Blue Damask (30 page)

     The door opened and he entered, tentatively, as though he didn’t know what would be inside.  His step and the way he kept his hand on the door reminded her of the story, “
The Lady or the Tiger?
”

     He saw it was the lady and relaxed with a smile the British wore when being introduced at a boring but necessary reception.  Elsa remained seated, knees together, hands in her lap.  She composed her face into an expressionless mask.

     He closed the door behind him slowly, and then turned.  He was a short slender man.  Her eyes darted over him quickly, taking his measure and readying herself for battle.  A different kind of battle.  A battle of minds.  He had clear ice-blue eyes and fair hair, cut and combed in military fashion, though he was not in uniform.  His skin was sunburned in places, and he wore a suit that fitted him ill.  She raised her eyes from his body and met his gaze full on. She was surprised to see him flinch.

     He did not offer his hand, but clicked his heels in a mocking way and gave a stiff bow.  He said, “
Fraulein
Schluss,” with an exaggerated emphasis on the guttural consonants.  In school-book German he said, “I am Mr. Thompson, and I have been asked to speak to you this morning.”

     “
Mis
ter Thompson,” she answered smoothly in English, rounding her vowels and accenting each syllable so that he could see that her English was impeccable.  “I cannot say I am pleased to meet you as I am not here of my own accord.”  That should take some of the snap out of his heels.  It did.  He widened his eyes and his smile became a bit more sincere.

     He put his hands behind his back and took a few steps around the room, keeping her at the center, glancing at her with each turn he had to make to avoid a wall.  When he passed close, she stood and unfolded herself slowly and deliberately to her full height.  This made him stop, as she knew it would.  She was a full head taller than he and outweighed him by fifteen kilos.  His eyes travelled up her body to the top of her head and he said, “Miss Schluss, I see you are a woman in full Teutonic glory, though your dress looks quite out of place.”

     But he wasn’t looking at her breasts, though they were nearly at his eye level.  He looked instead at her hands.  Her hands?  Elsa moved them gracefully in a casual way and the icy eyes followed them. 

     “Miss Schluss, I have been told you were found in the company of a known traitor.”

     She interrupted, “What has happened to Lord Sonnenby?”

     He was still watching her hands as he answered, “He is currently in the infirmary.  I do not know his condition.”  Just at that moment she heard an earsplitting howl from far down the corridor. Thompson tilted his head and averted his eyes.  He cleared his voice pretending not to hear.  “You are travelling companions?”

     Elsa tried not to imagine Sonnenby’s interrogation.  It sounded less civilized than her own and served only to make her angry.  If she became angry enough she would lose the ability to think.  That much she had learned.  It was important to think in this situation.  Throttling Mr. Thompson was not a viable option.

     Thompson had called her ‘Elsa Schluss’.  He must have her passport.  Why was he alone?  Standard operating procedure for an official interrogation would have included a stenographer and a guard. 

     “How is it that you are my interrogator, Mr. Thompson, instead of one of the men from the post?  I was expecting a great burly sergeant and an insufferable lieutenant.”

     This question caught him by surprise, for he raised an eyebrow and his lips parted with a little intake of air.  “Your English is excellent.  Have you studied in London?”

     “No.  I have never been to England.”

     “Family then?  How is it you learned it so well?”

     “Shakespeare.”  She told him honestly.  Her father had hired an English tutor for her when she had begged him for lessons.

     This explanation seemed to please Mr. Thomas.  The smile on his face was more than sincere.  Now he was genuinely interested in her.  That had not been her intent, but his curiosity was now a useful piece of artillery in her arsenal.

     “Fascinating. 
Romeo and Juliet
, I presume, in secondary school.”

     She shook her head slightly.  “
Hamlet
,” she corrected.  Did she appear to be a school girl mooning over poor Romeo?  The prince of Denmark had been her first true love, and her first imaginary patient.  She had been unable to save Hamlet from his tormented mind, and at least once a year mourned him by weeping unashamedly after the final curtain in the playhouse. 

     He said slowly, “The greatest play, of course.  Quite a bit of play-acting in that one.”  He was shrewd.

     She demurred, “Hamlet had everything right, and everything wrong at the same time.  He was forced to act upon custom and upon honor, yet knew the harsh truths beneath the façade of royal status.  He knew he was a fraud.”  She gave him an academic smile.

     Thompson looked at her with new eyes now.  She watched him reevaluate her and enjoyed his discomfiture. He took a step away from her, warily now, as though she were the tiger and not the lady anymore.

     “What are you doing in Mesopotamia?” he asked softly, the icy eyes fixed on hers.

     “Vacationing with my gentleman friend.”  This was true enough to show in her face.  She was on vacation from her real work in Vienna.

     His cheek twitched.  “Please, Miss Schluss, do not take me for a fool.  No one vacations in Baghdad.”

     “I have come to enjoy the delightful weather and indulge in the exotic food and drink.”

     He was annoyed now, and guarded.  “They say you are a spy for the Germans and are examining the railroad.”

     “Is that what they say?”  She allowed him to see her genuine surprise at hearing this.  “I assure you, the only thing I know about railways is that the trains are always late and one’s baggage tends to get misplaced.”

     “What are you doing with Lord Sonnenby?”

     This question she had an answer for.  “I am his moll.”  She gave him a naughty smile this time.  Thompson was taken aback at the use of the word, but was torn between the logic of her answer and her display of intellect.  She enjoyed his confusion and turned away to hide her smile and to appear demure.  She took a step and then another as though she might pace the room. She looked over her shoulder as she moved.  She wanted to watch him watch her.

