Unspeakable Things (6 page)

He bent once again to Maria. “You see, bad girl, how you upset your mother!” he shouted into her ear. “You are a bad girl! And now Mutti is crying. Bad girl!”

“Calm yourself, Ilse,” he whispered again to Maria’s mother. He motioned to the couch outside his office door. “We must have self-control. Sit here with Schatzie. I take the child now.” Maria’s mother sank onto the sofa, exhaustion rimming her eyes.

Maria cast behind her a look of despair as Felix took her by the hand and led her into the office. Was she again to be alone with him? A terror seized her heart. “Mama!” she tried to whisper, but no words came out. Looking at her mother on the sofa, Maria realized that there was no help to be had there. Docilely, she allowed herself to be led. Felix closed the big oak door.

“Now,” he said, “you bad girl! First we look at your ears, hmm! And then we shall look at Mutter. And then, if you are good, I give you a candy.”

Maria looked at the photographs of the children that covered the walls from floor to ceiling. “Would you like to be in a photograph?” asked Felix. “Perhaps today we take a photograph. But only if you are good.
Ja?
”

Felix suddenly fell to the ground in front of Maria, doubled into a fetal position. “Ow ow ow!” he yowled. “You see, bad girl, how you hurt Uncle Felix! My leg!”

Felix grimaced as he thrashed on the floor. Maria stood there, gravely watching him. She swayed with dizziness. “What have you done?” cried Felix. “You broke my leg!” Seeing that Maria did not respond, Felix sprang again as briskly to his feet.

“Come,” he said, “now we fix Uncle Felix’s leg.” Hobbling, he led the child to the examining table and lifted her on. “Bad girl, undress for Felix,” he demanded, pressing his bushy brows against her face. Maria was hot with fever, but she felt his still-hotter breath against her. She forgot entirely that her head hurt. Her head, her ears, both seemed bands of ice. Felix took off her clothes and surveyed her small, undernourished body. Maria felt the draft across her chest, but, alternately, warm air rose from the radiator in Felix’s room.

“Now,” breathed Felix. Once again, he raised the stethoscope to his ears and fastened its huge unwinking eye to Maria’s chest. He listened, concentrating, and Maria forced herself to leave her body and float up to the molded ceiling, where, she noticed, a huge stain like a map had emblazoned itself.

“Breathe,” commanded Felix sharply. Maria surveyed the happy children, all in white, like angels, who regarded her from Felix’s wall. “To my dear Uncle Felix,” she read in large graceful writing across the bottom corners. The other children looked out at her seriously, as if to give her courage. Maria listened for sounds of her mother outside, but the room was entirely silent.

Affixing a large beak to his head, Felix thrust this beak into Maria’s ears. She heard only the sound of his heavy breathing, and the sharp, cold metal hurt. Felix said nothing. After a while he withdrew the cold beak. “Say ‘Ahh,’ ” he commanded, thrusting a tongue depressor into her mouth. Maria gagged. “Bad girl. Say ‘Ahh,’ ” said Felix again. She smelled his shaving lotion.

“ ‘Aaah,’ ” she managed, terrified.

Felix held her wrist and seemed to count to himself. “Lie down,” he commanded. Maria lay down, her small, thin body shivering. She felt ashamed of her illness, ashamed of giving so much trouble. Felix said nothing. He pressed his large bushy head to her chest. He listened. Maria listened, too, but for what, she did not know. She smelled his oily hair. His hair tickled her. Once again, she left her body, floated on the ceiling near the water stain, the map. Felix held his breath.

“Now,” he said, almost to himself. “What have you done, bad girl?” He took Maria’s limp little hand and placed it near his own leg. “You see what you have done?” Maria felt a lump, a huge swelling on the front of Uncle Felix. “You see how it hurts?” he hissed. Maria felt such pity for him. Rocking back and forth, Felix pressed Maria’s hand against his lump. “Be still.” With his other hand, he held her so she couldn’t move, fixing her with a stare. She tried not to look at him.

