chapter six
It was eight o’clock. I had donned one of the pretty dirndls that hung like spare girls in Isolde’s wardrobe. You couldn’t wear a bra with the senorita blouse that went with it but it didn’t matter. No one wore a bra back then. Just wait till they get a load of me in this, I thought as I shut the door to my knotty-pine apartment and tiptoed through. Someone was tromping up the stairs. An unfamiliar voice I felt I recognized. I stood very still and listened. Someone important, I thought. I stood behind the nanny’s green door and watched through the new moon sliver of stained glass. Although I didn’t know it then, this would be the night when everything would change and my life would launch off in another direction.
Dr. Blacky von Osterwald huffed his irritated way up, up the tedious staircase one step at a time. I caught my breath. It was the man I’d seen that time six months ago at the airport in Milan!
So this was Blacky. He was angry, I could see that. And unhappy.
Blacky was a medium-sized man with an open, clear-skinned face. He was good-looking, all right. His eyes were wide-set jellies of green but the whole effect was nothing dramatically devastating until you came to the hair. Great trundles of pure black hilarity that even his brittle comb would find it difficult to tame. He would pretend to be annoyed when anyone mentioned it, as most people eventually would, but women loved it and he knew they did. You could see the women who had loved him on his face. You could see them in the way he stood, sure and aggravated. His mother, his lovers. Girls who watched him from afar. He was too restrained to swagger, but the impetus was there. I held my neck, admiring any woman who could keep him. Wishing, for the second time, it was me.
Out on the landing, Harry Honeycutt sat across at the top of the stair alongside Rupert. Together they petted Rupert’s cat.
“I have yet to climb this thing without cursing Isolde,” Blacky panted from below. “How can she continue to live on a mountaintop? She doesn’t need it now that Vladimir’s gone. It’s a sculptor’s loft, not a fit home for them. She certainly has the means to move.”
“Yes,” agreed Harry. “Although one would never find rambling, enormous rooms like these in a modern building with a lift. Nor a window with a view as magnificent.”
Blacky paused for a breather at the second-floor landing. “I suspect I ought to give up smoking,” he said. “And drinking.” He frowned. “We all drink too much.” He carried a bouquet of white freesia with lily of the valley and a good Würzburger-Franken wine. I’d never been in love. Oh, I’d had my share of successes on the open field. But that just had been a series of wins and near misses. Like sport. I suddenly felt that where he was was where I wanted to be. I could just be near him and the air would be enchanted. I didn’t even have to be near him. Just to know that he existed. That he lived. It wasn’t like they said, time stands still. It quickened. Heightened. Glistened. I didn’t need to talk with him. God, I think I wouldn’t have known what to say. And he was cruel, yes. You could see that right away. But there was something bountiful about him, too. Measured. Discerning. I opened the door a whisper to hear them better.
Harry was saying, “You’ll make us all look bad, never arriving empty-handed. What year is that?”
Blacky held up his bottle of Franken wine. “Seventy-one.”
“Oh! I’m impressed. You must be infatuated.”
“We got that business over with some years ago,” he protested easily with a laugh, “and have settled into a comfortable and more convenient understanding. No, I’m simply very well brought up.”
Harry, very well brought up himself, said, “Yes, Isolde likes having you because you’re an aristocrat, there’s no denying that. A count, in fact, isn’t it?” His voice betrayed real bitterness. “Although she will always pretend that has no influence on her.”
Blacky stopped to catch his breath. “It’s because I am single, charming, and, once you get me stewed, a lively conversationalist.”
Not only that, I confirmed from my covey of secrecy, but I would bet he knew what he was doing when it came to women.
“No, really, I hate this,” Blacky complained, “too many flights. But where else in Munich would one find a table as sumptuous as Isolde’s? And,” he added, “where one could at the same time flex one’s English; where one might and often does meet one pretty boarder after the next.”
Harry said, “Wait till you see the one she’s got here now.”
My breath stopped.
“I don’t care to meet her,” he went on. “What a flippant little baggage she is! When I telephoned, she took it upon herself to correct my pronunciation, as if an American dare correct anyone’s English! American women really are distasteful. Acidic. Isolde ought to go back to renting out to the Swedish girls. No irritating, superior attitudes. Just hupla into bed and gone before you wake. Americans put so much stock into ‘meaningful’ relationships. Well. One knows where that leads.”
“Yes.” Harry feathered Puss’s head.
“The men I know enough about from the year I spent as a volunteer medic in Vietnam.”
“Yes.” Harry stifled a yawn. “We’ve all heard how you went to Vietnam. Several times, I think.”
“Uneducated buggers,” Blacky, ignoring this, went on, “forever destroying perfectly decent scotch with horrid jolts of Coca-Cola.” He’d reached the top. “Do something with these, will you?” He dropped his soft bouquet onto Harry and strolled inside.




The party was a glimmering affair, candlelit and charming, the way only Isolde could do it. All old models know how to do lighting, but some are better at it than others. She had the knack, all right. The room was warm and glowy. I waited until they were all seated, took a deep breath, and went in. I felt Blacky’s eyes sweep me up and down and a thrill rushed through me. I trembled to my seat. His eyes, taken, followed me.
“Ah,” said Isolde, watching, “you haven’t met our Claire.”
“From America,” Harry just had to add.
He liked that. I could see the spot behind Blacky’s eyes reach toward me.
“Hello,” I said.
His eyes met mine.
I was sure his lit up.
But then—what was this?—at exactly the wrong moment, Tupelo Honig swept into the room. The actress was a voluptuous vision of flowing beige and loose chiffon.
All the men stood up at once. Tupelo Honig, however, had eyes for no one but Blacky. She moved provocatively toward him. Her cheekbones popped up like prizes and the edges of her glossy mouth went up and down in almost comical sensual allure. Her fingernails were delicate and filed into fancy sherberty ovals. She wore green pearls. I’d never seen green pearls before. Not real ones. They shone with an uncanny phosphorescence. They were dark yet light at the same time. Blacky reached across the table and took her hand. He pulled it to him and kissed it.
I was crushed.
It would have been very hard not to be captivated, I’ll give her that. I’d assumed she’d be older from all the films I’d heard she’d done. If she was, it didn’t show.
Everyone in the room leaned unwittingly toward her. Even as she stood there presenting herself, she moved like pudding, with no discernible bones. Her hairdresser must have sprinkled her head with glitter because as she went in in her fluid, captivating way, the candlelight seemed to shine out from her. Here was a woman who knew how to make an entrance. She was one of those dark blondes, with nutmeg eyes and dark brows, but hair that lightened into the color of corn-husk silk as it grew to its luxurious, uneven lengths. Her waist and ribs were preposterously small and her shoulders and breasts were, by contrast, big creamy things a man would love to touch. It wasn’t fair. Any thoughts I’d had of actually “getting” Blacky evaporated at the moment I saw his expression change from amused for me to rapt for her.
Liebling, I said Trachten!” Isolde chastised her. But she wasn’t angry. She was thrilled just to have her famousness in the house.
“You must forgive me,” Tupelo beseeched us all. “I’ve just come from such a grueling rehearsal at the theater.”
She said this as one would say “such a grueling time at the supermarket,” and we all obediently gazed at her with sympathy.
