That probably would have been the end of it. That sort of people makes all kinds of plans at parties and nothing ever comes of them. But then something happened that changed everything.
It was some days later. I was sitting on the window seat thinking what a wonderful apartment for Vladimir for his sculpting, so filled with light. I wasn’t surprised Isolde felt assured he’d be back. The flat alone was compelling enough to draw him. And it was odd here, with the bronze women statues in positions this way and that. They looked longing and desolate, not sexy and brazen as I’d first thought. It was as though they missed him, too.
I’d just finished cleaning my brushes, having formally readied them for retirement. I was enjoying a pale cup of tea with no milk, which is not the way I usually like it. I was feeling a little perverse and I was still sulking about my drawings being judged no good. I couldn’t just stop being who I was like that, in a flash. And yet I had. But giving up a lifetime of dreams is not an easy business. Harry had told me to go sleep on the idea and for once
in my life I took someone’s advice. It’s not everyone who gets a chance for guidance from a master, I realized; I ought to be looking at this as a gift.
Halfhearted little snowflakes fluttered, directionless, through the sky, but they had no real chance. The afternoon sun kept bullying its way through, knowing that the winter was over. Islands of daffodils clung confidently to the light. I had no plans for the evening. I’d enjoyed my afternoon of solitude but now I’d had enough of my own company and was wishing someone would come. Then the telephone rang.
“Hello?” I said eagerly.
“Hier ist Tupelo Honig,” a cold voice said.
“Oh,” I said, just as coldly. “Hello. It’s Claire.”
“Claire?” she repeated, pretending to be puzzled.
“From the other night,” I reminded her. “Here.”
“Ah,” she said, unimpressed. “Be so kind. My luggage is arriving within the hour. Would you see to it?”
What’s this? I thought. “Are you coming to stay here?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, “I’m renting the small apartment while we’re here.”
The small apartment? My apartment? “There must be some mistake.” I stood up.
“No mistake, darlink. Isolde has it all arranged. I’ll be needing somewhere quiet to study my lines.”
I was outraged. How dare Isolde rent my apartment? I was paying rent. I said so.
“Oh, I don’t know anything about that,” she said in a hurry. “Just look out for my bags, will you? And bring them up if the driver won’t? You are a darlink.”
I could hear Isolde coming. She was a large woman and she had her own rhythm of taking the stairs.
“Tupelo,” I said decisively, “there is no such thing as the letter k at the end of the word ‘darling.’” I hung up the phone.
I’d better look as if I’m doing something, I told myself out of habit, and then remembered it was Isolde who owed me an explanation.
Isolde burst into the room. She looked at me with glowing eyes. “You won’t believe it,” she said.
“Isolde,” I began.
“Claire! Listen! Frau Zwekl is dead!”
I looked at her. “What?” I said.
“She’s dead.”
“No,” I said. “How?”
The phone began to ring again.
Isolde shrugged and licked her lips. “Yes.” She sat down excitedly and did not pick up the phone. This was rare indeed. I imagined I knew instantly what she was thinking. She could install Vladimir in Frau Zwekl’s rambling apartment. He would be near the children. And, of course, her.
“Isolde,” I frowned at her disapprovingly, “how did she die?”
Isolde leaned forward and said, in a conspiratorial tone, “She cracked her head and broke her hip. She fell getting out of her bathtub.”
“Oh, no. No, no!” And I hadn’t even gone in to check on her! I lowered myself into the chair.
“Four days ago!”
Four days! The day of the party. The very day I’d met Blacky.
“And here’s the ironic part. Herr Kleiderschrank said he tried to get her to go to the doctor and she wouldn’t go. He told her she’d better watch her health, he told her she was looking for trouble, they say.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“Herr Kleiderschrank from the second floor. You know him?”
I shook my head vaguely, half remembering a slim, quick-footed little man dancing up and down the stairs. Frau Zwekl detested him and made a fishy face whenever he went by. “Go on,” I said.
“Well. He told her she must go to renew her blood pressure medicine. She refused to go and he threatened her. Good-heartedly threatened her. You know. But then she promised she was going to see her doctor soon and what happened next? She fell and cracked her head and that was it, she just lay there!”
God rest her soul—my heart sent out its message before my atheism reinstalled itself.
“Well, everyone knows she’s always out there. But Herr Kleiderschrank has nothing to do but mind everyone else’s business, you know. So he was the one to notice.”
I realized she must feel guilty to say such a thing. I warmed to her. Isolde acted tough but her heart was in the right place. She wore a smart dress, yellow and black, and earrings, cameos—they were Vladimir’s mother’s. She would never give them back. Never. They dangled now, dull ornaments on dainty chains. She went on. “Herr Kleiderschrank went in the next day with the police. There she was, dead! And the place cold as a morgue. All the heat must fly up to us because her apartment was cold. And that’s the way it always must have been.”
