Unspeakable Things (4 page)

But Joe always got special treatment, she told him, and she was his girl each time he came to port. The lovely Carmelita was nineteen, and Joe was young for a captain, age twenty-three. Neither could understand a word of what the other said, but they were in love. It also helped that Joe was good-looking, virile, and always paid her several times more than what she asked. This time, he would have a lot to give, the “whole wad,” as he said to himself. Arrangements had already been made.

Joe’s ship, the
Calypso,
was a rust bucket loosely affiliated with the Allied effort, and she was charged with ferrying goods up and down the coast of the Americas, legally or not. The main purpose of the
Calypso
was to dodge, by any means she could, the German submarines lurking about, and get supplies to American troops. The little tramp steamer was so beat-up-looking that no one took it too seriously. So she operated in relative calm. The
Calypso
carried munitions, sugar from Aruba and Cuba, and general cargo. On this last trip from New York to Venezuela, the
Calypso
had carried a holdful of boxes of cornflakes, toilet paper, fashion magazines in Spanish that had been printed in New York, and a few heavy, ornate coffins, corpses being returned home to Caracas. This all had to be unloaded before the
Calypso
could make the return trip. It was all the same to Joe Riley and his men; as long as they and the owners lined their pockets, everyone was happy.

“A kiss. Give us a kiss,” Sugar jabbered. Joe hiked the parrot farther up his arm and fished in his pocket for a piece of banana. He stuck a morsel between his lips, puckered up, and the parrot sidled up his shoulder to peck the morsel from Joe’s mouth. Sugar immediately started shrieking for more, but Joe ignored her.

They were loading the
Calypso
now, and Joe walked down to the loading dock to see how it was going. He squinted as a large crate was being jerked onto the deck of the
Calypso.
It hung in the air and swayed. He watched with a critical eye as the crate settled onto the deck of the ship and was lashed down. “Easy. Take it easy there,” he called to his men. He fingered the large wad of hundred-dollar bills in his pocket and fed the parrot one more ripe banana morsel.

Then he walked over to the port office, filled out the necessary papers, and pushed the parrot’s beak away from his lips. “A kiss! A kiss!” the bird shrieked angrily. But Joe was busy now, and the parrot, waddling sideways, anchored herself anew on his shoulder, chucking and muttering as Joe signed the exit papers.

Next, he had to go find the rest of his crew, make sure that the papers of the scruffy new sailors who had signed on in La Guaira were properly falsified, and then go rouse the last of his men who were in the local jail, sleeping off what had been a bad, or good, night, depending on one’s point of view. More money changed hands, the customary bribe to the local port authorities. By this time, Joe was almost ready for his afternoon siesta, so he strolled back to find Carmelita one last time.

As the
Calypso,
reeking of liquor fumes brought along with the crew coming back on board, steamed out of port late in the afternoon, the men working on deck could hear faint groans and clawing from inside the crate on deck. They reported this to their captain, who told them to ignore it. Joe ordered one of his able seamen to make sure the crate was firmly lashed down, and the groans soon became drowned by the winds that howled around the little
Calypso
as she steamed north. At night, during the graveyard watch, the cook’s boy would put a pot of rice and leftovers out on deck, and by morning it would be gone. But the sailors knew better than to ask questions.

As the northern shore of Venezuela receded, Captain Joe Riley, pacing the bridge, thought fondly of Carmelita and of their last wild afternoon “siesta” together. She had actually cried when it was time for him to leave, real tears that streamed down along with her mascara. She’d wound her leg two times around his neck and, with her big prehensile toe, scratched him delicately behind his ears, a trick she knew he loved.

“I’ll be back soon,” Joe said, kissing her stump one last time. He tried to comfort her as well as himself. To make sure she knew he meant it, he took out a wad of bills, counted out two thousand dollars, and put them into her hand. That very same two thousand had been stuffed into his pocket just the day before in a transaction that had been so unpleasant and secretive, he didn’t want to think about it. Dear Carmelita, could anyone need the money more? And oh, what wonderful times they had together. He sighed. For sure, he’d never find a girl back home as sweet as that little whore.