Blacky still looked at her with something else. I’d known jealousy before, but this was something new. He might have wanted me for that one quick moment but her, with all that sexual allure … he wanted her for keeps. And Blacky was impressed by other things. What chance would I have against fame and fortune?
“Don’t fuss for me, now, darlings, I beseech you!” Tupelo smiled sweetly at everyone. All the men were standing, tipped forward toward her. “My needs are so simple. I only eat raw foods, you know. High-energy foods. Or carrot juice. I love my carrot juice.”
From here things only got worse. Isolde asked me if I wouldn’t mind scooting one seat down so we could have boy girl, boy girl. I don’t turn red in an attractive, virginal blush. My nose and ears become bright dots. I felt suddenly scrawny and ridiculous in my dirndl.
Isolde introduced Tupelo to me.
“Ah.” She took my hand, purring, “Named for Claire of the poor Claires!” showing off her knowledge of America.
“No, actually,” I stared right back, “named for the song ‘Claire de Lune.’” But she’d already turned her back.
Then Reiner Decke, that awful photographer, arrived in a loden cape. I never would have thought I would be glad to see that man. But I was. I was glad for anyone who would change the dense, oozy tone of that room to something less seductive, even if it was to Reiner’s unpleasant cockiness. He had somehow assembled his trickle of hairs into a tail at the back of his head. It made him look like a degenerate rock star from Peru, I thought. And in all my life I have never seen a larger, more sparkling watch on a wrist.
Wolfgang Scherer, the filmmaker, arrived. Well, he appeared suddenly more than arrived. One moment he wasn’t there and the next he was. He was a little man, soundless, with a long trunk and short legs, his eyes very blue and sharp. He had outstanding, listening ears low on his head. He wore a flimsy neck scarf like an adolescent boy would at a dress-up, looking just the way you would imagine a filmmaker should look. He had well-formed shoulders and very frail little arms, almost childlike, but quick, high-arched feet that he tended to kick in the air as he moved like a kung fu artist, or a man with a fever. He must have had a horrible childhood, I remember thinking. He wasn’t pleasant to look at—and however much you tried to look at him from different angles, you couldn’t find a good view. Despite this, you continued to look because there was something captivating. He had a wonderful deep, full-throttle voice when he at last spoke and eyes that—no, it wasn’t that they twinkled. They didn’t twinkle, they glowed. Yes, there was something wonderfully hidden and compelling about him.
I tried to appear as though I were enjoying myself and, in a way, after a while and a few glasses of white wine, I thought I was. After all, I told myself, this was just what I’d always wanted: to be hooked up with aristocratic and decadent film people. This cavalier set were perfect for my needs. Wasn’t I determined to live a detached life, dedicated only to fundamental art and beauty? There was no room for such foolishness as falling in love. I told myself I felt much better. And I had my loathing of Reiner to keep me company. Reiner was in raptures to find himself dining with the famous Wolfgang Scherer and the actress Tupelo Honig. And when he was introduced to me, he acted as though we were old buddies. “Of course I know the little Breslinsky!” He dismissed me by never really looking at me. “We were together on safari!” His beady eyes twinkled from guest to well-heeled guest. The little Breslinsky? How demeaning. And again with the safari. There was nothing for me to do but smile.
Isolde led him to his place at her left.
Almost immediately, Reiner was fawning over Wolfgang. Anyone with half a head could see that he didn’t take to Reiner at all. Reiner didn’t notice this, or if he did, he figured dogged time and effort would bring him around. He went chummily on, happily intimate, even giving Wolfgang tips on new filters and revolutionary underwater camera attachments. Wolfgang, resigned, proceeded to make an origami bird from his napkin.
Tupelo and Blacky seemed delighted with each other. His seductive way with women was effortless. I helped myself to a glass of wine.
Vladimir, Isolde’s husband, handsome, heavyset, red-faced, blond, burly, sweating from the strain of the staircase, arrived last. He was laughing and carrying a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. I liked Vladimir. You couldn’t help liking him. He looked at you with his frank, sensual, handsome face, unimpressed with important people. “Wo ist mein Bier?” he shouted, filling the room. “Where’s my beer?”
Walking toward us, his big hand took hold of the neck and then the arched back of the huge sculpture he’d done of a girl on her knees. He ran his hand right down her back to her rear end, all the while holding eyes with Isolde.
“Well?” she confronted him. “Did you ask her?”
“No, I did not.”
Isolde threw up her arms in despair. “All I asked you to do was knock on Frau Zwekl’s door and ask her to come.”
Daisy choked on her olive spread. “But you hate each other.”
“I know.” Isolde busied herself, putting the flowers off to the side. “But she’s all alone.”
“I don’t like old people sitting about.” Vladimir grinned at the rest of us. “It’s depressing.”
Silently I resolved to go down and see Frau Zwekl in the morning.
Isolde, her hands on her hips, informed us, “He doesn’t realize that he’ll be old one day, too. Old and alone and grateful if someone invites him along.”
Vladimir smiled. “I’ll never be alone, though. There’ll always be someone around for me.”
She has no shot, I thought. He’s so much stronger than she is because he doesn’t care. He’s not even teasing her. He could not care less. Rings of perspiration had wet his shirt. He didn’t seem to mind that, either. He shook hands all around, then went back inside and saw to the music. He put on Billie Holiday, making sure the bass was very loud.
“Wow!” Isolde said, coming around, in an unlikely attempt at cool. Isolde became a different person when Vladimir was around. She came as close to obsequious as I’d ever seen her. I didn’t like it. You always knew when Vladimir was coming because the whole apartment reeked of her perfume beforehand. So already she was trying too hard. And your glamour rushes to the floor like sudden rain when you become needy. It angered me to see her so trivialized.
At least, I reassured my unhappy heart, Blacky hadn’t known that I’d fallen for him before he’d fallen for Tupelo Honig. At least I didn’t have to tolerate anyone’s pity. I couldn’t have borne that. Because I was young and inexperienced, I still believed in the importance of saving face. It was painful enough for me to watch Isolde when Vladimir was around. Whatever she did, it was never enough. Or too much. One morning, when he’d just moved out and I’d just moved in, I’d overheard them arguing in the dining room. She’d held a dinner party the night before and he hadn’t come after saying he would. I turned discreetly to go back into my little suite of rooms but not before I heard him say, in English—because of the children, I suppose—“Well, don’t,” he’d cried. “That’s just it. Don’t love me so much! You … you … want potted geraniums on every windowsill. That’s not me, Isolde. I want none of that.”
He’d said “potted geraniums” like “bubonic plague,” like there was something so wrong with the idea of them. As if you could accuse Isolde of being conventional! And he should have known the fastest way to teach children a language was to argue in it.
I was devastated for Isolde. And embarrassed. She would have hated to know I’d heard. It was one of the most brutal things I’d ever heard anyone say. Now here he was at last, and all this, I knew, had been for him. As for Vladimir, he couldn’t very well not enjoy the good meal before him, the enchanting company, but for him it was nothing more. Isolde’s eyes followed him wherever he went. And he never felt at home. He paced. He kept getting up and peering out the lead-paned windows as though someone were downstairs waiting for him in the car. There might well have been.
But now that I look back, I think she would have only loved someone not crazy about her for the simple reason that most people were. So in a way it was her fate.