Maria pictured her mother sitting in a shaft of white light outside the examining room, the dachshund at her feet. Maria hated her mother. She knew there would never be help for her there. She broke out into a sweat. Suddenly, tenderly, Felix was next to her. He held her hand, stroking her forehead. Maria felt obscurely grateful to him.

Felix moved away, and then as quickly he came toward her again, holding something fine between his fingers. Pinching her flesh, he injected something into her, withdrew the needle, and wiped her skin.

“Get dressed,” he said. “Mutti is waiting.” He adjusted her clothes, tenderness in his hands as he buttoned her sweater.

He led Maria, who was in a sort of swoon, out of the office. As he opened the door, Maria’s mother stood up. “The child will be fine,” said Felix. “She will be good. Won’t you?” he said sharply, addressing the almost fainting girl. Wordlessly, Maria nodded.

“The child needs vitamins. You bring her to me each week. After that, we shall see.”

Maria shrank back onto the sofa. “I give her the injections, you know,” said Felix, standing above both mother and child. “It could be quite serious, this difficulty with the ears. We must take care.” Maria’s mother nodded, holding her daughter’s hand. “We do not want to operate,” Felix said more softly, as a warning.

“Is that not so?” he suddenly cried, stooping down once more to Maria’s level. He pinched her cheek. “Abracadabra,” he recited, beetling his brows at her. Deftly, he plucked a sugar cube out of thin air and tossed it to Schatzie, who snapped it up immediately with a satisfied smacking sound. “Ah, what have we here?” cried Felix now, And he held one immaculately cuffed wrist near Maria’s ear. Suddenly, there was a lollipop. “Bad girl, you hide this from Uncle Felix!” he exclaimed. Maria’s mother smiled, the first smile since they had entered.

“Now,” said Felix to Maria, “I want you to sit here with Schatzie and rest while I talk to your mama. Don’t move,” he warned her, fixing her with what Maria knew was a special glance.

“Just wait, my darling,” said Maria’s mother gently. “I won’t be long.” As she got up to follow Uncle Felix, she was already unbuttoning her coat.

“Come, my dearest little girl,” said Felix, extending his hand to her. “You shall see, all will be well. You must not worry about the money when I am here to help. And the child will be all right, you shall see.”

“Wait for me, darling,” Ilse said. “Just sit there. There’s a good girl. I must have a little talk alone with Uncle Felix now.” Maria leaned her head against the back of the couch, and with one hand she began to stroke the sags and folds in Schatzie’s neck. She held the lollipop in her other hand. Maria decided never to talk to her mother again.

Before Felix could close the heavy door between the waiting alcove and his examining table, Maria caught one more glimpse of the cold white table upon which she had lain, and the big yellowed screen that guarded the far corner of the room. She could no longer see her mother. But she saw her mother’s scarf, and then the good black wool coat as it was flung over the upper part of the screen. Maria closed her eyes. Felix shut the door with a heavy, muffled sound.

Maria wondered if her mother and Uncle Felix were talking about her in there. If so, what were they saying? Was she going to die? Terror gripped her heart. She felt sick and light-headed. Perhaps she was already dead. She looked around her, still feeling the dog’s warm, jowly skin, and then she saw the many faces of children. They all seemed to love Uncle Felix so. Maria knew she hated him. Perhaps she had died and gone to heaven with the other children. Maria thought that heaven was a place of love and forgiveness. Had these children forgiven Uncle Felix? Maria knew, from her dispassionate, detached position now, that these children, all of them, were also dead. Otherwise, how could they express such love and gratitude? Maria watched herself be dead. Her hands and feet felt cold, but she did not move. She sat there, waiting, waiting, until the big oak door opened once again. Her mother emerged, laughing, talking to Felix as she adjusted her coat and scarf.

