Back home, Max changed into trousers and a shirt to join Grammie for dinner. He was not having any ideas, good or bad, about the problem of Nissa, so he shifted his attention to the other ongoing question—which had certain similarities to this one, didn’t it? He opened his detecting notebook to the page where he had already written down three occupations that might take him to Andesia and added two to the list, Geologist and Troubadour. Then he folded the notebook closed and crossed over to his grandmother’s house. Surely he could learn to play a guitar well enough to be a credible troubadour and enough Spanish to sing in that language. Couldn’t he?
The Water Rat Jobs
• ACT III •
It wasn’t until Thursday that Pia showed up. Max was alone in the house. Ari was helping Gabrielle move her boxes into one of the apartments that Mr. Bendiff had created out of the Workhouse Master’s residence for his chef, his sous chef, and his pastry chef. These employees praised his generosity, but Mr. Bendiff believed it was the employer’s responsibility to see that his workers could live comfortably. Also, he said, it was a practical matter, saving him the cost of a night watchman. Mr. Bendiff was like a king and Max wondered how a boy would get in to see Mr. Bendiff, if he weren’t already known to him. It would be good practice for Max to make an anonymous entry into Mr. Bendiff’s presence, somehow, and now that he’d thought of it, he started to wonder just how it could be done. How did you make your way past the obstacles surrounding someone so important and busy that he was like the treasure hidden at the heart of a maze?
At the moment, however, Max was enjoying the quiet of a solitary morning of vocabulary memorizing followed by reading a few of Aesop’s fables in Spanish. A knock on his door interrupted his concentration on the story of the oak that stands firm, and is blown down, while the reed that bends survives the windstorm. Before he could stand up to go down the hall and open it, or even call “Come in,” Pia burst into his kitchen. She had the red peasant skirt she had worn two mornings ago at the theater over her arm and she glared down at him to say, “I had to bring this back and, anyway, I wanted to tell you that it was really stupid so I’m going to pretend it never happened.”
Max couldn’t think what to think, except that this was just like Pia. Pia was always perfectly herself, he thought, and even if that self was so annoying that he often wanted to bop her a good one, he liked her being so true to it. He guessed this might be Pia’s idea of an apology, and it turned out he didn’t care about their quarrel. “All right,” he answered.
“So, what was it you wanted to see me about?” Pia asked. “Can I have a glass of water? Do you have any cookies?” As she asked, she was already reaching down a glass from the shelf and opening the cookie jar to take out two large hazelnut cookies. “Do you want one?” she asked. And then she looked at Max. “Are you laughing at me?”
“No,” he said. “No, I’m not laughing. I’m just—I’m grinning at you.”
Pia surprised him. Instead of being offended, she smiled broadly and sat down. She thrust one of his own cookies across the table at him. “My father does that. Everybody else gets mad but he just … He takes me seriously, though. He knows I mean it.”
“Mean what?” Max asked.
“What I say.” Pia took a big bite, chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, and admitted, “Mostly. So what did you want?”
Now Max filled his mouth, so distracted by deciding how to say it, how much to tell Pia and how much to keep to himself, that he barely tasted the toasted nuttiness. When he was ready, he swallowed. “This isn’t my secret. So I’m not going to explain, or tell you any details. The trouble is, I don’t know if you can leave things alone.” And he looked right at her.
Different expressions ran quickly over Pia’s face, like little waves following breezes across the surface of the lake. She drew her dark eyebrows together in displeasure and looked down at the hand holding the cookie—was she embarrassed? Her eyes sparkled with anger at what he’d said and her mouth smiled in rueful acknowledgment of the truth of it. Finally, she shrugged.
This was no answer. Max said, “I mean, can you not ask questions? Can you take my word for things?”
“You mean like whatever you and your grandmother were hiding from me?” she demanded.
Max could have denied that, but if he did he’d be making a mistake, he knew. If Pia was going to be a real assistant, she had to know how to assist and not try to horn in on everything. So all he said was, “Yes. Like that.”
