by Susan Daitch
Each year was further organized into alphabetical files according to the last name of the patient. Esme’s papers were under C, and the librarian, peering over my shoulder, offered to make a copy of them for me, gratis. She couldn’t leave me alone in the basement, and she had things to do upstairs.
No one had looked at the Canonbury papers in almost 50 years — the 1939 box had been coated with dust. The Canonbury papers were about one obscure patient among many obscure patients, and it was entirely possible no one would ever look in that box, or the others, again. As the librarian herself said, “Who would care? Who would be left?”
Esme Canonbury
Kierling Sanatorium
Austria, 1938
A nurse’s aide brought me a bowl of coffee with a gingerbread man nestled in the overhang where curve meets saucer. His collar, cuffs, and buttons outlined in icing, no visible zipps; even anatomically correct cookie people have no troublesome private parts. I put him into the cup, arms resting on the brim, as if he were soaking in a warm bath, oblivious to his imminent mortality, an event transacted when I put the lower half of his body in my mouth and let his gingery coffee-flavor dissolve on my tongue. The nurse herself came round pushing a trolley clinking with blue, red, and brown glass bottles labeled with the name of each patient, harbinger of vileness to come. When she reached my post near a window, she selected a blue vessel labeled “Esme Canonbury.” Christalmighty, the stuff tastes and has the consistency of liquid toad.
How did I get here? With income from the sale of the last of my treasures, including the creature Ryder had sent to me from Suolucidir, sold to a man named Feigen, I boarded a train, and crossed the Alps to find rest and recovery. This sanatorium is world famous, and my companions are those for whom money is never a concern. They can’t tell the difference between the sound of a pine bough brushing against a window and a rat scratching between walls or in layers between ceiling and roof. I have a private room between Lydea Diamantopoulos, daughter of a Greek banker, and Emily Topper, daughter of a Manchester industrialist. My third English-speaking companion is Casper Wakefield, who claims to be the unrecognized son of a duke or earl, someone, and a young woman who had been in the employ of same. Wakefield’s true story is unknown. I’m the oldest one here. The ailments from which many visit Kierling in order to convalesce, still snatch them away as soon as the opportunity presents itself. In truth, for many, this is only a brief respite, a stopping off point; for a small number only, it’s a cure. We all hope to be among the latter, chosen few.
After I swallowed my medicine, took a final gulp of coffee and the remains of the gingerbread man, I looked for my companions. Emily is in love with Casper. Wherever they are, I’m sure they want to be alone. I feel left out and try to interject myself into the solitude they seek. Mr. Wakefield was shunted around Europe by both his failing health and a father who desires only that he be kept out of sight; he wants nothing so much as to swim the Bosphorus, cross the Indian subcontinent in a hot air balloon, and map the bottom of the Sargasso in a bathysphere. In this regard, though unsteady of gait and with a face lined by the desert (prematurely, please!), I can out-Scheherazade young Emily Topper, whose life beyond the woolen mills of Manchester (even if viewed from the top), is limited indeed. It’s what I do. It’s what I’ve always done. Saturnine Emily with her tartan skirts and cherry beret; she’s hardly the first, nor will she be the last I can top. Nor is Casper the first or last fellow whose family wanted him as offshore as he could possibly be.
I made my way down the hall, paused to listen outside the pebbled glass door of the first-floor clinic. No discernible voice could I identify as belonging to Casper or Emily. A sitting room populated by patients made drowsy by potions, syrupy suspensions, inhalants propelled into their nostrils by a unique atomizing device designed by one of the institution’s founders — none of my companions were here. I stepped over a copy of a magazine, a photograph of Leni Riefenstahl looking though a camera on the cover. She was in Hollywood to promote her film about the Berlin Olympics. It was odd to imagine Olympians soaring off diving boards, running in vast circles, spinning around parallel bars while surrounded by those whose lungs, and consequently their bodies, were at the opposite end of the physical capability spectrum. I turned back, picked the magazine off the floor and put it in the trash, papers covering the evidence.