Tupelo Honig’s flattered, ladylike laugh tinkled distractingly over everyone’s conversation.
Later in the evening her joy would loosen to a slightly raucous and hearty bellow, but I say that only because I was leaden with jealousy.
Chatreuse came in with half endives, baked and topped with steaming, crumpled, runny Roquefort. There were intermittent corniches of parmaschinken, so thin they were almost translucent.
I clapped my hands with joy.
Blacky smiled at me. His eyes twinkled. “I’m famished,” he confided.
“Oh, no!” Tupelo Honig suddenly threw her napkin onto her plate. “I can’t eat food like this.” She said it as though reprimanding and let the words sit there on the table.
Isolde moved uncomfortably. “Well,” she said, “I have artichoke but they’re for later. They’re not cooked through yet, I think. Are they, Chartreuse?”
Chartreuse trotted accommodatingly back to the kitchen.
“I’ll wait. Don’t think of me.” Tupelo smiled benevolently. “Eat. Eat!”
Her color was high and she wore an expression of excitement.
No one liked to start until we all were served. Eventually, however, Isolde insisted we eat before the food got cold. It sort of took the fun out of it, though, with Tupelo sitting there very pointedly doing nothing. You could almost feel Chartreuse in the kitchen willing the tough artichoke to soften. When the rest of us had finished and the artichoke finally did arrive, she sat there comfortably, taking her time, enjoying it. Her eyes took in each of us. Anyone else would have dashed through it out of consideration but Tupelo luxuriated in the attention. She picked up one of the leaves. It was oily and pearly and luscious with green edges rimmed in pink. She held it up for us all to see and slit it open along the seam with one of her pretty nails. The succulent innards were revealed. She licked this. You could see her saliva on the leaf. She took her time. You’d have thought she’d tinged her fork noisily on a wineglass, the way we all stopped and watched. Then she dragged her teeth over its top, holding the flesh on the tip of her tongue and then swallowing it with a close-mouthed, feline smirk of satisfaction. She did this with every solitary leaf, laughing with merriment once in a while, placing each one ornamentally around the choke on the plate as she finished it, the pointy end out. The completion looked like a sunflower. I remembered thinking she had a lot of nerve, keeping everyone waiting like that, but you had to give it to her—she knew how to captivate an audience. I made a note to eat each artichoke that came my way in exactly the same fashion.
Then, as if that weren’t enough, she made each one of us close our eyes in silent meditation, thanking the universe for its bounty. (She made no mention of Isolde’s or Chartreuse’s part at this point.)
Indulgently, we all obliged. We closed our eyes. I peeked. Chartreuse watched me with his bright yellow eyes.
Daisy had at last lost interest and was trying slyly to read her horoscope upside down in the newspaper on the hassock.
Blacky tore himself from Tupelo’s attentions. “Claire,” he addressed me, “it must have been a marvelous trip you went on with Reiner.”
“Ah,” Reiner agreed before I could say a word. “So much adventure! We had so much fun. So much fun!” I didn’t know which trip he’d been on. It had been the worst trip of my life. His obligatory words to me said, Blacky returned his attentions to Tupelo. Tupelo was obviously besotted with Blacky and Blacky with her.
The party was progressing gaily. Chartreuse would slide into the room, shoulders hunched protectively forward over yet another delicious concoction. We all would “ooh” and “ahh” and he would distribute portions with womanly care.
“Good God,” Harry would say each time a dish was placed before him.
It looked like Isolde had found herself a kindred spirit, there, despite her words of distaste. She and Chartreuse consulted each other, madly serious, at short intervals in the kitchen, then burst forth from that little galley with brilliant, relaxed smiles over platters of superbly prepared food. They played off each other, each wanting to impress, but more than that, being both truly talented, it was each other they most enjoyed impressing.
Chartreuse had solved the problem of the too great leg of lamb cooking through in time by hacking it into small raw bits and artistically modeling these into a cunning small lamb held together by a paste of garlic, olive oil, and sea salt. Any bit that wouldn’t hold was anchored together with lengths of mint stems as threads. These he fastened with sailor’s slipknots, easily loosened and pulled away so no one got chewy bits of it in his or her serving. It rested, well done and crispy, with raisins for eyes, on a bed of airy white rice.
I’d never seen anything like it. He’d taken a blue satin ribbon from a jam preserves jar in the cupboard and tied a bow around the neck when it was steaming and perfectly done. A latticework of rosemary and garlic framed the tray like a woven basket rim. The latticework continued into gated arbors up the handles on each side. Hothouse primroses were stuck at the last moment up the arbors like summer vines. He’d fastened two soft, furry sage leaves inside the lamb’s ears.
“Charming!” Vladimir said appreciatively. “I could take you on as an apprentice!”
Chartreuse explained that he’d worked long hours as a teenager in a bakery kitchen in France.
“Wie süss!” Tupelo Honig cooed. (How sweet!) She might be a German film star but she wasn’t born German. Every now and then a trace of Eastern Europe slithered from her tongue. Which was, I suppose, part of her appeal. Well, I wasn’t going to let her ruin my fun.
I went briskly to get my camera. No one minded waiting. Done meat should rest for a bit before it’s cut and it would be a shame not to admire it. It was a wonderful lamb. Chartreuse’s stock had jumped through the roof.
I still have that picture somewhere. There is the lamb gazing benignly at the rest of us and we at it.
I snapped the picture and everyone applauded. Daisy put down her basket of steaming green beans and went to get the salad.
Vladimir carved one ear off the lamb and put it on Isolde’s plate. “Mein Schatz,” he said, in an offhand, easy way. My treasure. It was as if he had forgotten for a moment to be caustic with her.
Wolfgang said he hadn’t known I was a photographer.
“Hah.” Reiner laughed. “She’s not.”
“Oh, no,” Isolde explained, “Claire is an artist. Show them your drawings, Claire,” she urged. “Go on. Where’s your sketchbook, hmm?”
Daisy, clearing the table, said, “They’re here.” And she handed Wolfgang my precious book.
“Oh, don’t!” I protested but I was thrilled at what was about to happen. Blacky would see that I was not just a model. They would all see.
Proudly, Daisy and Isolde presented my work. I enjoyed each picture more than anyone, I think, reliving the moments I’d drawn them. Cherishing the end of the grueling effort that had gone into each. Daisy turned the pages reverently while Isolde gave a running monologue.
She rattled her head at Wolfgang. “What do you think of our Claire, eh?”
“She is a most serious young lady, I think.”
I’d been smiling, my expectation of his praise already evident upon my face.
“Yes?” Isolde waited. “Come on. What do you think of her work?”
Wolfgang looked down at his plate. He rolled his tongue across and around his teeth. Then he said, “What difference does it make what I say? I am a filmmaker, not a critic.” Suddenly he leaned forward. “Harry here is the critic. One of the best in his own field, from what I’ve read. So. He’s the one to ask, not me.” He smiled gently and handed my precious book across the table and over to Harry. I could feel my heart beating in my chest. What was happening? What had Harry to do with anything?
