Dark Metropolis (3 page)

G
ray clouds had moved in, spread across the sky like blankets above Thea’s four-story apartment building. Katrin Weis was sitting on the stoop, her arms laced around her bare knees above brown schoolgirl socks. She lived on the first floor, and Thea used to walk to school with her every day. But Thea didn’t see much of her anymore.

“Good afternoon, Thea,” Katrin said, the way she might greet an adult.

“Hi, Katrin. Are you waiting for someone?”

“Yes.” Katrin flushed. “I have a boyfriend. He comes by for lunch on Sundays sometimes.”

“Oh. Terrific,” Thea said without much enthusiasm. Katrin was fifteen, just a year younger, and yet a much wider gap existed between them, marked on the surface by stockings versus socks, and a purse versus schoolbooks—but by so much more than that underneath.

“How are you, Mrs. Holder?” Katrin asked Thea’s mother.

“I have a hole in my shoe.”

“She’s—she’s fine,” Thea said. She shrugged one shoulder toward the stairs. “We’d better start making our lunch.”

“Oh, of course! Don’t let me keep you.” Katrin’s eyes moved past Thea, looking ahead toward the boy she was expecting.

Thea felt a stab of pain, imagining herself waiting on the stoop for a boyfriend to come for lunch. But Katrin didn’t get to flirt with mysterious silver-haired boys or rub elbows with the rich and famous. And it wasn’t like Thea missed going to school.

She hurried up the stairs, stopping impatiently to wait for Mother, who kept looking at her shoe. Once safely locked inside, Thea sliced bread and cheese, spreading butter on one piece of bread and mustard on the other. Mother took more of the cake, too, and Thea was glad it wasn’t going to waste, at least.

After lunch, Thea wondered if she could slip out to buy groceries. Maybe even peek into a shop for a new style of hat like Nan’s—no, no. She’d better stick to the essentials—the butcher, the baker, and the produce stand. Mother had been acting too strangely today.

“Mother, I’m going out for groceries, all right? Stay here and don’t open the door for anyone.”

“Unless it’s Henry.”

“Well, sure, but he’ll probably have the key anyway. And don’t turn on the oven. Eat the rest of your cake if you get hungry.”

“Yes.”

When Thea returned, her arms laden with bags, the apartment door was hanging wide open.

Her heart rose into her throat. She dropped the groceries just over the threshold and ran in. “Mother?”

She wasn’t in the hall toilet they shared with Miss Mueller—Thea would have noticed when she came in. Obviously, she wasn’t in the kitchen. And she wasn’t in her bedroom, though the wooden chest that held Mother’s most precious possessions had been opened and rummaged through. Thea couldn’t tell whether anything was gone.

Oh god. What to do, what to do? She couldn’t alert the neighbors. She couldn’t tell the police. They would take Mother away. Thea had to find her.

Now she was noticing that all the food from lunch was gone—the rest of the cake, the bread, the cheese. So Mother was probably trying to take food to Father. These moments were the worst, when Mother became confused and thought Father was working at the train station and she needed to take food to him. Thea prayed Mother hadn’t gone farther. Once Thea had caught her trying to go down to the subway stop at the end of the street. The stop had been closed off years ago, and Thea had to tell a passing policeman that her mother was just visiting from the country. She always worried about seeing that policeman again.

She had to find Mother among all the Sunday travelers waiting in lines and consulting schedules and standing around with their bags. Mother would be wearing her shabby old coat—she still had the same one from before the war—with a red print scarf over her head. Thea could imagine her so keenly it seemed wrong that she didn’t spot her anywhere, even when she stood on a bench to get a better look. She tried calling for Mother, but her voice disappeared among all the other voices echoing in the soaring room. Finally, she was forced to snag one of the porters.

“Excuse me, have you seen my mother?” Thea’s voice was shaking, but she managed to keep the tone light. “I seem to have misplaced her. She’s a few inches shorter than I am, wearing a red kerchief, carrying a bundle?”

The young man’s brow furrowed as she spoke. “I might have. I did see a woman like that. But it’s been some thirty minutes, maybe. Did you lose her just now? I could tell the guards to look—”

“Thank you!” Thea said quickly, disappearing through a crowd.

Thirty minutes!

Maybe Mother had come to her senses and gone home.

