xx

For as long as I'd known her as an adult, Elsa had been confined to a space behind a wall, under the floor, in the smallest room above. She had been there years before I'd even known of her. Too many years in all. That may be why her notion of time was so unlike mine. She didn't divide it into weeks, months and years. So many of her days had been undivided by light and darkness that she just didn't divide. To her it was all part of one life, hers, and though her past could still be caged and kept safe in her one mind, her present didn't have to be. She might have been condemned to these spaces physically, but she'd learnt to let her mind wander out of them. Her life situation was the opposite of mine. I was physically mobile, but my mind remained with her constantly, captured within these same spaces. I envied her mental freedom as much as she did my corporal freedom. Little by little, my imagination suffered. In my mind I could visit her, but she couldn't come out to visit me. Hard as I tried, my image of her died as soon as I freed it from her confinement. One step out the door and it faded. Elsa was dying in my memory because I had too few memories of her on this side of my life. I began to feel walled in alive, grew claustrophobic even in the open air, where her room forever shut its wooden mouth on me, as well as the window, its only eye.

It was a stuffy, mosquito-infested summer night when I told her the whole house was hers on condition she kept clear of the windows and stayed down on all fours. Beads of sweat ran down her temples as I followed along as a sort of guide, indicating the rooms. At first she stopped advancing every four steps (mine) to swat at mosquitoes on her cheeks and legs, but I think it was her nerves for so many could not have been real. Then she picked up the pace, but stopped in her tracks like a startled horse after she'd rounded each corner, as if she'd come face to face with someone standing there — or had thought she might. If anyone was watching us from outside, all they would've seen was one silhouette, my own, wandering aimlessly about.

Her shyness didn't last long. After her tour of the bottom floor she knocked her head into my shin and brushed past me. Her hair had fallen over her face, and her laughter came from her throat so she sounded like some unearthly animal. With thumb and index finger she encouraged my desire, poking fun at the easy result. Half of me hoped she'd continue, while the other remained tense, expecting her to tweak me there. With uncontrollable giggles she undressed me down to the socks and pulled me down. Before I'd let my weight down on her she scuttled off, leaving me with my arse naked against the cold. I reached for my clothes to find them gone.

Telltale echoes of where she was came first from upstairs, then downstairs: she would not stay put. I began to regret my decision — didn't put it past her to sneak outside. I reminded myself only I had the keys to get out, but then realised they were in my trouser pocket. At one point, when her silence lasted too long, I cried out her name and sensed that I was alone in an empty house. My fear was answered with more giggles and uncanny sounds I couldn't pinpoint, and for a second I scared myself into believing she was a spirit come to haunt me.

I headed down the hall that led me past Pimmichen's room. The bathroom door was open and I found her half submerged, her big toe sticking up the tap as a trickle of water ran noiselessly over her foot. On seeing me, she kicked her bow-shaped legs about ecstatically, her heels thumping in the water. I saw my trousers balled up under her head and took them back as if my concern was not wanting them wet. The keys were still there: my anxiety was dispelled in a heartbeat.

Moonlight shone through the steamy window, and the water made the light jiggle on her narrow face as her ear-to-ear grin danced about like a boat bouncing on a sea. She was just having fun: it was a joy to witness. I had trouble understanding myself. Why did I suspect her of acts that never would have occurred to her? Why could I not believe what was in front of my own eyes?

'Comb my hair!' She paid for her order in advance with a wet smack on the pucker and the honour of drying her.

There were too many knots for me to undo, so I simplified matters with a pair of scissors. She cast tense glances down at the locks landing at her feet. I had to nag her to keep her head straight. I was trying to get the sides even when, in thinking I must be careful not to cut her ears, I remembered I'd still never seen them up close. I snipped away until her hair matched their shape — two fragile question marks. They existed, even if they seemed to supplement her beauty rather than perform a function. She was at last complete. Feeling her ears exposed, she fingered my work and scolded me from top to toe. I replied what did it matter? I was the only one who could see her.

I know this will make me sound as mad as a March hare, but the constant threat of discovery and execution heightened our sense of being alive. Given that I couldn't keep the curtains permanently closed without drawing attention, Elsa was forced to cross the house as if her life depended on it, scuttling along on her elbows like a soldier, and sometimes stayed put in some recess until the coast was clear. The tiniest details most people ignored in life had great importance in ours. We lived among ominous clouds of what ifs. What if I weren't home and someone were listening at the door? What if someone was controlling how much water we used? What if someone went through our rubbish? What if a neighbour saw only me through the window, but with my mouth moving because I was talking to her? These ominous clouds were foes, but they were our friends too. Thanks to them, putting out the rubbish, hanging her clothes on the line at night was enough to bring adrenalin to my veins, and hers as she waited inside for me, holding her breath. Common chores, tedious, demoralising and destructive to other couples, on the contrary, vivified our existence. Once accomplished, they cast us into embraces.

