The Little Book: A Novel

by Edwards, Selden

  The Rise of the Feminine

  At the end of the journal, in one of the passages not in Wheeler Burden’s but a woman’s neat hand, there is a description of the scene outside Frau Bauer’s from which we can construct a picture of what transpired.

  Pushing Weezie away from him left Wheeler’s arms out to the side and his chest fully exposed. As Frank pulled the trigger and the air was filled with a most awful deafening concussion, the bullet struck Wheeler square in the chest and knocked him back against the exterior wall of Frau Bauer’s. He seemed to hang for an instant, staring incredulously at his assailant, and he slid down the wall into a sitting position. The life would be out of him within a few minutes.

  The witnesses, their ears ringing, could only stare in shock at what had transpired. With her hands on her face, Weezie let out a scream and then rushed forward and knelt beside where Wheeler had fallen. A grimace had settled onto his face. He looked up at her, confused for just a moment, then calming. He raised his hand. “You must get him out of here,” he said in little more than a whisper, pointing at Frank Burden.

  For her own stunned and paralyzed moment, Weezie could only stare at the man she loved, and then something seemed to snap inside her, controlling what had to be done, as if in one fateful instant she understood her future and her destiny. Frau Bauer came bustling out the door and stopped in horror, seeing Wheeler on the sidewalk and Frank with the gun at his side. Dr. Freud too looked horrified and stepped away.

  Suddenly, Weezie was possessed. Perhaps she had known what was going to happen. However it was, she jumped at Frank, grabbing him by the arm. Frank Burden seemed in a daze, staring at what he had done. “I didn’t know—” he began, and she cut him off.

  “Do not talk,” she said with a fierce authority. “You must listen and do exactly as I say. You must leave Vienna immediately.” She handed him one of Wheeler’s train tickets. “This is for the Nordbahnhof, for Budapest, ” she said.

  Frank must have been stunned to be addressed this way, by a woman. He took the ticket mechanically and stared at it. “If you are caught in this country, you will be incarcerated and executed,” Weezie said. “Or spend the rest of your life in prison. You must leave and not stop until you have arrived back in Boston.” Frank nodded yes. He tried to speak, but she cut him off again. “Once you get to Boston, they will not try to extradite you, and you will be safe.” She walked him a few steps down the street. “Have you your passport?” she asked, and he nodded. “Now, give me your room key.” He reached into his pocket and gave her the key. “You can wire home for money once you get to Budapest. I will pack up all your trunks at the hotel and send them back to Boston. You will never mention this to anyone. Do you understand?” She gave him a shove away down the street. “Now, go,” she said finally.

  Moments later, far from the scene of the mayhem he had caused one could see Frank Burden hail a cab, climb in, and drive away. Near him, one could see the figure of Dr. Sigmund Freud, walking swiftly from the scene.

  Weezie returned to Wheeler, who was sitting at the base of the wall, the life nearly out of him. She knelt beside him and took his hand. She looked fiercely into his eyes. “You cannot leave,” she said, as if still in control. “You must hang on.”

  A slight smile came to his lips. “You are going to accomplish great things,” he said.

  “I don’t want to accomplish great things,” Weezie said, her fierceness dissolving. “I want to spend my life with you.”

  “No,” said Wheeler Burden, making an attempt to lift his hand in protest. “This is how it is meant to be.”

  “Take me with you!” she said now in panic, but Wheeler caught her eyes in his and calmed her with his smile.

  “We meet again, you know.”

  “But you won’t recognize me.”

  “Tell you a secret,” he said with almost no breath. “I thought my grandmother most beautiful.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “I had a crush on her.”

  “I’ll look forward to it” was all she could think of saying. “Are you in pain?”

  “No pain,” he whispered. “There was.” He closed his eyes and looked as if that might be the end, then they fluttered open. “And, hey—” He focused on her. “Don’t forget to send that mythology book ... Edith Hamilton . . . ninth birthday. You can write in it—” He was adding more, but his voice faded.

  She squeezed his hand. “I won’t forget,” she said.

  “Promise.”

  “I promise.”

  “That’s good,” Wheeler whispered, slipping away.

  “No,” she said resolutely, squeezing both hands now. He opened his eyes wide, one last time and found hers.

