Keeper of the Mill

by Mary Anne Kelly

The pottery was a dense white cement building partially submerged in the ground. It looked like an ivy-covered, converted bomb shelter in the middle of the orchard. The kiln, in the grass, a steel, drumlike oven, was still warm from an earlier fire. Sawdust was matted to the grass together with fruit-tree blossoms. She thought she would gather her bearings and rest against the pottery door and was surprised when it eased open. There was Stella, turning away at her wheel.

  “Hello,” Claire said. “Not at the wedding?”

  She realized Stella hadn’t heard her. She was in an almost trance-like state.

  “Hello,” she said again, and Stella looked up. She smoothed the folds of the cotton apron across her long lap and gave a wistful smile. The wheel stopped. She was done. She got up and stretched, catlike, comfortable on her own turf.

  “No.” She shook her head softly as Claire repeated her question. “I wouldn’t be at that wedding. Why should I?”

  “How do you mean? May I sit down?” She stood awkwardly before a broken stool.

  “No, come, sit over here.” She pointed to her gathering of great pillows in the colors of stones on the floor. “This is better. May I offer you a cup of tea?”

  “I’d love some. There’s nothing I’d like more.”

  “I’ve green tea. Do you like it?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Claire lowered herself down onto the pillows, feeling a mite stiffer than she had in the days when pillows on the floor were normal for her. “Nice here,” she said, hoping she wouldn’t go into a sneezing fit from the thick grog dust. “Not so noisy.”

  “No.” Stella stood, her back to her, rinsing her hands with water that had been left cooling near her hot plate. “One needs peace if one is to work.”

  “I can’t stay,” Claire assured her. “I mean, I won’t trouble you for long. I’ve got to get back to work, too. I’m working for Temple Fortune now.” Did she sound as smug as she heard herself? Was she that desperate to hear any word about him?

  “I’m only glad,” Stella said, “it’s not me.”

  “Not you what?”

  “Not me being married. To Blacky.”

  “Oh, you mean glad not to be married at all or just not married to Blacky?”

  “My father wanted me to marry him. For a while he was terribly insistent, so much so that I had to go away. It was last year at this time. I went to Japan. On a pilgrimage to Kasama, for the pottery fair.” She smiled at Claire. “Another potters’ town. It was fantastisch! I was to be apprenticed to a Master Potter.” Her face shone, then it dropped. “My father needed me home, though. At least he said he did. Well, you must know why my father wanted me to marry Doktor von Osterwald. He thought he’d keep me busy. Doktor von Osterwald does have a way of keeping one busy”—here she paused, and they both laughed at the appropriate interval—“and he figured he would look after Cosimo.”

  “Blacky will do that anyway, won’t he?”

  “Until the first major dispute, anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Blacky and Cosimo don’t see eye to eye on issues concerning day-to-day living.”

  “But surely Blacky will make an exception for someone as extraordinary as Cosimo.”

  “We’ll see, won’t we?”

  “Your pottery is exquisite.” Claire looked around, happy to have the opportunity to be with Stella. She was so unusual. “It’s so simple and plain,” she exclaimed, “yet there’s something about it. I can’t explain. It’s like you.”

  All the unfinished biscuit-colored pots sat about on shelves and on the floor. Stella was just doing a teapot. “That one’s beautiful,” Claire said.

  Stella smiled at her with that smile Claire was beginning to recognize as her superior smile. The aren’t-you-nonsensical-but-sweet smile. It was almost chilling.

  “No, really …” Claire refused to be dismissed for valuing what she knew was good.

  “Yes, I can see they give you pleasure,” Stella relented. “I am glad. So many people find them too plain. Too simple. Like me, as you say.” Bright tears shone in her eyes. “Perhaps you are a kindred spirit.”

  Claire’s heart went the other way. “Yes,” she said, wishing that she, too, could cry, “I hope I am.”

  “Isn’t it strange,” Stella said, “how the enormity of death and birth puts everyone on an equal footing, if only for a little while. Perfect strangers exchange private matters and”—she laughed, her teeth big and white—“other strangers.”

