Secret Dreams (59 page)

“I dream of this,” Fräulein whispered in confidence.

The older woman did not seem surprised. “So you've seen her too, eh? In a museum? Or a book … ?”

What an odd light in Emma's eyes, as though she herself had seen what went on in those strange dreams. Fräulein had the terrible feeling that if she told of what she saw — the village fields, the woods and rushing stream — the spark in Emma's eyes would leap eagerly to flame and she'd cry, “Yes, I saw that too!”

But Fräulein always held her tongue. Was this woman who fed her and sometimes made her laugh, was this the same woman who wrote lies to her mother? Who now touched hands across the table, not with leaden cold fingers but with warm living ones that seemed to speak endless tales of the shadowed man they shared? Frau Emma had more reason than any to write those lies. Saying:

My husband dances lurid dances in your daughter's private room.

Saying:

He bought her clothes. Entertaining her at late-night parties.

Saying:

He gave her baths.

Saying:

He took her out of the hospital so he could have her under the same roof as his wife. So he could have them in the same bed; watching them woman to woman or having both on him. Perhaps Frau Emma was more capable than anyone…. Writing this spiteful letter even if it wrecked her husband's future at the Burghölzli. Even if it tore apart the remains of her marriage. For what hope had she? Frau Emma
must
suspect them in her heart. Yes, actually know in that secret wordless way a woman always knows about a man. So if his passion for Fräulein could be defiled, the wife would wait. Circling like a bird of prey over the wasteland, waiting for the shreds of him when all was done.

Fräulein rose abruptly from the cradle of his arm.

“What's the matter?” he asked.

Suddenly the man seemed so callous and transparent. What did really matter? What mere foul-mouthed letter could hurt them? What on God's earth could Mother do to her now that she had not already spent a lifetime doing?

"I'm not a twiddler in the dayroom,” Fräulein said out loud. "I'm a person living in my own apartment. Soon I'll go to
school
. And if I still want to be crazy I can do it alone. In private. For my own relief. But not out there for everyone to watch!” She waved her hand to the drawn curtains and the vast world beyond. “When I was a safe little egg, I didn't exist. When I fed my babies to Herr Wolfpants, I was half alive, trying to create the other half. But now I exist. So alive that turd-mouthed people scrawl about me in women's toilet stalls. So important some maggot-eating ghoul writes my mother, telling her how bad I am. Telling her I'm your mistress. Well, nobody asked me — and I'm not your mistress. I'm my own mistress.

“My own!” she shouted.

Herr Doktor sat bolt upright. How did she know?

“Did you think Mother would write just you?” Scorn and pity in her eyes … He fell back against the cushions, breathing with his mouth open like a trapped man. “Did you know Father left her?” Herr Doktor shook his head silently no.

“Now Mother says she's coming here to Zurich. She wants to see where I live.”

“Oh,” he said after a moment. She stared at him for a long time. He appeared blank and confused. Fräulein knew she was going to tell him the final truth of how she wanted things. Ask him to take the last step with her. In life. In death. Forever. Take her by the hand and go into the future as it was meant to be. The words surged out.

“Leave her,” Fräulein told him. “Leave Emma, And come to me, Because of what we've been. And what we are now. For what we're supposed to be. Man. Woman. You … and me.”

Her words were like the first crack in a wide beam supporting a roof. No sign of mounting stress or impending collapse under the massive weight, but the sudden searing break as the thick wood splintered across the grain.

Herr Doktor looked neither at the girl nor at any object in the room. She saw his reason unraveling inside: eyes that fled inward, los-ing touch with her, the moment, reality. Dead eyes. Slack mouth. His body drooping with no will — except the fingers of his left hand covering his groin as if it pained him. Fräulein had never seen a
sane
person that way before.

Then with great hesitation he staggered awkwardly across the carpet to his desk, free hand groping for support. He touched the desk, and its solidness seemed to guide him. He shuffled slowly around the edge, coming to a stop. And there he stood, wavering gently like a reed. Is that the way I looked? A broken doll? A dummy head stuffed with sawdust? No wheels moving inside. Just a face to the wall? A sickening, knowing weakness flooded her. Yes, just like that.

Why doesn't he just come to me?

