‘Tell me about the rabbits, Papa.’
The car swerved for an instant before Gustav Müller straightened the wheel again.
‘What rabbits, sweetheart?’ he felt his throat tighten.
‘The ones down in the gardener’s shed.’
‘Oh, those.’ He took a deep breath. ‘What would you like to know?’
‘The gardener let me help feed them. They are so sweet.’
‘Oh. Did he?’ He cleared his throat. ‘That’s nice.’
‘But the baby bunnies look so sad, as though they’ve been crying. Why are they kept apart from their mothers?’
‘I’m not sure. Perhaps the professor is trying to breed them?’ After a pause, he added, ‘Sometimes it is easier not to look at things we do not wish to see.’
Anna wasn’t sure what Papa meant. All she could think of was the cute tiny rabbits. ‘Do you think he might give us one to take home, Papa? I would love to have a bunny of my own to play with.’
‘Where would we keep a rabbit in our apartment, Anna? And besides, who would look after it while you are at school?’
Anna sat staring out the window as they passed the town square. Papa drove down a familiar laneway and parked the car in front of Pignataro’s Puppetarium.
‘Come along,’ Papa said, straightening the feather in his hat as he glanced in the mirror. ‘I have a little surprise for you.’
It took a while for Anna’s eyes to adjust to the dim light inside the cramped shop. In the far corner a woman sat at a wooden desk, her face hidden in shadows, strips of wet newspaper spread out before her. Anna soon recognised her as the same woman who had handed the professor a package the day before.
Papa took off his hat as Anna followed him over to the workbench. He stood waiting for the woman to look up but she continued to ignore them, dabbing a brush into a pot and layering some glue onto a papier-mâché sculpture that she was fashioning into the shape of a cat. The creature was perched on a pair of hen’s feet attached to a metal base. The grotesque catbird would likely join other curious figures on display in the shop. Devils sat beside kings, and clowns slumped against princesses. Puppets and dolls lined the walls, wide eyes gazing out into the stillness of the room, waiting for someone to reach up and bring them to life. Shelves were lined with boxes of small body parts, crammed in between mountains of old newspapers. Taking pride of place on the shelf beside the dollmaker stood a miniature toy theatre, with elaborate curtains and a handpainted backdrop. The proscenium was filled with tiny, paper-doll actors dressed in elaborate costumes, all stuck in their perpetual roles. Glass cases were crammed with antique toys, metal clowns, wind-up trains and rusty acrobats standing on their heads, caught mid-cartwheel – souvenirs of a child’s abandoned play. They smiled at Anna mutely, each one begging to be rescued and taken home.
On a separate shelf a mini war raged, its ranks of lead soldiers dressed in military garb, fighting rusty battles long forgotten. They were watched over by a saint sporting a cracked smile. Along one wall were rows of smallish costume dolls, each one dressed in the garb of a different country. Holding Lalka, Anna searched the shop for the familiar cherubic cheeks and glassy eyes of the sorts of dolls she loved.
‘We don’t have many like her.’ The woman’s voice was raspy. She slowly placed her tools along one side of the desk, staring at Lalka over the top of her grimy spectacles. ‘Where is she from?’
Anna felt her cheeks burning. ‘Mutti,’ she said. It was a precious shell of a word that hid a lost world. ‘Just before she died.’ She looked down at her feet, her frilly white socks peeking out above scuffed red shoes.
The dollmaker pulled a handkerchief out from the pocket of her paint-spattered apron to stifle a phlegmy cough. ‘Ah! Born from the tomb.’ She held out her hand. ‘May I see her?’
Anna looked over at Papa, silently imploring him to rescue Lalka from being handed over to a stranger. Papa cleared his throat, and the woman glanced up at him quickly before turning her attention back to the papier-mâché catbird.
‘We are here to collect a parcel, Fraulein Schilling.’ Papa spoke quietly. He looked around as if to make sure no-one else was in the shop. ‘And we have one to deliver as well, from Herr Schilling, your father.’
The woman kept working on the sculpture. Silence draped the room. Almost. Anna could hear the toys whispering among themselves as they watched the scene play out centre stage. She cradled Lalka, hoping she would fall asleep and not have to hear the other dolls laughing at them.
