The Fig Eater

by Jody Sheilds

  She makes her way back into the city, walking confidently as part of her male impersonation. She kicks at something on the cobblestones, just to experience the swinging movement of her legs. She’s free, reincarnated as a boy on the street. As if she’d suddenly stepped into a parallel existence.

  When a woman selling flowers from a basket calls to her, Hey boy, she fiercely shakes her head, leveling her exhilaration. Just to see what will happen, she runs blindly across the Naschmarkt into the dense traffic of horses and carts. A wagon swerves aside, just missing her. The driver shouts at her in anger, not recognition.

  She undresses back in her room. The man’s rough wool pants leave a blur of red skin on the insides of her legs.

  Erszébet ordered a vadliba, a wild goose, from a woman at a stall in the Hoher Markt and had it killed exactly two days later. At home in the kitchen, she nervously unwrapped the plucked, cut-up goose and examined its breast meat, which was light in color. She interpreted this to mean snow would soon fall, ending their search for the fig tree. There is a precise beauty about this method of divination, signs read in the flesh.

  She cooks the goose and serves it, the dinner a vehicle for this prophecy.

  Her husband enjoyed the roast goose, the thin rétes filled with cabbage sauteed with pepper and caramelized sugar. She saved the breast bone of the goose for use in later divinations. She knows the time between Christmas and New Year is dangerous, a string of days and hours with significant prohibitions.

  That night, before going to bed, she scans the sky outside the window, expecting the first flakes of snow. She can abandon the fig tree to its white cover, since she has confidence in the other facts she knows about Dora’s murder, the secret advance of her search.

  As if cued by her thoughts, her husband speaks from the bed.

  “You’ve been very secretive. Are you making progress?”

  Fear pushes her head around to look at him.

  “How are your watercolors?”

  She laughs with relief. “What put you in mind of my painting?”

  “The way you’re watching the landscape.”

  I see, she says. My observations are as keen as yours, only different, she thinks.

  Wally sits with Dora’s mother in her drawing room. This time when she entered the house, she’d noticed how immaculate it was. The furniture stands like an intrusion on the shining waxed floors. The lamps, draperies, and Oriental carpets are insignificant things against the order this woman has imposed on her house. Wally senses there is an uncompromising system of rules — almost a haunting — that permeates all the rooms stacked above her.

  Dora’s mother is crying noisily into a handkerchief. Her clothing creaks slightly as she leans forward, her stiff silk dress rubbing against her corset. They’re side by side on the sofa, so close the folds of their skirts crease over each other. She has just given Wally a pair of earrings, tiny pearl drops, which belonged to Dora. A memento of what she fondly believes was her daughter’s intimate friendship with Wally.

  Wally is thrilled and dismayed by the gift. She stares at the earrings in the palm of her hand, fighting the impulse to give them back or toss them away, the confused reverberations of her guilt. The pearls should burn her fingers, reveal her imposture.

  While crossing Währinger Strasse near the Votivkirche, Erszébet told her how a witch, a boszorkány, is discovered. The first egg of a black hen is dyed, hidden in a pocket, and carried to church on Easter Sunday. Sensing the terrible invisible pressure of this magical object, a witch is unable to enter the holy church.

  Wally slips the earrings into her pocket. Nothing happens. The objects are mute.

  She puts her hand on the woman’s arm, whispers her gratitude. After a short time, Dora’s mother is composed enough to speak.

  “I still blame myself for what happened to Dora. I shouldn’t have let her go out alone.”

  “You didn’t know what would happen.”

  She continues as if she hadn’t heard Wally. “Dora would plead with me to let her leave the house. She’d say, I’m old enough, I’m a grown woman. If I’d say no to her, she’d get her father’s permission. Or she would just leave without asking.”

  Wally patiently tries again. “So Dora did go out alone. She’d done it before that last night?”

  “Yes. It’s true she had,” she whispers.

  “Did Dora usually go to any particular place, a café?”

