Since she had lost her brothers, Hanne’s career had taken an unexpectedly upward curve. She was increasingly petulant, undeniably tetchy, and openly hostile to her audience. But the more contempt she threw at them, the more the men began to adore her. Every time she sang, pulled postcards of herself from her stocking tops, or placed tall glasses of beer in front of her clients, it was as if it were for the very last time. And if they didn’t do as she suggested and buy her a drink, give her a tip, or purchase a postcard, they were punished. Once or twice, in front of packed houses, she poured beer over a customer’s head again, but now it was met by thunderous applause.
“The worse you treat them, the more they admire you,” the Bulgarian used to say with a shrug. And in her case, at least, it was true.
Maybe her popularity was because she appeared on the verge of walking out forever. In fact, she believed it was only a matter of time. She had been spending the afternoons with a film producer in a small hotel that rented rooms by the hour. He was a man who wore spats, his hat tilted at an angle, and a Rolex watch. He was married, of course, and hadn’t promised her anything except work as an extra in his next project. But he could be persuaded, cajoled, she was convinced of it. In the meantime, she blew her tips on fancy frocks and face cream from Paris and managed to ignore all but the most irresistible advances.
Hanne stared at her former friend from the orphanage in her dressing room mirror, but this time she didn’t comment on her clothes. Lilly had been almost erased from her mind. Only when she was drunk, when she had been dumped, or when she was broke did she give in to memories of St. Francis Xavier’s, the roses, her brothers, and her former friend. The feeling would pass, however, she would sober up and vow not to think about them again. But now that Lilly was here, she realized that she had missed her much more than she had allowed herself to believe. She blotted her lips on a rag before she spoke.
“How have you been?” she asked.
“Fine,” Lilly replied. “I’m . . . I’m a . . .”
Lilly drew a breath and let it out again slowly. She tried to start again but the words didn’t seem to want to come out. She stared at the gaslight fittings, as if they held the clue to her sudden arrival. She wished she hadn’t come. She glanced at herself in the mirror. She barely recognized herself anymore. Her mouth was raw. Her face was puffy and her eyelids were red. Hanne turned in her seat and finally faced her.
“You’re . . . ?” asked Hanne.
Lilly looked her in the eye at last. And her former friend’s face softened as if the mask she wore had now fallen away.
“I need to see a lady,” Lilly whispered.
arek, the penniless poet, may have been destined for great things but never made it past relative obscurity. Only two poems from this period ever made it into print, in a short-lived monthly journal called Spunk! Both were musings on the fickle nature of love.
When the previous housemaid fell pregnant and pointed the finger of blame at her supposedly impotent husband, the Countess was devastated. But he gave as good as he got. She later admitted that it could have been her fault; she shouldn’t have been standing in the way when he hurled the crystal vase, a present from her first mother-in-law, at the wall. And what is more, she should have gotten rid of the aesthetically offensive vase before he had picked it up in the first place.
The doctor stopped the bleeding but he could not prevent the scarring. Marek wept but the Countess could not. Instead she sat in the doctor’s office, watched a train shoot past, and thought about throwing herself in front of it.
So when her husband returned with a huge hotel bill and one paltry poem, she did not greet him with the warmth of a wife’s embrace. And when he sacked the cook and it was clear he was paying a little too much attention to the new maid, the Countess hired another cook, a lively mother of five who had an adequate mastery of electrical appliances, and ordered her husband out of the kitchen.
One evening in spring Lilly found a package with her name on it lying on the kitchen table. It was from Marek. Inside was a journal with thick blank pages and a fountain pen filled with India ink. She sat down and on the first page she wrote her name.
“Lilly Nelly Aphrodite,” the penniless poet read out over her shoulder. He had come into the kitchen so quietly she hadn’t heard him.
“Someone must have had high hopes for you,” he said.
As she sat and he stood behind her, the ink started to drip from her pen onto the paper. Very slowly, he laid his hand on the crown of her head and stroked softly, so softly, down to the nape of her neck.
“Lilly,” he said. “Nelly . . .”
She shivered.
“Aphrodite . . . a gift for my muse.”
Lilly stood up very suddenly. She turned and faced him. Ink was still falling in drops as big as apple pips and splashed onto the kitchen floor.
“Well, good night,” he said. And with a bow of his head he left the room.
The next day he strolled by as if nothing had happened. Maybe she had been mistaken. Maybe nothing had happened. How could it? She was a housemaid. He was the Countess’s husband. And her face blushed as she scrubbed the table with baking soda and her eyes stung with salt. That night she looked at herself closely in the small speckled mirror above the sink in her room. In the twilight she pulled her hair loose from the band she used to tie it back, she ran her finger along the curve of her cheekbone, and she tried to see herself as Marek might see her. Could he desire her? Could he want her? Could he be in love with her? She was thirteen. He was in his thirties. A bell rang. The Countess was calling her, but she still never used her name; she never called her anything but “girl” or “you” or “she.” And as Lilly quickly tied her hair back and became a maid with no name again, she insisted to herself that on all counts she was bound to be wrong.
