Keeper of the Mill

by Mary Anne Kelly

  Claire looked at him closely. As far as she knew, this had always been the case. And not just in Isolde’s mind.

  “Never mind,” he said more gently. “If it makes her feel better to think that.” He shrugged. “Let her. What does it hurt?”

  Claire smiled, but she wasn’t so sure. She had seen Hans’s adoring face when he’d welcomed Isolde that first day she’d arrived in Munich. That was not the expression of someone making someone else feel good.

  A gust of wind brought with it the smell of nearby black currant blossoms. They both inhaled.

  “Blacky,” Claire said suddenly, “would you know where the old forester’s house would be? It should be right in Diessen.”

  “I suppose one could find out,” he said. “Whatever for?”

  “Someone I know lived there once, long ago, before the war. The smell of currants reminds me of something she said.”

  “Before the war this was mostly holiday homes for the rich,” he said, as if that would eliminate anyone she would know.

  “Yes. Well. Can you think of anyone we could ask? Oh, wait.” Claire returned to Iris’s living room and her tale of escape. What had she said? Something about a church nearby.

  “Do you know what the smell of black currant blossoms reminds me of?” Blacky reminisced.

  “No, what?”

  “Turkey. Remember?”

  “I certainly remember Turkey.” She smiled back, not connecting the smell with that land at all. “Didn’t we finally find a new windshield for our van in Turkey? The one I crashed in India?”

  “Of course not! How can you think that? That was Iran! Herrgott, how can you confuse the two? You never took notice of anything! Not anything!”

  Suddenly she remembered. Iris had said there had been no moon that night, you couldn’t even see the … the … Marian Münster, that was it. “Marian Münster!” she cried out loud. “That was it!”

  “Was what?” Blacky was still furious about the windshield Claire had crashed out driving through a roadblock north of Rishikesh. It had taken months to get another. Baffled, he pushed his glasses up angrily.

  “Oh, let’s go there, can’t we? I just know I could find it from there.”

  “Find what?”

  “The house. The house Iris von Lillienfeld was happy in.”

  “I’m not coming with you on one of your Catholic guilt seminars. Remember in Turkey you made me sit with you on that godforsaken bench, where the Mother of God was supposed to have landed? Do you remember?” he demanded.

  “Yes, I remember. It was one of the nicest moments we had. And it was the three Marys. Our Lady, Martha’s mother Mary, and Mary Magdalene was there too. They’d been condemned to certain death, sent off in a boat to die. They’d been allowed to take the corpse of Ann, the Virgin’s mother. But they landed safely instead on the far-off Turkish shore. Side. Or Foça. I forget. It might well have been Ephesus. Anyway, that’s why they always say where there are three Marys, there’s sure to be fine weather. No, that was a wonderful place. Holy. The Virgin died there, you know, or was assumed to heaven. It wasn’t godforsaken at all.”

  “It was a seedy, empty beach. With a filthy tourist-hungry villager boy who had a handy legend.”

  “There just weren’t any monuments! And that boy hadn’t asked us for a penny. He was just proud of the history of his place!”

  “There were no monuments because nothing of note had ever happened there.”

  “It was the scene of a miracle, that’s all.”

  “If that were so, your industrious Catholic exploiters would have built some moneymaking fiberglass grotto there, you can be very sure. With statues and plastic holy cards for sale.”

  “You know, you are such a hypocrite. You love that sort of place if it’s Hindu or Buddhist. Anything like that that’s geographically and culturally removed from you is poignant and spiritual, but put a Christian anointing on it, and you, with your sophisticated, self-hating, witch-hunting little heart, condemn it. Why do you live in Christian Bavaria anyway, if you hate everything its culture holds sacred? You are detestable.”

  They mulled this conclusion with furrowed, but not unhappy, brows.

  “If you come with me,” Claire proposed, “I’ll tell you a secret.”

  “All right.”

  “On second thought I think I’d better go alone.”

  “Yes, but now you’ve got my curiosity up. I’m coming with.”

  “There will be nothing to see,” she warned, then added, “I mean nothing monumental.”

  “I’ll just give Isolde my credit card.” Blacky stood. “Then we can take our time.”

