Theft

by N. S. Köenings

  In vain, it was. Next I saw Petra shooting out from underneath the horse, laughing just as loud. Her parsley hair was loose, and she waved her purple scarf around to match Thérèse’s flag. Petra got down on all fours and pranced over to the pony and then she huddled underneath it. She had kept her blouse on, that was good, but it hurt to see her chuckling with that girl while I was by myself. I thought, They are playing hide-and-seek.

  Thérèse was not a handsome girl, not really, and she had just had, supposedly, a child. So she had little business taking off her skirt, but that’s exactly what she did. She was standing right in front of Petra and she let the brown thing drop and she stepped out of it, still hollering. Something like, “Oh! Cruel cavaliers!” or “Come here, cavaliers!” In her yellow panties! Even from where I was lying I could see how her reddened thighs, their plump insides, were wobbly just like my preserves are when they’ve come out clear and right.

  Then she started leaping. On the down, she’d crouch and dig her fists into the grass and pull some up in clumps. On the up, she’d raise her hands into the air and let the grass clumps go, so the blades would scatter wildly. Up. Down. Up. Down. With my good eyesight I could see that loose grass sticking on her, although from where I was and with the greenish light the blades looked black, like tiny eels, pasted to her limbs. Petra turned her head away and then I saw her arms come up around the pony, from below, like the strap that holds a saddle to a horse. She was pretending to be scared, but she must still have been laughing.

  Thérèse sang another song. I couldn’t make all of it out, but I did hear Petra’s name, “Petra, ma belle. Petra, ma jolie.” My hair started to prickle then, from heat, and I felt water pooling in my eyes. I wanted them to stop, but—it’s terrible to say, and here’s what it can come to when you bring the wrong girls home—Thérèse made me feel shy. Laughter can really harm a person, don’t you think? On my own land I was too frightened to go down there myself and order them to stop. I got up on my knees again. I took one look back near the kitchen and the last thing that I saw before I pulled myself onto the tiles and locked the door behind me was Thérèse, in a pair of yellow panties, raising up a leg in a very loose and ribald way as if to mount the pony’s back. Petra had been ruined.

  I knew I couldn’t tell Gustave. He might have fainted, or had a heart attack, and I would have had to ask that big girl for help. And while, God forgive me, it would have done poetic justice if she caused her own host’s death through all that foolishness of hers, of course I couldn’t tell him. And perhaps they hadn’t done the bushes any damage. But I was damaged, I can tell you that. The nettles were the least of it.

  That night Gustave was in good spirits with a call that had come through for him from Egypt. It must have rung while I was shoeless in the field. I’m usually the one to fetch the phone, and I enjoy it, especially when it’s a foreign scholar. North Africans, they are, professors. They’re always so polite it makes my toes curl and my ears feel very damp. It made me even angrier with that big girl, that she’d made me miss my call.

  A year ago it was a man calling from Khartoum, asking if Gustave would be their guest and give a talk, as they’d found something new out there. Of course we couldn’t go, and Gustave later said they hadn’t any money, something about the Sudanese professors all being kicked out of their schools and how the man I’d talked to was a fraud. But still, that professor’d been so nice to me I felt I should remind him that I was someone’s wife. In any case this call from Alexandria had Gustave very pleased, and he opened up a bottle of Sancerre, which I do like very much. Of course Petra drank it like she drinks her coffee, as if it were water, but Thérèse drank hers very slowly. She sat circling the mouth of her wide wineglass with a finger, which as you know will coax a humming sound. I thought, That’s the way to make a crystal glass explode, but I couldn’t bring myself to say so.

  I can’t shake the feeling, either, that that night after the scene among the bushes there was something new with us, sitting at the table. The two of them looked different. Petra didn’t talk. She hadn’t worn her cardigan. She’d put on a black blouse without sleeves that had a pointed collar and buttoned at the neck. Perhaps it was my headache, but it seemed to me her arms glowed, as though she’d rubbed them down with vinegar or lard. She was drinking like a fountain.