When Thea rounded the corner and her apartment came into view, so did a cluster of neighbors—Mrs. Weis with her youngest on her hip, old Miss Mueller in a faded housedress, one of the bachelor twin brothers—Fritz or Franz? And there was a sturdy, imposing police car parked on the street.

“There she is!” shouted Miss Mueller.

Thea’s heart sped. “What’s the matter?”

“A policeman just brought your mother home, dear,” Mrs. Weis said. “He’s still upstairs with her, and I think…she’s—”

“No!” Thea said, as if she could stop it.

“She’s gathering her things,” Mrs. Weis finished. “I knew
your mother took your father’s death hard, but I never knew she
was bound-sick. Why didn’t you say something?”

Thea swallowed hard. Why didn’t she
say
something? As if she hadn’t told a thousand lies just to keep it secret. She hadn’t even wanted Father Gruneman to know, and at least she trusted him not to report her mother to the authorities. It was so easy for Mrs. Weis to say this now, when a policeman was already here. She’d heard people whisper about bound-sickness, shake their heads over it—at church, at the Telephone Club, even waiting in line at the butcher.
I don’t know why the rustics ever clung to those horrible rituals. Magic going wrong even after someone dies? So tragic.

“They could help her, you know,” Fritz-or-Franz said in his haughty accent. He’d been rich once but had lost his money right after the war, like a lot of people who
’d
had extra in the bank. “They have clinics, the government. You don’t have to pay a thing.”

She worried every day about Mother being taken to one of those clinics. “She—she doesn’t want—” No. Why bother explaining to him? If Father Gruneman was right about the officials taking Mother’s memories, she couldn’t even speak of such a violation. She broke off and ran up the stairs.

The door to the apartment was open, and a policeman was waiting there, offensive in his mere presence, like a gun in a nursery. He stood with arms crossed, his eyes probing and touching Thea’s life—the mess in her kitchen, the pile of letters from Mother’s friends, and the photographs of Father on the ledge—but they cut to Thea herself as soon as she entered.

“Are you Thea Holder?” the policeman asked.

She nodded.

“I found your mother wandering by the river. Is it true, Miss Holder, that your mother and her husband, Henry Holder, were bound?”

Thea nodded again.
Don’t make a scene. He won’t care, and all the neighbors are downstairs….

“I’m sure you are aware that such magic is against the law,” the policeman continued. “Moreover, we have cures nowadays. It isn’t really fair to your mother, to lose her mind over a spell.”

Thea was still nodding. No use saying Mother didn’t want to go. No use begging or pleading. Thea steeled herself. They would take her memories away, and maybe—god, maybe it might even be for the best for Mother to be free of those memories. What kind of life did she have now?

Mother walked out of her bedroom just then, dragging along her traveling bag. Her eyes were angry and lucid. In rare moments, the real Mother was there. “He’s alive,” she said. “I’m sick because he’s alive and I can’t find him.”

“Mrs. Holder, I know you think he is alive. It’s only because the crude spell placed upon you at marriage has corrupted. He is deceased, I assure you, and I’d imagine your daughter has suffered because of your madness. I will take you to the doctor, and everything shall be made right.”

“He
is
alive. You and your doctors can go to hell!”

“Shh! Shh!” Thea flew to Mother, pulling her back as she took a step closer to the policeman. “Mother, please. She doesn’t mean it, sir.”

The policeman’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Oh, I know she doesn’t mean it.” He was going to get what he wanted. It wasn’t like Thea or her mother could do a damn thing about it.

“Mother, just think, when the spell is broken, it will be like old times with us,” Thea said, trying to smile, although she knew it would never be like old times again.

Mother straightened. “Before I go, let us have a moment to say good-bye.”

“A moment.” The door shut behind the policeman. Thea didn’t hear the footsteps creak any farther, and she would have bet money he was listening at the door.

“I know he is alive!” Mother said, too loudly.

“Well, where is he, then? What can I do about it?”

“Nothing.” Mother took Thea’s hand and squeezed it. “Just know it. Remember it.”

If only Mother were right. Thea used to believe her, but as the years passed, the hope fell away. She thought again of her vision at the Telephone Club: Father waking up in his military uniform. It was scary just to think of it, to allow any hope back in. She took a deep breath. “I will.”

Mother pulled her into an embrace, and Thea soaked up the feel of her, as if this might be the last time.

