The Clockwork Man (8 page)

Giselle, who as of this year has assumed the duties of hostess, aided us as well, both in planning the menu and preparing the dishes. Within an hour her arms were caked with white flour up to the elbows, with a thin coating on her face and apron. Late this afternoon the Master came in to ask after her progress; as he watched her work, he smiled, a hint of sadness in his eyes, then grasped her shoulders from behind and kissed the top of her head. “Do you know how much like your mother you are?” he asked.

“I don’t know how she did it,” Giselle said, fatigue creeping into her face. “It’s so much
work
. And she didn’t even have Eva to help.”

He laughed. “When we were first married, she would cover the whole kitchen with sugar and flour almost every time she cooked.”

“I miss her.”

“So do I,” the Master said, releasing her and brushing a bit of flour off her nose. “But I’m sure everything will be wonderful.”

After he left, Giselle looked at her reflection in a stew pot, blew some of the flour from her chin, and glared at Fräulein Gruenwald. “Why didn’t you warn me this took so much effort, Eva?”

Fräulein Gruenwald shrugged. “I thought you’d want to be surprised.”

Giselle smiled oddly, then drew a handful of flour from the bowl. “Thank you so much.” She threw it at Fräulein Gruenwald, dusting her face and hair.

When the day’s preparations were finally finished, Giselle withdrew to the attic observatory to recuperate, and bade me follow her up. Itwas a particularly clear night, and she wanted to get a good look at Jupiter, which at this time of year is relatively close to Earth. She has already composed the letter to the astronomical society, detailing her discovery of the comet, and so felt it was time to move on.

She fiddled with the telescope for some time, in turn adjusting the mirrors and eyepiece and peering into the night sky until she finally settled on a bright, unflickering point in the heavens. “There,” she said, smiling contentedly. “I think I’ve got it now. Come look.”

I placed my eye over the scope and looked at the dull brownish sphere with its red spot and faint splotches of light tan. “Very nice.” As I peered into the lens I noticed the magnification was more powerful than it had been before our travels began. “You’ve made more improvements.”

“I just changed the lenses. It gave me something to do while Father was away.” She sighed, ignoring the leather armchair in favor of slumping onto the floor. “Today was excruciating. I’ve never done so much work in my life.”

“Your father was very proud. And I’m sure the feast will be wonderful.”

Giselle laughed. “Eva says it’s good practice for when I get married. I’ll become the good little hostess and spend my days decorating the house and planning meals.” The tone in her voice was rather strange, a tired harshness, and in the dark her face seemed much older. “The idea seems so … boring. I want to go off and build things like Father, or discover something. Don’t you think I could do that?”

“Of course.”

“Father does, too. I think he’d like to send me to university. But Grandmother would have a fit.”

“She might understand.”

Giselle snickered in the moonlit attic. “You really have no idea, do you? About women, I mean. Father has left such gaps in your education, Ernst.”

I must confess to a slight irritation at that point—a subtle heaviness in my tin shell, a mild quickening of my winding mechanism. Giselle had never before been so critical of me, and I did not know how to respond. “I wish I could help. But as you say, I know very little of such matters.”

She looked up at me, and her expression grew gentler; she was once again the kind girl I had always known. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t take it out on you. You’ve already helped, just by listening.” She patted the floor next to her. “Come sit with me.”

With some difficulty—getting in and out of chairs is easy, but sitting on the floor is challenging—I lowered myself to the carpet and leaned against the wall by her side. “There.” She laughed. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“No,” I said. “But I may not be able to get up.”

She crawled over to me and rested her head on my chest, her hair spilling over my lap and onto the wood floor. “Don’t worry. I’ll help you.” Her eyes soon closed, and from her nose and mouth came a light, airy snore. The time drew near to wind myself again, but I was unable to reach the key without disturbing her, so I sat against the wall in the dark, listening to my ticking gradually slow and grow fainter, the dim light fading to nothingness. As my insides clicked their last, an image flashed briefly before my eyes, like nothing I had ever experienced: Giselle, in her robe and nightgown, spinning beforeme in the snow, her hair catching the morning sun like a fiery halo. At that I surrendered to the dark. Had it been my final moment, I would have met oblivion with perfect contentment.

