The Crooked Maid (14 page)

“I can’t figure it out,” he said. “Last night, when she came to my room, it was like she was in a fever. All of a sudden she was there, hugging me, kissing me, never standing still. And today she can hardly turn her head. She lies on the couch and stares at the wall.” He frowned, bent down to her. “You told me she’s taking powders. You mean drugs.”

“Veronal,” she said. “And morphine. And last night it was flying lessons.”

“Flying lessons?”

“Pilot’s chocolate. Pervitin. During the war they mixed it into chocolate. For the troops. It kept them alert. It also—” She wedged a limp arm between her thighs, the elbow dug into her pelvis; formed a tight, hard fist, then slowly stiffened, raised it, curling the forearm lightly at the wrist. “I suppose that part doesn’t happen to a woman. Funny thing to give to soldiers.”

She laughed at his embarrassment, and he turned away from her, cast around for a change of topic. In each of his gestures it seemed possible to read the sequence of his thought. Deceit was unknown to him. Habit helped transmute her envy into scorn. He mistook her smile for an invitation to resume their conversation.

“I’m seeing Wolfgang today.”

“Yes,” she smiled. “The family celebrity. A Nazi hood turned parricide.”

She said it lightly, turning pages in her book. And still he flinched.

“What exactly did he do?” he asked. “During the war, I mean, so that he had to hide all these years?”

She did not know. “He was Gestapo,” she said.

“Gestapo?” The word carried its own indictment. “And I had hoped that he was innocent.”

“Like you, you mean.”

Her eyes found his, the first direct look they had exchanged throughout their talk. It should have sufficed to chase him but helped encourage him instead. He drew closer, sat down across from her on the crate that served her as a table, their knees almost touching. His eyes stayed on her face then slipped downwards, to her body. Her skirt remained crumpled where she had placed her elbow. It marked the outline of her inner thighs.

“You have to help me, Eva,” he said. “Help me understand. All these days I’ve been walking around like a ghost. Everywhere I go, people look at me funny. At the police station, when I was trying to register, the clerk
asked me where I had been. And when I said Switzerland, and that when I left it was still war and I’d been in the Jungvolk and had only just been given the shirt and badges, well, he just started laughing at me, but he was angry, too, I could tell by the way he filled in the form. He couldn’t wait to get rid of me. It’s like everybody knows something I don’t.”

She shrugged, offered no help. Her silence burdened him, egged him on. Afterwards, looking back to this moment, she came to realize that it was she who had wakened him to spite.

“There is another thing Mother told me,” he said. “Last night, when she came into my room. About the orphanage, and how she picked you.

“Your name isn’t Eva,” he said. “It’s Anneliese. Anneliese Grotter.”

She slapped him then, hit him square on one cheek, and they sat across from each other breathless, as though they had been fighting, kissing, making love. After some moments she retrieved her book and started reading. He watched her, rose, and walked away; crows cawing, laughing at his back.

3.

She came to his room and picked him up. A little more than an hour had passed. Robert had lost patience with the ironing; sat idly at his desk. Neither of them made reference to the slap. She simply asked, “So you want to understand? How things work around here?”

“Yes.”

“Then come.”

Outside, on the pavement, she slipped an arm through his, mischief dancing on her face. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Where are we going?”

“To buy fruit. Here, let’s run and catch that tram.”

For the first time since he’d known her, she seemed young; weightless. They ran, and she held on to the side of her skirt so it did not fly and reveal her legs. Robert had no money and she paid the fare for both of them.
They sat down on the hard wooden seat, buttock to buttock, laughing. He looked at her sideways and wondered did he dare. The impulse took hold of him. He did not resist it.

“Anneliese,” he said, his lips not far from her ear. “Liese, Lieschen. It’s a pretty name.”

She held herself still, did not respond.

“Who is Eva?”

This time a smile formed, grudging, wistful, her fingers drumming on her thighs. “It’s just a name.”

“What’s wrong with Anneliese?”

She turned, flushed, grew angry. “Have you never wanted to be someone else?”

He shook his head and was surprised to find a look of envy in her eyes.

“Wait,” she said, “I’ll show you,” then fell silent for the rest of the ride.