The tears were coming now. No. No. She battled them off.
My good little soldier,
she could almost hear her father say. She could almost see him, too, when she held Mother so close. Mother was full of confusion and panic, but also memories—and when
Thea let her go, the memories would go with her.

She drew away from the feel of Mother’s coat on her cheek, the smell of her perfume and soap, and opened the door.

“How long will it take to remove the spell?” she asked the policeman.

“It can take a year, I’ve heard, if it is a bad case.” He was already heading down the stairs, glancing back sharply every time Thea’s mother lagged.

“A year? Where will she be? Can I visit her?”

“She will be at the city asylum for magical disorders. I believe visits are frowned upon. They can disrupt the treatment. I’m sure she will be well cared for.” He marched to his car and opened the back door. Thea’s mother looked tenderly at Thea one last time. Then she climbed inside. The door slammed shut, and the car drove away.

The neighbors were all gathered around watching. Thea didn’t speak to any of them; she just bolted for the stairs.

All the forced smiles and lies to Mother’s friends, all the nights she’d rushed home to keep Mother from wandering off or hurting herself…and now Mother was going to the asylum anyway.

Thea climbed into Mother’s bed and cried. She wished, more fiercely than she had in years, for her father to walk through the door. Occasionally, a creeping tendril of relief would reach her:
I’m free. I can go out with Nan after work. Go to the pictures. See boys if I want.

But how horrid to be glad, even for a moment, that her mother was gone, just so she had time to try on new hats.

Mother’s words haunted her.
I know he is alive!
Suppose she was right all along. Suppose Father had lived through the battle, and the vision was a sign? If there was any chance at all, she had to find out. She owed it to Mother, who was now trapped behind the asylum walls, losing her precious memories.

T
hea knew going to work could only help her feel better. Distract her. But it was still hard to drag herself into the world on Monday.

As usual, the floor of the streetcar was scattered with pamphlets. They were underground publications, often written badly and peppered with capital letters and exclamation marks, warnings of doom and gloom.
MAGIC MAY BE FORBIDDEN, BUT IT IS NOT
WRONG
! THE GOVERNMENT IS FEEDING YOU LIES! MAGIC IS THE TOOL OF THE PEOPLE
.

An old woman settling onto the car kicked several of the pamphlets under her chair with a look of disgust. She glanced at Thea with disapproval, as if merely being a young person made her complicit, and Thea shook her head. The last thing she wanted was a revolution, when everyone finally had food and coal, and even hats and chocolates and hair curlers and everything else. Had people forgotten standing in breadlines so quickly?

“Good, you’re here,” Elsa said as Thea walked into the club a few minutes late. “Nan’s late, too.”

Thea’s face fell. She needed a friend right now. “I’m sure she’ll be here soon,” she said, reassuring herself as much as Elsa. “She’s never missed a day.”

“I hope she’s not sick.”

“Nan is never sick.” Nan seemed like the type who could repel germs by force of will. But other things could happen. Thea had seen less of Nan in the past couple of months, and Nan talked of politics when she used to not care. People disappeared sometimes, Thea heard, if they read the wrong papers and spent time with the wrong people in the wrong places. But it wasn’t like Nan was a revolutionary just because she was more informed than Thea.

All this worry, and probably Nan’s streetcar was just late. She’d be here soon, and they could go to Café Tops for coffee after work and have a good, long chat.

Mr. Kortig had Thea handling the private rooms tonight, the only tables without any view of the show. They were as exclusive as the balconies, being few in number, and the best tips often came from these privacy-seeking groups. Right now it hardly seemed to matter. She just had to get through the night. Would she see Freddy and Gerik again? she wondered.

When the first performance ended, she began to lose hope on that account. Last time they had come early. Anyway, it was Monday. They might appear next Saturday. She had a table of military officers who lingered awhile and got quite drunk, and a large, jolly group. They were, at least, very polite and left plenty behind for her. Thea would be glad of the money later, she knew, but money couldn’t buy her mother back.

And there was no sign of Nan. Thea kept looking for her, asking if she’d turned up, but no one had seen her. What if she
was
sick? Thea thought of a classmate who had died from influenza when she was a girl; one day she wasn’t at school, and a week later they were burying her. She ought to check on Nan, really, except she didn’t know where she lived. Thea had never been able to pay a visit, on account of the need to get home to her mother.