I had no illusions about the propriety of the situation, which as the reader has no doubt deduced, was far too intimate for the boundaries of our relationship. But at that moment there was something else indefinable, a small, quiet thing beyond thought that told me this was the truest sensation I had ever known.

She rescued me, of course, some time later. My eyes again absorbed the dim light and saw her standing over me, felt her delicate arms helping me regain my feet. Silently, she lifted my hand to hers and pressed her lips to it with the softest touch, then tiptoed slowly downstairs and retired to her room.

The house has been full of life today. The Master’s family arrived late yesterday, and are all gathered here for the night, having greatly enjoyed Giselle’s enormous feast and heaped lavish praise upon their hostess. I, of course, was sent away, though the Master allowed me to choose between the workshop and the attic observatory. Giselle objected strongly, insisting I had every right to be there, but he commanded her to be silent. I was not troubled by my quiet exile; after all, I do not eat, and at last year’s festivities Giselle and Jakob’s cousin Kurt, then four, pelted me with bits of cabbage as I stood in the corner.

I have spent most of the day here in the attic, reading a volume from the Master’s library on the history of Florence. He has been innegotiations with that city’s municipal government to build one of his creations, and plans to travel there with the children and myself in March to find the ideal location for it. I very much wish to see its many artistic and cultural wonders in person, and the Master says the local inhabitants, who are accustomed to being in the presence of masterpieces, will appreciate me there.

Later, after the younger children were put to bed, Fräulein Gruenwald instructed me to watch over them and intercept them before they went downstairs and disturbed the adults, who would by then be drinking and playing cards. When together, the Master’s extended family tends to talk bawdily about neighbors and absent relatives, telling stories inappropriate for children, all the while Frau Gruber insisting they will suffer in hell for it. Tonight’s topic was the Master’s second cousin Dieter, who recently emigrated to London to become an actor and likely preferred the company of men.

I moved quietly (lest I cause a scene with Frau Gruber, who believed I was safely locked in the basement), answered several calls for water and warm milk, adjusted blankets, obtained several mugs of brandy-laced hot chocolate from Fräulein Gruenwald to help them sleep. The children—five in all, ranging in age from three to eight—jammed their fingers into the pockets of my jacket, flicked my monocle to the floor, and tugged at the ends of my mustache. It was all I could do to keep them from unraveling it completely.

Once the hot chocolate began to take effect, five-year-old Kurt, the Master’s youngest nephew, demanded I read him a bedtime story. I told him I had several memorized, and asked him to choose one.

“Pinocchio,” he said. (Though I might have wished it be another, considering certain rude and uninformed comments leveled at me in the past, I know the story well and was happy to oblige.)

So while his sister Deirdre, aged three years, curled up on the bed next to him, I began to recite the story as I had read it. They seemed more interested in listening to me speak than hearing the actual story, and several times interrupted me to ask how I talked when I had no lips, how I had memorized the whole story, whether I ever needed to make use of the water closet. I answered each question in turn and then continued. As I recounted Pinnochio’s transformation into a donkey and subsequent conscription into the circus, Giselle entered quietly behind me, sat on the bed and held Deirdre’s hand, smiling as I told the story.

Finally, when I was done, Kurt looked up at me thoughtfully. “Do you ever wish you were real?”

I looked at Giselle, covering Deirdre with the blankets. (The child had fallen fast asleep in the middle of the story.) “No. Though sometimes I should like to be able to taste hot chocolate.”

“Ernst
is
real,” she responded. “As real as you and me. Uncle Karl made him very well.”

“Oh,” Kurt said. “Will you stay until we’re asleep?”

“Of course we will,” I said.

“Will you leave the lamp on?” Kurt asked, throwing off his little slippers and climbing under the covers.

Giselle tucked him in tightly. “If I do that, you won’t be able to sleep. But Ernst can see in the dark. He won’t let anything happen to you.”

