“You really are a most unusual woman,” he said. “I don’t know many people who would have thought of doing what you just did.”
The knowledge that there was a hatch above us was an insistent, nagging hope.
“If you sat on my shoulders . . . ,” Falchenberg suggested.
We tried. Erich Falchenberg was nearly two meters tall, and I had luckily inherited my body type more from my father than from my petite mother. I could reach the hatch, I just could not move it even a millimeter. Whatever it was that had been placed on top, it was much too heavy for me to move.
I looked calculatingly at Falchenberg’s broad, athletic shoulders.
“Perhaps you should try.”
“You could hardly carry me.”
“We must at least make the attempt!”
Unfortunately, he was proved right. Even with the exertion of all my strength, I could not remain upright long enough. I staggered, and we both tumbled to the ground in a hard and awkward fall.
“Blast it,” I cursed. What good was it that one of us was built like a medieval battering ram if we could not get the ram within striking distance of the castle gates?
We tried a few more times, without luck. Then Falchenberg had to sit down for a while.
“Are you dizzy?” I asked. “Does your head hurt?”
He smiled crookedly. “It’s kind of you to ask, but . . . even if it does, what do you propose to do about it?”
He was right. There was nothing I could do. But it was second nature to keep an eye on his symptoms.
“Last night . . . when you asked August to meet you,” I said, “was that just to get him out of the house?”
He nodded without meeting my eyes. “Althauser sent a false message to get your father out of the way; I was to write to August. He knows my handwriting, so he would not have been convinced if the letter had been written by someone else.”
I observed him in the dim light. There were copious quantities of congealed blood in his hair and a bump the size of a hen’s egg where Althauser had hit him on the forehead.
“I still don’t understand why you think you have to do everything he says.”
“No,” he said simply, “you probably don’t.” That was all. No explanation, no apology.
“Do you have any idea why he hit you?”
“I should think because I disagreed with him. And because time is running out for me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll soon be a tool he no longer needs. I can only be used against you and against August. He has you under control, and August . . . August he has pretty much managed to push into the gutter too.”
“With your help.”
“Yes, damn it! With my help. How often do you want me to confess?”
He expelled the words with such force that he silenced me. We sat next to each other for a while and brooded over our private thoughts. Finally, he broke the silence.
“His name is Jacob. He is two years younger than I. And when his father discovered what was going on between us, Jacob tried to kill himself. I have not been allowed to see him since, have not been able to write to him or speak with him. All I know is that a court case would kill him. August can survive it. So can I. But it would kill Jacob, it honestly would. That is why I need to protect him. Can you understand that?”
It was so . . . upside down. I had spent so many months fearing and hating this man because I believed he was a threat to my relationship with August. Now it seemed that that had never seriously been the case. Though he had harbored no tender feelings for me back then, he would hardly have traveled all the way from Heidelberg to Varbourg just to harass me.
“The bladder of pig’s blood,” I said. “Was that your idea?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “Though it was actually lamb’s blood. Just in a pig’s bladder.”
“But . . . why? Since I had not actually stolen the love of your life, why all that anger?”
“I don’t know. And I really am sorry—it was a low and disgusting thing to do. I was so . . . frustrated. I was homesick. I was in despair over what happened with Jacob. I thought you were an insufferable little busybody. I probably needed you to be that, because then it was easier to do what I had to do for Jacob’s sake. If you actually deserved it, I mean . . . but you didn’t, and I’m sorry.”
I smiled crookedly.
“You have actually apologized once already. Very articulately too.”
“Yes. But that was only because Althauser forced me to so he could appear to be a hero in your eyes.”
I thought about it for a while.
“You say you love this Jacob. Is there a great deal of difference? Between the love of two men and the love of a man and a woman, I mean?”
“I don’t know, mademoiselle. I have only tried one kind. Perhaps you should ask August?”
“If I ever get the chance . . . ,” I said despondently. But the thought of August somehow made my tired brain start working again.
“I have an idea,” I said. “Perhaps it is foolish to aim for the hatch—that is exactly the spot that has been most fortified. What if there is a board we can wrench loose?”
“With your bare hands, Fräulein? You may be a remarkable woman, but . . .”
“With my bare hands,” I said. “And the stays in my corset.”
He began to laugh.
He helped me undo the hooks of my corset. If nothing else, I’d be able to breathe more freely now, and after the water-kiss we seemed to have few physical secrets from each other. We used the tongue of his belt buckle to undo the stitches. The stays were almost forty centimeters long and made of spring steel, and though they were meant to yield a little to follow the movements of the wearer, they turned into quite an effective slender crowbar when we combined several of them by tying a strip of fabric around them.
Once again, I climbed onto Falchenberg’s shoulders, and we proceeded systematically. Every crack was examined. There were only a few places where the crack between the boards was wide enough that my improvised crowbar could be inserted. Every time I succeeded, I tugged energetically at it while Falchenberg offered me well-meaning technical advice.