Her night was half over, the second performance of the revue in its opening number, when she approached an older couple in the smallest of the private rooms. “Welcome,” Thea said. “How are you this evening?” Then she almost did a double take; the man looked so much like Father Gruneman in the soft light.

No—it
was
Father Gruneman, she realized, as he gave her the briefest shake of his head, a gesture that said,
Here you don’t know me.

“Hello,” the woman said. “Nan isn’t here tonight, dear girl?” She was looking down, searching inside her purse and then snapping open a cigarette case.

“Not tonight,” Thea said.

“Well, can you get me a gin cocktail?” She was wearing clusters of carved ivory bangles at her wrists, diamonds at her ears, and a fur stole around her graceful neck. Such an elegant woman didn’t look like she belonged at a table with humble Father Gruneman.

But then, the Father Gruneman she knew would not be at the Telephone Club, wearing a plain dark suit instead of church robes. “What about you, sir?” Thea asked him.

“Just a glass of port.” He handed the menus to her before she could even gather them, his expression almost apologetic. It was a clear signal that she should leave them alone, so she did.

She felt as if the world had turned on its head, and she was the only one who noticed. Mother gone, Nan absent from work, and now Father Gruneman at the Telephone Club with some rich woman?

She brought the group in the next room the fresh fruits and cheeses they’d ordered, and then got the drinks. Onstage, the moon was singing her big star-crossed number about how she could never be with the sun, spreading her arms so that her spangled cape glinted in every direction. The Moonling chorus in white sang softly behind her on the stairs. Thea paused outside the curtain. Mr. Kortig would have her head if she were caught trying to eavesdrop on customers, but she had to know what Father Gruneman and the woman were talking about.

“She knew he was alive,” the priest was saying. “That’s why they took her away.”

Was he speaking of Thea’s mother?

“I think it’s gotten too big for them,” the woman said. “They’re stretched thin, trying to keep up with all the loose threads. It’s time to kill the witch. Cut them all in one blow.”

“But we can’t be hasty. We’ve already lost too many people by being hasty. If we act without enough intel and none of the workers can escape, they might cover up the entire operation.”

“It’s better than just sitting around talking while they take more people every day!”

“Don’t you want to see your daughter again?” Father Gruneman said, more gently.

“You know I do,” she snapped. “Don’t say such a thing. But I need you on my side. Like you used to be.”

The response was too soft to hear over the music. Thea’s ears were already straining to piece the words together, and she didn’t dare stay there any longer. She lifted the heavy curtain aside. Father Gruneman sat back.

“You know it’s gone too far for mercy,” the woman said.

Father Gruneman looked uncomfortable. Thea suspected she was part of the reason for that. “Nothing is ever too far gone for mercy,” he said.

She put the drinks down and smiled at them, trying to act casual and happy, as if she hadn’t heard a word and didn’t find Father Gruneman’s presence at the Telephone Club unusual in the least. “Did you need anything else? A bite to eat?”

“No, dear,” the woman said.

“I’ll come back in a bit to see how you’re doing, then.”

“Actually, would you bring us the check now?” Father Gruneman said.

“Why do we meet at all if you’re going to be so eager to get rid of me?” the woman said.

He didn’t answer her, just nodded to Thea. As the curtain closed behind her, she heard him say something about his congregation and guessed it might be about not wanting to speak freely around her.

“Fine, we’ll speak at the Rouge,” the woman said, sounding cross.

The Rouge. Thea had heard some of the revolutionaries talk about meeting at the Café Rouge.

Was Father Gruneman a revolutionary? She’d gotten the impression, from her childhood memories, that his life outside of church was nothing but cups of tea, books, and a dog sleeping at his feet.

Then again, his sermons did touch on rebellion and freedom so often, especially before the censorship rules. And he’d been visibly angry the Sunday after the church raids, when the government officials took all the hymnbooks away and replaced them with the “approved” ones. Anyone would be upset about that, of course—all those familiar, lovely old songs, and yet…

If he did know something about her father and didn’t want to tell her, that could explain it. Her father could have been involved with the revolution.

Of all the nights for Nan not to be here! If anyone would know what to make of it all, Nan would.

How could Thea not know where her best friend lived?

At least she could visit Nan now, once she came back to work. Now that Mother—

Mother was gone. The thought of going home to an empty apartment crashed back into her mind.

Nan will be back tomorrow,
she told herself, and plunged into work, trying not to let herself think.