A Chosen Sparrow

by Vera Caspary

  “Their souls, Frau Neumann, saved forever. Through eternity.”

  “What is a soul, Mutti?”

  I feel the beat of her heart in my body. Her arms bind my body like wires. “Do not worry about being saved,” she tells me. “Good Jews do not burn in hell. We have suffered enough, God does not wish us punished any more.”

  “Why does God have people punished and beaten? Why does He put us here in this place? Why doesn’t God put us in a castle with golden walls?”

  She scratches her head, her neck, scratches places I have been told not to touch. I ask again and again. “What is a Jew, Mutti?” “Who is God?” Endless the sound of scratching against the rough cotton of the prisoners’ rags worn in winter and summer, night and day. Saved and sinner alike suffer from the fleas, the lice, the unendurable itching. Once on a night so hot that women wet each other with rank sweat and the potato sacking mattress is as damp as if rain had fallen, I ask again. In half-sleep, accepting itch and stench and sorrow, Mutti murmurs, “God is life.”

  Now this came back, the impression so strong that as I lay on linen sheets stretched over a mattress of white horses’ hair, I was as cramped and fearful of movement as when I had been crowded with so many others on the damp potato sacks. Gerhard’s probings had never dug down to these memories. They would not have spiced his wines nor enriched the sauces served with his venison and roast goose. Who is God, Mutti? What is a Jew?

  “To do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with thy God.” This had been Mutti’s answer and I believed it her own with such trust that years later, when I discovered that it was in the Bible, I was astounded. But it was not an answer for a warden, a Nazi official, a disgruntled male mistress. Bride of spite!

  I am not sure whether it was a long time or only a few seconds that I lay thinking about my mother and the prisoners’ arguments about God and salvation. Even those who believed in eternal life were afraid to be taken away to die in the concentration camps. God is life, Mutti told me. Was that why the sick, the starving, the hopeless women clung so avidly to foul existence? Through all of my meditations I heard the sobbing in the castle, but was not sure whether it was real or in my awakened memory. At last I thought about my dog who often cried as she lay alone in her basket in the small storeroom on the ground floor. Gerhard would not allow me to have her in my bedroom. He said that animals’ fur carried germs, that their bad smells interfered with breathing. Litzi’s basket stood beside a warm wall so that in cold weather she did not suffer, but she hated loneliness and when I came to say good night, always looked at me with hopeful eyes. She was such a good little animal and usually so quiet that I could not let her cries go unheeded.

  The castle was quiet. No hinge sighed, no floor creaked under my feet. I crept down the stairs as stealthily as a thief, scarcely breathing lest I meet Gerhard and have to speak to him. Litzi heard me and left her basket to patter toward me on the storeroom floor. I took her into my arms, felt the warmth and liveliness of the small body. In defiance I carried her to my room and let her sleep at the foot of my bed. Frankly, I was afraid to be left alone lest the cruel creatures of my nightmare return to rape the innocent and torment the Jew.

  Early in the morning, I crept across my rooms to unlock the door before Suzi came upstairs with the rolls and coffee. She had been alarmed to find Litzi’s basket empty, afraid to tell me that my dog was gone. With surprise and relief she discovered the little creature rolled into a complacent ball on my satin quilt. Otherwise it seemed a normal morning.

  “Suzi,” I said, “please forgive me. I was unfair to you about that dress. It was wrong to think you would tell me lies.”

  “Which dress, gnädige Frau?”

  “The rose-pink satin, the Merry Widow costume.”

  She opened the curtain. The sky was of deep cobalt, birds sang lustily. With her back to me Suzi answered, “We all speak hastily when we are troubled. Is there something wrong with the rolls, gnädige Frau? You are not eating. Or is the butter not fresh?”

  A cobalt sky and chattering birds tried in vain to make this a normal morning. Suzi must have heard hints of scandal in the servants’ rooms as she refrained from her usual chatter while she gathered up wrinkled chiffons. “Come, Litzi,” it was clear that Suzi did not wish to linger in my room, “you must go outdoors now.” When she left, I bolted my door again.