  They found the Marian Münster easily enough, just walked steadily toward its rococo dome. The forester’s house was not so easily discovered. No one on the road knew of anything like it. Having Blacky along wasn’t such a good idea either. He was hot and thirsty and wanted his beer. Claire was ready to go ring any doorbell, which would have infuriated Claire, when an old man hobbled down the path.

  “Yes, yes,” he told her in Bavarian so thick it sounded akin to Olde English. He knew the forester’s house, but they were on the wrong side of the Marian Münster. They would have to go down and then go up the other side.

  “Well, that’s it,” Blacky proclaimed. “There will be no time now. And you haven’t told me a secret, you fraud. You were just trying to entice me.”

  “You go on back,” Claire said. “I’ve come this far, I really want to see it.”

  “No! I want my beer. It’s hot and I’ve had enough.”

  “Yes. It’s important to me.”

  “Isolde will think we’ve run off.”

  “Oh, let her be jealous, you old scaredy-cat. She’ll like you more. Come on. It’s not as if there were any truth to it.”

  “No,” he insisted, “I won’t worry her.”

  Claire felt a pang of sorrow. “She’s a lucky woman,” she said, watching him turn to go. He started down the hill. She watched him raise his wrist above his head in jangling farewell.

  “And what makes you so sure,” she heard him say, “there would be no truth to it?”

  The house was brown and winsome, old wood kept up. A whitewashed part had been added on. It was shuttered and window-boxed and adorable. A row of well-tended rosebushes led up to it behind a dark-brown picket fence. There were five different fruit trees, all bearing the starts of their fruit. If you turned, you could look out over the Ammersee. A school had been built on the land next door, but it was set very far back, and there was a boundary of tall pines between them. Real German Hänsel-and-Gretel pines. With wind in the tops. A pebbled walk to the cottage was raked and lined with pansies. Claire opened the latch and walked cautiously up the path. So this was where Iris had lived. She touched the corner of the house. Such a fine house. She could hear the faint laughter of Iris’s long-ago mother. But it wasn’t Iris’s mother. A happy family of intent Bavarians sat comfortably at the table pushed back from the window. They devoured their weekend lunch of Leberknödelsuppe and Sonnenblumenbrot. They didn’t see her, so engrossed and self-secure they were. So safe. It was then she saw the dwarf Japanese maple, gnarled and grown, still there.

  A shiver of heartsick despair overwhelmed Claire. There was nothing to do. Openmouthed, she took off, lurching out the well-kept gate. She staggered down the rolling hill, past no one. It was so quiet. All she could hear were her steps and the penetrating drone of invisible bees.

  Claire found them boisterously shouting to her from a rowboat. Blacky, imperious at the helm, gave directions to which no one paid any mind. Puffin had the oars but thrust them futilely upward and sideways into the bright air. Isolde lounged, legs up on the sides. She took the sun. She and Puffin were both naked from the waist up. They were all, no doubt, drunk.

  Mara, crunched into the corner bench but upright, held on with both hands. She seemed to be trying not to be ill.

  “Da ist sie,” Isolde hollered. “Fräulein Soldatenstiefel!,” Miss S
oldierboots.

  Claire waved, glad to see them, and took their picture. Blacky pointed her to the beer garden at the water’s edge farther on and she nodded agreement, not hearing a word. Mara stood up and stepped, decisively, fully clothed, into the chilly water. This, to everyone’s surprise, turned out to be shallow. She stood, woozy but better, her feet sunk ankle-deep in muck. Blacky, delighted, threw her a rope, and they towed her to the shore. Claire took off her own boots and hiked up her skirt and edged out to give her a hand. She moved with squeamish uncertainty. Each step sucked her in. Mara stood waiting for her.

  She looked very good, Claire thought, all wet, her perm electrified in stiff, Medusa-like coils, the tips lit by the sun, her mouth relaxed at last by the drama of her resolute flamboyance.

  “C’mon, I’ll shoot you now, if you don’t mind,” she said.

  “Okay.” Mara hummed to herself while Claire carefully adjusted her aperture. The tidy one-masters behind them rocked on the waves from the passing ferry.