Although Joe had agreed to transport his cargo to New York, he knew he could not get past the authorities there. The run was already dangerous enough. He decided to put the crate ashore before the
Calypso
reached New York, somewhere along the New Jersey coast, near Cape May. He went in as close as he could by night, watchful of the submarines. Then he stalled the engines, launched a lifeboat, got the wretched musicians in it, and rowed the Quartet as close in as he dared. He beached them in the shallows, near the barrens, the mosquito-ridden swamplands of New Jersey. From there, the musicians and their instruments would make their way slowly to New York City by bus. They had some money sewn into the red silk linings of the instrument cases, not much, but they would find a bus somewhere that would get them to New York. Although they had always wanted to enter the gleaming city in triumph, this was not to be. Once on the bus, they cringed, slid down in their seats, and drained the last dregs from their bottles of schnapps. Somewhere, they had heard, there was perhaps a last living relative of the Tolstoi family who would allow them to survive for a time in her coal cellar, or at least until they came up with another, more practical solution.

H
erbert arrived at the psychiatric hospital, where he opened and closed doors. “How is my wife?” he asked quickly, anxiously, of the nurse in the hallway. He was panting, worried that he might be late. “Has she been asking for me?”

“She’s fine,” replied the nurse, barely looking up. “She’s in there. She’s been a bit difficult today. Perhaps it is the weather.”

“Gracious lady,” he said softly. Charm was a reflex for him.

“She’ll be all right, I am sure, sir. It’s just the shock of it all. Really.” The nurse hesitated. “Perhaps you would like a cup of tea?”

“Ah, dear lady, you are too kind.” Herbert’s face betrayed his weariness.

“In there,” said the nurse, gesturing. “I’ll bring it in to you. Go now. She’s been waiting for you all day. She keeps forgetting where she is.”

Herbert looked stricken. “Yes,” he said, half to himself. He stood before the double doors of the ladies’ ward and squared his shoulders. The steam pipes hissed throughout the old brown building—steam pipes as big as the bus that had burrowed its way through the streets, tunneling him here to visit his mad wife. He was becoming a man of dark places: the library where he received his supplicants; the tenement where he lived with his elder son’s wife and children; the cafeterias of New York where he planned and waited and wrote letters; and now this dim, high-ceilinged room where ladies lay, muttering to themselves. He gathered his forces.

“Adeline!” he cried, bounding in what he hoped was an optimistic manner into the shadowed room. Once again, an aureole of light seemed to lift him by his meager hair, catch his large flapping ears and hook-winged shoulders, and propel him forward with energy. He sank in a subservient heap beside the bedside of his wife and took her hands in his. He kissed first one inert hand and then the other. She gave no answering pressure to his clasp. “Adeline, my darling!” he cried, and bent and kissed her lips.

Adeline lay in the feverish dark, plucking the same edge of the sheet between her gnarled hands. “Adeline,” Herbert whispered. The invalid did not look up. “Adeline, listen to me,” he whispered again, more urgently. She did not stop her relentless quivering and searching, as if her crabbed hands were trying to read the faces of her children in the grayed surface of bedsheets.

“Listen.” Herbert pressed his face against the unresisting chest of his wife. “The Rat is with us now,” said Herbert. “The Rat.” Adeline did not answer, but it seemed as if she had heard.

But still his wife seemed not to notice him. She stared straight ahead. “Speak to me, my darling. I implore you,” he begged, touching his large ring, the one that signified his membership in the Freemasons, to her cheek. That ring had saved so many lives. Could it save theirs?

“Herbert, they are trying to kill me,” said Adeline. “I saw them. I saw them yesterday.” She caught his gaze finally. “I can hear it. The sounds.”

“Where, my darling? Tell me.” Herbert looked at her tenderly.

“Here. Everywhere. Can’t you tell?”

“No, my darling,” replied Herbert. He stroked her hair.

He could hear steam hissing faintly through the walls, burping and snarling as it tried to fill the space assigned to it. And if he listened more closely, he, too, could hear the muffled cries of humans, clawing their way into their long death sleep. “No,” he lied. “It is only the heat. You are imagining things.”

Adeline did not answer; it was not worth it. She turned her head away from him and gazed at the wall. “My Michael.” She did not actually say this aloud. But in chorus, the steam pipes began to thrash loudly. Thick clouds rose among their own writhing. The pipes clattered, and patients throughout the building started to beat tin implements together. Plates clanged in the cafeteria somewhere in the dark basement reaches of the hospital. Steam bonged through the passageways and plates were flung onto floors. “Michael,” the lunatics cried. Adeline lay inert, still as a grave but, unfortunately, still living. A thin skeleton of a boy tried to wrap his bones around those of others. He moaned once; then the hissing of death stopped. Satisfied, death ate him.