At the library Lydea Diamantopoulos waved from an alcove seat and slowly made her way to the door. Tales of Hoffman under her arm, Lydea was bored and wanted to gossip about the other patients. Should I trust her enough to ask if she’d seen Casper or Emily? Lydea was shrewd and might guess, somehow, why I wanted to find the two lovebirds.
Esme, she put her downy hand on my arm, have you had tea yet? A small square-cut emerald glittered on one of her fingers. She withdrew a flask of rum from a pocket, just to show me, then quickly slipped it back. Yes, I’d had tea, as for the rum additive, thanks but no thanks at the moment.
Lydea’s honey blond hair seemed to have a life of its own, not like Medusa’s snakes, but I often felt if I spent too much time in her company, I’d become immovable. She never married, though there had been suitors and wild parties on boats sailing from Crete to Istanbul. Now she fretted about her stepmother and stepsisters tying up all her father’s money while she was stuck in Kierling. While others gasped for breath, she couldn’t stop talking. Tales about these junkets and her anxieties about dwindling resources were frankly depressing. While smothered in lap rugs, plied with tonics, coaxed with warm liquids, there was, if you gave into it, a terrible sense that gay, mad parties were going on somewhere else in the world, and you would never be invited or missed. The sound of two people laughing in the middle of the night, a perfume shop window, anything could kindle memories that rarely failed to remind you that your exclusion was fierce and definitive. Lydea, more than anyone else, added to this particular cloud of loss. Some felt their lives saved by Kierling, and those who’d had enough of trenches or of doors shut in their faces were content in a state of reclusitation. Sometimes I was one of them, happy to curl up in a soft, clean blanket, but not consistently, so I told Lydea the post had just arrived, and she left quickly for the front of the building where mail was sorted. Lydea was always frantic about the post, always hoping for letters that never seemed to arrive. Her sailing companions went on without her. With no letters, was it as if she’d never set foot on those boats? Was she so forgotten? But then one could always hope for the next day’s post, so like someone who always assures you his next cigarette will be his last, Lydea turned her disappointment into optimism, unmatched by anyone I knew at Kierling.
With the first floor thoroughly searched I began on the second. Like many patients here, Casper can walk and do stairs, just occasionally needs the chair, mostly when he’s outdoors. On each floor, whether you’re capable of stairs or have taken the tiny glass lift, you will find a number of wheelchairs, should you need one. The second floor echoed with a hacking cough, but none of my companions could be found there. The third floor housed the even more marginal cases, those whose residency in Kierling depended upon charity, and these guests were late stage tubercular, highly contagious, generating airborne death, and more or less hidden away. There was a fear on my and Lydea’s part, that if funds dried up, we would be removed to the third floor in less time than it would take to fill a syringe with fluid. I didn’t expect Emily or Casper to linger in the vicinity of the charity ward, but there was no place else to look. I doubted they’d gone back outside in the snow. On the north side, a solitary wheelchair was parked near a paneled door. Most patients’ doors had windows, but this one didn’t. I pushed the chair aside; the door opened to a narrow spiral staircase. It could only have led to the attic and the uppermost gabled windows you could see from the street. Whispers and pauses, the sounds of kissing, and if I listened closely, the noise of a scratchy wool skirt being pushed aside. Casper may have been sitting on something squeaky. Not wanting to surprise them, I was thankful the s
tairs creaked underfoot. Yes, I was right, Mr. Wakefield was sitting on a wicker chair. Miss Topper jumped off his lap when she heard me coming. Casper did look genuinely pleased to see me. Emily did not.
Mrs. Canonbury, he smiled, translucent skin sweating slightly.
Esme, please. Just thought I’d let you know the mail’s come. I sounded chipper, as if I this were my daily routine, making marginally useful announcements.
I never get any letters, Emily said to the ceiling. She twirled her beret on the tip of a finger. Standing behind Casper, other hand on his shoulder, she glared at me. In wet, stockinged feet, they must have dumped their coats and boots in the hall, then gone directly to the space under the eaves to smooch. That’s not true about her letters. Emily gets all kinds of post from concerned family and friends; she gets what Lydea misses.
I think you got a package today.
Well, it can wait, can’t it? I mean it’s not as if paper and cardboard have legs, do they?