“Ah, dear lady, it is I who am grateful,” said Felix as he ushered her out. He put something into her hand. Maria’s mother put her hand quickly into the coat pocket. Maria’s mother took the little, cold, dead hand of the dead Maria and the dead child floated whitely out of the office. Before too long, they were on the street, and the cold air burned against Maria’s face. She was dead; she did not want to feel the air. She did not want to smell the cold, sooty, greasy smell of it as it entered her nostrils. Dead people were cold, Maria knew, and so it was all right to be cold. But not to smell things.

Felix shut the heavy decorated door after they had left. He was ready once again to make his notes. His next little patient would be coming soon, after Felix had his nice lunch of thick bread and butter and sausage, and after Schatzie had her bowl of dog food.

“Come, my darling,” said Maria’s mother, walking more quickly, happily. There was a spring in her step, a careless hopefulness. “Now we go home. And I make you a nice lunch. Philip will be waiting for us,” she went on cheerfully, babbling into the unlistening ears of Maria, who tried to shut out her mother’s hateful voice. “Won’t that be lovely, a little soup? And then I must go to work. But soon you will be in your nice bed with your nice books. And you will feel much better.”

Maria’s body burned, but she shut herself off from herself and floated up into the sooty sky. There, assembled with all the little children in white dresses, she looked down at her mother with pity, as if from a great height. From now on, she would be dead. But she would still sit in judgment on her mother and others. And when God came on Judgment Day to ask her opinion, she would tell God what had really happened. In her mind, however, God and the SS were confused. Maria knew she must never tell anything—ever—to anyone. Or else they would all—her whole family, including even little Philip—be put into the camps. And then they would die in the ovens and become smoke. Black smoke, streaming out of chimneys. She thought of little Philip burning, his small body twisting, shrieking. She could never bear that, not even if she herself were tortured. Maria knew that life was a test, a test of courage and silence. She had always understood that, although her parents had tried to shelter her, perhaps, from this understanding. But she knew something from the whispers around her, the mutterings of the walls, the imprecations of the elevator girl, and the absences of her father. She knew from the furtive fear of her mother, from the huddled penury of their lives, and from the sense of being always in hiding, even here in New York.

Maria thought only her grandfather could match—in fact, surpass—her in cunning secrecy. She was brave; she would save her family one day by her silence. They were all in her power, Maria knew, her power and God’s. For if she said only one word of what she knew, the Nazis—or God—would find them all instantly, smoke them out like a helpless nest of mice.

No, Maria would never tell anyone anything, not even God, whatever happened to her. Not even her father. Where was he? It was a secret. Maria resolved to be dead at least until her father came back. Then she would hold his hand ever so tightly. But still, she would never tell. She would practice being dead as long as she could.

F
everish, Maria tried to adapt her body to fit around that of the Rat’s in her cot. Anna took up so little room that after the first night, Maria did not notice the lack of space; she fitted her small bones around the curved ones of the Rat. Maria was to find comfort in the frilled nightgown of the Rat, the sweet, faint smell of the Rat’s cologne, and, of course, the Rat’s low, thrilling voice. No longer did Maria have terrible dreams; no longer did she feel herself alone. Terror abated when the Rat came into her bed. They lay together through the long nights, when, with no heat and no dawn in sight, the Rat warmed them both with her stories. The Rat talked throughout Maria’s childhood. She talked while the others slept, while the thin snores rose in the silence of the room. Anna whispered to Maria in bed, her words inevitable and continuous as the flakes of first snow, falling upon the Rat’s adopted Russia.

“I was only sixteen, just a little older than you are now,” the Rat began, fondly stroking Maria’s hair back from her forehead. “But I was already married. My father had sold me, or perhaps I should say he had bought me a husband. A fine husband, handsome, well connected. But a poor husband. Oh, I did not know it at the time. But he was poor. And weak, too.” The Rat paused, her voice trailing off into the shadows.

“And I went away with him—oh, I did not want to go. But I went nevertheless.

“They sent me away, to Russia. To Saint Petersburg, where I lived with my husband. And his mother. And, of course, the whole household. And I had to learn their ways.”