More expressions crossed her face, irritation and chagrin and then, with a little widening of the eyes and a sharp glance at him, curiosity. He knew what she was thinking: she was wondering how to find out on her own what it was that he and Grammie were keeping to themselves. He bit his lip to keep from grinning again.
At last, “All right. I can,” she said. “I will.” Without giving him more than three seconds to tell her what he wanted, she demanded, “Isn’t that good enough for you?”
At that, Max did allow himself to laugh, just a little, before saying, “I need to know about a young woman who works for you. For your father, I’d guess. She goes to your house to work but I don’t think she’s a servant.”
Pia was already nodding; she knew who he was talking about, but he went on anyway.
“Her name is Nissa. Do you know who I mean?”
Pia nodded again but, uncharacteristically—was she teasing him?—did not say anything.
“What do you know about her?” Max asked.
“In the first place, she doesn’t work for my father.” Pia liked being able to correct him, that was obvious. “She works for my mother. She’s a social secretary—at least, that was the job Mum advertised in the newspaper. But really? She’s teaching my mother how to be a lady.”
Pia spat out the word lady as if it were peppercorns she had accidentally bitten down on and wanted out of her mouth, fast.
“Mother—she doesn’t want to be called Mum, she wants us to call her Mother, but Mum’s who she’s been to me, all of her life.”
“All of your life, you mean,” Max pointed out unsympathetically.
She glared at him. “I told you about her, she wants her children to have the right kind of friends and herself, too, but to her that means dressing right and having the right manners, wearing the right clothes and jewels, living in the right house with the right china and crystal and furniture … Nissa is supposed to be teaching her how to know about the things the right people already know, what to wear, what to talk about, what to serve at parties, how your home—and children, too—how everything should look. Also about books and paintings and music.” Pia laughed, mocking.
Max had to know. Of course he wondered. “Theater, too?”
“I don’t think Nissa knows much about plays,” Pia told him. “But she does seem to know about all the other things. She said she had governesses and they traveled with her. She told us about herself the day she came to apply for the job and Mum asked her to stay for lunch, to see if her manners were good I think. But she hasn’t said anything about herself since and my father wasn’t there then to ask the kind of questions he likes to ask. He’s almost never home for lunch, unless Mum is having some kind of party. She isn’t stupid, my mother. She almost never has a party unless he’ll be there. She knows if he’s there, then everybody—well, almost everybody, I can’t imagine the Baroness Barthold caring, can you? But anybody else will accept her invitations, but only to meet him and talk to him and listen to him; it’s nothing to do with her. She didn’t always used to be like this. My sister says Mum used to be more … normal with herself, and all of us, before … When my father started Bendiff’s Jams and Jellies, with all the money the brewery made? Mum was the one who made his jams, so she worked in the kitchen right beside him. She went around to stores with him, too, with loaves of bread she’d baked, to spread the jams and jellies on for tasting. Everybody was glad to see her then, not like now. She wasn’t proud, then.”
“But what do you know a
bout Nissa?” Max asked. At another time he might be interested in Pia’s mother’s life story, but right now he had a job to do, a problem to solve. “What’s she like?”
Pia shook her head. “I don’t know. How could I know? I almost never see her and when I do … She’s shy, maybe. Or maybe she’s someone who doesn’t talk much? Because she doesn’t feel shy to me, or proud. Or even, really, as if she thinks she’s a lady even if she knows all those things that ladies know. She always wears the same skirt and blouse, or maybe it’s a different one because they always look freshly cleaned. She has a soft voice and—have you seen her?” But she went on before Max could answer this, “Her hair is golden and she has eyes the color of …” Pia didn’t know how to name the color of Nissa’s eyes.
“Green smoke,” Max suggested, and then—too quickly for her to get started talking again—he asked, “How long has she been working for you?”