After all those years at the orphanage surrounded by other children, the silence of nothing but her own thoughts was almost too loud to bear. And so when her name came echoing through the lower floor of the villa, long and low, no wonder it made her feel like someone again, someone who was worth something.
“Lilly,” the poet sang one day. “I’ve brought you a peach.”
He placed it on the window ledge behind the sink and for a moment they both looked at it.
“I want to watch you eat it,” he whispered.
She wiped her hands on her apron as he sliced it into four pieces with a pocketknife. Inside, the flesh was heavy with juice.
“Go on,” he said.
She picked up a piece. She raised it to her mouth. He was so close she could smell him: cotton dried in sunshine, lavender soap, and the sweet sourness of his sweat. She raised her eyes to his. He looked from her eyes to her mouth to the peach and back. A hot rush coursed through her.
“I can’t,” she said.
“Why not?” he said.
“I’m not hungry,” she replied.
She looked away. He took her chin in his hand and turned her face around.
“Liar,” he said.
She ate the peach. She sucked all the juice from it, and then tore the flesh from the skin with her teeth and swallowed it.
“There,” she said, wiping her mouth on her sleeve.
“Well?” he said. “How was it? What did it taste like?”
Lilly turned back to the dishes piled in tepid water in the sink. “Like a peach,” she replied.
“Like a peach that was waiting for this very moment, this very second and not before, to be eaten,” he added.
She could feel the heat of his breath on her neck. How could he say such a thing? She blushed with equal amounts of anticipation and shame.
“Lilly Nelly Aphrodite,” he said below his breath. And then he strolled out of the kitchen, whistling.
The Countess’s daughter was coming home from school for the summer, and for the first time ever, the Countess began to get up at eight in the morning and go to bed at nine at night. She opened all the windows, and the curtains tailed o
ut in the breeze. She left instructions for Lilly to buy flowers and order sugared almonds and English tea. A portrait of a little girl in a white dress with a sailor collar was placed on the mantelpiece.
On the day of the daughter’s arrival, the clock seemed louder and the minutes felt longer. At five o’clock her train would arrive at Anhalt Station. As an afterthought, the Countess placed her husband’s publications on the table in the center of the dining room.
At exactly ten past two, the telephone rang.The poet answered it. Lilly heard the tone of his voice shift.The Countess’s former mother-in-law had decided it was preferable for her granddaughter to spend the summer in the country, given the unstable political climate in the city. She urged the poet to persuade her former daughter-in-law not to call her back; they were going out for a picnic.
The Countess tried to stab the poet with the letter knife. She missed his heart but hit him in the hand. The telephone was ripped from the wall and ended up in the garden. The poet’s publications disappeared forever. The doctor, summoned by taxi, arrived at three and stayed until six. The cook had prepared a three-course dinner. It was all thrown away.
That night the poet came to Lilly’s room. She opened her eyes in the darkness and there he was above her, his right hand bandaged and his face scratched. She had no idea how long he had been there.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was looking for the water closet.”
She sat up.
“I don’t think you should be in here,” she said.
For a moment neither spoke.
“She doesn’t love me, you know. She doesn’t understand me. Not like you do.”
“But you don’t even know me,” she whispered.
Lilly could feel her face burn. Her heart beat so violently in her chest that she feared it was visible. And yet she felt paralyzed as she sat there in her white nightgown, her hair unbraided and her legs bare beneath the covers.
“But I’d like to. Should I go now?” he asked softly.
She nodded. He let out a short snort of laughter.
“Let me,” he said.
But it was a statement and not a question.
It was true that she had imagined his kiss on her lips. It was also true that she had imagined the taste of his dark skin and the salt of his sweat. She had even imagined the caress of his hand on her breast. But she had never imagined this. He held both wrists above her head and launched himself upon her. His sudden weight was such that she couldn’t breathe. He reached below and ripped the cotton of her nightgown; his knee wedged her legs apart. And then the bluntness of him forced its way into her resistance. She cried out but he muffled her mouth with his palm. And then he started to push; he pushed until she was sure she would split. Lilly closed her eyes and willed it to be over. And soon it was, with a groan and a hot wetness between her legs.
The blood on the sheets came out. She stood shivering at the sink as the tap water turned from red to clear. It wasn’t me, she told herself again and again. I wasn’t there. And as she washed all traces from her body with a damp cloth, she half believed it. In the middle of the night, when sleep still wouldn’t come, however, she listened to the dark. Even though he was two floors above, she could hear the ratchet of his snore. And she started to shake and could not stop.
The next morning Lilly found the Countess slumped over her bed fully clothed. On the wooden floor below the bed was an empty medicine bottle lying in a pool of sticky dark liquid. For a few seconds Lilly simply stared. A shaft of morning sunshine illuminated the Countess’s body. Even from the doorway, Lilly could see the jagged scar, the scar that ran from her left eye to the corner of her mouth. The pull of the pillow below her face dragged her lips into a tiny ironic smile. One slipper had fallen off to reveal a pale foot with long, evenly spaced toes.