They got off in the ninth district, then walked a few blocks until they came upon a little shop selling groceries. An Austrian flag hung in the window above a display of tinned goods. In front of the shop the owner stood amongst some meagre crates of summer fruit and vegetables. He smiled when he realized they were customers, his mouth a hole with no front teeth. He might have been forty-five or fifty, jovial, fat-faced, born to chat. While Eva stood picking out a little basket of raspberries, she and the shopkeeper engaged in idle prattle: praised the weather, touched lightly on the Berlin blockade, cursed all politicians for their stupidity and graft: all in the same playful, conversational tone that was as much a part of commercial transactions in Vienna as was the exchange of money. She picked a basket at last, haggled, paid, and led Robert off to the low wall of a schoolyard, where they sat and ate the berries.

She waited until the basket was half empty, then asked him casually, “What did you make of him?”

Robert looked at her in surprise, then back at the shop. “The vendor? He was nice, I suppose. Bad teeth.”

“That happened in prison. He was a resistance fighter.”

“What did he do?”

“Oh, he was a real hero: sold produce on the sly, rationing be damned. But then one of his customers denounced him, and they pulled him in for questioning. The story goes, he just sat there, grinning at them.” She whacked the flat of her hand against the stretch of wall between them, startling him. “They lost patience, I suppose.”

“So?”

“Another story I heard. Back in ’38, when the Germans marched in and everyone was cheering. They were rounding up Jews then, to clean the streets, perhaps you remember. Lawyers, doctors, old ladies, crouching on their knees, and a ring of people around, jeering. Well, he walked past one of those little parties and one of the women there spilled some water on his nice new boots. So he shoved her, with the knee I suppose, and she falls right into the puddle by her side. Nothing happens to her, mind, she’s only lost her balance, but the crowd’s cheering him, like he’s a hero or something, and he looks up, embarrassed at first, and then, as though to test it, he gives the woman another little kick.” She paused, scratched her nose. “They say the police had to drag him off her in the end, he was kicking her to death. Stomped on her face like a madman, his fat mug flushed with his success.” She ate another berry. “And the beauty is it happened right here, in this street, so everybody here knows about it, and he knows that everybody knows. But they come to his shop and listen and nod when he tells them about the Gestapo and how they bashed in his teeth.”

They were silent for a moment, Robert mulling over her story.

“Did you see it happen?” he asked at last. “With your own eyes?”

She shook her head.

“Maybe it isn’t true.”

“Robert Seidel,” she said, “you’re just like everybody else.”

He chewed on that, along with his lip, searched her words for meaning. “You’re saying he’s an antisemite,” he tried to summarize. “He’s friendly, he jokes about politicians, but he hates Jews all the same.”

She laughed, hugged her crooked frame, something wicked running
through her features. “Ah, the Jews, the Jews,” she started singing to herself. “There was a boy in school—” She paused, lost track of her thought. “And, of course, they made them into soap.” She mimed washing her armpits.

“You’re evil.”

“I’m a hunchback. What do you expect?”

She jumped down from the wall, turned around, and pushed her hips between his knees. They were face to face, close enough for him to see white down curl on her cheeks; copper hair burning in the sun. The brim of her hat threw a shadow on one eye.

“We are a people,” she intoned, playful and serious all at once, “who have already forgiven themselves.”

“Not you.”

She wrinkled her nose and snorted.

He looked at her in wonder. “How did you get so smart?”

She smiled, pleased, leaned forward and blew a mouthful of air up his nose. “If you were smarter, you’d have kissed me.”

She stepped away, spun, one twisted shoulder leading the way.

“Your brother told me once that only a cripple cares about the past. Next thing you know, Herr Seidel falls out of a window.” Again she laughed. He could not tell whether her merriment was forced. “It’s what I love about Vienna,” she continued, relentless, laughing, raising her voice. “Everyone knows everyone, and what they did. You meet a strange lady on the train and next you know—”

“What?” he asked, remembering Anna Beer.

“Was she really very pretty, your brunette?”

He did not hesitate. Perhaps he should have. “Beautiful.”

She danced away, left him.

“Where are you going?” he called after her.

But she only turned her head around, stuck out her tongue over one sloping shoulder, and ran away.