“About four weeks. Maybe three but I think four. She has helped Mum, I have to admit. She tells her what she should wear and she’s even trying to talk her out of those R Zilla hats—but I don’t think even Nissa can do that. Those hats cheer my mother up.”
“What about friends?”
“Mum doesn’t have friends.”
“No, I mean Nissa. Does she?”
Pia shook her head. “Not that she talks about.”
“Family?”
Another shake of the head.
“Where is her home?”
A shrug and raised eyebrows, to say No idea. “I don’t know anything about her, not really,” Pia realized. “Do I? Except, it’s sort of funny when somebody never, ever talks about herself, not even a little. It makes you wonder.” She looked thoughtfully at Max. “Like you never talk about yourself.”
Max opened his mouth to return the conversation to the subject of Nissa, but Pia was already doing that. “I have to say that she explains things to my mother without making her embarrassed at all the mistakes she makes, and Mum makes a lot of embarrassing mistakes, I promise you. So maybe Nissa used to be someone important? Did she run away? Is she hiding? Who is after her? Why are you so interested in—”
Max cut her off. “Thanks, Pia. You’ve been a help.”
The idea of insisting on finding out what was going on was practically printed in capital letters across Pia’s forehead, but she pulled her braid, instead, and offered, “I could try to find out more. I could try to talk to her. I mean, I could ask her questions. I could do that if I walked with her to wherever she goes when she leaves the house; I think she might live in Summer. I could follow her, she always leaves at four. She might talk to me, anyway. She looks like someone lonely and I bet she’s not used to being lonely like I am so she might want to tell me things, if I gave her the chance.”
“Pia?” he said, with a warning in his voice.
“Or—” she started, then jerked down on her braid, hard. But she couldn’t help reminding him, “I found out about Gabrielle for you, didn’t I?”
“Pia,” he said, with a little more warning.
“Oh, all right. But this means I’m still your assistant. Aren’t I? If there’s a case, you’ll ask for my help. Won’t you? If you need it.”
“If I need it, I will,” Max said. He was waiting for Pia to leave, now that peace had been restored between them, now that she had told him all she could about Nissa. He wanted to be alone to think over what he’d learned and form a plan.
“What’re you reading?” Pia asked, and pulled the book across the table, to turn it around and read the open page. “Is that Spanish? Is that the fable about the oak and the reed? I know that one, but are you going to Spain?” She closed the book (losing his place in it, he noticed) to ask, “I thought you liked being the Solutioneer. I thought you earned a good living at it and—Would you like me to ask my father to give you a job? He always needs salesmen, to go around to places that don’t carry Bendiff products and persuade them to try them in their stores or use them in their restaurants. I bet if you wanted to, once you started you’d be good at working for my father. He already likes you.”
“Go home, Pia,” Max said. He couldn’t be any clearer. “I’ve got work to do.”
“What work? Why can’t I help?”
Max stood up and just looked down into her face. Her words were swirling around in his head, confusing him. He wanted to take his watercolors out into the garden, look at the sky, and let his brain relax and float free. All those words were like so many ropes, tying him down. Pia was exhausting. “Are you on your bicycle?”
“No, the motorcar is waiting. Your street is too small for the motorcar to drive on,” she complained, but she did go then, and as far as Max was concerned, she could complain as much as she liked, as long as she left his house and his morning.
In The Adorable Arabella, the suitor who had won the heart and hand of the girl had done so by not asking for it. Frank Worthy had seemed to be unmoved by the charms other men found irresistible, and he was the one she chose in the end, perhaps because he hadn’t pursued her. Frank Worthy was the role Max decided to play, to gain Nissa’s trust.
And it was Pia—he couldn’t deny it—it was Pia who had given him the idea. He was wishing he could deny it as he dressed himself that Thursday afternoon in a pair of long summer trousers and the blue-and-white-striped blazer his father put on for going out in fine weather. He placed Frank Worthy’s straw boater on his head and studied the effect in the mirror, before covering his eyes with the tinted glasses. Max knew he should tell Pia how she had once again helped him with her rattling talk. He knew he should but he wasn’t sure he would, and he didn’t want to. Instead, he made sure his boots had enough of a polish for the profession of salesman.