We used the toilet one after the other before we flushed. I proposed the same system as far as our bath was concerned, but with her indefatigable logic she asked, 'Why can't we each have our own half bath?'

Offended by what I took as a sign of rejection, for I had hoped she would suggest we bathe together, I replied, 'I'm afraid I'm not used to half baths.'

She said, 'With the greater mass of your youthful muscular body, a quarter bath would become a half bath, a half bath would likewise become a three-quarter bath, and a gentleman doesn't discuss fractions with a lady.'

It was no use arguing with her, she knew how to wrap a sour word inside a sugary compliment. In a nutshell, the hours' worth of chores I was in the habit of performing in the service of her bodily needs — the same needs as any infant but, I'd say with all respect, on a greater scale — she could now do on her own, and that made me happy.

She was like a toddler discovering a home: every object had to have a history. She'd look it over until I half expected her to stick it in her mouth. 'What's this?' 'How about this?' Wherever the commonplace truth stopped, I adorned it with tales. She found her way to Ute's door, which I didn't want to open, but her eagerness got the upper hand. She picked up Ute's Tracht — the faded green dress of her childhood — and held it up against her chest, where it looked farcically shrunken. She crossed the room to Ute's violin case. 'This?'

I removed the violin and studied the ribbed markings on its back. 'Yes, this first belonged to an Italian, Dante Molevare, who used it to seduce women. He looked in their eyes as his fingers teased the strings, his bow loving the instrument. He seduced Olivia Tatti, an orphan turned nun whom he refused to marry, despite the fact that she bore his child. Unable to endure the rejection, she set herself on fire under his villa. To protect his reputation he rushed down, tearing off his cape to smother the flames. Misinterpreting this show of heroism for love, she threw herself at him one last time. The only place he wasn't scorched was where her face had pressed into his, and it was said that when he walked the streets of Rome, her face could be made out as clearly as if she'd thrust it into clay.'

Elsa's partial smile, mocking yet a pinch entertained at one corner, urged me on. 'Sixty-three years later, the violin was inherited by his nephew and kept in his attic. Upon his death, his wife sold it to a widower from Como. One day the widower came home early to see his only child, Clara, weeping, with the governess striking her knuckles for every imperfect note. He dismissed the governess on the spot and the violin was untouched for eleven years. Clara married a Swiss man. None of their children wanted to play, so Clara donated it to a Romanian so he could make money for his family in the streets. But for a quicker profit he sold it at a Viennese fair, to a luthier who put it in the window of his shop at a reasonable price, because of the chip off the side from Clara's once having dropped it. One day . . .'

Elsa picked up where I left off: 'A man happened to be walking by and was struck by the workmanship. He worked long years as an underpaid tailor and spent more than he earned to buy his child this violin. He warned the child, "The violin is a spiteful instrument. If you don't take care of it every day, warm up all its strings, it will sing only nasty things to you." The cost of the lessons was draining his family, the soup was thinning, his two sons were of age to go to yeshiva. He was pressed to sell the violin to the business associate of an acquaintance whose daughter wished to take up music. The girls were the same age, but the poor man's daughter had five years of lessons behind her. The rich man's girl saw how sad the poor man's daughter was at handing over her instrument. She told her that if she helped her learn, she, in turn, could practise on the violin. In no time they became best friends; the violin was what it had been made to be: a source of harmony.'

Elsa twisted the pegs, plucked the strings. 'Once upon a time, after many years of not touching it, Elsa remembered her father's words.' She swung the violin into place under her chin.

'Don't! The neighbours will know it can't be me playing with only one hand!'

The bow seemed to hurt the strings; the high-pitched notes were coarse, scratchy and ruthless on the ear. I had no trouble pulling the violin away. I was about to shush her peals of laughter when I saw tears streaking her face and wondered if she was really laughing. She buried her face in mine and I thought of the face bored into Dante Molevare's.