  The question makes the woman angry. Wally feels her body tense, and she withdraws her hand.

  “I don’t know. Ask Rosza, the governess. My husband paid her to work here, but Dora thought she was her friend. They’d go to the cafés and parks together. I don’t know which ones.”

  “Rosza didn’t act like a governess?”

  “No. They’d be in Dora’s room, laughing and talking, and I could hear them. If I knocked on the door, they’d stop. They pretended I didn’t know they were there. That calculating woman. I’m sure it was her doing. Rosza knew I didn’t like her.”

  Even before her next sentence, Wally anticipates her words, their dark weight.

  “We went on a vacation with the Zellenkas. To a lake in the Alps. And Rosza came with us as company for Dora and her brother. I remember Frau Zellenka and I had walked to a fountain where you could drink the sulphur water. I came back to the hotel early with my boy and I heard her, she was in her room with Herr Zellenka.”

  “Dora was?”

  “Dora? No, no, Rosza was in the room with Herr Zellenka. What I heard was . . . I heard vulgar, intimate noises.”

  Wally imagines the woman’s bulky silhouette crouched outside a door in a hotel corridor, listening. She falls so completely into this vivid picture she’s surprised when her angry voice pulls her back into the room.

  “I’m not well. You should go now.”

  “Where can I find Rosza? I need to speak with her.”

  But Dora’s mother has finished their conversation. Wally reluctantly stands to leave. Her eyes follow the row of tiny silk buttons on the woman’s dress that dully reflect light, black-on-black points outlining her body. Her hand is a plump fist over her handkerchief.

  “I’ll see myself out.” She waits, but Dora’s mother is too distracted to answer before she leaves the room.

  Wally peers into the kitchen. The Mehlspeisköchin turns from the stove, motions to the table set with two plates and cups. The woman is dressed for working in this hot room, her big body streamlined by a kerchief over her head and a white apron. She regally moves inside this zone of heat as if it were her tropical kingdom, an island with a different climate and atmosphere than the rest of the house. She lays out a plate of chocolate-covered Indianer cakes filled with whipped cream. Wally slips into a chair, glad of the offer of coffee. They eat in silence for a moment.

  “What kind of dessert did Dora like? Did you ever bake anything with figs for her?”

  The pastry cook dabs cream from her lips with a corner of her apron.

  “Never. No figs, no fruit, no chocolate. Dora and Fräulein Rosza both scorned my baking. Wouldn’t touch my desserts. They were too common for them.”

  Wally shakes her head sympathetically and waits through the cook’s anger. She watches her lift a large forkful of cake to her mouth. “What else did Rosza do?”

  “I don’t know if I should tell you about Rosza. Your delicate ears.”

  “Don’t be concerned about me. I haven’t lived with my parents since I was twelve. I’m eighteen years old.”

  “You’re eighteen? You don’t look it.”

  Wally still wears her long hair down in the English style instead of pinning it up like the Viennese women. “It must have been difficult for you to work here with that woman. I’m so curious about her. One of the governesses in the Volksgarten told me Rosza had trouble with men. You don’t have to protect her. And Dora is dead. She wasn’t schöne Leiche.”

  As if she had received Wally’s vision of Dora — a lone figure, a mocking offering sp
rawled before the statue of the Empress Elizabeth, who was reviled for rejecting her husband’s love — the cook relents.

  “I’ll tell you Rosza was never kind to me. She was wicked. A wicked woman. She wasn’t fit company for a young lady. I’d told Dora’s mother about her, but she ignored me, fine lady that she is. But she found I was right. She sent Rosza away.”

  “Why?”

  The cook’s eyes are naked with grief. “Rosza is an angel maker, an angyalcsináló.”

  Wally’s silence is genuine.

  “She could fix you if you were going to have a baby.”

  The Inspector has become busy with a strange case that hinges on the identification of a few stray hairs. It is a peculiar and unsavory story. A very blond servant girl was accused of an illegal act with a dog. The hysterical girl claimed the straight black hairs found on her pubic area were fibers from her skirt, which was heavy dark cotton.