  “We will waltz again,” he said distinctly.

  They exchanged a few last words, Weezie gripping his hands even tighter. And then his eyes closed, and he really was gone.

  Weezie knelt beside him with her hands on his for what might have been an eternity, until just before the police came.

  61

  Fin de Siècle

  Grief began descending on Weezie like a thick shroud of night. Much later she would be far enough down the path of self-discovery to know that a good part of it was a revisiting of the major event of her childhood, the death of her mother, which she had not been allowed to feel. But right now she was struggling for breath, afraid to stay awake because of the devastating sense of abandonment, and afraid to drop off to sleep because of the arrival of the terrifying dark figure that rose up and hovered at the foot of her bed, ready to enfold her in its embrace.

  In many ways she had been sheltered: she had led a life of privilege and had never endured the hardships of poverty or physical violence or racial prejudice or war. She had come to Vienna in search of something she didn’t know or understand, and in her experiences with the culture and the relationship with one man, she had opened herself to great inner depth but also to unbearable vulnerability. “I feel as if I have given it all to you: my body, my honor, all my dark parts,” she had said to Wheeler while sitting up on the studio couch, draped only in a sheet. “I have fallen completely in love, and that love has allowed you to carry all that for me.”

  Wheeler had smiled at that. “That I do willingly,” he said. He was standing beside one of the most striking of the Secessionist paintings, the one of the goddess Athena, she with the fierce eyes and bright helmet.

  “And what if I lose you?”

  “Oh, my dear,” he had said, fixing his eyes on hers, “my part as guide is only temporary, while you are beginning to explore the dark corners. Soon you will be going on your own, converting the paralysis to strength. You will discover this powerful goddess here beside you, her strength indelibly within you, expunging all those dark memories, to make them a positive part of your new self.” He had smiled then, running his fingers over the thick gold paint of the grimacing Medusa medallion of Athena’s breastplate. “Her great strength is within you, always was, always will be. You must never, never forget that.”

  But now he was gone, and the sense of loss seemed unbearable. She had lost his protection, and no powerful goddess was rising up to save her. She could feel the dark parts returning in waves surrounding her, swallowing her up, with no guide and protector to turn to. She could not come close to finding that power of Athena that had seemed so accessible to her while this one great love of her life was beside her. “Take me with you,” she had said to him in those last moments, as she felt his spirit slipping away, sliding down to the underworld, and his eyes had fluttered open one last time and he had raised only two fingers this time to keep her where she was.

  The devastation was complete, and as she lay awake at night, unable to sleep, she gasped for air, feeling herself pulled deeper and deeper into the void that overcame so many in this city of suicides. She did not know what the bottom was, but she felt herself being drawn down, down. Even images of her mother in her white dress and her inviting smile could not help. She was utterly and completely devastated.

/>   In the midst of despair and doom, some tiny spark of hope flared up, at least momentarily, some “self” she had barely acknowledged in her life, some inner power of survival trying to come to her rescue. Somehow, she knew she had to save Frank Burden and return to Boston. She had no choice. And yet while in the throes of this paralyzing and enveloping grief, she knew what she had to do.

  She had been questioned at length by the police at the scene of the shooting and waited until the coroner’s wagon came and removed the body. The police agent could see her despair, the enormity of the grief that now had her in its grip, and he escorted her back to Fraulein Tatlock’s, where he took her passport. “We need you to stay in Vienna,” he said.

  Barely able to speak, she told the kindly Fraulein Tatlock what had happened in front of Frau Bauer’s. “Who did it?” Fraulein Tatlock asked.

  “I do not know,” Weezie said.

  And somehow, despondent and shocked as she was, that very afternoon, after the police left, Weezie picked herself up and walked to the Hotel Imperial and let herself into Frank Burden’s room, and fighting off numbness, she collected all his belongings and packed them into his large steamer trunk. Inside the trunk, she found currency from other European countries in marked envelopes. With those funds she arranged to pay what remained of his hotel bill, and she instructed the hotel to ship the trunk back to Frank’s Boston address, leaving a significant tip for those who accomplished the task. By late afternoon, there was no trace of Frank Burden anywhere in Vienna.