But Harry was not just Harry. He’d studied, reviewed, published. He was a renowned critic not only for the Süddeutsche but the London Times as well. I remembered Isolde saying he was an art collector and had become quite famous in his own small, elite world. There were others who were impressed to no end by our bumbling Harry. Take a swan out of his pond and he waddles, isn’t that it? We’d only ever seen the waddle.
Harry, slipping imperiously back into his own pond, adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat. “Yes.” He nodded. “They are lovely pictures. Yes.”
He looked at my pictures for a very long time. At last he stopped. He pursed his lips and leveled his gaze at me. “Are they good? Of course they are good, they are lovely to look at.” He looked up. He looked right at me. “Good, yes. But never great.”
For a moment I thought he was joking.
“I’m so sorry,” Harry murmured, “but it’s best to know the truth.”
He must have seen my shock.
“Forgive my bluntness, my dear. But if I’m to be honest, this is”—he searched the air helplessly for just the word—“amateur. This is a young girl’s memory of a European tour. Mediocre. Nothing more.”
Thunk, thunk, thunk, each word took me down another step. “Oh. I see,” I agreed casually, my hopes and dreams of a lifetime dashed. “Yes, of course,” I whispered. “As much as it hurts, it is best to know the truth.”
Isolde threw back her head. “I think they are beautiful,” she said loyally.
I should have been glad. But it only made it worse. I could have wept. I would have rather anything than let the tears fall, though. I think the only thing that kept me from it was my pride in front of Tupelo Honig. She would have enjoyed that so, so much.
Daisy trembled with plump indignation on my behalf. She said fiercely, “One man’s opinion means nothing, though, if one is set upon making it work. What was it your American, Ray Kroc, said? ‘It is perseverance and perseverance alone that determines success.’”
“Yes, of course.” Harry seemed to come to. He handed me my book. He looked kindly at me, sadly. “But life is short. Don’t waste too much time.”
I almost fell off my chair. I continued to smile, yet I was so hurt, so devastated, I almost couldn’t see straight. Remembering my manners, I thanked Harry for his expertise.
Blacky gave me a crooked smile. It was made to console me. There was something about the closeness of this man, this Blacky, that allowed me to feel things I’d pushed off. Scary things I’d been too frightened to admit to myself. Things I felt I could feel and still be safe. All these things go running through your mind. Although Harry had proclaimed the judgment, it was the nearness of Blacky that opened some door in me, allowing me to think what I’d dared not think, perhaps to admit at last to myself that my drawings were not really as good as my brother always boasted they were and it was all right, not the end of the world. After all, my brother had had his vested interest. He’d wanted me to be happy. Nothing had pleased him more. He’d pumped me up. That very sweetness had been the saddest thing to lose.
The worst part about losing someone is not what goes with the tears. That’s the luxury. The most awful part is the dry, unrelieved ache, the moment when you know you’ll only ever have the memories. No present. No future. No dreams of laughing together in the garden while you seed the grass, year after year. Never. And that moment comes again and again and stretches at last and long into the future. At the thought of Michael I felt the tears welling up and was horrified they would overflow. But the next moment the lights went blessedly out. Chartreuse entered with a cake ablaze with candles.
Evidently it was Vladimir’s birthday. I wiped my eyes in the darkness and pasted a grin on my face. I sang along but I wasn’t really there. I was numb with shock and outrage.
“Turn the lights on, please,” Vladimir said when he’d blown out the candles.
Someone threw on the bright overhead light. I struggled to my feet then sat back down. We had moved on to the oddly shaped bottles of Würzburger-Franken wine and I was too drunk to go anywhere now.
“I say.” Harry, his thick glasses still on, scrunched his face up. “Excuse me, Vladimir, but who took those photographs? You?” He indicated the pictures of the children and the Leopoldstrasse on the Peg Board.
Isolde, still peeved, said defensively, “Claire took them all.”
Harry crouched forward to get a better look. “But these are superb.” He looked at me above his spectacles. “Have you others?”
“I take photos of all the subjects I sketch,” I said.
“May I see them?”
May he see them? I think for the first time in my life I let my dessert sit. I tried not to think as I went obediently into my small apartment. My hands were trembling when I fished the photos from the desk. Shortly, I returned with a dossier folder. Harry followed me into the living room. I let the photographs slip to the coffee table.
Harry perched himself on the edge of the sofa and inspected the lot I’d taken in Milan. There was the dark and firelit composition of the whores along the Autostrada, the road stretching toward the lurid sunset. The early morning eeriness of Luna Park in ghostly scarves of fog. After a minute he looked up. “You might not be an artist at drawing, young lady, but I have rarely seen such a fine eye for photography.” He regarded me again sternly from beneath his heavy brows. “In this you are an artist.”
Yeah, right, I thought. Throw me a bone. But I wasn’t drunk anymore. “I am?” I said.
“Yes. Did you really take these, Claire? They are good. Excellent in fact.”
“Yes.”
Distrustful of the slender vein of hope that was beginning to surge through me, I asked him softly, “You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
“My whole life,” I could feel the words cracking in my throat, “I wanted to be a painter.”
“My whole life,” he surprised me by glancing quickly over his shoulder and then saying, “I wanted to be a ballet dancer. To soar through the air with beautiful women in pink tutus. I have, however, two left feet. In life, we work with what we’ve got. We work with our gifts. Our blessings. Not our unrealistic desires. In this way, we are useful to ourselves and others. Why? I’ll tell you why. Doing something to which we are unsuited is tedious and frustrating. Doing something really well is fun.”
I felt my cheeks grow warm. “I didn’t think I was that bad,” I said. “Couldn’t I become better with hard work? I’m not afraid of hard work.”
“My dear,” this gentle, kindly man went on to ease me forward, to help me understand, “is that what you want for your life? To be not bad?” He held up a crooked, moonlit picture I’d taken of the Viktualienmarkt in snow. “As a photographer, you could be one of the best! You have the talent! The real thing! Wasn’t it fun to take this photograph?”
I remembered the moment well. Yes, it had been fun. Easy. I thought of all the struggle and impatience that went along with my sketching because it never went smoothly. No. It was never fun, that was for sure. “You think I could be a great photographer?”
“I could guarantee it.”
“Come back in here, you two!” Isolde demanded.
She acted as though she were annoyed at me, but I could tell she was pleased.
I was suddenly embarrassed to have taken so much of his time. “Your dinner will be cold.”
“What sort of a hostess do I look like? Daisy!” Isolde bellowed. “Go get Harry’s plate from the oven.”
“Look, just look at this.” Harry held up the photograph to Wolfgang. “And this one.” He held up one I’d taken in a dressing room. Eleven beautiful women at their worst, curlers in their hair, everyone looking unhappily, even tragically, into their mirrors. He pressed another into Wolfgang’s small hand. “Take a look at this.” It was the picture I’d taken of Rupert’s back, his head out the window, behind him the rooftops of Munich.
Wolfgang said grudgingly, “Yes. That is good.”
Even Blacky seemed impressed. But only for a moment. Tupelo, sensing mutiny, leaned opulently forward toward the package of HB cigarettes at Blacky’s distant elbow. Obediently distracted, he reached into his pants pocket and provided her with a light.
“It’s so easy to conjure a good layout with the camera,” I said.
“Of course,” Wolfgang agreed, one professional to the other. “But that’s the point, darling. To follow your bliss. Not your headache. You see, you’ve already found what you do well, you just didn’t know it.”
