I Remember You

by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

  So Gretchen ran along until she could see the light of the sun shining through the leaves, and there she stopped, meaning to cough up the bone, but the flute sang, “Run faster! Even now I can hear the witch’s footsteps gaining speed!”

  So Gretchen ran along until she reached the very edge of the wood and could feel the long grass and soft buttercups beneath her feet. Just as she was about to pass the last tree in the forest, the witch appeared before her.

  “Do not forsake me and I will never forsake you,” sang the bone flute. “Now you must cough me out!”

  Then Gretchen coughed up the flute, but as it came forth, it turned into a thousand ravens. The ravens fell upon the witch and pecked her to pieces in the forest—but Gretchen ran out into the meadow, and if she is not dead yet, she lives there in the sunshine still.

  1951

  Why don’t you tell me where we are.

  The doctor sat in a stiff chair set by the window. He’d offered her the softer one, its velvet rose upholstery only a little worn. This had seemed gentlemanly in the moment but now Heike squinted, facing him. The sun slanting in at an afternoon angle. She put a hand up to shield her eyes.

  — We are in the Kloster, of course.

  — Now, Heike.

  — In Thurgau. In Switzerland. Better?

  — How do you know this? He paused, watching her eyes shift slightly. His face lightened. Humour me a little, Heike. I have this script to go through, you know. The university is terribly rigorous about these things.

  — Where else would I be?

  — That’s a fair answer.

  He reorganized the papers in his lap. Usually he had a pencil, but today he did not.

  She turned her head to look around the room, her eyes making little spots until they adjusted to the lower light away from the window. The door to the hall rested against its frame without being quite shut. She could see the latch where it lapped at the strike plate like a tongue.

  — There was an accident, she said. That’s what you want me to talk about, isn’t it?

  — That’s what I’m trying to help you with, yes.

  — I’m sorry, I don’t remember. I still don’t remember.

  — You came here to recover. He got up from his chair and walked over to shut the door tight. It closed with a click, and he turned and leaned against it, but it was a casual gesture. It’s alright if you don’t remember.

  Heike lifted her face.

  — It’s not alright. I was all of a sudden a widow. How can I forget this?

  He came back across the room, and she stood up to meet him. He had a habit of standing over her chair that made her nervous.

  — No, don’t get up. Here—

  He took her hand and tugged gently downward, but as she sank back into her seat he crouched beside her. Still nervous-making, but not entirely unpleasant.

  To one side of the room, she could see her bed with its white sheets and the white curtain to pull around for privacy. They had housed her this time not with the novices, as when she had first arrived here during the war, but in a larger room with three elderly nuns.

  — Because you were so sick.

  — I was terribly sick. I almost died. So they gave me a bed here, where it’s quieter.

  Only it wasn’t quiet. One of the old sisters often screamed out, and another sometimes wept in her sleep.

  What she knew of the accident: The car had come out of nowhere. They were crossing the street, her arms were full of something, flowers or floury rolls from the bakery, she couldn’t remember which. He’d died before she woke up. Most likely he died when his head hit the ground. Her injuries were minor; she was concussed. When the ambulance arrived, they found her sitting in the road, his head in her lap. A lot of blood; she remembered that part. Her skirt soaked through. She could not stop crying, and they sent her away from the hospital and brought her here, to a place she knew and a doctor she didn’t.

  To begin with, she had not been able to remember returning to the convent at all. They met twice a week; then three times. The doctor was helping her to fill in the blanks.

  He let go of her hand and patted it where it lay in her lap. She leaned toward him, just a little.

  — Doctor Lerner.

  — Eric.

  She paused.

  — Eric.

  Now they met every day. He came to see her on Sunday afternoons, and brought her presents: chocolate, or squares of pastry with marzipan filling. The last time, a collection of fairy stories, hard-bound, with coloured illustrations.

  — Have you been doing any reading?

  — Sometimes I make up my own stories, she said. Reading still hurts my head.

  From the hall there was the sound of a tea trolley passing by, and Heike paused, waiting to see if it would stop, if the door would swing open, but it didn’t.

  — That’s not so useful, Heike.

  She glanced at the door again. He lifted a hand to touch her face.

  — Sometimes we need a new start.

  * * *

  When it was time to leave, he watched her settle herself into the back of the car, then shut the door behind her before climbing into the driver’s seat, one arm thrown over the seatback as he shifted into reverse.

