9

Claire checked her room one last time, then closed her suitcase for good. Blacky and Dirk would be downstairs any moment to drive her to the station. She was taking the train with Otto von Auto to Hamburg, where he would be placed on board a liner, and she would take a plane. It had all been arranged by Blacky with typical German precision. She looked out the window. There they were, Dirk and Blacky. Rupert would come home for summer vacation. Blacky had decreed it would be better for Dirk to stay home from now on. She had to smile. They really were quite perfect for each other, those two.

Evangelika tugged on Dirk’s knotted hair with a comb. Dirk argued hotly and ran off. Evangelika tripped him neatly and started wearily in again.

Blacky puffed on a beedi. The new Mill keeper, Blacky. He looked expansive and disheartened at once. The phone rang and Claire picked it up.

“Coming home?”

“Jupiter! I told you for the last time. I am not shooting cigarettes. Not for you or for anyone.”

“Calm down, calm down. I wouldn’t think of asking you to waver in your moral sanctimoniousness. Remember Matt McGee?”

“The fellow with the big bucks.”

“Right-o. Well, he thinks it’s a great kick that you refuse to do tobacco. Thinks it’s a great angle. The whole agency has to give up all tobacco accounts.”

Claire looked out the window for the last time at the uprooted magpie circling the hill, looking none the worse for wear. “What happened, he lost the tobacco account?”

“Better than that. He’s got emphysema.”

“Jesus.”

“So you may come home to a relatively forgiving Manhattan.”

“Ah. Thank you.”

“You are welcome, my dear. Tell me, was it really wretched? That business with the loony?”

“Anything else on your mind, Joop? Because I have to catch a train.”

“A train?” He said “A train” the way someone else would say “An elephant?”

“Just till Hamburg, then I put the car on a liner, and I take a plane to Queens.”

“Uwww, how unfortunate for you, dear. But that’s life, isn’t it?”

“So have you got something for me when I get back?”

“Mmm. There’s an all-star ballgame out in East Hampton. That will freshen you up. Put you back on your toes.”

“I’ve got to go.”

“Call me when you get in. Maybe I’ll have something better.”

“All right.”

“I hear Johnny’s been hanging out at your parents’ house. Meek as a lamb. What about him?”

“What about him what?”

“Is he drinking?”

“If he is, he can leave until he sobers up. Anything else?”

“Maybe a small bottle of schnapps for me? A bientôt,” he said, and they hung up.

* * *

Claire dabbed Chanel behind both ears and holy water on her Ajna Chakra, took a deep breath and crossed the threshold from her room.

Hans von Grünwald’s bedroom door stood open. Claire walked slowly toward it. Isolde sat in there, her back to her, at the elaborate, and once Kunigunde’s, Biedermeier mirror. It hadn’t taken Isolde long to have it hauled down from the attic. Friedel the gardner had done it for her. Everyone had had a raise in pay. Not much, but a raise. Blacky ran a tight ship. So Friedel was in a good mood. And now that Stella was clearly out of not only his reach, but all mankind’s, Gaby, the plump little serving girl who came to and from work on her bicycle, was looking better and better.

Isolde lined her lips, eyeing Claire in the mirror with reproach. “You should have gone to Corsica with Mara. She asked you to go with her. All the world is there now. How can you go back to the States? It is utterly devoid of culture.”

“Sez you.”

“Tch. Everyone knows.”

“You only say that because when you’re there you go to all those trendy places. You’ve never even had dinner in a typical American home.”

“That’s because there’s no such thing. And no one’s ever invited me.”

“Is that right? I thought that was how this whole thing started. My inviting you to come stay with me in my home.”

“You always have to have the last word.”

“I’m glad marriage hasn’t destroyed your sanguine temperament.”

Isolde piled her hair up on her head. “My marriage suits me very well.”

“I can see that. Are you coming to the station?”

“I would, but I’m contemplating a headache. You won’t mind?”

“No. You hate the train station.”

“You remember. Thoughtful Claire. How will I get along without you?”

“Very well, I’ll bet.”

“So you never found your treasure.”

Claire shrugged. “Time will tell.” She’d decided to look at this philosophically.

Isolde peered at her shrewdly. “If you had found a treasure, it would be legally mine now anyway.”

“Gee. Good thing I’m still poor.”

“You’re not poor,” Isolde said sulkily. “You always think something wonderful is going to happen to you.”