We smiled at each other. Wolfgang was sitting directly across from me and, because I wasn’t an actress interested in being discovered, he took a liking to me. I asked him a couple of questions about black-and-white photography and depth of field and he answered me in a simple, easily understandable way.
I got the distinct impression that this business was beginning to annoy Reiner Decke. He sat there, jealous and aggravated. I’d spent two weeks with the man and by now knew when he was upset. I couldn’t figure out why, though. Surely he wouldn’t rather be the one showing me how to use my camera? No. Then I realized it was Wolfgang Scherer’s attention he wanted.
I turned my attention back to Wolfgang. “Everyone else I’ve ever asked has got me so confused that I was almost ready to ditch my thirty-five-millimeter camera for an automatic,” I told him.
“Oh, but no,” he insisted, “the less contraptions on a camera, the less can go wrong. There’s less that can break on it. Just keep it up, you’ll get it.” I felt somehow protective toward him. There was something virile about him, though, an underlying heavy beard he took great pains to keep at bay, and a thirsty darkness to his voice. There was something, certainly not feminine, but feline about him. I hated even to think it but there was something dwarflike about him, too, with his short little arms and legs and big feet and head.
Still, we hit it off right away. His English was very good. He liked to tell a joke and I liked to laugh, almost always doing so at the punch line, so to him and everyone else we were having a fine old time. Despite my disappointment, there was something magical about that evening. Maybe we had the right chemistry; the party never seemed to want to break up.
“An opulent feast.” Harry licked melted butter from the tips of his beautiful fingers. “I adore white asparagus.”
“So much left over!” Isolde cried, eyeing the expensive surplus.
Chartreuse, piously righteous, observed, “That would never be a problem in India. In India there is always someone waiting just outside to take the food home.”
“Did I hear you mention India?” Wolfgang turned his attention abruptly from me to Chartreuse.
“Yes.”
“Have you been there?”
Chartreuse gave that dramatic, negative French shrug of his. “But of course. Many times.”
“You know, if you don’t mind, I’d love to pick your brain about it sometime.”
Chartreuse said, “Bien sûr. At your service, eh?” He looked up from the joint he was rolling and grinned at Wolfgang in that wicked, childishly happy way he had.
“I’ve always wanted to make a documentary about India,” Wolfgang said. “You know, a train-of-thought film. Just go to all these unusual places and film as you go. I might really have time to go to India if I plan it well enough. I can’t start filming Brazilian Love until the fall. I wonder if I could change it to next fall.”
“Is that your next film?” Blacky asked Wolfgang.
“You know,” Wolfgang grew excited, “perhaps I could get up a little band to go there. To India, I mean.” He was unable to give it up.
“Ah, that would be the life.” Blacky tore himself from Tupelo’s gaze and sat back in his chair. His eyes shone at the thought of such a trip. He put his hand through his silky dark hair and combed his long fingers through. “You’ve got the right job, all right,” he said to Wolfgang. When he spoke I had an excuse to gaze at Blacky outright. He was one of those rare people who was content in his skin, comfortable, even, in his envy. He stretched his legs out. I admired the circumference and length of those legs. He saw me looking. I pulled back, caught.
And then Chartreuse said, “Why not drive?”
“Drive?” Tupelo guffawed. “That’s ludicrous. Can’t you see it?” Her green pearls shimmered with laughter.
Everyone tittered obligingly. Chartreuse sat back in his chair. His eyes shone with the memory. “Each day,” he said, “the light climbs easy, easy through the curtains into your caravan. If yesterday was bad, today begins a new landscape, new people, new country! This is a wonderful thing, I think.”
We listened, transfixed.
“The blue sky,” Chartreuse said, “each day, only sun and sky …”
“Drive to India,” Vladimir went on, tasting the idea. Then he said, “It would be like flying to the moon.”
“What do you mean, the moon?” Reiner Decke’s head bobbed and he squinted at him in an unpleasant way.
“He means,” Isolde said, “metaphorically.” Because she was happy, she wasn’t on her toes. Vladimir looked at her crossly. “Why do you interpret what I mean? Do you know what I am thinking?” He stood up. “Am I not even allowed my thoughts?”
“No.” She touched her chest. “I didn’t mean—”
It was so like Vladimir to attack her like that in front of everyone. But this time he kept on. “Then why do you say ‘metaphorically’ like that? As if interpreting for me! Do you want my thoughts, too?” He turned to me. “She even wants my thoughts!”
I think we all thought the same thing, that Vladimir was coming unhinged. For a moment I thought he would hit her.
“Don’t worry,” she said carefully, “you’ll soon have them all back. Anyway,” she laughed nervously, as if none of this bothered her, as if it were all nonsense and she was in on the joke all along, “you who gets carsick driving to Salzburg—”
“That’s because I hate to drive there.” He sat down.
“Doesn’t your mum live in Salzburg?” Daisy asked stupidly.
“No,” Vladimir said, “Isolde’s mother does.”
“Ah, so.” Reiner Decke grinned maliciously.
Isolde smiled at everyone.
Wolfgang said, “No, I was just thinking, why shouldn’t we all go?”
“We?” Reiner Decke shunted his knife into a lamb haunch. “As in everyone at this table?”
Conversation stopped as each of us digested the idea. We looked one another over.
“I mean,” he went on, lowering his voice so we all had to lean closer, “it seems you can drive through easily enough.”
I was beginning to get the idea how he got things done. His sense of drama and timing had everyone mesmerized. But it wasn’t only that. It was the way he stayed on track. How he remained intent on this one thought. I wasn’t surprised he made good films. For all his Puckish looks, his big hands, and his probably oversized scrotum, his voice so hypnotic and deep, he had us all mesmerized.
“Would you be interested in such a venture?” Wolfgang peered into Chartreuse’s eyes and I thought for a moment, He is a hypnotist!
For all the hash he’d smoked you’d have thought Chartreuse would be more stoned. But he was alert as a chipmunk on a fox’s hill. “Do you mean you would want a guide? Someone who would know the way as I would?”
“Exactly!”
Chartreuse pressed his elbows together. I could almost see his mind lurch into gear. He would get back to enchanting India, where he could wangle Lord knew what sort of deals, and now, on top, he’d be paid. He pretended to mull all this over, “Hmm,” he said. “I know of an excellent van, totally equipped for overland travel. I might be able to get it for you for a good price.”
I almost laughed out loud. Now, if it broke down, it would be someone else’s problem. And he would have money. Not only that but he could do whatever it was one did under the prosperous and respectable title of “film company guide.”
“The Orient,” murmured Harry.
I became unreasonably jealous. The Orient was my idea!
Blacky said, “You know, I’m coming, too.” He meant it when he said it.
Tupelo threw back her head and laughed. “Darlink! You cannot! You are a doctor!”
“Yes, I am quite sure I am. But it’s not as though I can’t leave when I want. I can lease out my practice. There are at least ten doctors who will jump at the chance to take my place. Munich is the most desirable place to work in Germany.”
“You can’t be serious,” Reiner said.
We all watched him. This was beyond us all. A doctor, willing to give up his hard-earned position. I found him so idealistic and beautiful. His sooty curls.
