Papa sat beside her on the sofa, reading The Adventures of Pinocchio, her favourite story. Anna imagined the wooden puppet’s nose growing longer with each outlandish lie he told. More than his naughty ways of fakery and deception, it was his yearning to become a real child that fascinated her. For this to happen, Papa explained, he would have to prove himself unselfish, brave and, above all, truthful. But Anna knew real children were nothing like that at all. Anyway, who would want to be a human child? Surely Pinocchio’s mechanical reactions were far better than having to feel real heartache? The puppet had to spend hours practising crying, whereas a sea of tears could spring from Anna’s eyes in an instant.
The book lay open on Papa’s lap. He had fallen asleep mid-sentence, but it didn’t matter – they had read it so many times, Anna could recite the story off by heart. She sat still so as not to disturb him; he had been very tired lately. He woke with a start at a sudden knock on the door and threw the book onto the sofa. The pages fell open at a picture of Pinocchio hanging from a scaffold. Anna thought it was just deserts for the puppet after he behaved so appallingly to his father, Geppetto, who had lovingly carved him out of a piece of enchanted wood. Pinocchio’s name meant ‘eyes of pine’, which made him blind to knowing right from wrong. Anna would never lie to her father.
A woman stood at the entrance of their apartment. She had long eyelashes and red lips, her hair perfectly coiffed. Papa was a good man, gentle and calm, aside from the night following the funeral when he had smashed a mirror, distraught after the loss of his beloved wife. Anna felt safe under the canopy of his love. They didn’t need anyone else. But the Lady of the Flowery Dress – carnations, tulips and roses – whom Papa had tipped his hat to in the park during their Sunday stroll last week had brought over a plate of Linzer torte.
Papa bowed awkwardly and invited her in. ‘Anna, of course you remember Fraulein Nachtnebel, our neighbour?’ He took the woman’s fur coat and hung it in the hallway.
She headed straight across the room and draped herself on the sofa. ‘You may call me Tantine, my dear.’ She smelled of stale cigarettes and wet vegetables, with a hint of lilac perfume sprayed over the top. ‘What a pretty dolly you have.’
She reached out to touch Lalka’s hair, but Anna refused to give her up. Lalka might be brilliant and strong, but she was anything but pretty. Anna was sure, in fact, her doll would consider that description insulting. It made Anna feel doubtful Papa would ever become friends with Tantine. He deplored liars.
It was through Lalka that Anna was learning the rules of the world. She provided answers that none of the adults could. Or would. Lalka was tender and inviting and allowed Anna to fill her with confidences, holding a tiny portion of Anna’s soul, protecting and keeping it safe. No. Being pretty was not important.
‘Go play in your room, darling. Tantine and I would like to talk privately for a while. I’ll be there shortly to say goodnight.’
Anna stared at the plate of cakes on the table, but soon understood she would not be offered any. She cuddled Lalka as she left and went to her room. Busying herself playing with the doll’s house Papa had built for her, she filled it with miniature teapots the size of her fingernail and lavish meals fashioned from clay. Tiny things intrigued her, minuscule objects she could fit in the palm of her hand, paintings made from pictures she cut out of old newspapers, gluing matchsticks together to fashion frames. This diminutive home was decorated with hand-knitted rugs for the floors and wallpaper she had painted for each room. Voices and personalities were attributed to dainty stick figures who roamed from the bedroom to the parlour.
Anna was building her dreamland; the life she knew she could never have in full-size. In the world of the doll’s house she could imagine the unimaginable, albeit on a small scale, where you could leap about in time and space, visiting a past where the mother of the house was busy in the kitchen frying pancakes that fit on a pinhead. When she placed the small parents on the sofa in front of the fireplace, they stayed there watching the child play with her dolls on the rug. She created a perfect family, in a perfect world of tiny things she dreamt about. Here, the universe obeyed her, and things happened entirely upon her command.
Nothing ever got dirty. Everything was arranged perfectly, with the maid stationed permanently at the entrance, holding a tray of lavishly decorated pink cakes. Life was simpler if it could be contained inside a doll’s house. Shrinking her family to the size of ants gave Anna a sense of order. She could keep an eye on everyone’s movements and, being able to manipulate this reduced world by imagining grander schemes, she felt there was a clear future for everything.
In the privacy of her bedroom Anna noticed that Lalka seemed quite sulky. She wanted Anna to take the newest toy back to the Puppetarium, because he was mean. But returning Puppet was out of the question. He was a gift from Fraulein Schilling. Besides, Anna hadn’t been home when it all happened. The dolls invariably became bored when she was away at school and got into fights that she wasn’t there to referee. And Puppet held a frightening sadness; the thought of letting him go made Anna feel like weeping. He would sit slumped over, his head bent forward, deflated after trying so hard to make Papa laugh. And although she loved Lalka with all her heart, it would be a terrible wrong to betray him.
Lalka sat stiffly, her eyes flaming. The bedside lamp hissed.
‘What did he say to you?’ Anna whispered.
The doll leaned forward, placing her hands on her hips. ‘He told me that I’m not real.’
Just then Papa opened the bedroom door. He smiled at Anna and her now lifeless friends, who had instantly swallowed all their words at the sight of an adult. The monkey drummer froze, his mottled fur exposing the tin skull above his right eye. The three-legged donkey cast a giant breathless shadow on the wall.
‘It’s late, my darling. Time for bed.’ He stood at the door, as he did each evening, whispering: ‘Goodnight, sweet dreams, see you in the morning’.