Doesn't he know it's all right?

But Herr Doktor made no sign nor any sound. Yet she waited, as he had waited for her through the endless sick time … watching a slim knife of sunlight from a gap in the curtains inch its way across the carpet. And when, at the end of the hour, the man still hadn't stirred, Fräulein gathered herself together and left his office. Shutting the door sadly behind her. While Herr Doktor remained as before.

A face to the wall.

The maid knocked, heralding the arrival of the next patient. When Herr Doktor did not answer, the maid peeped cautiously inside. She saw the man slumped against the wall; his head sagged.

“I'm not here,” he mumbled. “Can't see anyone. Tell them to go away.”

The maid fled. She found Frau Emma. And it was Emma who made the apologies, turning the patient away with; “I'm terribly sorry, Herr Doktor is feeling poorly today…. Can you telephone us tomorrow?” The patient said he'd telephone tomorrow.

Emma went back to the office. She tried to comfort him with clumsy words. She petted him, she kissed his dangling hand. She tried to pry him gently from the wall. But he was made of wood. With a dull quaver, Emma noticed a dark article of clothing abandoned on the couch. One of Fräuleins black kid-leather gloves. She picked it up. The kid glove felt warm to the touch. She drew it slowly over her fingers and slipped her hand inside. How appropriate. A perfect fit.

When evening threw its long purple shadows into the office, Frau Emma still sat with her husband as the day wore away. Now he trembled with fatigue, as if at any moment he might fold. Gently Emma went to him once more. “Please, come. Come with me….” The words seemed to rouse a deep echo. Then an imperceptible shiver, like the final crumbling of some private foundation. After what seemed an age, his fingers twitched to life. Hesitantly he searched out hers. His hand was limp and clammy. At length he let himself be led off to the bedroom, docile and unresisting.

She undressed him. She said tender words to him, words he did not seem to hear. Dusk darkened into night. He lay in bed a sick man, his inward eyes staring out at nothing.

Whom did he love?

Which one with all his life?

The girl he saved from insanity?

Or his wife of years, the keeper of his bones?

They were players in a play he had written for himself. Players on a stage of good behavior, of life's rules, of work and sacrifice. And upon this barren stage he was frantically groping for an open portal, a way out, a trapdoor…. The sounds of the night preyed on him. The dripping of water down a gutter, the whirring of a motorcar on a distant road, the creak of wind against the windows. Next to him, the rhythm of Emma's breathing pounded like a hammer inside his skull. He wished he could take a pillow, press it to her face, and stop her maddening sighs. While across town he thought he heard the girl — her pen scratching across the blank paper of her art book, the sound like the screeching of a rusty weather vane. Setting his teeth on edge.

Which woman?

Which one forever?

He closed his eyes and slipped off into the ancient dream time…. But the girl's sacred place was no longer any refuge. Now a loathsome swamp of stench and dread. Bitter sun beat down upon the village fields. The crops had withered to brown, rattling stalks. Birds sat on the orchard's dying branches, pecking at the rotten fruit. A powerful thirst took Herr Doktor, overthrowing his whole mind. But the rushing stream had shrunk to muddy pockets,- bleached stones lay in the bed. Clouds of flies and mosquitoes hovered over the stink.

The body of a woman lay sprawled where she had knelt for her last drink in the fetid puddles. She was stripped naked to the waist. Her flesh hung loose, breasts sagging to wrinkled sacs. A green spotted toad had stuck to her tit, drinking the body's water through her skin. She was too weak even to detach it from its sucking. A swarm of gnats covered a swollen, bloated face. Fräulein smiled at him through blistered lips. “Come to me. For what we'll be. Man and woman. You and me.”

* * *

Herr Doktor awoke in bed. The morning light, airy and golden, slanted in at the window. Sparrows chirped in the trees outside. He quietly moved his eyes about the room. Then to Emma, sleeping peacefully beside him. Good, fine, deep-sleeping Emma. The covers had fallen back from her. He contemplated her long, strong body. Slowly he perceived the lines of Emma's figure had undergone a subtle change. The slimness of her belly gone,- and a heavy roundness had come to her breasts. Was it all in his mind? Or had he just noticed her change for the first time? Think back! Seven, eight, nine weeks ago … too early to show? A little early But still, what an undeniable firmness to her skin, a ripening luster. Ja, more than possible. With all the madness between himself and the girl, then going straight to Emma afterward. Never taking any precaution, just spreading her and going in … He gently caressed the first swelling. Emma wriggled pleasurably under his hand.