“All right,” he said, and laid his head upon the pillow. It took him one minute, twenty-two seconds to go to sleep.

Once they were both sound asleep Giselle and I left their room quietly. “You’re very good with children,” she said. “I wish you’dbeen around to read me to sleep when I was their age.”

I remarked that I would have done so gladly, and she smiled.

“I’m sorry Father sent you away. Grandmother actually believes you’re some sort of monster who’s going to harm me or Jakob.”

“Never.”

She laughed her light staccato laugh. “I know. And so does Jakob—that’s why he teases you so. I’d like to lock Grandmother in a small room with you so she can see just how gentle you are. Or die of a heart attack. Either would be fine.”

I did not know whether she was joking. “That would be cruel.” She shrugged. “You’re right, I suppose. I could never do that to you.”

“Thank you,” I said, in lieu of a better response.

She sighed, rolled her eyes in the dim hallway. “I have to go back downstairs. Grandmother will be asking after me any minute.”

“Of course.”

She drew her hand gently down my arm, then crept quietly downstairs, while I returned to the attic and continued reading in the dark.

As the family prepared to leave yesterday, I was called upon to help carry the bags out to their respective carriages. Frau Gruber, as usual, would not allow me to touch her luggage, and attempted to carry her heavy valise downstairs herself until the Master came to her aid. Though he tried to explain that my motor coordination hadimproved considerably since the last time I ported her bags—unfortunately, I had dropped them two years earlier and broken an expensive ceramic vase she had purchased in town—she would have none of it. “I don’t want it anywhere near me,” she told him as he followed her outside. I would very much have liked to speak with her awhile, in the hope that she might realize my good intentions, but she neither looked at nor spoke to me, and never came near Giselle’s observatory the entirety of her stay.

However, I seem to have earned the trust of little Kurt, who hugged me round the legs before he left, which drew many smiles from the Master’s family. He asked to hear “Rumplestiltskin” next time he visited, and I promised to commit it to memory by the time he arrived. (In point of fact, I have already done so—the unique brain the Master fashioned for me allows me to instantly memorize every word.)

Giselle kept primarily to her room after the feast, though her grandmother intruded several times, urging her to redo her hair in a more feminine style, perhaps in tight curls, and giving her advice on the proper use of makeup. Since Giselle’s mother was gone, Frau Gruber said, someone had to teach her these things, and her father was too busy with his clocks and mechanical monstrosities to bother. However, when her grandmother entered her room and began picking over her skirts and blouses, tossing away the more frayed and worn garments (her preferred attire round the house and in the Master’s workshop), Giselle stormed downstairs to the library to vent her frustration to me. Despite Frau Gruber’s obvious contempt for me, I believed she at least had Giselle’s best interests at heart, and I urged her to tolerate the situation.

“I can’t stand all her needling,” she said. “Now I know how you must feel all the time.”

I was inclined to agree.

By this afternoon, when the house was empty, things began to return to normal. The Master seemed as relieved as Giselle after Frau Gruber’s departure, and took to sipping brandy in the sitting room, staring quietly at the frost-covered hills in the midday sun.

I had not seen him this pensive in some time. When I entered to ask him if he required anything, he looked at me curiously, his head tilted to one side as if he were lost in thought.

“I’m sorry, Ernst,” he said. “Mother can be … difficult at times.”

“She did not offend me.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Of course not. You’re above that sort of thing. But you’re a part of my household, and she shouldn’t have acted that way toward you.”

I refilled his glass from the crystal decanter. “Frau Gruber is entitled to view me as she wishes. And the gathering was not disrupted.”

The Master grunted, presumably in agreement, and swirled the brandy in his glass. He stared into the pale amber liquid for some time, then looked up at me, lines creasing his brow. “Giselle told me how you took care of the children.” He enunciated slowly, as if pondering each word. “You’re much more than I expected.”

“I am flattered that you should think so.”

“I haven’t always treated you as well as you deserve, have I?”

“I have no complaints,” I reassured him.