Satisfied, Max went downstairs to pick up the small, square leather suitcase he had packed with jars of Bendiff’s jams and packages of Bendiff’s crackers. He added a salesman’s pad before he closed the suitcase and snapped the catches. Then he reopened it, to put in a copy of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
He was seated at the café and reading when Nissa arrived. She took a table as far away from his as possible, but he didn’t look up from his reading until the café owner came out to greet Nissa, and be greeted, and set a cup down in front of her. Max didn’t know why, but he assumed that this young woman drank coffee. He looked up from his reading, but not at Nissa, although he gave a mannerly nod in her direction. He called to the woman, “Miss? Might I have another cup of coffee?” then returned to his reading. He didn’t look up again until the cup arrived at his table, at which time—without even a glance in Nissa’s direction—he paid the woman and thanked her for her trouble. When it was time for the ferry to arrive, Max picked up the little suitcase that had rested by his feet, replaced the book into it, and—with a vague, polite nod in Nissa’s general direction—walked down to the dock.
On Friday, which was luckily another sunny afternoon, so that it didn’t seem strange for him to be wearing tinted lenses, he did exactly the same thing, playing exactly the same role, Frank Worthy, a young man with more important things on his mind than any young woman. This time, however, he engaged the café owner in a short conversation. “This seems a pleasant, busy little village,” he remarked, and she assured him that it was, and would become even busier with the arrival of the royal family. “They take their summer holidays here, always have, my grandfather remembered it. This is the only place where they can really relax. Here by the lake, I mean. Summer’s a sleepy place in winter, I grant you. But it’s not winter now,” she said with a friendly smile. “Is it, sir?”
“Not a bit of it,” Max answered with his own friendly smile as he paid and thanked her. The smile included Nissa, should she be watching this exchange, as he thought she was, although he did not check to see for sure.
After that, it was the weekend, when no salesman would be out at work. Max had decided not to undertake the Romanian Count job, so he had nothing to do until Monday. It was the first lazy week
end he had enjoyed since his parents disappeared. He slept late and spent what was left of the morning painting in the garden. In the afternoon he went to B’s, where he tasted pastries for Gabrielle and admired the changes Mr. Bendiff had made in what until recently had been a decrepit and dismal home for the poor and aged and helpless of the city. Now there was a gleaming kitchen, a stylish dining room, and a courtyard hung with Chinese lanterns.
On Sunday, despite a low-lying cloud cover, Max took his paint box and a pad of heavy paper and rode up along The Lakeview, almost as far as Baroness Barthold’s castle, to sit beside the lake and paint. The water was as gray as the sky and as smooth as a mirror. First he painted the sky, finishing several quick paintings that differed from one another only by a slight change in the brightness of sunlight filtered through the clouds. Then he painted the sky as reflected in the water, but those pictures were no more successful than his efforts to paint the sky as seen through glass. Max was not discouraged, however. Or, rather, he was less discouraged than interested to find that even with a subject matter as limited as the sky there were things he could see but could not paint. He was able to paint only the sky itself.
While he was eating his lunch alone beside the tranquil lake, he added Banker to the list he was drawing up and then—looking at the isolated farmhouses on the hillsides opposite and remembering how the Brothers Grimm had gone from house to house with their own notebooks—he wrote down Collector of Folk Tales.
In the cooler late afternoon air, Max mowed the grass growing up around Grammie’s house and his own, then washed and changed, to join his grandmother for a roast chicken dinner. Grammie reported that “There are Romanian Counts, hordes of them. It seems that in Romania, the richest man in a village proclaims himself Count and nobody questions his right to collect taxes, as long as he survives and holds on to his lands. It’s a bit like Andesia. Have you been reading the book I gave you?”
The Book of Secrets Page 23