  I could not face my husband.

  The telephone rang. It was Hansi all out of breath. “Leni, you are awake, darling?”

  “Obviously.”

  “Are you well this morning?”

  “Why not?”

  “Please do not try to be so brave after the shock last night. Did you sleep?”

  No use confessing nightmares. “Yes. Quite well.”

  “Holy Mother, you are made of iron. Have you seen Gerhard?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “He did not come to you last night and explain?” A silence followed by, “Who was this man?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before.”

  (Except, perhaps, in a red silk domino.)

  “I do not think he is anyone who lives around here,” Hansi reported. “I have asked my bartender, he lives at Imml’s place, right in the middle of the village, they know everyone.”

  “Oh, Hansi! You haven’t been talking.”

  “Don’t be mad at me, dear. It is your husband you should fight with! I asked only if they knew a rather short man with dyed red hair. Oh, Leni!” Her voice went up an octave. “Would you believe it, I have found the emerald?”

  “No. Where?”

  “It was on the floor of my room, beside the bowl where I had washed my hands. It had probably dropped out when I took off my rings. So stupid of me not to notice. But perhaps it is better,” she cooed as a cold cramp tightened my organs, “that you know. You would have found out sooner or later. Leni, I am having a room arranged for you here to stay in as long as you wish.”

  “Thank you, Hansi, you are very kind but I am not coming to you.”

  “Where will you go? To Vienna?” I did not say anything and Hansi went on, “It is important for you, child, to take steps immediately. I want you to see Dr. Heinz Holtz, there is not a better lawyer for such matters. He can do more than anyone else for you.” Her voice dropped as if we were whispering secrets in a salon. “He obtained my last one very profitably and in your situation …”

  I cut Hansi off in the midst of her argument. Someone had knocked at my door. With shaking knees I went to face Gerhard, but found Suzi who had brought my dog back. With swift and quiet movements the dear girl tidied my room and left me.

  I think I walked twenty kilometers in my suite that day. No thought was conclusive, ideas were cut off in the middle, hopes dawned and died. I carried on several pointed conversations with Gerhard, attacked courageously as one so easily does with an unseen presence. By late afternoon, still in negligee, I had worn myself out with intensity and unspoken arguments. At five o’clock I drank a cup of coffee and commanded enough energy to bathe. While I was still in the hot water, Suzi knocked to say a guest was waiting in my boudoir. I was both eager and afraid to be confronted by Victor’s cynical eyes. How much would I tell him, I wondered, as I studied my face in the mirror and chose my handsome blue velvet house robe. I used a delicate lilac makeup, shadowed my eyes still further with violet. A tragic heroine owes it to vanity to look the part. In my pretty boudoir, against the rosy western light, I saw a silhouette in trousers. Hansi with the stub of a cigarette between her lips. Although Hansi is a fastidious woman who will use only the costliest of French soaps and perfumes, the smell of stale tobacco never leaves her.

  “Well?” she said after kissing me on both cheeks.

  “I have nothing to report.”

  “I hope you haven’t talked to Gerhard.”

  “I haven’t seen nor heard of him.”

  “Good. I was afraid you would be foolish and condone.” She fli
pped open a jeweled cigarette lighter, regarded the flame like an enemy. The glow illumined wrinkles that makeup could not hide. “You are such a little idiot with that man. If he says a kind word, you quiver all over like a puppy. I advise you to leave this house before you’re forced to talk to him. For your own good!” Through the smoke she delivered a sermon, speaking with piety of a woman’s duty to herself, of the obligation of a husband who has failed his wife. In the spirit of sympathy she had put through a telephone call to Dr. Heinz Holtz in Vienna, and without mentioning names had described the situation, not neglecting to inform him that the husband was a man of wealth. “Dr. Holtz says that if you stay in this house another night, you will have condoned the evil and weakened your case sadly. So you must pack and leave him now.”