Always the same chant, his hand gripping the doorknob as if he were scared to enter or in a hurry to get back to whatever he had been doing.
‘Have you chosen which doll to take with you to Landsberg tomorrow?’ He stood motionless, his face unshaven.
‘Yes, Papa.’ She stretched her arms out and yawned. ‘Lalka.’
‘Of course, my sweetheart.’ He turned off the light and closed the door quietly as he left.
Anna never left Lalka behind. Reaching for her in the dark, she dragged her into bed. She threw her arms around the doll, the trembling air of nightfall filling the room as she slowly drifted off to sleep. Anna tossed and turned, falling in and out of dreams. Who to leave behind when they went to Landsberg for the weekend? She faced the same dilemma at the end of each week. How to choose between her trusted companions of the heart? They knew her so well, each one an avid listener to different parts of her life. She read books to her toy Siamese cat, Lungri, his fur thinning where she rubbed him under the red kerchief tied around his neck. His tail was permanently bent into the shape of a question mark. He loved listening to stories from the wild, especially of the great Shere Khan, the rightful chief of the jungle, with whom he shared a nickname because of his shrivelled leg.
When Anna played with each of her dolls, they opened up to reveal a secret life. All except beautiful Luba, who sat silently on her side of the shelf, blonde plaits peering out from under a velvet hat threaded with shiny beading, her white crinoline frock perfectly pressed. Unlike Lalka, who wore a simple straw hat, she was not made to be played with. Although Anna admired Luba, every time she looked at her cold stare she knew that it was Lalka she loved with all her heart.
Each morning when Anna woke, she was amazed to find the toys in the exact same places she had left them the night before. They had moved around so much in her dreams. Dolls were her circle of true friends, each one with a full storied and colourful life. They held her world in their petite bodies, whispering and singing as they stomped, danced and paraded around her room. She would never agree to take just one of them, would hide them in her bag, under her hat, in the pocket of her clothes. But who to choose? And how to leave behind the friends she had spoken to every single day of her life, cut them off like dead wood and abandon them like tombstones in what would soon become the cemetery of her room for the entire weekend? They had built a world together; they knew her more perfectly than anyone else. She wanted to speak to each one, tell them she would soon return. Pengi, with his half-open beak, couldn’t seem to find the word for goodbye. She lowered her eyes, felt her lips turning numb.
Despite her love for Lalka – her most secret desires and imaginings poured into the hollow vessel of the doll’s tiny body – Anna always felt a quiet superiority that lay somewhere between parent and prison officer. They had faced each other across the same bedroom for a year now, but despite the veneer of Lalka’s docile smile Anna sometimes thought she saw a slumbrous menace tucked away behind those glass eyes. She was a blank slate onto which Anna could reveal her innermost thoughts and yearnings. Sometimes she spoke to her as if talking to a friend who knew her better than she knew herself. And yet, for all this, there were times she felt as though an empty shell stared back at her. It was on those days the loneliness crept in, bringing on one of Anna’s nerve storms. The nausea turned her stomach, jagged pain dug through her skull, and every sound bored straight into her brain. Colours bled into black. After the agony had leeched away her lifeblood for several hours, the distant world would slowly begin creeping back in, spilling around the edge of the floral curtains, the light seeping into Anna’s eyes again.
That night, Anna woke to hear the clock in the hallway chiming eleven. She reached out to cuddle Lalka under the covers, but her doll wasn’t there. Groping at folds of bedding, feeling around for the familiar coarse curls, the dimple on her tiny chin, Anna’s heart started pounding. She grabbed a pillow and threw it aside. Still no Lalka. The light from the landing crept into her room. Kneeling on the floor, she reached under the wooden frame of her bed, searching for the familiar little body. Her panic began to rise when Lalka didn’t appear. It felt strangely like she was losing her mother all over again.
She opened her door and crept down the hallway, barefoot. Papa was in the kitchen, standing by the sink, washing dishes. Smoke hung heavy in the air but there was no sign of Tantine, except for a pile of lipstick-stained cigarette butts resting in an ashtray on the table. At the other end, Lalka lay on her back, naked. Her dress, dripping wet, hung over the back of a chair. Anna let out a scream, unsure if she was still inside one of her nightmares.
Papa turned instantly, holding a soapy plate. It slipped from his hand and shattered on the floor, tiny pieces flying off in all directions.
‘Careful, Anna. Don’t step over here. You’ll cut your feet.’
‘What have you done to Lalka?’ Her words squeezed out between sobs.
‘It’s all right, darling.’ His voice sounded small. ‘She’s fine. I was just giving her a little wash.’
She wanted to grab Lalka and run to her room, but she froze, watching Papa as he dried his hands and calmly swept up the mess. When he finished, he walked her back to bed, his hand resting on the back of her neck. This time he didn’t stay at the door; he followed her and watched as she climbed under the covers, tucking her in tightly as if signalling she was not to escape.
‘Why did you take her without asking me?’ She could barely contain her anger.
‘I’m so sorry. I wanted to surprise you by having her clean and looking her best.’
‘Promise you’ll bring her back to me soon?’
‘Of course I will. But first I need to see that your eyes are tightly closed, young lady.’
She curled up in a ball and made fists, trying to stop herself from trembling.
‘Goodnight. Sweet dreams. See you in the morning.’ To her surprise, Papa bent down to kiss her, then quickly left the room.
She tried to fall asleep as fast as she could, hoping that when she woke in the morning Lalka would be by her side again.