     Again, his eyes were for her hands, not for her breasts or her hips.  She dropped a hip as she walked to make her backside sway and swing the beaded fringe on the blue damask stretched over her rounded bottom, but his eyes were not diverted.  She raised a hand to move a lock of her hair from her face and his eyes followed the motion.  She turned to him.  “I am good company,” she insisted, and twisted her shoulders to make her breasts bounce.

     “Indeed,” he said, but not with the thickening of voice she was so familiar with when dealing with men who looked at her as though her tailored suits were transparent.  His voice registered an intense curiosity and yet no trace of lust at all.  She moved her hands.  He liked her hands.  She would work with them instead.

     “What is it you want to know?”  She asked.  Sometimes being straightforward shook up a man who was used to subterfuge.

     He responded immediately.  “You shouldn’t be here, yet you are.  We want to know why.  Simple enough.”

     “I told you.  I am here with Lord Sonnenby, Nothing more, nothing less.”  It was perfectly true.  He could see the honesty in her eyes and it confused him.

     “He is a lucky man,” he said graciously, watching her.

     Elsa touched her hair again, and again his eyes followed her hands.  They softened when he looked at them.  She quickly went through everything she could remember about the English.  Thompson was a small man, and rather frail looking, the opposite of Sonnenby.  But they had both gone to the same kind of upper class schools, judging by their identical dialects.

     She smiled pleasantly so as not to give away the direction of her thoughts.  Small men tended to overcompensate.  Being small was not necessarily something that led to sexual deviancy, but in the context of the highly competitive environment of school…she narrowed her eyes as she considered the effects of bullying on little men.

     She did not think he was a homosexual.  A homosexual would not be looking at her with sexual interest at all. This man found something about her hands irresistible. This man was devouring her hands with his eyes.  What else could it be? Elsa was excellent at mathematics and suddenly two and two added up fairly quickly.  She turned and raised her hand high above shoulder level and moved with sinewy grace in Thompson’s direction.  She hardened her eyes, and pressed her lips together in a firm and disapproving line.

     He was intrigued.  She watched his eyes follow her hand.  She paused with her hand in the air near her ear for a few seconds, and then brought it down quickly, with a whip snap against her thigh, making a loud smack that echoed in the little room.  He gasped and his blue eyes dilated and contracted.  Elsa pretended she was having a little temper tantrum.

     “
Gott im Himmel
!” she cried, “Mr. Thompson, are you going to charge me with a crime?”

     He was visibly disconcerted.  His mouth opened and closed a few times soundlessly, and then, “Miss Schluss, please calm yourself.”

     “You must tell me now!” she raised her voice and emphasized the German pronunciation of the consonants.

     Thompson began to breathe a little faster, obviously unused to women and even more unused to tall German women having tantrums.  She pressed her advantage.   “
Vell
?” she insisted with exaggerated German fricatives and a heavy rolling ‘r’, “Put me in
prrrison,
Mr. Thompson!  Put me in
chains
, Mr. Thompson!  Beat me!  Let me go or charge me
mit
a crime, or else I
vill
take a hand to you!”  She raised her hand high as though to slap his face and shimmied her shoulders just enough to make her breasts bob.  “I
vill
beat your backside until you scream!” She took a step toward him.

     She glanced down below his waist to see that his trousers now appeared to be uncomfortably tight.  A heavy blush rushed up his neck and colored his face as he followed her eyes.  He turned on his heel and left her there, shutting the door behind him with a solid thump.  She relaxed and smoothed her hair and smiled to herself.  She had his number.

     No one else came to question her.  She paced the room again, thinking of Sonnenby and Descartes.  In her worry, she picked at the loose beads that were falling from her gown like little glass grains of sand.   She sat in the metal chairs, then on the desk, then paced some more.  No more howls had come down the corridor.  After an hour a man in uniform appeared at the door and told her to follow him.  She did.  He led her to the front door, stepped aside and bowed slightly from the waist as a doorman might do.

     “Where is Lord Sonnenby?” she demanded.  “Where is Monsieur Descartes?” She insisted.  Elsa was not going to be put out like a cat.

     “You wished to be charged or released,
fraulein
.  You are now released.”  Elsa would not leave.  It would be a terrible idea to walk about Baghdad in the blue damask, now nearly in tatters, without a veil.  She had no money and her briefcase was not in her hand.

     But a familiar voice from outside called to her.  “Come,
cherie
.  Come.”

     Elsa flew out the door and down the three steps to the street.  Descartes took her elbow before she could step into the traffic and steered her to the left and along the road under the telegraph wires.  “
Vite, vite, vous devez vous dépêcher
, hurry, hurry,” he urged.

     She stumbled on the hem of the dress.  He steadied her, almost dragging her until they passed a narrow alley.  He pushed her in between the tall walls among the rubbish between the buildings.

     “What a scene you make in the streets of Baghdad,” he gasped.

     Elsa looked over his shoulder at the street behind him.  There was quite a bit of traffic.  People, trucks, donkeys, mules, automobiles.  It was busy.  But there was no scene.  She looked up at him, puzzled.

     “What happened?  Where is Lord Sonnenby?”

     “One thing at a time,
fraulein
.”  He was still panting.  He took off the fedora and slapped it against his knee and put it back on.  “Our things are still at my friend’s modest house.  We go there.”

     “No!  Isn’t he the one to turned us in?  We can’t go back.”

     “He did not. His neighbors did.  The British always pay for information and the locals are eager for their coin. You can understand that.  But we go back.  You want your things? Yes?”

     She agreed with a nod and Descartes took her elbow again and steered her through the alley and out onto a much smaller street.  It was less busy, but curious eyes followed her and she understood now what he meant.  She was nearly naked in the blue damask, the silk had shredded from the knees down and some of the beads were hanging from strings like the fringe.  Her arms and shoulders were exposed without a veil and the sun beat down upon her hair and her face.