From the first, the Count did not touch the Rat. He liked her dowry. Anna was a meal ticket for this impoverished branch of the noble family. But he found women ugly, and the marriage had been only an agreed-upon front for his other, darker desires. Her intelligence repelled him further. He did not care about her deformity, since he never intended to have anything to do with her other than to mollify his mother. “We had no wedding night,” the Rat told Maria. Night after night, Anna lay alone in her room while the Count amused himself elsewhere. Anna accepted this, and did not expect otherwise. “Perhaps he had a mistress. Perhaps he was at cards….”

Maria knew better than to interrupt. She lay beside the Rat, staring into the dark. “He went to the theater; sometimes I went with him.” Anna was silent then at the memory of it. “He was repelled by me. And so,” she continued, “I lived with his family. It was wild and savage; I enjoyed it. And then finally I had the children. His mother had spoken to him, you see.”

“You must try to do something with the girl,” his mother had protested as the debts mounted. “We want the family name to continue.”

The Count went out and got drunk, came home, and mounted the Rat from behind. A few gestures, a stifled cry, a booted leg hastily thrown over her hyphenated body. Two or three plunges in the dark; there, it was finished. This much he would do for his mother. And when it was finished, tears—his. “Forgive me, my little Anna,” the Count sobbed. “Can you forgive me?” But it was his fellow officers from whom he was asking forgiveness. One in particular—his immediate subordinate, who had instructed him how to do it in the first place. He bit his lip. He would do this for three nights, approaching her in the dark, thinking of Vanek, and then, when he had thought enough, mounting her in a violent fury until he had spent his seed. Anna knew enough to cooperate, never to cry out, never to feel anything. To respond in any way would have seemed to her the ultimate treachery. Each time, when it was over, her husband collapsed and sobbed on her hunchbacked body in disgust. He pulled out of her without a word and left immediately, going to the barracks at once to drink himself further into a stupor. Was this how men behaved with their wives? Anna was disgusted, but she stroked his hair as he bent and kissed her hand before going. “Of course. Yes. Shh. Go; don’t worry.”

This happened exactly three times. Three children. Anna, embarrassed by her pain, stifled her cries. It was humiliating, the whole procedure. But the children were beautiful, each one emerging from her torn body. She clutched them to her, precious things. After that, she didn’t mind that her husband was never there. She watched with pride as her three children grew.

“And then, one day, my husband was sent to the front.” Like other younger wastrel sons, the Count had a career—or rather, that which passed for a career—in the military. He was an officer for the Tsar, and his manners were brutish enough to command any number of wretches having the misfortune to serve under him.

“I was not sorry to see him go,” the Rat told Maria. “We had the usual farewell scene. But we both knew it was a farce.” Upon saying good-bye to his three children, all under the age of five, the Count allowed his real emotions to show for a moment. His mustache quivered. When he embraced his old mother, he burst into tears. He had done all she had asked of him. Anna observed all this, dry-eyed.

“Life at home went on as usual. Mama was aging, becoming more impossible. I tried to please her. I couldn’t. The children grew, did the usual things. I was happy, peaceful. We didn’t hear from him for a long time, this husband of mine. After a while, I began to forget him. I was happy, alone with the children, and I realized I was never made for marriage after all.”

After a year, still no word came back from the Count. But one day, Anna opened the door to a man whom she recognized as one of the Count’s servants. He handed her an envelope with the Count’s seal upon it. “The bearer of this message can be trusted. I rely upon your generosity,” she read. “Your husband is in danger. He must have money immediately,” the servant told her.

The Rat stepped back. “Money?”

“He has lost everything,” the servant replied.

“My dear little wife,” the Count had written. “All is lost. By the time you read this, your unhappy husband will be…”

Anna scanned what appeared to be a deathbed farewell. The Count had thrown away everything in gambling. Anna’s money, their house and lands, even the house in the country had been lost in the endless gaming to which at last the addicted Count confessed. “It is a debt to the Tsar,” he wrote. “If I don’t pay it, I shall be shot. I beg of you, my dear Anna, to send me money immediately. I promise you I shall never gamble again.”