  He suspects the servant girl’s employer is somehow connected with the incident. The case has no merit; there is no victim. He refuses to send any men to search for the accused dog.

  After a protracted exchange of letters with an Untersuchungsrichter, an examining judge, he reluctantly sends the black hairs removed from the girl out for evaluation. To the naked eye, silk, wool, cotton, hemp, and linen threads, certain grasses, and the legs of insects appear identical. Human hair can usually be distinguished from that of animals under a microscope or by certain tests.

  He’s confident the investigation will be prolonged indefinitely. Hapsburg bureaucracy is notoriously slow and complicated. It is considered unremarkable that a single tax payment passes through the hands of twenty-seven officials. Fortwursteln — the process of muddling through — can be useful at times.

  Other cases also divert his attention. Two prominent men, related by marriage, had a financial dispute that escalated into blackmail. His initial interview with their sister-in-law, Elisabeth von R., was unsuccessful. She has all the tiresome symptoms of a hysteric, and he isn’t looking forward to a second meeting. Franz has put aside his search for Rosza to pursue a pair of horse thieves.

  The Inspector is under pressure from another examining judge to arrest one of the Gypsies he interrogated and charge him with Dora’s murder. He answers the judge’s request with a flood of documents to buy himself time. His lack of progress with Dora’s case is frustrating. When he was an assistant, he learned how to photograph shiny objects at a crime scene. To neutralize their reflection, mirrors, polished silver, and glass objects were painted with plumbago or with Russian talcum mixed with essence of turpentine.

  Now he turns to this visual image for reassurance. I only need to observe what is in front of me, he thinks. All the facts are here, thinly disguised.

  Wally pushes the bicycle to the Volksgarten, where she props it against the bench next to her. Soon, a few children wander over and shyly examine the bicycle. She permits three of them to take turns riding it. The next day, she again waits in the park with the bicycle. When one of the boys she questions says yes, he knows Otto, she lets him go around the fountain and as far as the Grillparzer monument.

  Then she asks him if he knows Otto’s governess, Rosza. Preoccupied, the boy fiddles with the bicycle’s pedals, turns the front wheel from side to side in the gravel. Rosza isn’t with Otto’s family, he says. But I know where she lives. Wally trades him the bicycle for his information.

  She finds the house where Rosza lives with a family. She loiters across the street and watches for the governess, who now takes care of two little boys. After a time, Wally memorizes Rosza’s routine, her comings and goings.

  She doesn’t dare make any advance to the woman yet.

  By mid-November, the military band in the Volksgarten has moved inside the restaurant for its afternoon concerts. It is four-thirty P.M., and their music, Morgenblätter, is faintly audible. It is almost too cold to stand outside. Wally taps her feet to keep warm. Over the past few days, she’s followed Rosza, accompanied by the children of the family that now employs her, to this area of the park. Now she waits for her.

  Frost has burned the tender leaves off the plants, leaving only the bare, blackened stalks upright in the ground. It looks as if fire has swept through the landscape, leaving ruins.

  She remembers her mother loved to garden, even planting the empty space between pear trees in the orchard with hyacinths and shrub roses. Her father ignored the garden unless there was a crisis, then he’d frantically hoe weeds, pluck caterpillars, or fumigate the plants with tobacco smoke from a bellows.

  When she was very young, one of the small grafted fruit trees didn’t take; clearly it was dying. Her father jerked the sapling out of the ground while she watched, horrified. Daughter, let me recite what Virgil wrote, he said, holding the sapling up in front of her as a lesson. “An awful portent, wonderful to tell. For from the first tree, which is torn from the ground with broken roots, drops of black blood trickle and stain the earth with gore.”

  And it did seem as if black drops fell from the sapling’s twisted web of roots, writhing in protest. She ran screaming for her mother, her father’s shouted apologies faint behind her. To this day, the acts of uprooting, digging, turning over the earth make her uneasy.