Blacky drained his glass and looked around for the bottle. “When I come back,” he said, as though he were talking to himself, “I’ll take it over again.”
“But what about moi?” Tupelo asked in a baby doll voice. She twiddled her fingertips in the candlelight. It was an action related to the scent of money.
“You’re always flying off on a filming trip,” Blacky reminded her. “Here. There. You probably won’t even be in the country while I’m gone.”
“I’m doing that play.” She frowned. “In Munich. Right here.”
Chartreuse stood up and circled the table, sidling ingratiatingly, on his way to refill Blacky’s glass.
I watched Tupelo Honig’s bright little eyes calculate her next move. She was a quick study as to which direction things were going. And although they went along well, Hollywood had not yet cabled. After all, one doctor in the hand was worth two in the cattle-calling bush.
“Wolfgang,” she announced, “I want to come, too!”
“You!” Wolfgang looked at her with startled eyes. “The first time there was no regular bathroom you’d be looking for the nearest airport!”
“No, that would be me,” Isolde interjected.
We all laughed.
“No, really, Liebling, I would return broadened,” here Tupelo paused, “as an artist.” Her head swung majestically atop her neck. She said it all with a queenly pout. I think I hated her completely at that moment. Not only had she taken Blacky from me. Now she was the artist. And, on top, she was taking my place as a gal on her way to the Orient.
“What about your play?” Daisy reminded her.
“Ach.” She made a shrug and a gesture as though that were of little consequence. “Any actress could play that part,” she said, using Blacky’s tactic. “But India,” she wobbled her head like a Jaipuri temple dancer, “people would see me as an actress who could play any role.” She lowered her voice. “They run documentaries at Cannes, don’t they?”
Isolde added, “Or even at the Berliner Film festival.”
“Hey,” Wolfgang leaned forward, “it would be wonderful. I could get no end of backing if you came along.”
“But I wanted to go,” I blurted tipsily.
“Oh, you! You just want to go to Afghanistan!” Daisy dismissed my credibility with a demeaning little swipe of the hand. “You’re not up to the grand trip.”
I was a little stunned that Daisy would demean my wishes in front of all these people.
There was a sliver of true malice in her attitude and I was surprised and a little hurt. Daisy and I had always been close.
“My dear Claire, Americans don’t want to go to Afghanistan now,” Harry said. “It’s absolutely perilous.” I think he was the only one of us who wasn’t noticeably drunk. Well, he was so used to his alcohol.
“All the more reason you should come along,” Vladimir said. “One of the last great frontiers.”
Isolde said bluntly, “You’re Afghani, Chartreuse, aren’t you.” She didn’t say it as a question.
He flinched without flinching, if you know what I mean. “My mother.” He glanced momentarily up from the joint he was rolling.
“But,” she pursued, “you were born there, surely.”
He returned her gaze. “Herat.” He said the word fondly.
“Well, then you know better than anyone,” Wolfgang said. He turned to me. “Why would you want to go to Afghanistan, anyway, Claire?”
I closed my eyes and went to see what I imagined when I thought of me in Afghanistan. I saw the silk route of the past winding its way through the yellow mountains. The marketplaces. Men sitting cross-legged in apricot shops. Fierce women. The color red. I found I had said all this out loud.
The cool silence that greeted me opened my eyes.
Then, “India, too, has red,” Blacky said.
“Pink,” Tupelo corrected. “India has pink.” She loosened her shawl. “Hot pink.”
But his green eyes held me from across the table. They were interested now. Indulgent and captivated.
The way he said the word. “Inja.” With such refinement. And yet, there was passion. I heard the sounds of marketplaces and the roar of nearing elephants. The jingle of ankle bracelets on brown legs. The homespun white of Gandhi. Suddenly I wished very much that I could go. Go to India, where no one I had known at home had ever been. From where I, too, would come back changed. I asked myself why was he looking at me like that. There was something so charmed in that. I felt that I could trust him. I also felt the blood well up in my cheeks. Then I burst out into nervous, hysterical laughter and he looked away. Oh, I loathe myself, I thought.
Wolfgang turned to me. “Why don’t you tag along? Afghanistan is on the way.”
“What, me?” I touched my throat, chickening out. “I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I haven’t got that kind of money put aside,” I admitted. “Anyway, anything I’ve got right now ought to go toward a car.” I sighed. “I spend so much on taxis”
“You’ve got tons of money,” Daisy said. “Come on. We can both go.” She opened a nail polish bottle and she drew an iridescent stripe down the middle of her thumbnail.
Vladimir’s mouth dropped open. “I wouldn’t do that so near to the food.”
“And I wouldn’t admonish someone publicly who is just about to possibly shrink your shorts in the dryer,” Daisy shot back. She smiled. “Those are your things left in the hamper, aren’t they?”
No one said a word. This was new. What had got into Daisy, acting up like this. So cryptic. It was so out of character that nobody knew what to do. And yet Vladimir couldn’t let this go unpunished. It occurred to me that Daisy might like to be fired. They’d have to pay up, wouldn’t they? It was known that they were very cavalier about paying. She had no expenses. But she did keep track. Her back wages would add up to a nice sum.
“Claire doesn’t have enough money to stop work for a couple of months.” Isolde sounded angry. Naturally. She wanted me here with her, handing in my tidy rent each week in cash.
“I think it would be all right,” Wolfgang said. “You could do the still photography.”
“Oh, I’m not good enough to be professional.” I laughed.
“That’s true,” Isolde said. “You’re not.”
“Yes, you are.” Daisy poked me, changing sides. “Those shots you did of the children were lovely!”
“There’s a bit more to it than that,” Reiner tut-tutted with a patronizing smirk.
“Claire can’t leave Munich now.” Isolde looked around worriedly. “She’s just beginning to save money.”
“Yes, I could,” I announced defiantly, noticing Blacky’s interest in Tupelo waver and hoping it was due to my independent swagger. “I can go wherever I choose.” Then, in a smaller voice, “I’d just have to save a bit more first.” Everyone was looking at me. “And then I would work hard when I got back. I would work really, really hard!” I heard myself. I sounded like a child.
“The thing is,” Chartreuse said, “everyone comes back from India looking like merde.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Everyone gets sick. Or covered with some fungus.”
“And yet here you are, alive.”
“A girl I was with died in Afghanistan. A Dutch girl. We foolishly shared a mere sip from a glass of unboiled water.”
Isolde said, “But you didn’t get sick?”
“If you reach the age of five in Afghanistan, it is pretty hard to kill you. We have enough antibodies for ten people. I should have known better than to let her drink, that’s all.” He looked desolate with the memory.
“I see.”
“Filthy country,” Harry told Daisy.
Tupelo said, “Blacky would make sure nothing happened to me, wouldn’t you, darlink?”
“I would shoot you up with gamma globulin before we left.” He moved his lips at her with a push.
“Anyway,” Reiner said, “no one wants to photograph a girl with fungus on her face, eh?”
“I’m healthy as a horse,” I announced defiantly. “I just don’t have enough money.”
Everyone laughed.
“Oh, you poor little thing!” Tupelo said dismissively. She would sum you up with her eyes and, finding you unable to advance her in any way, give you a swift write-off. She had a way of looking at you as though you were an invalid. It was a look full of false pity, demeaning and leaving you feeling superfluous.