  “What were you saying about Blacky?”

  “Oh, Doktor von Osterwald. As I said, just that I’m glad I didn’t have to marry him.”

  “You make it sound like prison.”

  “Yes, well, for me it would be. I wouldn’t be a good wife. I wouldn’t want to be. Not everyone is called to the married state, as I’m sure you know. Not that Doktor von Osterwald wouldn’t be a wonderful husband if one wanted a husband.”

  Was she feeling her out? “Not to change the subject, but do you happen to know that bird? The one with the white body and the black head, with indigo and green on the tail and the wings. Do you know it?”

  Stella shrugged. “I can’t bear those filthy things. Always coming into the house. Diebische Elster!” She shuddered. “It’s my brother who knows all that.”

  “Is he pleased about Blacky and Isolde keeping him on?”

  “Pleased? I wouldn’t say pleased. Why should he be? Imagine if it were you …”

  “Yes, I see what you mean. Still… things could … be worse.”

  “Oh, things could always be worse.” Two vertical lines troubled the space between Stella’s gray eyes. “I’m afraid I like everything to be calm and simple. I don’t like unnecessary agitation. I don’t even like necessary agitation.”

  “Is that why you chose raku as an art form?”

  Stella’s eyes sparkled immediately with interest. “Yes, you’re right. Although it is, in fact, extremely sophisticated. The word ‘raku’ originally meant ‘pleasure’ or ‘enjoyment.’ Do you know, in the traditional Zen tea ceremony, or chano-yu, the wares are made of this pottery. They are kept in special padded boxes.” She pulled a plain but exquisitely made wood box from the shelf. “My brother made this box for me,” she said proudly. She removed one bowl. The dappled light from the window played across its lustrous finish. Stella held it carefully, lovingly. “The Tea Master selects which bowls are to be used. This is based on subtle aesthetic consideration and, of course, tradition. Westerners most usually have a hard time comprehending the subtle aesthetic considerations of it.” She moved the bowl across her cheek. “Raku started in Kyoto, Japan.” She spoke as she went about her preparations, taking great care with each movement. “It was first done by an immigrant Korean potter about 1525, and then continued by her son. It’s a quite unpredictable firing process, at about one thousand degrees Celsius.” She held up one smoky black, lopsided piece. “After I take it from my kiln, I reduce it in sawdust. The glazed pieces frequently have a crackle to the luster. You never know exactly what you are going to get.” She got up and trod swiftly about the place, searching for a particular piece to show Claire, then held one up: a simple curved plate dripping matted shades of green.

  “Oh, I love it,” Claire exclaimed. “It reminds me of blades of young grass.”

  “Yes, that is the beauty of raku. Every piece is open to interpretation. It’s very exciting to watch. The firing method is swift. Sometimes they are unglazed, those are the rich black and smoky grays, and these”—she held one up—“are the glazed. Very often they are crackled. I love the crackle,” she said intently, the way a young girl would have confided she loved a man.

  “I do too,” Claire said.

  “As you see, my typical work turns a creamy and jade-like green blush. This is because of the copper-carbonate element in the earth nearby. Wooden tools, handmade wooden tools, are often used by raku potters. I use my fingers. Only my hands. I like this. The hands have a sympathy for the clay that instrume
nts do not.”

  “Hm,” said Claire. She touched the rim of a drying pot and Stella flinched. “I’m sorry,” Claire said.

  “It’s just that they’re not dry yet, not set…”

  “Stella. Did your father ever talk to you about his father, Adam von Grünwald?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  “My father never spoke to me about anything. He didn’t really know how to communicate. My mother did, though.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yes, she told me stories about how when they were young and the war was on, they had to live on tulip bulbs and sugar beets and berries. It must have been awful. You had to be sure to boil the tulip bulbs a certain way, else you got poisoned.”

  “Did your mother ever tell you stories about Adam before he married your grandmother? Kunigunde?”

  Stella stopped pouring the water over the cups and watched Claire carefully. “No. Never. Why?”