  Egon has been watching Wally from the other side of the Kaiserin Elizabeth monument, wondering if she’ll remember him. In her red cloak, she is a solitary, fiery figure against the whitened grass.

  “Excuse me, Fräulein?”

  Wally whirls around, the gravel grating under her feet. He frightened her, but when he approaches she smiles and extends her hand.

  “I’m the photographer, do you remember?”

  “Yes, yes, I do remember you, Egon.” She asks about his camera.

  “No pictures today. I’ve been so busy, I needed a rest.” After an uncomfortable pause, he says, “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but I photographed your friend again, the dead girl that was found here.”

  “You photographed her? How could you? She was buried.”

  Wally is uneasy. Not wanting to hear his answer, she nestles her chin deeper into her collar.

  He bends his head toward her, eager to talk. “Someone dug up Dora and cut off her thumb. The police put her back in the ground. They told me another blessing was said over her grave, but I think they should have taken other precautions. What happened is unnatural. There could be a curse of some kind on the body. Perhaps she’s a revenant.”

  Wally suddenly needs to sit down, so they perch on the stone edge of the monument. She doesn’t speak, just hunches over with her elbows on her knees, a posture no Viennese girl would ever allow herself in public.

  He thinks he’s made a mistake. Uncertain about how to comfort her, he hesitates, stowing his hands in his pockets. He’s accustomed to having a piece of equipment, his camera, as a foil for his awkwardness, his loose hands.

  At the sound of footsteps, she raises her head. A woman sweeps around the corner, chased by two small boys. Now they race ahead of her into the park. She claps her hands and shouts at them. Her voice sounds clipped, faintly foreign. She doesn’t speak the resonant upper-middle-class German. It’s Rosza, and Wally is afraid of the place where her greeting will take her. She has no idea how to approach her.

  The woman stands close to them, on the place where Dora’s body was found. She silently returns their scrutiny.

  “Can you light this for me?” she calls, waving an unlit cigarette in her gloved hand.

  Egon walks over and introduces himself.

  She gives him her name, nervously shifting her feet and pulling her scarf up around her face. Fräulein Rosza.

  Wally joins them. Even with half her face and her hair muffled by scarf and hat, she can see Rosza is beautiful. Her narrow eyes are watchful and thinly lashed, which accentuates their shape.

  Egon offers her a light, and her puff of smoke obscures the red dot of fire cupped in his hand. She stares at him for a minute, boldly searching his face until he’s puzzled a
nd uncomfortable, before nodding her thanks. She turns to watch the boys playing in the distance.

  Then Egon makes jokes until they all laugh, circled around the smoke from their cigarettes. The women hug their coats closer; it really is freezing. Wally is wild with impatience, wanting to ask her about Dora, but she holds her questions like the smoke in her lungs. The statue of Kaiserin Elizabeth towers above them, her face and figure cold blue stone in this light.

  Suddenly Rosza says Excuse me and marches away, her narrow skirt giving her a jerky gait, her feet crunching bitterly on the frozen gravel. The boys stop tussling when they see her approach. She talks loudly to one of them, then transfers her cigarette and slaps him, hard, with her free right hand.

  “They’re little devils,” she says when she rejoins them. “They’re really unbearable. There are too many children in this world. I thank God I have none of my own.”

  “I take care of children too. But they’re away right now,” Wally volunteers.

  “Aren’t you lucky. Paid for nothing. No wonder you have time to stand around in the park on a cold day.” Smoke streams out of Rosza’s pink nose. Then she drops her cigarette and neatly crushes it with the pointed toe of her boot.

  Egon hesitantly suggests they meet in a warmer place. Does she play cards?

  “I have trouble sitting down for very long games, but I do love to play tarok.”

  They agree to meet at Café Landtmann for a game later in the week.

  The Inspector takes his wife to the Burgtheater. It begins to snow lightly while they are inside. After the performance, the audience gathers at the door, opening umbrellas against the frozen shower descending from the sky before stepping under it.