  Puffin watched them from the boat. He was standing and holding on to his feeble stomach. He never should have had that Leberkäs this morning.

  “I’m going to get her out of that water,” Isolde decided. “She’ll catch pneumonia like that.” She struggled up out of the boat onto the nearing dock and strode toward them, leisurely reinserting herself into her blouse as she marched.

  “I just wish …” Claire narrowed her eyes. “Oh, Isolde, good. Could you sort of just, here, just sprinkle water at her, just lightly. No. Yes. Yes, that’s it.”

  Isolde, always happy to be part of the creative effort, took over the special effects and sprinkled just the right amount of droplets onto their movie star. She knew what she was doing. Hadn’t she worked with the best photographers when she was young? She could teach Claire a thing or two. She stood humped and alert, ready with her handful of water, set to go at the cry of “Los!”

  Claire had to admire her. She did, wondering slightly, all the while, why they were still friends. Was she Isolde’s audience? Her observer from whose reactions Isolde could read how far she’d come, or how different from her she was? Because Isolde’s charm was different. Besides just the obvious money thing. Hers was Magic. Making people feel the moment they were in her presence that they were at a sort of party. That they ought to have a drink. Why not? The gray of everyday skies was no longer just gray, it became, in Isolde’s exclusive aura, romantic, meaningful, superbly European. For example, if you were broiling a fish and Isolde came in, she would light up, glow with the opportunity of creativity, elbow you dismissively away with your meager pat of butter. You were assigned the job of shutting off the TV, finding a good tape while she took over. Hauling soy and white wine and garlic from the shelves, she would pull out her sharp silver nail scissors and snip parsley and cilantro from the herb pots. “They’ll grow thicker if you use them, Liebling.” She would hum, and you would find yourself humming along, no longer tired, alert and alive and as pink-cheeked as she was. So your humble evening of fish and a little white potato on the sofa in front of the news became “Poisson Magnifique,” enjoyed at the table with a cloth. Whether you liked it or not.

  Isolde never cooked without a phone in her ear, and before you knew it, there were three more people on the way, and you found yourself dispatched to the bistro for another couple bottles of white wine, costly and make sure it’s cold.

  “Whoops!” Isolde guffawed, and Claire jumped back to the present and away from the spray of water, worried for her lens. She slipped on a stone and almost lost the camera, then righted herself. They all had a good laugh. There was something wrong with Mara’s skin anyway. It was all mottled. Then Claire realized Mara was crying. Really crying. Isolde put her arms around her and huddled her out of the water.

  “Now you’ve done it,” she scolded Claire. “This is all your fault. You go too far. You don’t know when enough is enough. The girl is shivering with cold!”

  Mara sniffled in commiseration. They stalked out of the lake, leaving Claire momentarily paralyzed with the fear that she would never be able to pull her sunken feet out of the sucking muck, but she did, then ran-sank-ran-sank-ran-sank with her arms above her head until she got to the other side of the spectrum of discomfort: the sharp vicious white pebbles of agony that stabbed her winter-coddled feet.

  Isolde was toweling Mara’s hair dry with her unraveled skirt. They ignored her, preferring their intimate basking in each other’s attention. Claire removed her own heavy sweater and broke through this ball of privacy as she gave it to Mara. Mara managed a thin smile. They were creating a stir sitting there on the ground until Isolde glared haughtily and long at the dazzled picnickers. So successful was Isolde’s mean look that it was the picnickers who got up and moved subserviently away.

  Mara and Isolde had their cigarettes.

  “Feeling better?” Claire asked.

  “No,” Mara said, and they all realized at once that they were none of them feeling well. They were tired. This fabulous weather was such a stress. Coming. Going. They huddled together against the impertinent sun, the two puffing an umbrella of smoke around themselves.

  “I’m still not over my abortion,” Mara confided, plucking at her hair.

  “Tch.” Isolde smoothed the ground beside her.