“Good-bye, Isolde.” She hugged her tenderly. Isolde tensed up, then remembered this was it, she was leaving. She threw her arms around Claire in a perfumy crush.

“Auf Wiedersehen,” she said huskily, then let her go with a dashing wave of bracelets. Claire saw only the back of her head as she closed the door.

Stella came up behind her. “I’ll help you with your things.”

“Just these two.” She handed her the lovely woven basket Evangelika had given her for shopping in America. She followed Stella to the end of the hall and down the stairs.

“Temple left this morning?” Claire asked her.

“Yes,” she said gently. “For Ireland.”

Claire nodded and checked again for her lens cap.

“I won’t come all the way out,” Stella said. “I’ll bid you adieu right here.”

“All right.”

“I have something for you, though. Something you must choose.”

“Time to go.” Blacky, coming in the door, smacked the palms of his hands together and rubbed them back and forth. “What’s that?” Blacky said. “Cosimo?”

“Oh, it’s Beethoven’s ‘Appassionata.’” Stella Gabriella clapped her hands. “He used to play that all the time. He hasn’t played it in years.”

Claire listened. She found it difficult to move.

“Come on, come on.” Stella pushed her into the kitchen. “No time yet for sentiment. You have to choose a pot to take home with you.”

“Oh no!” Claire laughed. Stella had set up three bowls, each half full with water, on the long kitchen table.

“What, now we have to wait for her to choose a direction?” Blacky cried. “She couldn’t do that in all the time I was with her. We’ll never make the train!”

Dirk, never far from Blacky, mirrored his apprehension. He was looking forward to the train station. It was always milling with Turks.

“Yes, we will,” Claire assured them. “I already made my decision anyway. We’ve been down this road before.”

“Never mind, never mind,” Stella teased her, “every day is a new day. Are you so sure you want the same path?” She took hold of the table edge.

Claire looked again at the bowls. Puzzled, she looked closer. They were different. These were not the tea bowls she had chosen from the first time. These were much larger. She looked to Stella. Her eyes told her nothing. Stella Gabriella shrugged. “It’s up to you,” she said in her breathless, detached way.

Claire chose the middle bowl. Then it was really time to go. She made sure she had Stella’s address at the convent, hugged and kissed Evangelika, and went out into the yard.

Evangelika wiped the headlamp with a corner of her holiday lily-print apron.

Claire climbed in and rolled down the window. “Remember.” She stuck her head out and warned Evangelika, “Iris is expecting you with Cosimo and Stella in October.”

Evangelika nodded back with apprehensive eyes.

“Push over.” Blacky invited himself to drive.

“I’ll pick you up at the airport,” Claire called shrilly across his lap. Dirk climbed in on her other side. Otto von Auto started grudgingly up. Claire gripped the formidable bowl on her lap.

Evangelika waved them away with one fist heaving to and fro.

As they pulled off, Claire saw Stella Gabriella watching her from her upstairs window. She was grinning, no longer fingering her beads in her usual way. All the small, shiny hinges and facets which hold a rosary together lay, unhinged and unfastened, on Stella Gabriella’s pink marble tabletop. She would have a new pair from the convent soon anyway. And Kunigunde’s ghost, she felt sure, could at long last rest easy.

They were just climbing the hill behind the chapel when a taxi came from the other direction. It stopped in front of them, cutting them off. It was Temple Fortune. Claire got out of the car. There was the moon.

“I couldn’t leave without saying good-bye again,” he said. Evangelika’s clean white sheets flapped around them in the wind.

They walked into each other’s arms, holding on for the last time, feeling each other’s strange, familiar forms.

Blacky complained from the car. Dirk reached over and honked the horn long and hard.

Finally, they let go. She still had Stella’s bowl in her hand, pressed between them painfully.

“Look what I’ve done! I’ve gone and cracked your fine bowl,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Now I have something of you.”

She turned and climbed into the old rumbling car. They pulled away, leaving Saint Hildegard’s Mill, rolling past the chapel, the band of foresty trees. Temple stood beside his taxi, his hands down at his sides. He watched for a good long while, until the car was just a dot. Claire sat, a little squashed, between Blacky and Dirk.

A precious bright series of tears dropped into her bowl, dazzling the spot where Temple had chipped it.

Something winked excitedly beneath, revealing at last the spell unbound and baked into its just seams.