“Don’t yank. Use a steady pressure. Push it in farther before you try. Yes, that’s better.”
Finally one of the boards gave. The nails squeaked, and the wood began to splinter. I could feel Falchenberg’s shoulders shaking with effort, but he stood solid as a rock despite my uncoordinated rocking and tugging.
Then the board snapped with a crack like a pistol shot. I completely lost my balance and brought Falchenberg down with me. But when we sat up and looked toward the ceiling, there was a new hole—about twenty centimeters wide and sixty centimeters long.
“One more board,” said Falchenberg. “Then a slender young lady like yourself should be able to wriggle through with no problem.”
It took time, because while the first board had been somewhat rotten and worm-eaten, the boards next to it were more solid. But we succeeded at last. I hauled myself up as far as I was able and ended up using poor Falchenberg as a kind of ladder. I think I even stepped on his abused head, but he did not complain.
I found myself in an astonishingly ordinary living room. Two armchairs, a small dining room set for four. A heavy old Chinese chest—it was what was keeping the hatch closed. A silk screen with Japanese fabric prints and, behind it, a fireplace and a copper bathtub. Faded chintz wallpaper and a mantel clock made of marble. Everything was a bit worn and dusty but otherwise entirely normal. Nothing gave away the cellar downstairs.
I pushed the chest aside and opened the hatch. Realizing Falchenberg would need something to stand on, I fetched a chair and lowered it through the hatch until he could reach it. It was not quite enough.
“Is there another one?” he asked.
It required a small pyramid of three before we succeeded.
The living room door led to another room that also looked entirely ordinary—a bedroom with a bed,
dresser, and wardrobe. Then a small hallway and an equally tiny kitchen.
The front door was locked. But this was a castle gate the battering ram could reach. The doorframe splintered at his first assault.
By modifying the internal nutritional environment [of an embryo], and by holding the organized matter in some way in a nascent state, we may hope to change its direction of development and consequently its final organic expression.
—CLAUDE BERNARD, “LE PROBLèME DE LA PHYSIOLOGIE GéNéRALE,” 1867
October 5–11, 1894
Everyone seemed to believe that it was appropriate for me to go to bed. You would think there was a handbook on the treatment of women who have been subjected to mortal danger. (1) If the woman is reasonably unharmed and unravaged, tell her countless times how fortunate it is that unspecified “worse things” didn’t happen. (2) Offer her vast quantities of chamomile tea and chicken broth. (3) Send her to bed with a hot-water bottle, regardless of the time of day. (4) If there is an even minimally relevant male figure nearby, thank him profusely for saving her.
I was not quite sure which part of this regimen irritated me the most. At least Falchenberg was honest enough to look uncomfortable and mumble that we might be said to have saved each other. But no one tried to send him to bed with a hot-water bottle and a cup of tea. Instead he was installed in the Commissioner’s favorite plush armchair and plied with cognac.
I could tell that my father was a bit confused as to who this young German actually was, and how he fit into the picture—by silent agreement he had been presented simply as “one of Madeleine’s fellow students.” If Papa had known the full picture, he might have been a little less generous with both his cognac and his gratitude. But at least it seemed that Papa and August had found each other again in their mutual concern for me.
They had arrived home almost simultaneously from their respective wild-goose chases, only to be met by a devastated Madame Vogler, an ether-befuddled Elise, and three representatives of Varbourg’s gendarmerie that Madame Vogler had called. Elise could tell them nothing except that she had been in the middle of preparing Mademoiselle’s bath when she had heard someone outside the back door. She had opened it—and had been overpowered by a masked man armed with a rag soaked in ether. As to my whereabouts, they had been able to find no clues except for the wet jacket I had discarded.
Papa immediately sent for both the Commissioner and Police Inspector Marot. A search was instigated, but at first no one thought of questioning Althauser. Not that it would have made much difference. He was hardly the type to break down and confess at the first hostile questions. He had not done so, for example, when Marot and I confronted him with the files from the Commission for Public Health and Decency and what they revealed about his connection to Rosalba.
It had been almost noon, explained Papa, before they had received a useful tip from “some journalist—he claimed he knew you?”
“Christophe?” I said in surprise.
“Yes. Him. Peculiar man, something of a flâneur, I shouldn’t wonder. It turned out that he had considerably more knowledge of what you have been doing for the last few days than I.”
It was hard to explain. I chose not to try.
“Yes,” I said. “Go on.”
“Are you sure it wouldn’t be better for you to lie down? You look pale.”
“Come on, Papa. What did Christophe say?”
“Among other things, that you had been extremely interested in the tenement block in Rue Colbert where the coal merchant’s yard is. A part of the search was thus focused there.”
Perhaps that was why we had not seen any sign of Althauser. Madame Arnaud could come and go more easily without attracting attention; she lived in the building, after all.
Something kept bothering me when I thought of the saddlery shop and the bricked-up windows. Something hovering just under the surface of my consciousness but unwilling to come forward and speak its name. But Christophe’s information explained why Falchenberg and I had run directly into the arms of two gendarmes as soon as we had emerged into the street.