  I made a point of asking her what she’d done all day, to see what she would say. She looked up very coyly and couldn’t keep my gaze. Her eyelashes were so very wild and long, they looked like those tarantulas Gustave has a picture of. Gets those lashes from her father, I thought, or maybe that Liège girl had lent her some mascara. Petra couldn’t keep her eyes on me, and she only nodded at Gustave, who was explaining how the two of us might take a trip in winter. “To Alexandria,” he said, “where the world’s best books once were.” Petra said, “A trip is nice,” and Thérèse gave out a smothered little laugh, as though she had in mind some journeys of her own.

  But all in all, she was quiet, too. Now and then she made a show of listening to Gustave’s every word, blinking her blue eyes at him like the wings on a still butterfly that’s sucking at a flower. I chewed a bit of anchovy from the salad for a long and salty time, and then I took another. Though thinking about Alexandria did make me feel better. Not so dirty, and not so—oh, I hate to say it—old.

  I asked Thérèse if she would do the dishes, please, and told them all that I was going to bed. She must have been accustomed at the sisters’ to doing work around the place, because she said she didn’t mind. She got up from the table and she strode into the kitchen before I had folded up my napkin. Perhaps she was relieved. Perhaps it was too much to ask her to behave like a person who belonged. I peeked into the kitchen then before going up the stairs, and it was true, Thérèse knew how to care for our domestic things: she was very careful with the plates, put spoons with spoons and knives with knives, she did not break a glass. My head hurt and once I got to bed I wished Gustave would hurry up and lie beside me. One likes a man’s warmth, now and then.

  I know they say if you are on the trail of evil, evil you will find. And when you’ve brought it home yourself, in some ways it’s your fault. But the worst was yet to come. I’ve said already how I like to get up early, how the house is mine then, in the hour of the wolves. Well, I woke up extra early for the whole of that next week. I couldn’t sleep past four.

  The first morning I thought I should stay in bed a little longer and try to pull some warmth out of Gustave, who when he’s sleeping deeply doesn’t mind it if I curl myself around him. But my eyes were open wide, and you know it’s wearing to be conscious by a man who’s sleeping like the dead. So I made myself get up.

  The sky was black, not blueing at the edges, and once up I felt good. I took to walking through the whole of our big house, corridor by corridor, up each and every hallway, as though I were on patrol. Our bedroom is au premier, which Petra found amusing. For her it was on “the second,” and downstairs was “the first.” Why the ground, which is most of all itself, ought to have no number she could never understand. Anyway, I’d walk first up to the second floor, where we’ve closed up the rooms. I’d take a candle with me and try not to think too hard about all the gathering dust. It was drafty, too, and even in my housecoat I was chilled. But the cold will do you good, I always say, cold will keep you sharp.

  It made me feel just like a girl, wandering in that house with nothing on my feet, awake while everybody slept. I’d walk all the way past the central staircase and to the far one that goes up into the tower, and then down again, in stone. They were in the tower—that’s where I had put them, one room across the landing from the other, Petra’s looking out to Spa over the pines, and Thérèse’s, come to think of it, with a nice view of the chamomile and of my husband’s zoo. I’d put gardenias in their rooms the day each of them came, and I’d given them replacement flowers to take up on the Thursday just before that hideous, hideous show. I liked to tell myself that I could smell the petals in the s
tairwell—a cool smell, that, so white.

  The first few times I made my rounds, the girls’ doors were both closed. Shut very tight against me, that’s what it felt like. I’d move to each in turn, and listen. I hoped that they were sleeping well, honestly I did. I wished each of them good dreams. The best ones come at dawn, they say, and that’s what I think, too. One morning I tried to think of Petra as a baby, how she’d looked when I held her up to that old Brussels priest so he’d toss some water at her. When we walked out onto the Sablon she didn’t make a sound, not even when we passed the antiques vendors, and you know how startling, how pushy, they can be.