***

My visit to the mental hospital was nothing like what Dr Gregor and his glossy brochures had prepared me for. The living quarters may well have been cleaned every day but they still stank to hell. With a handkerchief to my mouth I followed the head nurse down a long, over-lit corridor where one patient was finger-painting the wall with his excrement. Greasy individuals were slumped in poses of lassitude in filthy, bolted-down armchairs. One patient was having an argument with himself, another one was preaching to an imaginary military crowd, another chanting 'That's a no no' to his cradled fist. The banging, moaning and howling were as demoralising as the white-eyed laughter. The institute's employees, doctor and custodian alike, waded through this foul red tide of madness as if nothing were out of line.

By the time I made it to my father, I was ready to turn around and run. He'd turned into one of the immobile many. His inner being had wandered off somewhere. What was left was no more than the mould any apprentice would have left behind in an art school's graveyard of such figures: empty, hardened, calloused by life, petrified in their last attempted position. Even so, I couldn't stomach his being among those lunatics, who might once have been as normal and caring as he, but to me were inconceivable as anything else but lunatics. I told myself I must find a solution. Anything — death itself — would be preferable to this.

***

I touched Elsa's reflection in the mirror, slid my hand from her cheek to her collarbone, edged it down to her breast. She arched her back under my touch, her buttons straining under the pressure. I flicked at them, but the reflection of her dress remained in place. She helped me, let it fall to her feet. Her face chilled, seeing herself naked. I breathed on the glass to clothe her in hot vapour, spun her a gossamer gown shaped by my own fantasy. When she relaxed again, was steamy with desire, I ripped through it with my fingers, went down on my knees to rub it with my lips. She ran her fingers down my own reflection, shielding me with her own breathing. I erased and re-erased these barriers of her desire. Soon I was longing for whole lengths of the cold mirror as we both scraped at each other's unattainable selves, knowing the stabbing ecstasy of wanting and not getting.

Another time I craved her so penetratingly with just my eyes, she fell back on the bed and went through the motions she guessed I was dictating. We were wild with desire, my eyes never leaving hers but pulling some part of her, closer and closer, grafting it to my core, two slits, the sap seeping sweet. Then her face grew perplexed as if an unexpected rain had dampened our leafy, lush paradise. And that's when I heard, to my utter consternation, my father. My plan was backfiring.

'I think your butler is calling for the maid again,' Elsa said. She sat up, scratched her knee and sighed.

What was happening shouldn't have been, considering the amount of medicine I'd made sure he'd swallowed. This wasn't the first time he'd awoken from a deep sleep, called out for help, and fallen back asleep.

'Oh Lord,' I said. 'He's senile; what can I do?'

'Where's he got himself to this time? In the cellar, polishing silver we don't use? In the attic, greasing your Great-Grandpa's riding boots? Retirement, you know, might be more charitable than fruitless labour.'

I brushed away her questions with a wave of my hand. 'He's been with the family a long time. I do what I can for him, put him up as I can. Besides, he'd never accept wages otherwise. I know the old fellow. And he won't have it being in the way. It's not as if he disturbs us much.'

I was justifying myself too much to sound credible. Elsa looked at me, puzzled, but didn't pick up on the grotesqueness of this last falsehood. When I'd brought my father back home covertly and locked him up where there was little chance he'd be found, I was sure my making up this story about him being an old butler — in the event he be heard — would push me to do what I should long since have already done.

Slowly but surely, Elsa continued to adapt to her new role as lady of the house. She tied my shoes to her knees, attached an apron above her breasts, and shuffled between refrigerator and bench top. One would've thought it a normal manner of moving about. To protect her eyes from the pans spattering grease at eye level she rummaged through a drawer for my grandmother's glasses to wear. They were powerful reading glasses, so she had to feel her way back to the cooking range blindly, hands out in front of her. Doing the dishes, she joked, 'Life would have been kinder to me had I been born a dwarf.'

She read in a cookbook how to make my favourite Austrian dish, which Bavarians claim Bavarian, and purists Czech, before the Empire appropriated it: crispy roast pork with red cabbage. She had a ball, so to speak, preparing a Serviettenknödel, a giant, ball-like dumpling made out of stale bread, wrapped in a tea towel and boiled in water. We were in stitches over it, especially when she claimed it looked American to her and pretended to pitch it like a baseball. I knew she was making a double effort: one, to cook; two, to deprive herself of what she cooked, in particular the crisp pork. But, once she'd tasted it, her diet was forgotten. Thereafter, we ate the same meals, from the same pot. I was pleased with this romantic turn of events — that is, until we both started putting on weight.