‘Your doll’s eyes might be closed, but she can still see.’ The woman muttered, as if talking to herself.
Lalka’s eyes opened with a startled stare as Anna held her upright again. A box of tiny legs lay on the floor. The dollmaker pushed her chair back and bent over to pull a small hessian sack out from under the bench. She slipped a parcel inside and tied it firmly with some string.
‘Here you go. It’s yours,’ she said, sliding it across to Papa.
‘We both know it’s not mine, Fraulein Schilling.’ Papa pulled out a small package from the inside pocket of his jacket and placed it in front of her.
She scooped it up quickly and hid it under the desk.
Papa turned to Anna. ‘Darling, Fraulein Schilling here has kindly offered to let you stay with her this morning, while I run some other important errands for the professor.’
Anna looked up at him, feeling uneasy. She did not want to be left alone with this stranger, but already guessed from the stiffness in his voice there would be no point arguing.
‘I won’t be gone long.’ He gave her a peck on the cheek, turned briskly and hurried out.
The quavering sound of church bells crept in from the street as the door swung open and closed. Along one side of the shop where the sun streamed in, the dolls looked a little jaundiced.
‘Come! Sit here, child.’ The dollmaker patted a faded floral cushion that rested on a chair beside her. ‘Nothing to be scared of.’ She stifled a cough.
Anna inched forward reluctantly and sat down.
‘You know, you have a very special doll,’ the woman said, her voice gentler now that Papa had left. ‘Your Mutti must have loved you very much. Do you miss her?’
What sort of a question was that?
‘The dead never truly leave us, you know,’ Fraulein Schilling said airily, as if she had crept inside Anna’s mind. ‘They are like acrobats balancing on a wire, gliding between life and death. We hold them inside, each one of us a walking cemetery.’ Reaching up to a shelf, Fraulein Schilling took down a pert-faced doll with a red mohair wig. ‘Let me introduce you to Leisl, my own little girl.’
The doll had a double chin and full cheeks, with feathered eyebrows drawn above blue glass eyes. She wore a white lace dress and clasped a bouquet of dried flowers.
‘Liesl was my niece. She died when she was about your age, but she’s always here, helping me breathe life back into every doll I work on.’
‘Why is she dressed as a bride?’
‘As a reminder of what might have been.’ She wiped away a tear, straightened her apron and looked across at Anna with cat-green eyes.
‘Now, young lady, would you like to learn how to repair a doll?’ she asked, changing the subject.
Anna nodded.
‘All right, then. But first you must learn a little anatomy,’ she said. ‘A butcher needs to know that filet mignon is actually the iliopsoas muscle of the cow.’
Anna grimaced.
‘So, too, a dollmaker, my dear. Sometimes a doll may have had an unfortunate accident; it is very important to understand the body parts and how they all fit together. For example, see this torn cloth leg?’ She pointed to a rag doll that lay crumpled up in one corner. ‘It only requires a bit of stitching to make it sit straight. But if sewn into the wrong spot, the whole body will twist.’
She grabbed a doll’s head from one of the boxes under the bench and picked up a tool that looked like it came from Mutti’s old manicure set.
‘This is a beveller. We use it to set eyes.’
She stuck a glass eye on the twisted metal hook poking out from the end.
‘When you put it in you want it to lie in the midline. Sometimes it can take hours to find the exact setting. I like to work on both eyes at the same time, because that way the doll can show me itself if something isn’t quite right.’ She held the doll’s head up to the light. ‘This is how you check if the whites are equal. You can also see if the eyes are slightly different colours. If the eyes don’t quite match, that can really throw you off.’ She looked across to Anna. ‘Although your doll’s eyes are very beautiful, just like yours.’
Anna smiled, her wariness fading as she found herself engrossed in the dollmaker’s instructions.
‘The French have paperweight eyes, and then there’s the paperweight wraparounds. Oh, it gets so complicated.’ She laughed. ‘That’s the scary part for a doll specialist – knowing exactly which eyes to order for each doll. Eyes are never created equal.’
She mixed some plaster of Paris with water to form a thick paste. The white spots spattered onto the back of her hand. Adding too much water prolonged the setting time, causing the mixture to ooze through the front of the eyeball. She spread the plaster along the inside of the head and alongside the eyes, which she was careful to hold in place. One dab between the eyes and it was ready to be left to dry. Carefully, she used a toothpick to remove the excess plaster protruding through the front of the eye.