After a brief questioning, we had been permitted to go home to Carmelite Street. The search continued, but now it was Althauser they were looking for, so far without success. He was neither at home in Rue Faubourg, at the university, nor at the Institute for Child Care and Nursing.
But that was not where they ought to be searching, peeped that insidious little anxious voice in my head. I rubbed one temple.
“Are you in pain?” asked August.
“No,” I snapped. “I’m fine!”
“If you don’t want to go to bed, could you at least rest a little?”
“For heaven’s sake! I’m not sick!”
It came out with such vehemence that everyone in the salon stared at me—Falchenberg, the Commissioner, Papa, Madame Vogler, and of course August as well. The worst thing was that the moment I had said it, my insides began to wobble and a prickling, stinging feeling right behind my eyes told me that a crying jag was on its way.
I refused to sob like a hysteric while they were all looking at me. I got up with as much dignity as I could muster.
“Fine,” I said. “If it means so much to you, then I will go upstairs and lie down.”
I fled up the stairs before anyone had time to comment on my capitulation. As soon as I had closed the door, the tears came pouring out. I grabbed a pillow and tried to muffle the loudest sobs, but I had an awful feeling that they could still hear me in the salon.
The emotional storm was violent and abrupt, but it did not last very long. My hysterical tears dried up almost as suddenly as they had begun. I lay fully clothed on the bed for a little while, staring at the ceiling. It had been a very long night, and a long day both before and after. Perhaps it wasn’t entirely unreasonable to provide body and mind with a little rest.
As soon as I closed my eyes, there it was again.
The saddlery shop. The cold cellar. Ether-fogged dreams and a voice that whispered, “Where is the child?”
I placed both hands against my abdomen but felt no response there. Time would show whether I was right, but this endless afternoon I felt sure that my body still belonged to me and that no little stowaway had taken over my uterus.
But if this strange protective urge was not some kind of early pregnancy warning, what was it? And what was it I was missing about that coal cellar?
I could almost hear a collective “Oh no!” pass through the assembled men when I came down the stairs. Just when they had finally managed to get me where they thought I belonged . . . I was painfully conscious that I was not properly corseted, that I was still wearing the cellar-stained skirt, that my hair looked like a stork’s nest, that my eyes were shiny and red rimmed. All in all, I probably looked like I belonged in an asylum for severe cases of female hysteria.
I strode through the salon as calmly as was possible.
“Where are you going?” exclaimed my father.
I considered saying that I needed a bath—it was true enough and hard to argue against. But Elise was at home with her mother, being justifiably fussed over, and I was not at all sure I would ever feel like going down into that laundry shed again, not even if it was just to leave the house by the back door.
“I am a grown woman,” I reminded him. “I can come and go as I please. Wasn’t that what you said?”
August had risen.
“Then you won’t mind if I accompany you?” he said quietly. And because he said it in that quiet voice, so completely devoid of disparagement or command, it struck me how comforting it would be to have him with me.
“Very well,” I answered, and then, because I felt that sounded a little cold, added, “Thank you.”
The streets were darkening when we reached the saddler shop. August looked at the bricked-up windows.
“Are you sure you want to go in?” he asked. “I know you are strong, but . . . most women would run screaming from this place if they had experienced what
you have.”
I thought of the women in the Decency Commission’s custody—both the ones who had been subjected to Pro Patria’s experiment and the ones who had “only” undergone the usual forced examinations.
“There are many who cannot run screaming,” I said, “or run away at all, even though they are put through worse horrors. It is, in fact, only women from higher walks of life who can really afford to be frail. The others just have to pick themselves up and get on with it, if they and their children are to survive.”
He acknowledged this with a slight nod. “You may be right. But . . . what is it that you want here?”
There it was, the question I could not answer. I did not know what I was doing here; I just knew I had to come.
“Let us just go in,” I said. “It looks as if the door is open.”
The door was open because it could not be otherwise—Falchenberg had reduced the doorframe to kindling.
The rooms were dim and shadowy, and felt dusty and damp at the same time. In the few hours that had passed, the cellar smell had risen through the open hatch and the hole in the floorboards, and I shuddered in spite of the wool coat I had put on as protection against the evening chill.
“Is there any light?” August asked softly.
“Not electric,” I said. “But there is probably a lamp somewhere.”
Gaslight from the streetlamp outside bled through the parting of the heavy plush curtains, and we managed to light a lamp that stood on the table by the armchair in the salon. August raised it like a torch above his head and stared down through the open hatch into the cellar prison I had shared with Falchenberg.
“What is it you want here?” he repeated.
“Shush,” I quieted him. I stood completely still and concentrated my hearing to the utmost. “Can’t you hear it?”
“What?”
A faint mewling cry, so weak that it was hard to believe it could emanate from a living creature.
“There!” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
A Lady in Shadows Page 27