And then Lilly noticed a shallow movement, the twitch of an eye: the Countess was still breathing. She hauled the Countess upright and slapped her face. The cheek was white and clammy. She slapped again. A small pink rose appeared.
“Wake up!” she shouted.
The Countess opened her eyes but did not focus. Her head lolled. Lilly rubbed her hands, her arms, her legs, and then, when there was no response, she shook her shoulders.
“Leave me,” the Countess whispered through cracked lips. “I want to die.”
She tried to lie down but two arms prevented her. She looked up into her maid’s eyes and instantly registered that she would not be able to swoon into oblivion as she had hoped.
“You can’t just give up,” said Lilly.
Maybe the girl was right. Maybe she wasn’t so sure she wanted to die anymore after all.
“Call Dr. Storck,” the Countess whispered.
The doctor came immediately.The Countess did not die.The penniless poet went to the casino and spent two hundred marks.
You can’t just give up.The bruises on Lilly’s wrists gradually faded. The insomnia continued and never entirely went away. The poet left early every morning and came back after midnight. The house was filled with doctors, specialists and psychiatrists, healers, and even a couple of priests. There was talk of the Countess going to the country, to recuperate in a spa, but she refused.Then Dr. Storck was back again and one by one he drew the curtains.
It was weeks later when the poet sought her out again.This time he was brandishing a new anthology of poetry as if nothing had happened.
“Read it! You will agree that it is absolute drivel,” he said. “Because you, my Lilly Nelly Aphrodite, have a poet’s soul.”
And with that he reached out and, with one hand on her waist, pulled her close to him, so close that she almost stumbled, so close that the smell of the cologne he had splashed on his face that morning was overpowering. He swallowed and then he ran his finger along the line of her cheek. His mouth was only an inch or two from her throat. His body was hard and hot as it pressed into hers. And then he caught sight of her face.
“Anyway,” he said, letting her go. “Come and find me when you’ve finished it.”
She knew he was sitting in the summerhouse at the end of the garden, smoking a cigarette. She could smell his tobacco; she could see a single pinprick of burning red. It was early summer, and although it was late and the sky was dashed with the black skitter of bats, the air was luminous. The Countess was drugged and resting. Dinner had been served and cleared. No visitors were expected.
The summerhouse was open on all sides but raised from the ground by three wooden steps. She took them one by one until she stood on the edge of the top step, directly opposite him. He did not appear to see her at first. He was reading an article about a new wine restaurant in Leipzig. She coughed and he looked up. A single newspaper page fell to the floor, where it rustled and flapped in the breeze. The poet leaned back, completely placid, the glow of his cigarette flaring up and dying down as he inhaled long and slow.
“I need to talk to you,” she said.
“Don’t move,” he replied.
And then she noticed that beside him was a large black object on three long legs. It was a moving-picture camera, a Leica, a gift for himself after the paper-knife incident.
The film he took of his wife’s maid was hugely underexposed; he had no idea about shutter speeds or flashbulbs. Against the darkening sky and the even blacker density of the summerhouse, a faint silver hourglass with a face on top shivers in the dusk. It takes a moment or two to work out that the shape is in fact a girl, a girl with long dark hair, which seems to vibrate around her head like static. And then your eye is drawn to her face; her lips are black, her eyes two black holes pinpricked with white. Despite the poor quality of the photography, Lilly looks unearthly, like a vision or a spirit summoned up from the night.
And when the poet watched it several months later, before almost destroying it in a projector that had not been set up correctly, he wondered quite seriously if he had been mistaken about his vocation. He persuaded several more girls to pose for him, but nothing he ever made again c
ame close to the one-minute-and-twelve-second moving picture Lilly in the Summerhouse, May 1914.
The evening air was chilly. She could stand it no more. She turned her back to his camera.
“Enough,” she said.
He stopped cranking and stabbed out another cigarette in a geranium pot. And then he started unscrewing the legs of the tripod. She took a step forward.
“Marek,” she said.
He glanced up and could not hide the slight displeasure he felt when he heard her say his first name.
“What is it now?” he snapped.
“You shouldn’t have done what you did,” she said. “I’m in trouble.” The penniless poet sighed with irritation, as if she had just told him she had smashed a window accidentally or broken a dish.
“How inconvenient for you,” he said, and continued to unscrew the tripod.
Lilly waited for him to go on. He didn’t. And as the seconds passed, she realized that he would do nothing, admit nothing, contribute nothing.
“Shouldn’t you be working?” he said eventually. “That is, after all, what you are paid to do.” s the bullets were poured and metal helmets forged, as rifles
were oiled and the Schlieffen Plan presented to the kaiser, Lilly developed an insatiable appetite. And that was where the poet would sometimes accidentally stumble upon her, in the kitchen with her finger in the cake batter or dipped in newly poured jars of jam. He was formal with her now. He did not seek her out or ask her opinion on his poetry anymore.
“My tea was a little cold this morning,” he would say. “Could you make sure the water has actually boiled next time?”
And she would nod, because her voice would only betray her. When he was gone, her tears would roll into the sponge mixture and it would spoil.
The Glimmer Palace Page 13