‘Once the eyes are set, it’s very hard to change the direction in which they are looking. It’s very important when you are repairing a doll not to do anything that can’t be undone. Would you like to try?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Then wash your hands properly. The oil from your skin can attract insects and mildew to the doll.’
Anna walked over to the sink and turned on the tap. Returning to the desk with clean hands, she asked quietly, ‘How do you know all this?’
‘A very good question.’ Fraulein Schilling smiled at Anna. ‘The first doll I ever owned was a matryoshka,’ she continued. Although she was taciturn with adults, she was very happy to chat to children. ‘It was a gift from my father – who is also a dollmaker – when I was a child he often travelled to Russia for work. I was sometimes allowed to help in his workshop, dusting shelves and checking for broken parts. Instead of a salary, he paid me in dolls. When I was older, my father was offered the job as warden at the prison here in Landsberg and, instead of closing his workshop, he asked me to take over the business. He used to repair all sorts of toys, but I began to specialise in antique costume dolls. We soon started to receive interest from overseas, especially the United States; all sorts of collectors writing to us, from the well-to-do to the ordinary.’
‘Which of the dolls are your favourites?’ Anna asked.
‘I don’t have any. Each doll is its own person; you just need time to discover the right one. And when you do, it’s like finding a best friend. It’s my job to breathe a soul into a doll, and what comes out depends on my mood at the time. Sometimes they turn out looking happy, and other times, a little sad. But it’s a child’s job to bring the doll to life, so it can tell its own story. The eyes are the most important part. Some children are afraid of blue eyes and think the doll is evil. Those with brown or green eyes are always in demand – they are seen as good dolls.’ She turned to Anna and cupped her hand around her chin. ‘That makes you perfectly balanced.’ She smiled.
Time passed quickly and soon the front door swung open again. Papa had returned. He strode over to the workbench. ‘I see you have been quite busy in my absence, ladies.’
‘You have a beautiful daughter, Herr Müller. I have been teaching her a little about doll repair today. She is very talented.’
Papa pulled another package out from under his coat and handed it to Fraulein Schilling. ‘From the princess in the tower.’
She unwrapped it carefully. It was a Spanish costume doll; one of the most beautiful things Anna had ever seen. Fraulein Schilling lay it down on the table and quickly tore off its head. Anna gasped in horror.
‘Anna,’ Papa said. He nudged her towards the front of the shop, shielding the bench from view. ‘Won’t you show me the puppets over here?’
Anna heard Fraulein Schilling scraping and banging as she worked. After a short while she called across to Papa. ‘It’s done.’
He turned and walked back to the workbench, Anna following. The doll’s head was neatly sewn back on.
‘Would you like to keep her safe?’ Fraulein Schilling asked Anna. ‘She is very precious.’
‘May I?’ Anna looked at Papa.
He nodded. ‘Well, I suppose there’s no harm in that. She is no longer of any use to us, Fraulein Schilling. Correct?’
The dollmaker’s face turned to stone. Anna noticed her fold a small scroll of paper and place it in an envelope, which she tucked inside her pocket.
Papa placed his hand on Anna’s shoulder. ‘Keep her close and take good care of her.’
He turned to Frau Schilling and whispered: ‘You’ll make sure the note is delivered on time? We don’t want to arouse any suspicion.’
Anna pretended not to listen to the adults as she introduced her new doll to Lalka.
‘I’m good at my job. You don’t need to question me, Herr Müller.’
‘My apologies, Fraulein Schilling, but it’s hard to know who to trust nowadays.’
‘I understand my father’s position as prison warden makes it difficult for you, but I have chosen a different path, as you are well aware. Most people would just rather be pulled by strings from above. That way, they are not to blame for any of their actions.’
Papa lifted his hat. ‘Thank you for what you do, Fraulein Schilling. Auf Weidersehen.’ He ushered Anna towards the door as she cradled both the Spanish doll and Lalka in her arms.
She turned to say goodbye, but the dollmaker had already slid the catbird sculpture in front of her again and was busy applying a layer of glue to its mouth.