  “Nothing really. I just thought perhaps …”

  “There was one thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “One thing that might interest you … Evangelika used to talk about a Jewish woman who enchanted my grandfather before he married.”

  “Evangelika told you about this?”

  “Yes. Often. I never knew my grandfather, Adam. Cosimo looks like him. Dark. Oh, he was famous around these parts. The local people loved him, they say. Kept a woman in the attic. He died before I was born. And my grandmother, she used to laugh about it, but, you know, even as a small child, you pick things up, you intuit the pain in someone’s eyes as they speak. Well, I remember my grandmother saying he was more loyal to the promise he’d made a dead Jew than a living wife.”

  Claire instantly sat up.

  Stella said, “You know those creaking noises you hear at night in the Mill?”

  “I’m glad you hear them, too.”

  “Evangelika always says it is Kunigunde. She says she can’t settle in until the treasure finds its way out of hiding.”

  It occurred to Claire that Evangelika might well have been at the Mill when Iris was.

  “My grandmother was a simple woman,” Stella continued. “She came from the village and never left it. She … well… the fact that she was simple did not stop her from being powerful. All those prayers she said from morning to night. She was quite a formidable force, you see.”

  “Did your grandmother ever tell you what that promise was?”

  “No.” Stella sadly turned and touched her dry mouth with her fingers. “No, she never did. Sometimes I wish she had. I think it would have helped me. The mystery of things is what children have trouble with. I think they can deal with anything that is forthright and explained to them. Even death. Especially death.” She wrung her hands with pathetic agitation. Remembering, Claire imagined, Hans’s miserable end.

  “Stella,” she said gently, “I have a story to tell you. It began long ago, in the village of Diessen. There was a young and beautiful girl. Her name was Iris von Lillienfeld …”

  The wind outside grew stronger and the light more dim as Claire told her tale. By the time she finished, she realized they’d both been lost on her journey.

  Stella had stopped the preparations of her tea ceremony. Politely, she sat back on her slender, young girl’s heels, intrigued by the idea of the grandfather she’d never known but heard so much about. His love story. But by the time she finished, Claire realized Stella was not going to be aghast at what had happened long ago. She’d listened politely enough for a while, with appropriate cluckings of commiseration, but soon she went back to preparing their tea. Her main focus was still obviously on what she was doing. This was not the reaction Claire had expected. Stella didn’t deny having heard tales of treasure at the Mill; she simply shrugged and said she’d always taken them for legend.

  There were three jade-like bowls on the wiped-clean board Stella used as a table. “Do you know what we have here?” she said, placing her fingertips together and getting on with what interested her, as though everything Claire had just said had nothing to do with her. It was as though she’d been impatient for the story to be done so she could get on with hers. “Now,” Stella said pointedly at the first opportunity, “this is your choice. The symbol for delving into the universe.”

  “So, what do you mean?” Claire asked. “A riddle in three parts?”

  “You must choose your own bowl.” Stella knelt before her and crossed her arms on her knees.

  “May I?”

  “Ah, you may.”

  “I feel like ‘Simon says.’ Okay. So. Let’s see. I’ll probably choose this one. In the middle. The one with the glaze looking like a crane taking off. Would you like to know why?”

  “No.”

  “No? Don’t you care?” she joked.

  “Do you want me to dissuade you from your choice?”

  “Perhaps,” Claire said, imagining how pretty it would look on the baker’s rack in her own kitchen.

  “Remember, your reasons are the mixture of subtle traditions and aesthetic considerations which are peculiar only to you,” Stella reminded her.

  “Well, I thought the middle way would appeal to you. Avoiding extremes. As in Buddhistic thought. And, I suppose, I’d like to please you. But then you are a fervent Catholic and have no use perhaps for Buddhistic thought?”

  “I see no conflict in Christian dogma and Buddhistic teachings. Buddhism is a way of life. A practice, not a religion. Truth, after all, is truth. And you, after all, are the Master.”

  Claire didn’t know what she meant. She found herself sitting in a suddenly antagonistic atmosphere. Which she herself might be producing. She was waiting for a response to her story of Iris, and she was getting symbols. She could see now what Blacky had meant about Stella making you cuckoo.