I tried not to show how that scorched. The attic was full of stuff left by deceased patients, trunks never picked up, broken medical equipment, old calipers, lancets, and clysters, textbooks on the pulmonary system that looked as if they dated from the time of Copernicus.
No, seriously, Emily, I think you got something special delivery from London. I do hope they’ve sent you Kipling Cakes. It was so kind of you to share them last time.
I could hear Emily thinking, the old dingbat, what’s she doing here? Why doesn’t she buzz off already?
Know what this is for? I picked up a clyster but didn’t wait for an answer. Treating syphilis, before penicillin was found to be cure. One could insert this into a penis, you see.
Mrs. Canonbury, I don’t think we need the details. The package couldn’t have been for me. My parents are in Egypt, doing a tour of the Pyramids.
Cairo! How lovely! Where are they staying? When my late husband was stationed in Cairo, I lived there for a few years, then traveled further east, alone. Such an adventurous time! (I gushed like a silly goose who lived in a teacup, but still I had my opening, and began to tell my story. Thanks to Emily, it was a start.)
Really? Casper pricked up his ears. So far I’d told them very little about myself. When I first arrived, I was a wreck and stayed in my room. It was only until I felt well enough to walk down a hall unassisted, clean, and wearing new clothes, that I began to meet my fellow guests. I told no one, not even the doctors, about where I’d been for the last thirty or so years, and in this self-contained shelter of maladies, where most are entirely and perhaps justifiably, concerned with only themselves, no one asked.
Tell us about Egypt. I’m dying to go.
I described diplomatic life in Cairo, meeting aristocratic women who lived in harems, shopping in Qasr al-Nil or Jazira, a European quarter some distance from the center of the city, boating up the Nile to Rosetta and on to Alexandria. Wakefield was all ears.
This was before the Great War?
Yes.
The Great War is old news. Emily was annoyed. She opened a dustbin full of old newspapers and poked around until we all started coughing.
Oh, leave that alone, Emily, will you?
I kept talking as best I could.
Even in Cairo, we knew war was imminent. Churchill had converted the royal battleships from coal to oil, so they could travel at far greater speeds, refuel at sea, cover greater distances, and require less manpower. This seemed like a good idea, but the problem is, as you know: there are no oil wells anywhere on our island, while in other parts of the world it exists in great subterranean plenitude. My husband, Aidan, had consulted for Anglo-Persian Oil Company, now known as British Petroleum, so this was something we discussed quite often. Churchill signed an agreement with Anglo-Persian Oil regarding the oil wells in southern Persia, but there were no guarantees in that chaotic, unstable country, that such an arrangement would be carried out seamlessly. Many other players had set up camp in the region. The Nobel brothers had built derricks to the north in Baku. We coveted a piece of this gooey pie, and more than a question of random desire, we needed reserves very badly. Another headache: Russia, as vast as it was, had no open seaports in winter, and not only wanted waterways desperately, but had the secret support of Germany for its Asian incursions. It was essential Britain keep its foothold and control that area which, it was predicted, could well fall prey to a German or Russian attack. It was absolutely imperative our resources not fall to the Kaiser or the Tsar.
The Tsar, Emily said. Hardly. What did he care? He was about to lose his head.
Not yet, Emily, a bit later. Casper gave her a do-shut-up-numbskull look I haven’t seen in a very long time.
Archduke Ferdinand was still a long way from Sarajevo, the Lateiner Bridge had, as yet, no significance for Gavrilo Princip, and the diplomatic corp in Egypt had the most fantastic parties. At a Saint George’s Day celebration I met two tall bumbling Englishmen, Ryder Congreaves and Archer Fairfax Hilliard, my own personal two shots that changed the world. Ryder was the awkward one. Archer was effusive and in his element, a man who clearly loved parties, and seemed to already know many of the guests by reputation, if not in actual fact. He beamed, pinkish, raffish, slicked-back blond hair clotted into ribbons, he shook hands with twice as many as were offered. However, when I was introduced to the pair, Archer became nervous, looked at other clusters of people, as if he needed to get away from me. The scent of attar wafted past, and he detached himself to tap the elbow of a young rajah strolling around the edge of the crowd. Ryder followed as if on a leash. I watched the two disappear in the crowd, then promptly forgot all about them until the next day at breakfast, at which time Aidan told me the story about the one called Archer.
