Pinkerton's Sister (42 page)

(“How is it now with the weather?”

(She waited for news of increasing warmth.

(She waited for news of brighter days.

(She waited for news of cloud-free heavens.

(She waited in vain.

(“We have been given cold weather,” she was sometimes driven to answer herself.

(“We have been given dark weather.”

(“We have been given oh-so-much cloud.”

(The oh-so-much cloud grew thicker, darker, ever more impenetrable. Cloudier, today, Hilde Claudia,
very
much cloudier.)

Come now! Come now! Come NOW!

Alice had never heard her refer to her husband by name, and sometimes speculated about how she would address him, though she always thought that – whatever it was – it was sure to be spoken deferentially. Perhaps she abbreviated his middle name and called him Charm. If the Heightons could still straight-facedly address their daughter as Chastity after the Sunday-school picnic, Mrs. Webster could go ahead and address her husband as Charm.

Unless she called him Cotty.

Unless she called him Asch.

Asch would
Tritsch
her, Asch would
Tratsch
her, if she attempted the
Tritsch, Tratsch
polka. (“Opus 214,” she would announce solemnly, determined to suppress any unsuitable elements of frivolity in her choice.) There'd be
Donner
, there'd be
Blitz
, there'd be
Wiener Blut
all over the carpet, and the air would be bluer than the Beautiful Blue Danube when
he
let rip. (Yes to Wine, yes to Song, no, no,
no
to Women.)

She saw Hilde Claudia, tentatively, rubbing tired eyes, holding out a translation to her husband after a day of toiling, the pages covered in crossings-out and variant readings.

“Is this meeting with your approval, Charm? Always I am trouble having with the werbs.”

Her exhausted arms – barely capable of lifting the flags – jerked into spasmodic automatic action. Somewhere in the distance,
someone
would see her signal, and respond.

Attention!

H
…

I
…

Error!

H
…

E
…

HELP! FROM CHARM ME BE RESCUING!

HELP! I AM BY COTTY CAPTIVE!

HELP! ASCH HAS ME HERE PRISONERED!

More book titles became legible.

Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. Asylum Journal. Traumdeutung. A Treatise on the Nervous Diseases of Women. The Borderlands of Insanity
…

These last two projected slightly forward from the others, as if replaced hastily on the shelf, highly suitable volumes for last-minute pre-Miss-Pinkerton perusings, judging by the titles. They'd supply a few words, a few phrases, sparsely hold the silences at bay as she told him what she saw in the clouds, what she had dreamed. She couldn't see a copy of
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
. This was a book she
had
read. This was the book whose words she repeated to herself. The title would have appealed immensely to Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster, with its promise of crowds of loonies eagerly surging toward 11 Park Place, all clutching hard cash in their hands, eager to thrust ready money at him for listening to their ravings. If only Charles Mackay had stayed in Longfellow Park in the course of his researches as he expanded his findings for new editions. He'd have found mad crowds aplenty, enough material for a multi-volumed masterwork. She'd have had a chapter all to herself, between “Fortune-Telling” and “The Magnetisers” or – more appealing, this – between “The Witch Mania” and “The Slow Poisoners.” She'd like to have a stab (a more appropriate expression should surely have come to mind) at being a slow poisoner, though
fast
poisoning held considerably more appeal. “Miss Pinke
rrr
ton,” Charles Mackay would have called her, rolling the “r” sound to demonstrate his Scottishness skittishly, in case she hadn't spotted the saucily fluttered kilt –
well-formed and smooth knees, predicts that you will have many admirers
– as he skirled his bagpipes.
But none to woo you in wedlock.

Alice assumed an expression of intelligent concentration, and tried to look as though she was seeing
plenty
in the clouds, a galleon crowded with incident. She thought of Hilde Cloudier.

“I can see …”

“I can see …”

That was what she should be saying.

“The rigging is lined with sailors dressed in white …”

Scribble, scribble, scribble.

At the appearance of dozens of sailors, the pen began positively to leap across the page.

Neue Vorlesungen uber –
shouldn't there be an umlaut over that
u
? –
die Krankheiten des Nervensystems, insbesondere uber
– another umlaut, surely? –
Hysterie.
Psychiatry: A Clinical Treatise on Diseases of the Fore-Brain. Injuries of Nerves and Their Consequences. Fat and Blood
…

What fun bedtime reading must be in the Webster household, as Mama and Papa sat down with their loved ones – the two crumpled-looking scrawny boys – to read the latest installment from
The Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria
or
Mind and Brain
.

“Read that part about women's inability to deal with the abstract again, Papa!” young Theodore – he knew how to please – would cry. “Tell us about the less development of their frontal convolutions!…”

(If this was an example of Hilde Claudia's translation skills, Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster's lips would remain firmly pursed, as if perpetually poised for a dry passionless Pharaildisian peck –
Peck. Peck. Peck –
of a kiss. Here a peck, there a peck, everywhere a peck-peck.)

“… It is by far my favorite section! Perhaps Mama will demonstrate it for us!” He revealed his proud Germanic heritage with an excess of exclamation points.

(One of the men began to speak to Alfred.

(“Be calm, my dear young gentleman; don't agitate yourself. You have been sent here for your good; and that you may be cured …”

(“What are you talking about? What do you mean?” cried Alfred. “Are you mad?”

(“No,” one of the men answered. “
We
are not …”)

…
or a fear which is sufficient to embitter existence.