“Feel better?” she asked softly from the pillow.

‘Yes, better,” he said.

She patted his hand, pressing it to her belly. “I'm so tired,” she murmured. “So lazy … But I'll get up. Get up in a second. You stay in bed. I'll make breakfast.” She sighed into the pillow, dozing off once more.

Was he better?

A few weeks passed in the drowsy limbo of summer's close. Fräulein no longer came for her morning sessions. But this did not strike him as so unusual. She had begun the first semester at the university and had once mentioned something about a waitress job. Had she decided to leave him alone? Was she hoping he would come for her? He gave up the question. Surrendering the struggle for a choice. It seemed far simpler to let Emma speak for him right now. Think for him. Exist for him.

Just at this time another letter arrived from Herr Professor in Vienna. The president of Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, America, wanted both of them — elder man and younger man —- for a series of lectures in late September. Travel expenses would be forthcoming. Should they leave from Trieste, sailing through the Mediterranean? Herr Professor wondered. Or meet in Bremen, sail down the Weser and out the dreary North Sea? Prepare a lecture, young man! And prepare for a bit of fame, the letter warned. Bring your tuxedo. There will be newspapermen and photographs taken.

He prepared a lecture, taking some desultory notes from Fräuleins dusty and voluminous case file. He had to force himself through all the pages devoted to her. How lifeless they seemed to him now, how dull. He found it more exciting by far to jot down ideas from the troubles of a new patient, lately come to his office.

He had his tuxedo pressed.

Steamship tickets departing via the Mediterranean were not available on such short notice. So they booked passage on a ship from Bremen. A few members of the Wednesday Society planned a bon voyage party: lunch for seven at the Bremenstadt Musiker Hotel. In the waning months of summer, he concentrated on the fascinating troubles of his new patient.

As for Fräulein, she had not forgotten him, nor let slip one moment of their last hour together. She fretted, as if waiting for an obscure decision from a court of faceless judges. A decision that never came. Yet there were tides of hope — and then tides of despair. Yes, she thought, he was going to leave Emma. He was coming now. Walking from his house, the woman's sobs fading in the wake of his footsteps. He was taking the tram with a single suitcase, hat and coat slung over his arm. She saw so clearly how he crossed the courtyard. How he mounted the stairs, sweat dampening his shirtsleeves. She left her apartment door unlatched, so that when at last he knocked, the door would creak gently aside, inviting him in….

And then the sinking knowledge. Back from a day at the university or an evening at the café, where she took orders all night long — she ran home, pounding up the creaking stairs. In dread that the flat was empty.

She left the door open. But he never came.

In the end she broke down and went groveling to his house. And for the first time in her life she fully understood what it meant to grovel. Not just cower in terror but with a clear mind abase yourself before others. Humiliating yourself by begging for what you want to come true.

Emma let her inside but did not invite her upstairs or into the kitchen. Those times were over, as though they never happened. The woman was pregnant….

“You've come for your glove.”

“My glove?”

Emma handed over a black kid glove. Fräulein twisted the limp thing in her hand. Wasn't it strange how the word “glove” was made up mostly of the word “love”? For a few seconds Fräulein forgot entirely what she had come to say. Emma stared at her, plainly hoping she would leave. “Can I … Can I …” Fräulein put the love-glove on her hand, wriggling her fingers into place.

“Can I see him?”

“He's with a patient now.”

“Can I come back later?”

She felt the embarrassing urge to twiddle,- in fact, the hand dangling by her side began to twitch. God, how hopeless, with Emma barring the way. Fräulein almost told the woman all of it, blurting the truth. You don't want him. You can't please him. You only decided when you saw yourself losing him, getting pregnant just to keep him! But if Fräulein burst out with this, she really would descend into an attack of the twiddles. If only Emma's baby died, if only she could kill it before it grew … Somehow she managed to draw off her black glove and shove it in her purse.