The newcomers were supposedly on some kind of dig, but Ghiza was just a place to stop for refueling, to assess the landscape, and for Archer to get his bearings and briefing, so to speak. His real mission lay in Iran, where he was charged with the task of finding out what the Germans and Russians were up to in Persia. Unknown to Congreaves, Hilliard had contacted my husband immediately upon his arrival in Egypt. The Great War would distract Europe from Asia, but hadn’t done so yet. Germany and England were already rattling swords, building their fleet of dreadnoughts. Archer Hilliard fervently believed he could be of service, while Ryder was only dimly aware of current events. His days were filled with taking measurements, sketching Sphinx heads weathered in such a way it looked like a comb had been dragged across them, writing long letters home. Head literally buried in the sand, whether dreaming of riches or screaming at Ghizan coolies, he remained steadily oblivious.
Hilliard, Emily said, I know that name. She stopped spinning her hat.
The Hilliards were arms merchants, from swords to bayonets to pistols to whatever martial innovation could keep them ahead of all others. Hilliard Armaments had made a fortune in the past, but toward the end of the century, the company had fallen far behind its main competitors. They tried, but someone else always seemed to get to the patents on machine guns, rockets, and artillery tripods first. Though Archer was somewhat estranged from his family and rarely spoke to his father, even when he lived in England, he still wanted to prove himself to these people who generously paid his bills. Nonetheless, his family wanted him out of the country in no uncertain terms.
Why? Casper leaned forward in his chair.
He had proclivities. Everyone in Cairo knew.
Casper leaned back.
Archer’s motivations, which seemed all about defending his Majesty, more or less, weren’t unalloyed, and Aidan, whom you might have called his handler, had some misgivings. While charged to protect England’s interests, Archer was also driven by the desire for his family to take him seriously, to redeem him from exile. In order to do this, he dreamed of saving the family fortune with such inventions as repeating artillery, submarines coated with ice-resistant titanium, equipped with periscopes and fabulous enlarging lenses, sulfur for poisonous gases and gunpowder, not to mention large a
mounts of cheap labor. Persia, he believed, was rich in all these things. An interesting idea, it was thought, but a distraction from the matter at hand. Hilliard could be seduced and distracted by a trail of smoke, a taste of fresh bread dipped in olive oil, the outward swaying motion of a loose sleeve — or so it was believed. Perhaps unfairly so, because actually he was superb at dissimulation, pretending he was one thing, when he was something quite different. There were women in Cairo who were taken with him, and he allowed, even reveled in the circulation of rumors.
If you could keep an eye on him whilst he’s in Egypt. . . . It was not an unusual request. The British Foreign Office often used observers in those days. In this capacity Gertrude Bell was reporting on Turkish Arabia and Iraq. If you were accustomed to staying in the background, as I was, you were well suited for the job. I’d kept an eye on people before, and because of what were called his tendencies, it was perfectly safe for a married woman to spend time with Archer Hilliard.
It’s an odd business, was all Emily would say on the subject of proclivities.
Though I continued to encounter the pair at parties and formal events, Hilliard remained elusive. I invited him to go boating, on outings to historic sites, and a tour of the souks, but he politely refused each time. Not only did Hilliard intend to travel into regions that were unmapped in more ways than one, but he needed to get his partner to continue to accompany him without suspecting his true mission. Congreaves, earnest dupe, was his cover. Ryder, who had only a patchwork of social graces, was incapable of hiding either his contempt or his excitement. He slightly lowered his head to his food and focused on his rice or meat as if it were possible that each might grow legs and escape his fork. It was difficult to sit opposite him in restaurants, formal dinners, or even cafes where he held his tea or even tiny coffee cups with two hands. Here was a dog, Aidan chuckled, who would guard a shredded, dry, rotten old bone with his last remaining teeth, yet would still bite your hand off even if you offered to give him a better one. Ryder barked at waiters with his mouth full, but shut his eyes as if in some kind of blissful trance when he first laid a hand on a pyramid.