  “So, I am the Master. You mean me as in ‘me,’ or me as in ‘one’?”

  “Oh, you as in ‘you.’ Of course. You are the master of your destiny, aren’t you?”

  “Well, sure. But that didn’t sound like what you meant. You mean, like the choice is mine?”

  Stella wagged her head back and forth, setting Claire to wonder again if it was she who was the insane one and not her brother. But then, Stella usually didn’t talk much. She used instead her gift of intent listening. “Help me out here,” Claire finally said.

  “Choose the goblet,” Stella urged, “from which only the poor can drink.”

  “Don’t you mean only the pure?”

  “It is the same.”

  “Oh.” Her mind went immediately to the decision of whether or not to shoot cigarette advertisements. She looked again at the middle bowl. The other two bowls swam evocatively on each side. One said “mortgage” and the other “private school tuition.” If she didn’t shoot the ads, someone else would just come along and do it. Surely once your motives were no longer pure, that was it. They were not going to turn around and become pure because you wanted them to. You couldn’t change what already happened. Or did we remake ourselves? Could we? Was that what life was all about? Reinventing ourselves?

  “Why do you hesitate?” Stella watched her from a remote place. There were dabbles of the last gold light on her face. She looked like a leopard.

  “I feel like I’m throwing my changes,” Claire said. “You know, I Ching.”

  “No, I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

  “It’s sort of like reading your fortune.”

  “You don’t need hocus-pocus to choose your fortune.”

  “No,” Claire admitted. “I suppose you don’t. Tell me, what are you thinking?”

  “I was just remembering. In The Red Shoes, where the fellow says, ‘It is much more disheartening to have to steal… than to be stolen from.’”

  Outside, the wind stopped running to the west and the sounds of the party drew near.

  Claire chose the middle bowl.

  By the time she left the pottery and walked back toward the Mill, it was too late for Claire to get an
y shots. She wouldn’t use artificial light. She didn’t like to and she almost never did.

  She picked her way across the tall grass. The wind stopped suddenly, and the evening was low and purple and still. Any minute it was going to rain. She hurried, shivering, wanting her sweater, going the long way around the meadow to the Mill, past the little chapel, and ran upstairs to her room. Her sweater was in the closet, neatly hung, not left crumpled on the bed where she’d left it. German orderliness was so reassuring. She went down the stairs. The oompah-pah band outside was in full swing. She crossed her arms in front of her and listened for a minute. Everyone was outside. She might just sit in the dining room for a while. Just sit and do nothing. She leaned over and peeked in. There were a few locals in there, enjoying the fire. A woman at the booth table, a man on each side. Both men, intent, had a hand up the front of her blouse. The woman met Claire’s eyes. She smiled. It was a brutish, feral smile. “Be careful,” Iris’s words came back and alerted her. “Something festers there.”

  Claire turned and fled.

  * * *

  A great ruckus rose from the front of the Mill. Claire joined the throng. The lads of the village had stolen the wood carving at the tip of the next village’s maypole and were putting it up on theirs. There was a tremendous seething rivalry about maypole Spitzen, or tips, these being a wood cutting of a local theme or nursery rhyme the villagers had grown up with and come to think of as their own. They stole each other’s as a matter of course, and the captured Spitze was guarded at the top of the pole with their own until the guard was let down and the connivery would begin again. This was a perfect moment to slip into the house, with everyone’s attention on the cavorting around the maypole.

  There was that bird, she saw as she checked out each window for the lurking Fräulein Wintner. Was he at her window? Yes, it was hers. The bird’s beak glinted, as though it had a silver tooth. She watched him as he took off, glided across the lawn and landed softly on the Roman Bridge. A magpie! That was it.

  She would go to see old Father Metz. She wanted to give him her traveler’s checks anyway, might as well be now. Make it a done deal. But first she should probably show her face at the festivities. She’d shot plenty of film, too much, probably, but it might be construed as deliberately sullen if she didn’t show up at all as a celebrant.