I was helping her bottle preserves in the back room behind the kitchen when we heard a prolonged yell followed by a thud. Elsa went in pursuit of it, stooping as she ran but still too tall for the windows.

'Ignore it! It's nothing!' I tried to push her back down but she resisted. After a short chase I caught her by the waist, but she gripped the doorframe and, with a few good kicks, got free of me. She used the raspberry-stained spoon she was still holding to undo the antique lock to Ute's room and her whole body to thrust it open.

Completely drugged, my father had fallen off his foldaway and was lying flat on his face with no sign of life.

'Mein Gott! Loosen the poor fellow's collar! Make sure he doesn't choke on his tongue!' Elsa cried.

'Get out. I'll take care of this.'

'Air! Is he breathing?' Obstinately, she turned him over. Almost in answer to her question, he farted twice.

She turned his face to the light and I tried to stand strategically so as to shade it. It looked so altered anyway, I didn't see how anyone could recognise my father in that simpleton's guise. She did. 'Oh my God, Herr Betzler! Herr Betzler!'

She lifted his eyelids and felt his throat for a pulse. Reassured he was still living, she lifted his legs, I suppose to get the blood to his brain. She was the closest she'd ever come to ugly as she twisted back to shout at me, 'How could you say he was your butler? How could you tell me such a lie! You told me your father was dead!'

'He's worse than dead! Now you finally see what happened to him! I'd rather he was dead. You wait until he comes to.'

The truth is, if Elsa hadn't found out about him, I might just have put him out of his misery quite soon. I'd been increasing his dose of sedatives, and needed just a boost of courage to tilt the pill bottle a fraction more.

***

The architecture of the brothel-house itself was surprisingly classic, and the interior immaculate, cosy though over-perfumed. The ground floor was used as an extensive sitting room, with a bar to the far right and a broad red-carpeted stairway funnelling out the back and up to the individual rooms. The armchairs were arranged in horseshoes and rounds of five and six, in which businessmen were conducting meetings, old buddies were slapping their knees over beer-garden memories, and some lone individuals were reading or writing in the sole company of their drink. A house-mate of Madeleine's, taking her place on a high stool at the bar, was having trouble keeping her mules on the footrest, which was a metal rod. The heels were so high that they reminded me of cloven hooves. A group gone boisterous, watching her slip and slide in her place, invited her to join them. I had the feeling it wasn't the first time she'd staged this skit.

Two robust men blocked the entrance, along with a short, squat man in his fifties, olive-skinned and bushy enough of moustache to compensate for his baldness. When I'd solicited admission he had looked me over before nodding at the others to let me in. I took him for the boss and approached him when he went to the bar for a glass of water. My reason for having to see Madeleine — I needed her not for me but for the good, the health of my father — was met with a burlesque thatched grin. I actually had to pay before I went up just to talk, and no drop in the bucket, after which he invited me in a patronising strut and flick of his stocky arm to have a few drinks beforehand. For the moment, he bragged, Madeleine was busy with 'another client'.

Madeleine awaited whomever was next in a coldly professional position on her regal bed, her right leg bent, her left arm thrown over a heap of satin pillows. She was surrounded on three sides by an avalanche of purple velvet. The fourth wall was a mirror, against which her bed was pressed and in which the room was duplicated, as if the reality of the room could become dreamlike by passing over to this plane, and whatever took place in it could count more, or not count at all, depending on the viewer. Above her, a ceiling fixture soared like a giant octopus with electrified suction cups.

Her expression didn't change when she saw me, but her foot twitched like a crouching cat's tail. Finally she spoke in a soft if charged voice. 'You know, I'm entitled to refuse clients.'

I took off my hat, was kneading it out of shape and becoming conscious of something knotty under my shoe. I looked down to see that I was standing on the tail of a zebra skin. 'I'm not here for that.'

'That?'

'What you think.'

'You know what I think?' Her eyes narrowed.

I wished I hadn't come and it must have shown in my face, and my voice too — I made three attempts to speak before I had the sense to shut up.

'So, you can't handle Pop? My care's not going to be free this time. You know that?'

I nodded and found myself dumbly taking note of the zebra skin's pattern.

'Listen, I'm not going to make you go down on your knees to beg for forgiveness. If I make you go down, it'll be to do something better than that.'

She patted the bed beside her and, after a reasonable wait, said, 'Don't be scared. I'm not going to bite.' As if to appease my doubts she crossed her arms behind her head. I noticed she was still wearing my mother's pendant. 'So. I'm all ears. Contrary to what you believe, those are the orifices most of you fellers come to me for.'