To ease my embarrassment, Blacky said, “There is nothing so refreshing as a healthy woman.” But then he turned bright red, as though regretting his words. He’d said it out of kindness, but there was truth in it, for him. Again he looked at me and I at him. Tupelo Honig might have captured him, but the look between us had fireworks in it. And I would have my fireworks.
“But my dear,” Harry told me gently, “a model only has so much time when things are going well. Once you fall from fashion, the cash flow stops abruptly. You must make hay as the sun shines, my dear.”
I was unimpressed with this argument. I would be young forever.
“Still,” Blacky pointed out evenly, “a trip like that … difficulties would surely arise.”
“Not if you have a translator with you,” Chartreuse assured him.
“Well, do you speak Urdu?”
“That I do not speak but we can easily hire some—”
“I do,” Daisy spoke up. “I speak a lovely Urdu.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Harry said.
“What ridiculous,” I interjected. “Daisy grew up all around the world, didn’t you, Daisy?”
“That’s right,” she said. “My Punjabi’s a bit rusty, but it ought to suffice in a pinch.”
“And I speak all the local dialects one needs overland,” Chartreuse put in.
“I see,” Blacky said, “a real gadabout.” He said this almost arrogantly and he said it to Chartreuse. I hadn’t heard him use that tone before. Then he said, “Chartreuse … sounds French. Surely not an Afghani name …” His smile was sweet.
Chartreuse returned his sweetness. “I said my mother was Afghani. My father was from Toulouse. But when I was born, I did not want to come out. I was almost a ten-month baby. Really. I was green. Covered in green slime. Merde alors! my father cried out upon seeing me. Il est chartreuse!
They all laughed. I was appalled and revolted. I wished he hadn’t told me that. “What did you mean,” I turned back to Wolfgang, changing the subject, “about the still photography? You mean I would get paid?”
“Not a lot, assuredly,” he hiccupped. “You’ve not made a name for yourself as a photographer, have you?”
“No.” I ducked my head. “We all know I’m the amateur.” I’d heard Isolde say Wolfgang was mean with money—for all his success. I could feel him watching me, which pleased me. The great filmmaker captivated by little me. Still, he looked so long and hard there were moments I felt intruded upon. His eyes were not just pleasured, but scrutinizing.
Isolde put in, “It isn’t as though photography were brain surgery.”
Reiner sat up at this and sputtered, “And it’s also not as though just anyone can pick up a camera and make a go of it.”
“Oh, calm down,” Daisy sassed him. “Nobody’s challenging your profession.”
“Surely you could muddle your way through it,” Harry said, “I mean with so many exciting subjects. Even if you botched the half of it, some of it would surely turn out right.” He turned to Wolfgang. “And that half might be frightfully exciting.”
“Film is still expensive,” I pointed out.
“Certainly that would be included in expenses,” Chartreuse negotiated.
“Yes, I suppose so.” Wolfgang placed his knife and fork down on the plate in a final gesture. “But why not come?” He rubbed the palms of his hands together. “It would cut costs to have an unknown.”
Reiner said, “Of course, if I decided to come that would solve all your problems. Then Claire wouldn’t even have to come.”
“But,” I was outraged, “I might want to come.”
“Claire could still do some of the photography,” Isolde said. “She could be a backup. For insurance.”
“You wouldn’t need insurance with me as photographer,” Reiner pointed out.
“But you know,” Wolfgang said, “that just might work …”
“Look,” I protested, “I’m just a model. Maybe I’m in over my head here.”
Blacky turned in his chair. “No, but being a model has its own cachet. Fashion and film mix very well, I think. The newspapers love that sort of thing, don’t they? You could send back intermittent stories, Claire. They could print them. Quick would love a travel story like that. Didn’t they use you on a cover?”
He’d said my name so gently. And he was sticking up for me. He might be dazzled by Tupelo Honig but he was on my side. I felt it. And what an idea! Artists weren’t worth their salt until they’d traveled off the beaten path. I’d be gaining experience. And an eye. I would become a real artist. Just a different sort. And one could make a living at photography.
“You’ll have to write the stories.” I smiled gratefully at him. “But it’s a wonderful dream. One day I think I might manage the pictures.” I frowned, remembering the reality. “If only you could wait a couple more months.”
Blacky said, “I’m disappointed. In a couple more months, you will have met a handsome young man.”
Isolde joined his mocking tone. “Who will help you spend your money.”
“And,” Blacky reached toward me with his eyes, “he will have filled your head with dreams …” He bit the rim of his wineglass, his white teeth on the edge. The wine swirled in a tantalizing circle. Was he flirting with me?
I shook my head, denying such a future. But I raised my glass to him and finished it. To add to my confusion, Blacky now turned back to Tupelo. Right away, she was basking in his refound admiration. I caught the glint of satisfaction in her eye. Gaggle on, she must have been thinking to herself as she shimmied in place, I’ve got the goods.
That’s all right, I told myself with all my newly learned bitter, sophisticated reasoning. Let her have him. He’d be back. And how did he know I’d done a cover for Quick if he hadn’t seen it? So he did like me. I didn’t have him, but there was something in his eyes that told me one day, if I was lucky …
Wolfgang put his plushy hand on top of mine. “Where is it you said you were from?”
“I’m from New York,” I said.
“But not New York City, surely?” Reiner said, already knowing the answer. His hair had come loose from its rubber band and I couldn’t help thinking he looked like an old transvestite done up like a nun at the end of a long, happy night.
“No,” I said. “Queens. Just outside.”
“Oh.” He caught the eyes of all of them. “Queens! That stretch of curb that lines the Van Wyck Expressway from the airport all the way to the city. I know. I’ve been to New York so many times.” He slipped a spoonful of peas into his mouth and chewed them thoughtfully. “Where stray dogs roam. Isn’t it true?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Not a shred of culture. And graffiti everywhere. Dreadful!” He turned to Tupelo. “All the houses have bars on the windows.”
“Uch,” she said.
My throat closed and I could barely speak. I wanted to defend my home. But where would I start and what would I do, describe the trees, the beauty of the old Victorians, the rain-washed light? Whatever I would say, he’d turn it around and make me look foolish. He had the knack. “What’s the matter, Reiner?” I said. “Do you hate Americans?”
Isolde raised a hand. “Oh, please, Claire, don’t go getting defensive and patriotic. It’s so gauche.”
“Especially from a country involved in an illegal war,” Wolfgang put in.
“Where in India,” Harry kindly changed the subject, “would you be going?”
Wolfgang looked to Chartreuse, who said blithely, “To Goa, of course.”
“Goa?” Harry said. “Portuguese Goa? That’s where all the hippies and drug addicts go. Beach after beach of naked Europeans, isn’t it?”
Chartreuse said, “Goa’s wonderful.”
“You’d get sick of that quickly enough,” Harry said. “There is one place, though, in the Indian Himalayas … a Tibetan Buddhist refuge.”
“Ah,” Chartreuse remembered. “McLeod Ganj. Just above Dharamsala.”
“Isn’t that where the Dalai Lama lives?” Blacky put in. Wolfgang said, “Now that would be interesting!”
“Me, too!” I heard myself lament. “I want to meet him, too!”