Herbert heard. “I know.” He was sweating, pale, but dared not think further. It was too dangerous. Beside him, Adeline lay in her trance state.

Their thin, beautiful boy cried out to him. “Father! Father!” Just those two words. He raised his head from the pile of the dead for an instant; his eye sockets bored into Herbert’s own. The muttering of the steam subsided into a faint complaint around the edges of the room.

“Michael!” Herbert cried inside himself, but he dared not speak. “Adeline,” he pleaded. He caressed her closed eyes, her cheeks, closing his own eyes around the memory.

“Herbert, wake up! What are you doing?” Adeline shouted, suddenly opening her eyes and sitting upright. “The woman over there is spying on me. I know it. She stole my brooch.”

“Shh,” whispered Herbert, looking furtively across the room. In the adjacent beds, other women lay inert, muttering to themselves.

“I saw her.” Adeline’s voice rose to a shriek as she clutched her pink silk bed jacket around her throat. Her bony fingers moved convulsively. “Pig!” she hissed at the woman next to her.

“My darling.” Herbert tried to calm her, smoothing back her hair, which sprang up like a thicket of flames around her head.

“Thief! I spit on you. I spit on you! Do you know what they do to thieves where I come from?” she demanded. “Ppfft!” Adeline spit furiously toward the bed next to her, and the spittle ran down the corner of her mouth. Her face was convulsed, engorged with fury.

“My darling,” Herbert said mournfully, trying to hold her down and looking wildly around the room. He hoped no one would notice them. But such was the bedlam around each patient that Adeline’s privacy was ensured. “Thief!”

“Now, dear. Settle down.” The nurse appeared beside Herbert, holding two cups of tea. Adeline thrashed, trying to knock them out of the nurse’s hand. “Calm down. There’s a good girl.” It seemed to Herbert there was menace in the nurse’s soft voice. Adeline shrieked once more and then fell back against the pillow. “There,” said the nurse. “That’s better. Perhaps you would like some tea also?” Herbert gratefully assented, and Adeline, calmer now, took the cup in her hands.

“And what have you been doing?” Adeline demanded of Herbert when the nurse had left. Herbert tried to resume a normal, calm tone. “Professor Zatzki came to see me today,” he ventured conversationally.

“And do you remember also Frau Elkin? Helmut’s wife?” He sighed.

Adeline brightened at their names. “Ah, yes. Are they here? They, too? It is amazing to think they, too, are here.”

“Yes,” whispered Herbert. He did not tell Adeline of the losses among their compatriots, those old colleagues who had also found their way, stumbling, into the cavernous library in New York.

“Was it hard for them?” asked Adeline tenderly.

“Yes, my dear. I am afraid so.” Herbert did not tell her of the long wait, the papers, the false documents, the money, the connections, the letters, the final seal of the great ring upon papers that said death or life to a Europe gone mad. Europe was eating them all in its gaseous fury. Herbert operated in secret, but he was not alone. There were others—others, whose names he did not know—who carried out his bidding. He looked at his ring and put his hands in his pockets.

“You are a shabby little man,” Adeline said suddenly. “You know, I always liked your brother better. I should have married him instead.”

“Oh, Adeline.” Herbert sighed, pressing her hand to his lips once again. “You are so beautiful.” He sighed again, dropping her hand. She would never love him now, he knew. “I am not half the man my brother was,” he said. “But I love you with all my heart.” “Could you not love me a little bit?” he wanted to say. His heart was breaking. No, he corrected himself, it had broken already. Irrevocably.

“Look at me,” cried Adeline. “Can’t you see I am no longer beautiful? I, who was always the greatest beauty? Yes!”

Adeline sat up again, throwing her cup and saucer onto the floor with a large satisfied crash. “I was so beautiful,” she shouted to the woman in the bed next to her, “that you, you pig, cannot imagine what it was like. Papa loved me the most. I was his favorite. I was a great beauty once. Herbert, tell them how beautiful I was,” demanded Adeline imperiously.

“Shh.” said Herbert meekly. “You still are, my darling. My beauty. My sweet girl.”