  With an even greater heroic effort, she scheduled an appointment the next morning with Sigmund Freud and arrived at Berggasse 19 precisely on time. She and the great doctor were the only witnesses to the catastrophe. She knew she had to speak with him personally, and she knew exactly what she needed to say, to give his great mind a mystery to solve: that was the way. As she entered the room, she noticed how short a man he was and how his piercing eyes seemed to take in everything. He showed her to a chair beside his desk, and she sat.

  “How may I help you, Fraulein Putnam?” he said graciously.

  “I have something very complex to tell you.”

  “I am quite good at dealing with human complexities, you may have heard.”

  “Good,” she said. “We have never met, but I think perhaps you had heard of me before our unfortunate meeting yesterday in front of Frau Bauer’s.” Dr. Freud nodded the acknowledgment in the least demonstrative way. “Unfortunately, I knew Mr. Truman very well, as you know. You will have to excuse me if I seem a little incoherent during this meeting, but the event of yesterday has left me with little to hold on to.”

  “You have my sincere condolences,” he said. There was a tone of more than usual empathy in his voice. “And perhaps I may render you some form of relief.”

  “Please do not misinterpret my visit, Herr Doktor. I am not here for myself.”

  “Then what do you want from me?”

  “I am here to try to protect someone who has been wronged, and I think you might help.”

  “I see.”

  “A young man named Frank Burden has come to Vienna to seek me out and to ask for my hand in marriage. I deeply regret that I have become greatly distracted by my very strong and very sudden feelings for the man we both saw killed yesterday. I am deeply ashamed of my actions, and I fear I have ruined myself and most likely ruined my chance to honor Mr. Burden’s offer. You know well of the standard held in Vienna for young women who wish to marry young men of promise, and the same standard holds in my native Boston. By my passionate involvement with Mr. Truman and by my devastation at my present loss I have brought things to ruin, I fear. ”

  “Perhaps the situation is not as dire as you think.”

  Weezie kept her eyes locked on his. “Oh, I fear that it is.”

  “And where does my assistance come in?”

  “I need to tell you that a few days ago a man came to me, a man from San Francisco. He provided some shocking information. It seems that he was a business partner of Mr. Truman, and because he felt he had been betrayed, he wanted me to know the truth, to protect me, he said. He told me that Mr. Truman was a very experienced and well-traveled confidence artist and that he was out to get my money and that this man and Mr. Truman were in the process of victimizing Frank Burden also. I need to add here that Mr. Burden and I are both from very wealthy Boston families.” The moment she began telling this part of the story, she could see the thoughts whirring through the cerebral doctor’s mind.

  “And what is this man’s name?”

  “He is Mr. Robert Dilly.”

  Dr. Freud took a moment to process the information. “How did you react to this Mr. Dilly’s information?”

  “Not well, I fear. I knew of Mr. Dilly because I had met him before. He is quite an accomplished musician, as is Mr. Truman, and we had played some music together, which I now see was part of the plot to draw me into their confidence. Because I was desperately and shamefully in the thrall of Mr. Truman, I decided to disregard Mr. Dilly’s information and follow my seducer wherever he went.”

  “You know that you are not the first woman to have found herself in such a position,” Freud said. His attempts to comfort were touching.

  “As for Frank Burden, they had befriended him also and were in the process of enticing him into an investment. They had acquired his hotel room key and were about to steal from him some personal papers that would allow them access to his private dealings and his bank account.”

  “And you believed this story?”

  “I did. Mr. Dilly acknowledged that Mr. Truman was indeed from San Francisco, but he had traveled through Europe for many years, victimizing young American travelers. He said, by way of example, that he and Mr. Truman had just recently traveled to a town near Vienna because Mr. Truman had fathered a child some years ago, and the mother was asking that he provide some funds for the child’s schooling. Mr. Truman borrowed money from Mr. Dilly to pay the woman, and Mr. Dilly feared that in traveling to the town Mr. Truman intended to do the child harm, although nothing transpired on the trip. Mr. Dilly had recently discovered that Mr. Truman intended to leave Vienna with me and the money they had inveigled from Frank Burden.”

  Freud looked concerned. “And Frank Burden discovered the plot?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Why do you say that?”

  “Why then did he show up at Frau Bauer’s with a gun?”

  Weezie gave Dr. Freud a look of seemingly genuine confusion. “I do not follow,” she said.