  Like I said, I’d make the rounds, and then go on as usual, as though I hadn’t slept a little less than a person really should. I’d make the bread and coffee, set the jams out in a row, and put out four fresh napkins. I’d read in the dining room until Gustave had come for coffee and to tell me what he was tackling that day. Once Thérèse arrived, Petra stopped coming down so early. No, the girls came down so late I left them to it. It was as if we had no guests at all, just a presence, and even—when Thérèse took to washing up the breakfast dishes, too—as though we had a maid. But I tried to be forgiving. I thought, Well, all right.

  With all of my patrolling, I’d get tired in the afternoons. And the truth is you can’t keep watch with your eyes closed. I’d go out with my book onto the patio and in spite of all my fears I always fell asleep and when I woke up it was six. I’d wake up very cold and need to get a cardigan upstairs, then race into the kitchen to start cooking for the evening.

  It’s because I fell asleep that those girls got so free. If they’d told me they had dreams of going into town, I would have taken them, I would. I would have pointed out the extra bicycles we keep in the garage beside Gustave’s MG. And I would have remembered how the sisters had advised me not to let Thérèse wander alone. That she needed supervision. But I think now that several times they looked as though they’d been doing things in secret—something hot about their hair, and the way they’d come down from the tower, sometimes holding hands.

  When I discovered I was missing money, I can’t say I was surprised. It must have been Thérèse. Because although Petra had a slight look of the cabaret about her, she was not born in the gutter. And if Petra knew of it, or if she had a hand, well, she would not have done it all alone. Sylvie may have gotten married to Hermann, but that does not mean she was dishonest. It was after dinner that I found my wallet short. After I’d made them all a quiche, with which I’d served a plate of carrot soup and sweet creamed radish greens. I’d had my purse out in the kitchen, because I thought I’d make a list of things to buy and slip it in the outer pocket so I’d know right where to find it. I didn’t plan to count my money out right there, but something made me do it. And I have to tell you, though it pains me, that one thousand francs were gone. Gustave was in his study, and I couldn’t go to him. He’d have told me to be more careful with my things, that precaution and precision are welded at the hip. As though my jams aren’t labeled nicely with a date on every pot. As though I deserved it.

  Well, it was one thing going to the tower rooms while the girls were fast asleep, but quite another to go up when I thought I’d find them wide awake. I waited. I’d go to them in the dawn. Maybe Thérèse would be dreaming thickly and so dead to our world that I could look through the girl’s luggage and find my thousand francs.

  It didn’t turn out that way, in the end. I never got that far. The last day was a Monday, I remember, because as I was walking down the hallway in the dark I made a note to bring the mower out to straighten up the lawn. When the townsfolk come on Tuesdays, I’ve often got some tartelettes or bigger pies that I make the day before and leave out for the children, and I also thought that I could choose the apricots and pit a bucketful by noon.

  I was just coming to the landing on the tower steps when I heard it the first time, and I blew the candle out. I set it down just near the door, and I noticed very sharply how the air was warm above the wick and the smoke around my ankles made the rest of me feel cold. It was a kind of shuffling, what I heard, the kind of noises thieves must make at night. It wasn’t even four yet, so I thought, what could she be doing? I thought for sure it must be Thérèse, since she’d already stolen from my purse. It stood to reason she’d be up this time of night, doing things of which I could be afraid. But it wasn’t. Or it wasn’t only her.

  Petra’s door was open. I could tell because there was a moon. The light was shining through her window, and it would have glowed right through my dressing gown and shown me if I hadn’t slipped myself very nimbly flat against the wall. At first I thought maybe Petra had a fever. She was making little sounds like children do when they’re asleep and in the clutches of a cold. I thought I’d go to her and ask if she was well. I think I would have liked that: when you haven’t any children of your own you think sometimes how nice it would be to help them when they’re sick. I could bring a cool cloth for her forehead, sing a little song. But it was the moon that stopped me, how it glinted off a gold thing on the dresser before I looked closely at the bed. I’d got quite near now, had my fingers on the lintel. Like I said, I see quite well at night.