Adeline’s lips curved in a satisfied sneer. “You see,” she hissed at the woman next to her, then fell back onto the pillows once again. Tears came to her eyes, and she started to sob. “Oh, Herbert”—she gazed at him—“I was beautiful once, wasn’t I?”

“Shh,” said Herbert gently, sorrowfully. “Of course. Calm yourself.”

“No,” said Adeline, despairing. The tears ran down her face. “Look at me, Herbert. Be truthful for once in your life. Even he wouldn’t want me now. Not even your handsome brother.” Sobs shook her thin shoulders.

Herbert cleared his throat. “Adeline,” he said, as if to change the subject, “you haven’t asked after the children.”

Adeline seemed to return to herself. She looked at him. “Tell me.” She regarded him searchingly, as if to really see him. “The little ones. How are they?”

Herbert smiled at her. “Today I took them with me to the library. They are so good, David’s children. Philip sat there like a good boy. And Maria, a little princess. I was so proud.” He thought of the children, patiently waiting with him day after day.

“And Ilse? Is she working now?” asked Adeline.

“Yes,” said Herbert. “She has a good job now.”

“She was never good enough for our family,” Adeline hissed, rearing back. “She was never good enough for David. And what’s more, the girl isn’t even Jewish.”

“No,” said Herbert. “But she is a good girl. She works hard.”

“And common,” sneered Adeline. “David could have done much better.” Both thought of their elder son, the good one.

“Michael,” the steam pipes started to whisper again.

Herbert’s head hurt; his eardrums whirled in a blackness of pain. He thought they would burst. “Stop it immediately!” he shouted aloud. Somehow, he was standing on his feet, a small scrunched figure beside his wife’s iron bed. “Stop it!”

Adeline shrank back, her dark eyes regarding him with surprise. “But my darling,” she began in a coaxing voice, “I did not mean…I only meant…” The room receded back into its rightful form. “I am sure Ilse does a good job,” she said grudgingly. Her voice became conciliatory. “Sit down, my darling Herbert.”

Herbert’s head cleared and he saw his family united as they once had been: David and Michael played together in a large walled garden under the linden trees. And Adeline, beautiful and proud, gathered the little boys to her and kissed them tenderly. She played the piano; she sang. The boys ran off again, grew up. David in Berlin, Michael at home in Vienna. Then something happened, but he had forgotten what.

The music swelled. The sounds of the children playing drifted up from the garden. The fragrance of linden trees in June was like white sleep. In their bedroom, the shutters were open. The scent of the flowering trees entered the windows of the large house and fell like petals on the bed.

“My darling,” Adeline sighed to him from her pillow.

Herbert kissed her beautiful mouth; he stroked her hair. Lowering his body onto hers, he wondered at so much tenderness. Then he remembered something again. His brother. The one she had wanted to marry after all. Only, something had happened there, too. His brother had married somebody else, a nice, common girl. Leni liked to collect mushrooms, Herbert remembered. She was a good cook. A nice, dull girl.

“Die Linden, die Linden,”
sang Adeline in a white dress. There were flowers in the room, flowers in her hair. Two little boys played in a pool of sunlight next to her skirts.

Herbert parted the body of his wife and slowly entered her velvet. She opened, receiving him. He pressed his lips to her mouth as she struggled to tell him something. Something about the children perhaps. “Not now,” he wanted to tell her. Everything could wait.

But the room reorganized itself with a sudden white clapping sound. “Herbert!” screamed Adeline. “You haven’t been listening! Did you hear what I said?” She stared at him, panting, with large terrified eyes. “What are you doing? Don’t you see they are killing me here?”

Probing evening fingers of cold were clawing their way into the room, and Herbert shifted slightly in the scratchy overcoat. He was sweating even though it was cold—a chill sweat, as if he were becoming ill. Heavily, he got up from his sitting position next to her. He uncramped himself slowly in the isolate dark. “I must go now,” he said to her. “It is getting late and I must go.”

“Herbert, I am so frightened,” burst out Adeline.

“You are right,” he said to her sadly. “You would have been happier with my brother.”

“Don’t leave me,” Adeline pleaded.

“But my darling, I’ll be back tomorrow. You know that,” he said in a soft, coaxing voice, as if to a child: the child she had become.

“I am nothing,” he thought, and a great weight fell onto his heart.