  “Please, Hansi, allow me to make my own decisions.”

  Eyebrows rose, painted lids were lifted so that the eyes became round and ingenuous. “Do you think you can dally here until it pleases you to leave a man who has caused you indescribable unhappiness and suffering since the day he married you?”

  “It’s been a very pleasant life here.”

  “Your womanhood, child. Don’t you know its value?” Hansi considered womanhood an asset worthy of great compensation. She repeated the entire conversation with Dr. Holtz, mentioned betrayal, infidelity, perversion, millions of marks, also that neither husband nor wife was Catholic. “This makes it easier. Dispensation is very expensive. Even with my uncle a bishop I had great trouble and it cost quite a fortune for my divorces.”

  “Please, Hansi, I am not worrying about it.”

  “Not yet, darling, you are still in a state of shock. When you are calm again and consider your future you will see that I am wiser. At your age and with your face and body you will see how much they will give you of that Prussian pork fortune.”

  I protested but still she went on with the lecture. From her point of view my education was limited. If I had been brought up in good society I would know that a girl’s youth and good looks are financial assets. But I had been educated by the Stompfers whose daughter sold herself for small privileges and cheap gifts and I did not like to think of the female body as a source of income. In the years I worked at the Königshimmel Bar and Nite Club I had seen many of Vienna’s street prostitutes, often exchanged greetings with the neighborhood girls on my way to work, and there had been men among the customers who had made me offers of money or bits of jewelry. None of it had ever touched me. I had been brought up without God, but also without greed. Until Hansi delivered her sermon I had never thought of myself as a valuable commodity.

  My arguments did not cool her ardor. Quite the contrary; she preached the glories of a bank account as a missionary might paint the ecstasies of heaven and then, like a monk who warns against evil, she painted the hellish horrors a woman suffers when she is alone and without money.

  “You deserve all you can get. You have been mocked and made a fool of by perverts, your innocence has been betrayed. Darling, you are too naive to know how these vile creatures have been making fun of you, laughing behind your back. Everyone wondered about you.”

  “If you knew, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Could I hurt my sweet child?” She galloped across the room to wind her arms about me. “I am so fond of you, little Leni. But now that you have seen these demons in their unspeakable corruption…”

  “All I saw was the dancing…”

  “In your jewels! It made me sick, I can tell you.”

  “But you’re not unused to these men, Hansi. They’re your steadiest customers and you’re on the friendliest terms with them.”

  “But none of them is married to a decent girl. And I am an old woman, used to such things. To a young girl, it is a nerve shock that may hurt you for the rest of your life. Believe me, it is worth a fortune if you will be sensible.” She spoke with such emphasis that her fist struck a small inlaid table and threw cigarette stubs and ashes all over the carpet. “And what you have not considered is that you have a witness who will stand by your side and support everything you say. And there are other facts, too. Victor has important information—”

  “You’ve talked to him? Hansi! You haven’t told him!”

  “He knows there is trouble here. That’s why he telephoned me, to ask why you did not wish to speak to him.”

  “Who told him that?”

  “Can’t you guess? Who answers the telephone downstairs? Imre is a very faithful servant.”

  “But why?”

  “Why not? Do you think your husband wants a scandal? Not that his tastes are any secret to the neighbors.” She offered an artless smile. “Believe me, there was plenty of talk when we heard he was getting married.”

  I felt degraded. That patrons of the Schatulle Bar had whispered about me, that servants and villagers gossiped, sneered or pitied, was bad enough, but infinitely more humiliating was Victor’s knowing and probably pitying me. I had rejected him, playing the faithful wife, had turned from his ardor as though I had neither need nor desire for masculinity. I would have liked to hide myself away, keep separate from compassion, but at the same time and in a contradictory way I was in a fever to know how he felt about my situation. “What did he say?”

  “I am to telephone and give him your message, or make an appointment for tonight or tomorrow.”

  “He’s going away tomorrow night.”