4.

“Look at you! Like a dog waiting to play fetch. Frisky. And look at the shirt you put on, it’s literally stiff with starch. Well, sit down then, little brother. No, stand, let me hug you. There, you even get a kiss. Don’t look at me so surprised. It’s the bloody prison—makes you sentimental. That, and you are pretty like the Virgin, never you mind about the eye! There, you even blush like her.

“But go on, say something. Though I already know all about it. The guard told me—Bastel, the fat one with the pockmarks and the beard. Says you came here last night, ‘just to make sure you knew where to come,’ and then sat chattering away for a good half-hour, though you were in a ‘terrible hurry’ and got up every three minutes in order to head home. Oh, they had a good laugh once you left. But don’t be angry! They rather liked you. They laughed at you, but they fell in love with you all the same. You were like that even as a little boy.

“But tell me, Robert, what is it you want? To see me? Well, here I am. What do you think? I’m growing stout. There’s a Magyar here, in the kitchen, I mean, a cook, and he makes a goulash, let me tell you—There is no meat in it, naturally, just bones and gristle, but it’s not bad all the same. I’ll miss it when I get out.

“But speak, speak, and stop creasing your brow. I can see it from here: you’ve come with a plan. Well, then, out with it! Only sit, make yourself comfortable, and don’t mind the guards. They are listening, naturally, it’s not from malice or anything, but
a matter of policy
(they are awfully fond of that little phrase). The truth is, they’re bored, terribly bored, and there’s no drinking here on duty, they are very strict about that, and one of them even got suspended over a little glass. So it’s no wonder they all come out to nose around a little. After all, it’s an occasion, you have even washed and combed your hair!”

Robert sat and watched his brother without saying a word. Wolfgang looked much as he remembered; not at all “stout” but rather trim, with a loose-jointed athleticism that had marked him even as a youth. If anything
he had grown more handsome as he passed into manhood: a broad-shouldered man with long limbs and a square chin, and soft hazel eyes it was said he had inherited from his mother. The swooping “cavalry” moustaches made him look like a dashing officer from some historical portrait, an appearance not at all lessened by the dirty state of his clothing and the scratch that was healing on his forehead. It was only the voice that betrayed something morbid and unhealthy in the state of his soul. It struck Robert that it had been a long time since Wolfgang had spoken to anyone, and that now, all of a sudden, he was terribly greedy to speak, though there was something artificial, too, about this greed, something nervous and forced, and that some part of him was listening to his chatter with angry disdain. Wolfgang’s hair had been shorn close to the scalp but was already growing back with peculiar vigour.

Despite Wolfgang’s comments about the boredom of the guards, there was only a single guard present, along with some sort of representative of the court, sitting in one corner of the room and listening to them with lazy equanimity. The room, incidentally, was not a cell but a larger furnished room reserved for visits. It had been a special favour to Robert to arrange a visit outside regular hours. They had the room all to themselves.

Robert turned his attention back to his stepbrother. His eyes wandered from Wolfgang’s face down to his hands, surprisingly small for a man of his frame and even somewhat plump. A crescent of dirt was wedged under each of his nails.

“I met a man today,” Robert found himself saying, “a greengrocer. He had half his teeth knocked out by the Gestapo.”

His brother pulled a face. “So that’s why you are here,” he said sulkily. “You want an answer to that nagging question: is he a good man or bad? Well, Robert, I don’t remember any greengrocers. Though perhaps, who knows—” He grimaced, leaned back on his chair, folded his hands behind his neck. “You know what the guard said to me? Yesterday it was, right after lunch. He puts his hand on my shoulder, friendly like, and says, ‘No chance of bail, eh? Never you mind. At least you’re safe in here.’ Real
touching it was. I suppose he pictures him, that greengrocer of yours, honing his paring knife in my honour. Or maybe he thinks they are out there somewhere, a whole cabal of hook-nosed little vagrants on the lookout for my kind.” He laughed, then spat. “The rubbish people will believe! My kind, indeed. And what about his, eh? It never occurs to him there may be a little pack of them out there for him too!” He paused abruptly, leaned forward across the width of the whole table, and added somehow nastily, “You haven’t asked me yet whether I threw Father out the window.”