We watched each other with horrified eyes. Hers were sparkling.
“What a place she’s got! He was tickled pink to get inside. No one ever gets in. Not even him. You leave your laundry at the door and that’s where you pick it up. All old paraphernalia from before the war. And not the second war, the first! Oh, Kleiderschrank was carried away with the excitement. Nothing ever happens to him.”
I felt so sad. I remembered how I was always flying by lately and never stopping to chat. All she’d wanted was a little confidentiality. I knew our chats had given her pleasure and I’d deprived her of them out of selfishness. I felt ashamed.
Isolde, having departed with the brunt of her news and receiving as much reaction mileage from me as she was going to get, picked up the phone to spread the word.
I remembered Tupelo Honig but my heart wasn’t in making interruptions and recriminations. I just sat there and listened as Isolde telephoned around and I reheard the story again and again. After the fifth time I could have retold it in German myself. Poor Frau Zwekl.
Isolde held her hand across the mouthpiece and said, “You look tired, Claire. Why don’t you go lie down for a bit.”
I knew she wanted to be rid of me. She was deciding how she would tell me about Tupelo Honig. Down in the street, I heard a car door slam. That would be Tupelo’s bags.
“Yes,” I said, stretching the top half of my body sideways. “I think I will.” I blew a kiss and left.
There was a commotion out in the apartment while I lay there. Well, I was ready for them. Just let her come in here and try to move me into the nursery with Daisy and the boys. Just let her. I was prepared to pack my bags and leave. There was a charming place near the Englischer Garten called Erna Morena. Erna Morena had been a silent screen star and her daughter had made a pension filled with her memorabilia. A lot of the models stayed there. So could I.
But then, as it so often is when you’re prepared to stand firm, nothing happened. I put on the “Consolation Number Three” of Franz Liszt—a beautiful piano piece that sounds like water tripping over stones—in memory of Frau Zwekl and fell asleep and when I woke up, everything was the same as usual. Daisy was setting the table and the boys were eating soldiers of toast with cinnamon and butter.
“She’s gone out,” Daisy said over her shoulder.
I sat at the table with the boys. Dirk perched his fork and let fly a juicy piece of toast. It landed on my nose. This must have been the funniest thing that ever happened for the amount of time they laughed. Then, wiping her eyes with the tip of her apron of 1940s cherries, Daisy sat down across from me. “Did you hear?” she said finally.
“Frau Zwekl?”
“Yeah. Tough, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Hope I don’t go like that. All alone. No one to care. Well, what do you say, boys? Shall we go for our walk?”
“Yay!” The boys climbed over each other.
I stood up. “I think I’ll go back to bed.”
My room had grown chilly and I covered myself with the eiderdown. I had to take a train to a studio in the eastern part of Germany that night for a week’s work and I knew I ought to rest.
I lay there. I heard them go out for their walk. But then I heard the front door open again.
Oh, I thought. They’ve come back. But it wasn’t them. It was a quiet person. Someone crept around the hallway. I lay still, pretending I wasn’t there.
I felt someone at the entrance to my room. My door swung open silently. I could see the threshold from the mirror. It was Tupelo.
She came into my room. I lay there watching her through half-closed eyes. She stood before the window looking out. Then she shut the door. Like a whisper, she climbed in under the sheets beside me.
I was still as a dead girl. I could hardly breathe.
We lay like that a long, long time. And then, just as the bells rang out in the kirk tower over the street, she slipped her silky fingers in between my legs and touched me there.
When it was over she took me by the neck. “Don’t you ever tell a soul,” she warned. “Promise.”
I studied her, naked except for her green pearls. She was perfect. Except for one L-shaped scar on her shoulder blade, as though a tuck had been taken in her body, there wasn’t a mark on her. I raised myself up on one elbow. I traced the scar down to the curve of her back and I felt her body shiver. “All right, all right. I promise.” I
shrugged. I watched her animosity subside. But I wasn’t afraid of her anymore. If anything, it was she who should be afraid of me. For although she was the one who had boldly come to me, once the line had been crossed, something had shifted in the power department. It was I who took over, seeking her most hidden places with such appetite that she cried out not once but many times. And I knew she would be back.
One dream out the window, one in the door. Learning I was no artist. And now this. What was I, after all? What sort of person? And what had taught me to be so expert at an art of which I knew nothing? Or had thought I knew nothing. Because it seemed I knew instinctively just what to do. It is the hunger that pleases. And I had the hunger.