oil, a shoe horn, a glass bottle shaped like a coiled snake full of an amber-smelling cologne, tweezers, a toy hippo made out of leather, an umbrella, six fountain pens, cream-colored envelopes tied together with ribbon, sixty sheets of Italian marbled paper, eighty sheets of plain cream paper, a paper knife, a stamp container, a silver and lacquer cigarette case, an ivory ashtray shaped like a swan, a comb, a large silver-backed brush, a small silver-backed brush, a hand mirror, an empty powder jar, a powder puff, a pair of black silk socks (a hundred cans), a pair of mustard-colored socks, a pair of white socks, a pair of blue socks, a pair of salmon-pink socks, a red rubber and brass enema syringe, a pot of anise-flavored toothpaste, a cane that folded into three parts, a sewing kit, a tin of buttons, including ivory buttons, gold buttons and black satin-covered buttons, a retractable gold and ivory back-scratcher in the shape of a dainty hand, a cream waistcoat, a black waistcoat (six cans of each), one pinstripe waistcoat, a black jacket (there were twelve such cans), one tweed jacket, one pinstripe jacket, a pair of black trousers (there were thirty cans of trousers altogether), a pair of pinstripe trousers, a pair of tweed trousers, a soap box with a bar of purple soap inside, a manicure set, a gold matchbox, a pair of black finished binoculars, an oriental silk robe, a pair of white gloves, a pair of brown gloves, a pair of grey gloves, a pair of black gloves, a glove stretcher, a toothbrush in a silver case, a corkscrew, a stiff-bristled clothes brush, a curling iron, an ivory and gilded metal snuff box, a map of Europe, a guide to hotels in London, a hat made out of beaver, a shaving kit, six white bowties, seven black bowties, a paisley bowtie, a red bowtie, an oyster fork, a green wooden mask from Central America with a spider on its nose—the spiders’ legs spreading out across the cheeks like a moustache, the mask was too small for the wide face of Baron so it was purely decorative—a lacquered fold-out shaving mirror, a copper percolator, shoe polish, a beige rubber ball, a ragged topsy-turvy doll, one half with white skin, the other with black, a pistol, a striped knitted cotton swimsuit, a leather-bound edition of The Diary of Countess Françoise Krasinska, written in the final years of the reign of King Augustus III by Klementyna Hoffmanowa, a mahogany stereoscope fitted with a double image of a ballerina, a polished circle of amber with an insect inside, a small table clock, a silver pocket watch, a yellow towel, a green wool blanket, a single slipper (there were six such cans), a magnifying glass, a small rose-colored pillow, a taxidermied black North American squirrel, a watercolor paint set, twenty smallcut squares of watercolor paper, a small black leather notebook with thick paper, a pair of leather and canvas sports boots, a bowler hat, a trilby hat, a straw boater hat, a white cotton vest, a pair of leather mules, a jumper with horn buttons, a black overcoat with a beige fur lining, a dinner jacket (fifteen cans altogether, two per can), a knitted jumper, a peaked cap, a pair of leather sandals, purple silk pajamas, green silk pajamas, yellow silk pajamas, a large cotton nightgown, a bottle of iron tablets, eighteen tie pins and, finally, a tin of oysters, of a much higher grade than those produced by the Hungarian Food Company Inc.