The first title she had deciphered had been a whole bound series of the magazine
Brain.
At first she had read the word as
Brian
, and something about its pale mauve binding, and its position half hidden in the shadows on the bottom shelf, had led her to uncover the clues – she was after all, a
Pinkerton
, detection was her heritage, she was fully alert to the latest discoveries – that revealed what was hidden within those tenebrous tomes. Sparingly applied talcum powder (finely ground, lavender-scented, smuggled into the consulting room in a china pillbox inside her purse) brought to light what had hitherto been hidden, but long suspected by her: the glass which enclosed
Brian
was made cloudy with the whorls of damp and fevered fingerprints, the pouted imprints of kissing lips. The study of fingerprints – a true Pinkertonian awareness, this – by detectives, this new infant science, this search for uniqueness in order to gather together the evidence against a criminal, seemed like something from the realm of the quacks, the quack-quacking migration of sky-darkening flocks of wild geese out chasing. They were caught red-handed, and hidden in the bloodstained lines of their fingers and thumbs was the evidence that would condemn them to death, captured by the markings on the body that only they possessed. In the fairground booths, doctors and detectives fearlessly donned brightly colored headscarves, and jangled with gold-coin jewelry as they interpreted dreams (if they were doctors), or (if they were detectives) ventured into palmistry and graphology to bring murderers to justice. “The Lower Mars section of your Mount of Venus is flat and undeveloped,” the detective would say accusingly, his earrings jangling, as he grasped the killer's especially washed hand firmly. (
Wash suspect's hands thoroughly
was the golden rule in the grubby world of fingerprint reading.) “Your whole Plain of Mars is also very flat, almost a hollow.” This – it would be made quite clear – was not a characteristic of which one could be proud. “Are you a man lacking in
confidence
?” he would suddenly ask with meaningful emphasis, gazing with unblinking and suspicious regard into the eyes of the sweating man across the table, daring him to attempt to outstare him, daring him to keep on denying and denying, when his guilt was as clearly marked upon his hands as Lady Macbeth's had been. “Your Line of Life is
very
short.” (That always set them trembling, the first words of confession spilling from the frightened lips. “I didn't
mean
to …” That's how they would start. “All I wanted was the
money
…” It would all come pouring out, another triumph for forensic palm-reading.) Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster – for his were the fingerprints, the lip-prints (was a science in these developing, also?) – would have had to lie prostrate on the carpet to achieve the right angle for labial contact; he would probably rather have enjoyed this, the ritualistic humiliation.

The keys to the bookcases – tiny, ornate, golden, like the key to a musical box, “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do! I'm half crazy, all for the love of you!”
–
were kept at all times in the doctor's vest pocket, just above his heart. He – of all people (the reader of clouds, the reader of dreams and pictures) – had to be fully alert to the significance of Symbolism, odd in a man who claimed to eschew imagination. All the bookcases were kept locked, to exclude the unworthy, to bar the beardless. The lack of keys was no problem to a trained Pinkerton: a few deft watch-repairer-like twists with the point of her hatpin, and the bookcase – the only one with its glass covered in prints, the only one kept
double
locked with two different keys (her keen eye had soon registered these significant details) – yielded up its secrets, and the truth could no longer be denied.

To dream of keys, denotes unexpected changes.

The violet volumes were filled – crammed to bursting – with erotic photographs of Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster's secret, forbidden love: Brian, a pale, artistic youth, thin and sinuous as an Aubrey Beardsley lily, with a collection of blue and white china, and limpid, sulky eyes.

Between the two of them, a dangerous passion throbbed.

“The sailors are swaying from side to side. They are beginning to sing, and they're waving to two other ships that have just started to appear over the horizon …”

Sailors swaying from side to side. More sailors pouring in by the shipload.

Scribble, scribble, scribble.

The nib of the pen almost ripped through the paper. The impression of the handwriting would be legible six pages deep.

For a young woman to dream of sailors, is ominous of a separation from her lover through a frivolous flirtation. If she dreams that she is a sailor, she will indulge in some unmaidenly escapade, and be in danger of losing a faithful lover.

Alone, in the evening – “I need to undertake some research,
meine kleine Nachtmusik
”
–
fortified by a glass of brandy, Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster (reclining in a nightshirt of a color that Brian told him really suited his complexion) would linger guiltily, caressingly, over certain pages, illuminated in flickering firelight, as the voices of Hilde Claudia, Theodore, and Max echoed faintly from around the piano in the room upstairs, the words of the song interspersed with extempore yodeling. A certain frivolity was permitted on carefully designated occasions.

Something inside Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster broke, and he began to sob. The tears flowed down his cheeks, as he tenderly pressed his lips against Brian's bare shoulder, imperfectly concealed by a loosely clutched sunflower. These were photographs of the kind that could not be entrusted to the post office without dire risk of incurring the wrath of Anthony Comstock, and all the gradations of shame to follow: seizure, denunciation, destruction, vast heaped piles of dirty books and dirty pictures – fluttering, blackening – blazing like a forest fire.

Anthony Comstock, the celebrated – not to say, notorious – moral reformer was no kin of Mrs. Albert Comstock, but he and she were as twin souls in their vindictiveness, their small-mindedness, and their implacable air (worn like Crusaders' breastplates: Mrs. Albert Comstock's would contain enough metal for Brooklyn Bridge) of moral superiority.