  “It was such an ordeal. The thing is, I don’t think it went very well. I mean, they got it out all right, but then they couldn’t stop my bleeding.” She threw her arms into the air. “I mean, it wouldn’t stop.” She leaned closer. “They thought they were going to lose me. Really. The doctor told me. After. They had some time of it, he said. I mean, people still die during operations in this day and age. You would think they wouldn’t, but they do. So you never know.”

  Isolde scratched her cheek. “How far along were you?”

  “Four months.”

  “Ach.” Isolde nodded. “That’s why.”

  Claire covered her own belly with her arms and blinked away the sudden assault of sadness. The baby she and Johnny had lost had not been much older than that. They had been battling as usual. Not about the baby, that was something they both wanted. She’d been screaming at Johnny just before she’d begun to bleed. He never did a thing, she’d yelled at him. She hated him, she’d yelled. She’d never said that before. And then she’d started to hemorrhage.

  When Claire awoke in the hospital, a doctor had stood beside her bed. She hadn’t known this one. His pocket had been full of pens, and her eyes had tried to focus on them. She hadn’t been able to understand what it was he’d been saying.

  “And what we want to know”—he’d pressed her wrist to reawaken her—“is whether you would be prepared to hand the fetus over for experimental purposes. If you would just sign this release …”

  She had fallen back into the oblivion of drugged unconsciousness and tuned him out. That was how she’d found out that she’d lost her baby. That had been a good two years ago, and she still couldn’t bear to talk about it. She saw herself once again as she walked down the broad sweep of hospital entrance stairs. There was her family waiting there in the car for her, their faces wanting her to be well. To be theirs again. Her empty arms were at her sides.

  “You didn’t want the baby?” Claire heard Isolde confront Mara.

  Mara shrugged. “What could I do? He didn’t want it.”

  ‘He,’ Claire realized, was Temple.

  “And,” Mara continued, “it wasn’t because of that thing I’d had with Puffin, either.”

  “What thing?” Isolde asked.

  “Oh, that little fling. It meant nothing, really. It was over almost before it got started. And the timing was off. So the baby couldn’t have been Puffin’s.”

  “You slept with Puffin?” Claire said.

  “It was really just a ploy of mine to come between them. I was always jealous of Puffin. They were so close, you see.”

  “I can’t believe you slept with Puffin!” Isolde said.

  “Oh, Puffin’s all right,�
� Mara said. “He even talked to Temple for me. He told him it was his duty to marry me. Or at least stand by me. But I wouldn’t have had to be married. I’m not like that.”

  “Interesting,” Isolde breathed.

  Mara went on. “I told him, I said, ‘If you didn’t want me to get pregnant, you should have opened your mouth instead of your zipper. You should have told me you didn’t want a family.’ Oh, it was awful. We were staying with his friends on Wienerplatz. It’s funny, the things you remember. After I came home from the hospital, the flat was empty. I thought I’d take a bath. A long soak, you know. I must have drifted off. I heard someone let himself into the flat and I—I was startled, like guilty. I jumped from the bath. There was no towel, so I ran to our room. It was Temple. I was relieved until I saw that he was furious. He was so angry. I couldn’t understand him at first. He kept talking about how we were guests in this house and how I’d left a great trail of water all over the parquet. The two of us just stood there, in someone else’s place. Me naked and him dressed and furious, looking down and down and down at the great puddles of water I’d left on their beautiful waxed floor. Their poor floor.”

  “You should have had it anyway,” Isolde said finally. “He would have come around.”

  Claire stared at her. What good would that advice do now?

  “No.” Mara shook her head sadly. “I didn’t want him that way. I didn’t even want a baby, really, I just wanted him and I thought … I thought … God. Listen to me! How idiotic I sound. I thought it would make him love me again. And what happened? It wound up making him hate me.”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t hate you,” Claire said, hating herself for hoping it was so.

  “Oh, he does.” Tears ran freely down her cheeks. “He thinks I am the reason for all his troubles. He’s as much as said so. And look at my face. Can you blame him? Every time I come out in the sun it gets worse.” She pushed her hair away from her skin. A butterfly of dark pigment made a grotesque stain across her features. Now that the makeup was all rubbed off, there was no hiding it.

  “The mask of pregnancy,” Isolde said. “Some women get it from the pill.”