Harry fondled his earlobe. “There was some talk within the trade a while ago about a missing tabernacle, a gift from Tibetans to Papist Catholics, as it happened, who’d been sent to China as missionaries then lost their way. Lavish with rare gems, that sort of thing. Was supposed to have turned up there and then didn’t. Raised quite a fuss. I must have that article somewhere. Would be lovely to stumble across that, eh?”
“There it would be,” Daisy said, “just waiting for you.”
It was very late. Still no one seemed to wish to be the first to leave. Suddenly I felt so warm I became dizzy. I excused myself and went down the hallway to the bathroom. I was just consoling myself in the mirror, washing my hands under a stream of delicious icy water, when Tupelo slipped in and shut the door behind her.
“Oops,” I smiled, feeling slightly better, “just going.”
But she hadn’t come to use the ladies’. “Let me see your bosom,” she said, peeking over my shoulder.
I thought I must have got something on Isolde’s pretty blouse. Interested, we both looked down. She took the elastic top of my blouse and, with two hands, slipped both sides over my shoulders and to my waist. I stood before the mirror, exposed, my arms imprisoned in the sleeves. From behind, she weighed me with her eyes.
“What a curvy little thing you are,” she said. Then she threw back her head and laughed, one up on me.
“Keep your hands to yourself,” I said, regaining my composure, pulling my blouse back in place. It had all happened so fast. But it was too late. She’d seen the pupils of my eyes dilated with pleasure in the mirror.
“Sei vorsichtig, Kleine,” she warned me pleasantly, looking keenly at herself now, for she’d accomplished her task. I knew enough German to understand. Be careful, little one.
“And just what is that supposed to mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean,” she hissed in her heavy English. “Europe is not like America, you know. You’d just better keep out of my way.”
“Hey, don’t be so shy.” I returned her intimidating tone with an exaggerated swagger of the head, reenacting washing my hands, the soap slithering in and out of my fingers. “Just spit out the way you feel,” I said, not feeling as brave as I sounded.
She ignored the irony. “Things happen here to young girls.” The way she’d said it, it frightened me. I became aware of her size and strength. We stood there for a moment, at an impasse.
Then she said, “You’re not the first little flootzie to step in my path, you know. They come and go like, like popcorn.”
“Flootzie?” How dare she! She was the flootzie. I mean, floozy. I returned her scoffing tone.
“Like popcorn, eh. Really? How unusual. That’s quite a threat.”
But she wasn’t wounded by the absence of subtleties in one of her many languages. She smiled, a nasty smile that reached one eye and left a twitch.
“It’s your boyfriend you should be worrying about, not me,” I came up with, scrambling for any defense.
Isolde and Vladimir were coming down the hallway to go check on the children. Vladimir was grumbling, “I’ve got to find a flat nearby, that’s all. I can’t be wasting time driving back and forth.”
Isolde was laughing and hopeful. “I’ll help you look,” she murmured in the voice she saved for him.
Tupelo put a reassuring palm on my shoulder, as though we’d been in there confiding secrets. “Go home. Things will be safer for you in the States.” She let me pass. “I promise.”
I wiped my hands hastily on a towel and got away.
She made light conversation with Isolde and Vladimir.
Trembling, I went in and regained my seat.
“You must try these peppers.” Chartreuse leaned over me with the frying pan when I sat down. “These are magnifique!” He swaggered the top of his head. “Hold your plate up. Careful! This oil is hot.”
Tupelo was just returning to her seat, her face a radiant mask of changing smiles. Harry leaned back at that moment and Tupelo seemed to trip and bang into Chartreuse. The oil splashed down, splattering onto my lap.
“Ow!” I cried out. It was furiously hot. I couldn’t believe how much it hurt. Everyone made confused and sympathetic noises and I wanted to make light of it, but the oil blazed into the inside of my thigh and it was all I could do to keep from crying.
“How clumsy of me!” Tupelo clapped her hands together.
Everyone rushed to assure her that of course it hadn’t been her fault at all.
“Oh, the poor thing! Oh, the poor thing!” she kept saying. But she didn’t say a word to me. Blacky came over to me. He pushed the folds of the green skirt up and inspected the angry map of red on my thigh. I took no joy in this. At the moment I was in so much pain I could only rock back and forth.
With a concerned look, Blacky lifted me by the hand and I followed him into the living room. He led me to the couch and Harry went to Isolde’s medicine cabinet for gauze and salve. For a few minutes, I saw nothing but white pain. But after a while, the intensity subsided and I could almost see the humor in the situation. Tupelo watched with a feverishly craned neck from her spot at the table, hardly noticing Wolfgang, who had seen his chance and was gesticulating at her in vivid conversation. I imagined Tupelo was intensely frustrated at that moment. Then I heard her say, “Can you imagine? She exposed her breasts to me in the toilet!” I don’t know what they all thought.
Blacky’s gentleness was something I wasn’t prepared for. I certainly understood why he’d become a doctor. There was something so empathetic and thoughtful about his touch. There seemed to be nothing else he could have been.
“I know it hurts,” he said in a caring, intimate tone. “The pain will subside shortly.” He seemed totally taken up with me and I relaxed.
I imagined him in the hospital in Vietnam, saying the same words over and over to American boys with gravely serious injuries. For that reason alone, my heart would have flown to him. When he finished applying the salve and, with a feather-light touch, wrapped the wound, with me lifting my leg at the appropriate moments so he could slip the gauze strands under and through, he looked into my eyes with concern.
“Thank you.” I smiled. “I’ll be fine. Really.”
He, too, relaxed. “Do you always get into trouble like this?” He smiled, too. There was a hint of mischief in his sparkling eyes. Well, we were both over the limit.
Suddenly embarrassed, I drew my legs together.
He gave me a patronizing little pat on the knee and stood up, the cool, professional doctor once again, and I his little charge. He offered me his hand with deliberate politeness, steadied himself, and escorted me back to the table.
Tupelo held up one arm and rattled her noisy bracelets, as if she were calling a cat. Blacky seemed to float toward her.
Everyone made a fuss for a moment or two.
“Has anyone seen that piano player Emmanuel at the Kleine Rondelle? “Isolde changed the subject and they were all off on a different foot.
“Ach, that reminds me!” Vladimir jumped up with an uncharacteristic burst of energy and went to the stereo to gather his records.
Wolfgang was talking to me; my face was toward him but my full attention was with Blacky and Tupelo. My ears strained to hear everything they said. After our short encounter, I felt proprietary rights toward Blacky.
“You know,” I overheard him tell Tupelo, “my mother telephoned this evening. She loves the theater. You can’t imagine how excited she was when I told her I’d taken you out. Really. She’s a fan.”
“Drop me back at my hotel after this.” She smiled at him. “I’ll give you a photograph with a really special message for her.”
“I’ll bet she will,” Reiner, listening, too, said to me.
I felt sick. All at once, it became obvious to me that they would sleep together. It was hopeless. I knew I’d had too much to drink. Everyone was laughing.
As I left the room I looked in the mirror. Above Tupelo’s shoulder I saw Blacky’s face. He watched me go. He could have had me, but he watched me go.
I went to my bed. I didn’t cry. I lay there looking out the window at the navy darkness and the drowning fall of stars. I pulled myself up to the sill. I looked to the east.