“And so,” continued the Rat, stroking Maria’s hair absently, “I sold everything I had. My furs and jewels, everything. But it was not enough.”

A month later, the Tsar’s bailiffs came to the door. “Give me a week,” Anna pleaded. “I shall go to the Tsar himself and throw myself at his feet. I shall beg for mercy.”

The next day, while the children were asleep and the Count’s mother was still in bed, the Rat made her way by coach to the palace. Attendants led her upstairs and through a series of rooms and magnificent hallways. Enormous doors shut behind her and finally she was taken into a large study. At the window stood a hooded figure, pondering the sadness of Russia as he looked pensively outward. Anna stood before him and waited, her head bent.

The figure turned. “So, my dear Countess,” the man said. “You have come for mercy.”

The Rat shuddered. She had never seen eyes like that. Anna sank to her knees. “Holy Father,” she murmured.

The man came forward and lifted her to her feet. “Countess,” he said, “you come on your knees to me?” His voice had a sarcastic timbre that echoed through the cramped bones of her body. It spread out like ripples in the room. “You come on your knees? And you would like something from me?” The voice was insidious, hypnotizing. “Good,” he said. “Now, my child, look at me.” The command caused Anna to raise her head until her eyes met those of the apparition.

“And then I knew.” Anna shuddered, burrowing her head in Maria’s hair. “I was in the presence not of the Tsar, but of Rasputin.”

The Monk reached out one finger and touched the Rat’s cheek. “Tell me, my child,” he commanded. “What is it you want?”

“Save us, Holiness.” The Rat burst into tears. “Save us.”

The gaunt figure listened, immobile. He looked into the eyes of the Rat. “My dear lady, I already know everything,” he replied slowly in his thrilling voice. “Trouble yourself no longer. I will pay your husband’s gambling debts. All of them. You and your children do not have to cry any longer.”

The Rat gasped.

“But I shall ask of you only one little thing in return.”

“And what was that?” Maria asked urgently.

The Rat did not answer. And when finally she did, it was in a low, reluctant voice.

“I ask of you only this, dear madame,” Rasputin said. “That for the next two weeks, you shall be my companion.”

Rasputin looked into Anna’s eyes with a piercing yellow glare. The Rat felt herself go weak. “If not…” The Monk did not need to say more.

“And did you do it?” Maria asked.

The Rat was silent for a long time. A shiver crossed her little body.

“Yes,” she finally said. “I agreed. And so I went every day to Rasputin’s apartments. And there, I did with him…” She paused. “Unspeakable things.”

In the darkness, both she and Maria were silent. Maria stared into the room, wondering what “unspeakable things” could cover. She thrilled to the dark inclination of the phrase. “Unspeakable things.” The words repeated themselves.

From behind the blanket that separated the room, Maria’s grandfather’s snores rose like wisps of smoke into the thin air. The room was starting to take on the outlines of early morning. Maria’s mother slept as if flung down onto the couch. Only Maria and the Rat lay awake in the half-light. And finally the Rat, too, fell asleep, with small, slack, shallow breaths, as Maria lay half-awake, listening.

Ilse was to speak to her daughter later. The next morning, as Maria’s mother was combing her daughter’s hair, she pulled the child toward her and hugged her. In one corner of the room, the Rat sat hunched contemplatively over her cup of tea. Maria’s mother cast a quick look at the older woman. “Maria,” her mother said softly, “there are things we should be silent about.” She stroked her daughter’s long, shining hair, then deftly plaited it. “We must be silent, do you understand?” Her hands moved efficiently.

Maria could hardly wait to get home that afternoon to see if the Rat was still there. And indeed, there she was, bent over as when they had left her, but this time with a large book propped open and a lorgnette in front of her. Upon seeing the children, the Rat sighed, put down the lorgnette, and held out her arms to them.

