28. The Princess

Six square millimeters for each foot and yet he would certainly need much more space to see it well so the dark color of the kimono would look right and the hair would shine when viewed from any direction. It would need a white cloth like the white silk background that pearls required, as the Japanese woman in the suite facing the garden had said; silk and satin for the distant, mute, and almost smiling little lady dressed in mauve and gold, hair held by little gold pins with pearly heads, a gold sash that tied in the back with a wide flat bow, and a yellowish fan that might have once been gold in her raised hand as if to hide her face, at least the mouth and nose although not those eyes that revealed a smile. The sweet suffering of those tiny motionless feet, traversed by two slivers, naughty the smile, savory the taste of discovery, acrid the dead air in the house where everything was being sold, furniture, fittings, lamps, utensils, and decorations, bitter the stale odor of age, of what had been closed up and unused for a long time, sitting in the cold and dark accumulating white spots from humidity seeping through the ceiling and the cracks of carelessly closed doors. He would put her between the dancer and the monkey, as if they had the duty to entertain her, as if she were only looking at him after having seen the pirouettes of the dancer and the bows of the monkey to let him know how much she had enjoyed the show. The lower shelf, not on the upper shelf where it might slip and fall and where the fish-man sat who saw everything, knew everything, and was jealous of everything. Wulda approached with the platter: instead of holding it over an open hand within reach and keeping the other hand on the far edge, she desperately held it with two hands, one on each of the longer sides, making it hard to serve himself comfortably. He looked at her angrily but she noticed nothing, only smiled at him briefly, almost a grimace, so different from Kati-Kati’s smile; which made him feel sorry for himself and for the effort he had put into erasing or at least muddling the memory by twining it around any other one and closing it tight and hoping it would not arise even disguised in dreams, that fleeting moment when he had lunged forward and the girl, startled or impatient, had fallen back abruptly no doubt pushed by the gaze of the fish-man who had presided over every act that afternoon. It had been an accident, that certainty supported him: an accident. He grasped at the serving utensils, passing one of his hands behind Wulda’s arm to bring them nearer but the spoon was too far away, and he sat there tense, frozen, and furious while Madame Helena Lundgren spoke about travel with Miss Esther and was not watching, did not see what was happening: Kati-Kati thought she was important and that was why she had fallen, not because he had attacked. If she had stood still, nothing would have happened, but the fish-man had been behind it all, a force of destiny behind her wavering body, useless hands, horrified eyes, and the fall, and then Wulda herself was running her fingers over the edge of the platter to give him more room to lift up the serving utensils and finally he could put some meat and vegetables on his plate. The fish-man staring through the water, an open door, the steps of Kati-Kati coming down the staircase: it had all pushed him to leave his room and once past the door to congratulate himself because only the two of them were in the corridor; the girl came down the last steps, he waited below, she jumped to get away, he reached for her, she moved fast, hesitating, and falling back, her head hitting the edge of the steps she had just come down without even enough time to cry out, he returned to his room and stared at the eyes of the fish-man for hours until it had grown so dark he had to turn on the lights and only then did he hear voices and hurried steps although the doctor had come much later, even after the evening meal, which had been the first meal disastrously served by Wulda. The girl would recover, how could she not, please, it had been such an insignificant fall, not a fatal accident like the one involving the boy from the house across the street months previous run over by a coach and trampled by horses; no, this was nothing, just a stumble, a fall, a contusion, nothing, she would of course heal, absolutely, but if she healed he would have to flee, to escape Kati-Kati’s eyes which would open and search him out and say: it was him. Unless she had forgotten everything, which according to what he had read somewhere might happen since sometimes people who suffer a blow to the head and lose consciousness later awake having lost their memory, not knowing who they are or where they are or what has happened to them; he would need to leave. He would take only the little Japanese princess wrapped in silk so she would not suffer, soft and warm in the hollow of his hand, no other treasure, just her, and by no means the fish-man with his fish-man eyes capable of slithering over rocks and walls. He would leave his treasures behind and he would not care because she would go with him, her porcelain soul, silken heart, pearls on the pins of her headdress, and secret eyes of black amber, to wherever the wind and sea would take them. He did not know exactly when Wulda had taken away his plate or exactly when she had poured more wine in his glass: when Kati-Kati returned to serve dinner, he would not be in the house, he would not eat creamy sauces or well-seasoned meat, he would not chew nuts like bits of butter nor would his tongue help wine slip past his palate and down his throat, he would not hear that Lundgren woman’s voice, or see daylight appear through the window of his rooms before everyone else. With all his strength he wanted to twist the day, unite the flavors, set aside time, forget all those people who again and again sat at that table to look for words in the folds of their more than imperfect memories and throw them at each other and smile, above all the women, even this poor-spirited girl who served them; to smile in the desert where there was no one and nothing, not even a wolf whose teeth shone as it tried to bite a mouthful it would never reach. A china and silk princess, with slivers in her feet, natural hair sold by some woman, threaded into her head lock by lock and arranged with a nest of pearl-headed gilt pins from a country of fans and domes and bells, he would take her and leave, and with that would suppress the footsteps on the stairs, the gaze of the fish-man from the upper shelf as if from the sea, the voice of Helena Lundgren giving an order that no one could dispute, and the Japanese woman entering as portent for this other woman, herald of the truer one of flesh, blood, and saliva, in the house on Scheller Street.