  The gold thing was Thérèse’s vinyl purse, unzipped at the mouth. And next to it—I saw, because I squinted both my eyes—was a pile of Petra’s things, her Illustrated Guide to Belgium, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg, and a vial of L’Air du Temps. In the corner—which gave me quite a start—was Petra’s purple case. Right beside it was Thérèse’s yellow one, pointing straight out from the wall, like a pair of Gustave’s shoes. On the chair there were some clothes, and it was another shock to see that old brown skirt tangled up with Petra’s pea-soup cardigan, thrown one over the other. What’s the use of making up two rooms if your guests are going to go behind your back and share a single one? I didn’t like to think about the two of them so close, their things mixed up like that.

  Of course it wasn’t just the things that were pressed up together. Petra wasn’t by herself. There was a lump beneath the blankets with her. Thérèse was a lot bigger than Petra, so I knew that lump was her. I heard that shuffling again, hands tight on the sheets, a sort of nighttime cooing, which sometimes Gustave makes. I must have made a sound, because they suddenly went still. All my breath went sailing out of me and into that warm room. I was like Lot’s wife, I was, rooted to the ground.

  I wondered how long they’d been together in one bed—if on the other days when both the doors were closed I was missing something all along. You can’t know what goes on behind a door, not really, even if your sight could pierce the wood. My eyes were smarting in the dark, and it wasn’t from the smoke. I looked over at the desk again to where that purse was gleaming, and I thought, That’s where my thousand francs are. I wanted to walk right in and past the bed and take my money back, but my feet were stuck like leeches to the skin of the cold floor.

  I did try to rally. So what if they know that I’m right here, I thought? They ought to be ashamed. The covers moved then, and that’s what set my legs free, but I couldn’t go inside. I reached out and shut the door, and then I ran downstairs so fast that I was panting in the kitchen. I went directly to the chambre froide, where we keep all the apricots and berries, and sat down against the door.

  What would you have done? You understand I couldn’t have the girls here any longer. Not like this, not mashed together in one room making plans against me. I’ll tell you what I did. I didn’t bake the bread that morning. I pulled out the ends from Sunday and had a cup of tea, which calmed me, made me think of England. They’d make the coffee on their own, I thought. I’d forget about the money if both of them would go.

  In the end, Petra did it for me. She came down in that old dress of hers, long arms bare, her hair all wild and loose, and found me in the kitchen. “No coffee?” she asked me. And when I pointed to the Maragogype in the glass jar on the counter, she set to making it herself. I’d been crying, but I’m sure it didn’t sh
ow. If it had, Petra would at least have kissed me on the cheek, or told me to sit down.

  “Listen, marraine,” she said, very friendly, as though nothing wrong had happened. In fact more talkative than she had ever been. “We’d like to go to Liège, to spend a few days there, is that all right with you?” She turned the gas on with the lighter, then walked into the dining room. “I thought, you know, that since this is my first summer en Europe, on irait même à Knokke. That’s where the beach is, isn’t it? Have you ever gone?” Well, I guess that “we” was Petra and Thérèse, though if she’d told me from the start, I could have gotten used to the idea and we would have gone together. I’ve been to Knokke once or twice. Blue sea, Italian ice in tiny cones, and a pretty little wind. I could have planned it for her if she’d told me. But it was clear she meant Thérèse. I told her she could do exactly as she liked. I didn’t tell her that Thérèse was not allowed to go off by herself, or that I’d promised Sylvie I’d take good care of her daughter, make sure she was safe. I walked right past her to the bread box and got myself some jam. Gooseberry.

  They must have agreed to act as though I hadn’t seen them in the night, as if I didn’t know that they had turned into a force. I couldn’t bring it up to Petra. Not to Sylvie’s little girl. She watched me chewing, and I had to put the bread down. I didn’t like her eyes on me. I told her I was going to change my clothes. On the way, I got my courage up. If I couldn’t tell my goddaughter exactly what I thought of her, I’d say something to the other girl. That’s right, I thought. I’ll talk to this Thérèse.

  Petra’s door was open, and Thérèse was in the room, which I guess she had come to think of as her own, and she was looking in the mirror. Mouth tight and open like a fish, she was putting on her lipstick. Still holding her mouth like that, which made her voice peculiar, she said, “Celeste,” and my name sounded strange. With a tip of her big brow, she told me to come in.