  “Mr. Burden, why did he come forward?”

  “I am still not following.” She paused, summoning all her courage to look hard into the doctor’s face. “You have never seen Frank Burden,” she said. “Have you?”

  “I have not,” Freud said.

  “He is slightly overweight, slightly portly, and has balding red hair.”

  Now it was Dr. Freud who looked confused. “I assumed—” he began.

  “Oh, my goodness,” she said. “That was not Frank Burden,” she said emphatically. “That was Mr. Dilly.”

  “And I saw you approach him and take something from him. What of that?”

  “I told him he had better depart quickly—I don’t know why I said that—and I demanded that he give me the key to Frank Burden’s room.”

  Freud needed a moment to think. “You mentioned an illegitimate child. You don’t happen to have a name and the name of the town.”

  Weezie shook her head. “I am sorry, but that was a detail I wasn’t able to absorb. The whole story came as quite an enormous shock to me.” She looked very distressed, then suddenly remembered. “Wait a moment, ” she said. “I wrote it down.” And she opened her small handbag and began fingering in it. “Here it is,” and she handed a slip of paper to the doctor.

  He took the slip and examined it, and she could see his head whirring. “Adolf Hitler,” he said, “Lambach.” He paused and looked up at her and said, almost under his breath, “Very interesting.” We
ezie said nothing. “And now what do you want from me?”

  “Dr. Freud, you are astute enough to see that I am in very grave despair. I intend to extract myself from this very disturbing situation as soon as the Viennese police will allow. I intend to return to Boston, to recover my equilibrium, and to marry Mr. Burden, if that is still a possibility. He had nothing to do with this frightful mess, and it is very important to me that his name not be dragged into it in any way. I know that Frau Bauer will tell the police of your close relationship with Mr. Truman, and I know they will come to you for information.”

  Freud nodded. “The police have already contacted me, and we have an appointment this afternoon.”

  “Then, I have come none too soon. I know also that in the complicated story Mr. Truman told you that Frank Burden seems to be implicated, and I assure you he is not. To be quite selfish about it, the best outcome for me is for Frank to return to Boston, and for him not to hear anything about the death of the unfortunate Mr. Truman.” She did her best to fully collect herself. “I cannot stress that strongly enough.”

  “So you want me to leave any mention of Mr. Burden out of my story to the police?”

  “That is all I can ask. I will leave him out of mine, and I can only implore you to leave him out of yours.”

  Dr. Freud thought for a moment. “I think that can be done.”

  “I thank you more than you can know,” she said and after some brief parting conversation she prepared to leave.

  “I know this has been a great shock to you, Fraulein Putnam,” he said at the door. “If there is any way I can help, I hope you will return.”

  “Thank you. You are very kind,” Weezie said. “But I intend never to bother you again.”

  Her conversation with Dr. Freud seemed to have served well its purpose— the police never made the connection to Frank Burden—but that fact brought little relief. The darkness settled on her more and more, and she sank deeper and deeper into despair. She stayed in her room and left only to take long walks by herself. Fraulein Tatlock expressed her concern by bringing food to her room on trays, but Weezie ate little. At night, she slept only briefly and then fitfully, the dark figure visiting so menacingly and with such regularity that she would cry out. This went on for almost a week, endlessly. And then one night something very strange happened. She had slept soundly for what must have been two hours; then the dark figure came to claim her, and off to the side of the bed she saw something glittering and stirring, and the black figure retreated, hung back, then vanished. Beside her bed was the figure of the goddess, with her fierce eyes, gold helmet, and medallion of the petrifying Medusa. She said nothing, only smiled, powerful and confident, and pointed across the room to the table where there sat a neat stack of blank papers and a fountain pen. Slowly, painfully Weezie rose from the bed and moved to the table, sat down, picked up the pen, and began to write. Suddenly, all the words they had spoken about Vienna and music and Gustav Mahler and the waltz, some his, some her own, began pouring out of her. She wrote that night for what must have been two hours, and then she walked back to bed and fell asleep, and just as she was falling away, she glimpsed the goddess standing over her, beautiful, wise, noble, and tall, and somehow she knew that that figure would be with her for the rest of her stay in Vienna and for the rest of her life.