Each night, Maria huddled around the Rat’s small body and waited for the next installment, spellbound. “My husband,” the Rat whispered into the dark, “you know, I never saw him again after that. He was sent to Manchuria. And so…”

And so? Maria’s heart was pounding with excitement. “And so.” The Rat turned over and went to sleep.

The next morning, before everyone else was awake, the Rat picked up the story of Rasputin. “And afterward, he, too, disappeared. That was terrible. But I was not sorry.” She was silent for a long time. “And of course the Holy Tsar and his family. It all happened so quickly.

“I stayed with my husband’s mother until she died. It was my duty.” After her death, the Rat yearned to return to Hungary. “To see my family and friends and your grandfather, who was then still living in Vienna. Yes, all this I wanted. But,” the Rat continued sadly, “I had my duty to my husband also. And so I waited and waited to hear news of him. But no news came.”

The Rat decided to try to find her husband. “I only knew that I must see him one more time to say good-bye.” Taking two servants with her to accompany her three children, she set out toward Manchuria. “I did not know if we would ever return, and so of course I took the children. We traveled all through Russia. Mother Russia.” The Rat whispered into the dark, staring outward at the memory. “But I never found my husband again.”

“And so, she never saw her husband again,” Maria’s mother was to tell Maria, many years later. “Nor her two sons. Except for one daughter, who went to England, all were lost.”

“What happened?” Maria had wanted to know this ever since the Rat had started once again to tell the story of her travels throughout Russia. Maria knew a bit about Anna’s children—mostly of their mischief and misbehavior. But once the Rat embarked on the story of their travels through Russia—herself, the two servants, and these children—there always came the point of absolute silence, when the Rat turned her face to the wall and refused to say another word.

“She never saw any of them again. We don’t know what happened. Your grandfather tried to find out. But…We can only imagine,” Ilse told her daughter quickly, sensitively. Maria’s mother immediately continued on another topic in order to forestall Maria’s possible questions. But Maria had no intention of not asking questions.

“And then,” she asked, “what happened to the daughter?”

“She went to England. Aunt Anna managed to smuggle her out.”

Maria thought this over. “And how did Aunt Anna come to us?”

“We don’t ask this question,” admonished Maria’s mother impatiently, pursing her lips.

Maria couldn’t wait for night to happen again, to hear the beautiful hunchback’s story, whispered obsessively in the dark, into the whorled echoing shell of the child’s ear. Unspeakable things.

Hadn’t Maria known all this already? The Rat, curled in upon herself, dreaming of Rasputin, her spine a bent half circle, floated in Maria’s mind as in their small bed. And Maria’s grandfather, his white hair an aureole about his head, dreamed in a cloud of quiet snores behind the army blanket draped over a clothesline, so close to them both. In the room, Ilse turned over on the couch, where she lay wrapped in a quilt. Next to her, little Philip pressed his nose against her body.

In a dank basement far away, secreted in another place, another city, with the long name—Washington, D.C.—David, Maria’s father, husband of Ilse and only remaining son of Herbert and Adeline, peered at a page and tried to type what he saw there. He rubbed his eyes. He was so weary. There was always more news to translate. Always more to decode and try to understand. He tried not to read what he saw beneath the mild reports that came to him from abroad. For he was an alien, and a translator whose usefulness was controlled. David translated the advertisements from foreign newspapers—ads for goods, which were limited, ads for people who sought spouses, even in the midst of catastrophe. The Allies felt that perhaps, in these ads, great schemes might, in code, contain military secrets. David wondered. But he translated into English the desperate hopes for marriage and family that, even in the midst of devastation, reflected the ordinary yearnings for a more ordinary happiness on the part of the German-speaking people. David translated these pathetic ads, then passed the translations on to his superiors. Maybe they could decode them? What did it matter? David dreamed of his family sometimes. But when he thought of his mother, Adeline, he stopped thinking and bent again to his work.