  “Perhaps he can arrange to stay longer. Leni dear, that young man is very much in love with you.”

  I examined the polish on my fingernails, remembered that I had not kept my manicure appointment that morning. Hansi lit another cigarette and said that it was better, as things had turned out, that I had not taken a lover. In such a situation it was always easier if the woman had a clean conscience. She also offered her salon as a meeting place since it would not be comfortable for me to meet him at Liebhofen.

  I thanked Hansi, but knew I would not meet Victor in her rooms. I wished to speak to him alone without her waiting greedily at the edge of the rendezvous. “If you will just phone for me and say that I would like very much to see him.”

  Gerhard came in. Hansi was not disconcerted. “Grüss Gott, Gerhard,” said the gracious Baroness, and extended her jeweled hand.

  He did not take it. “I would like to speak to my wife. Alone, if you will excuse us, Hansi.”

  “Tomorrow,” I called as she walked out.

  VI

  “Come upstairs,” he said. There were shadows around his eyes, a reddish fuzz on cheeks and chin. He, too, had lounged in his suite all day, too inert to dress. “Excuse the dishabille,” he said formally as though we were strangers who had met the night before in a resort hotel. We must have looked ludicrous, both in negligee, Gerhard with a green velour robe over his pajamas, I in padded blue with a silver and gold girdle, like children playing knight and lady in the religious plays. I used to watch with Elfy at her convent school. We went up the winding staircase to his study.

  He had ordered a tray of drinks. “Would you like a vermouth, Leonora?” He poured himself a large cognac. I said I would like the same. “Isn’t that unusual for you?”

  “I need something strong.”

  “Wouldn’t you prefer slivovitz? Let me ring for it.”

  Still like strangers we seated ourselves and smiled. Three walls of the room are covered with books in several languages. Behind locks and curtains are those about concentration camps and the pictures of the tortured dead. On the fourth wall hangs the portrait of his mother wearing jewels and the pince-nez. The painted curve of her lips is not a smile. After an eternity of silence her son said, “I have a weak character.” Probably a stringy boy had confessed in these words after he had disgraced himself in the presence of grown-up hunters. Frau Irmengarde had taken his education into her own hands. Trained in strength through shame, he had learned to control nausea when the bodies of fallen birds lay bleeding at his feet.

  His reticence and the pause reminded me of those first shy nigh
ts in the baroque room of the Vienna restaurant. He spoke in the hard Prussian voice and formal old-fashioned German. This was the language of the country of his mind, to me an alien land. “I beg you to understand me, Leonora.”

  He could not remain seated. Probably he had paced this room and his bedchamber since early morning. I said, “Please sit down and be comfortable. I am not a judge in a courtroom.”

  Still he walked, turning his back to me and then forcing himself around to see me in the high-backed chair. In his eyes I must have seemed the harshest of judges, member of the ruthless sex which takes a man’s size in meters of character. All of my humility had been foolishly invested; I had wasted myself in fear of a weaker person.

  He pulled himself together and made an attempt at command. “I want you to forget. Everything. All that happened last night, whatever you saw…”

  “So simply?” I snapped contemptuous fingers. “I am to forget and go on as before. As though I’d seen nothing.” I spoke coldly because his tone, in spite of the air of authority, asked for pity. From the very beginning when the millionaire had fed the waif with costly foods, I had somehow, without seeking the reason, known compassion for the man. But one cannot go on forever feeling sorry for those who pity themselves for past mistakes, and then go on with the mistakes so that they can wallow in fresh self-sorrow. This thought hardened me. “How can you ask me to forget? The sight of your friend in that dress, the makeup, the satin slippers…”

  “Quiet!” His voice reached high irritability. I saw him now, not the velvet-robed lord of this castle, but a spoiled boy sulking because a world shaped for his pleasure had failed to please. I saw him with the mother whose command to character had denied some whim. “Why must you bring it up, torment me, make me feel twisted and abnormal and filthy?”