  She studied his face. He was capable of such kindness, but now he was looking past her. Her red woollen coat was folded in two on the bench next to her—she could see the edge of the velvet hood tucked away inside, and the pinpoint gleam of rhinestones set into each round button. There was a breeze, and she brushed a piece of hair away from her face, where it was playing at her lip. The car spun softly out to meet the road. Eric turned back to face the wheel.

  There was something in her hand, the wood worn smooth, and she turned it over and over in her fingers. When she looked down, she saw it was a little cross that she was holding.

  — From over your bed, Eric said. He’d been watching her in the rear-view mirror. She could see only his eyes and part of his brow. We took it down for you. Remember?

  The brow furrowed slightly, but the eyes were warm enough. Heike ran her thumb up and down the vertical bar of the little cross.

  — There’s a lot of travel ahead, he said. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.

  He often told her how much she worried him.

  — Don’t say that. I’ll feel better when I’ve had a sleep. I promise. Let’s talk about something else.

  The trees on either side of them went by in flashes. She sat back and let her hands fall into her lap, the cross also falling, caught in her skirt, in the dip where her thighs came together. They drove on for a moment, Heike looking out the window. It had begun to rain very slightly. There was a split-rail fence separating the road from the field, and on the other side of it a few horses milled about, undaunted in the wet.

  Eric turned the wheel, and the car rolled to a stop on the dirt shoulder.

  — Tell me again.

  — I’ve told you twice already.

  — I want to make sure you remember it.

  — But it’s silly. Let’s talk about where we’re going instead.

  — Once more, tell me. Reassure a man.

  Heike swung her feet up onto the bench next to her and slid down to rest, her head in her hand, elbow propped against the red coat as though it were a pillow.

  — It was two weeks ago, April third. For flowers, I had lily of the valley, because they were your mother’s favourite and you found so many growing in the woods behind the chapel. Father Alphonse married us.

  Here she paused a moment, and her head tilted a little in concentration. In the mirror, he lifted his chin.

  — I wish sometimes I wasn’t a doctor.

  — Eric.

  — You have no recollection. You were so sick.

  There was another car approaching, dark blue, but it didn’t slow down as it passed. To the side of the road the meadow stretched out long and wide and greenish-gold. Eric turned the engine off and twisted in his seat to look at her properly.
Heike shifted and lay back flat.

  — It’s a long trip, Eric said.

  — I know. She reached up and ran a fingernail along the car’s headliner. Somehow I feel I know exactly what the boat will look like, she said. I can picture it.

  The little cross had spilled onto the floor.

  — I’ll give you something to help you sleep. Then it won’t feel so long. Eric leaned over to the passenger seat and unclipped the latch on his bag.

  Heike turned her head to look at him.

  — And what about my suitcase? You must have sent it ahead to the boat. Did you? It’s not in the trunk?

  Eric held a glass ampoule up to the light and shook it. Heike sat up.

  — Oh no, Eric. Not again. Just give me a pill. I’m really so much better now.

  — Who’s the doctor, me or you? He pulled the liquid from the ampoule into a syringe and flicked the tip with a fingernail. What do you want your suitcase for, anyhow? He turned in his seat and held out a hand as though offering her a dance. You know I’ll always take care of you, Heike. We’ll buy you some new dresses when we get to America. A whole closetful of new dresses. You won’t recognize yourself.

  Heike’s hands stayed folded in her lap.

  — Be a good girl and give me your arm now.

  She inched forward a little, and Eric took her hand, pulling it toward him.

  — It’s just that it’s mine, Eric.

  She looked down. Her arm stretched forward, her hand in Eric’s, the pale inside of her elbow opening up clean and soundless. Eric rubbed it with a bit of cotton. He took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and tied it tight around the arm. It was a white handkerchief, silk, with blue anchors on it. Heike thought: Anchors. Because of the boat.

  — It’s just that it’s mine, Heike said again. So I’ll be glad to have it back. She looked from the arm back to Eric. My white suitcase. When we get to New York.

  10

  1956

  When she woke, Heike could not tell if it was early or late, and she lay blinking for a few moments and looking around her. Somewhere it seemed to her an axe was falling, a steady rhythm: the soft thunk, and then the shush of the cut wood being swept away off the chopping block. The sound was both near and muted. Down in the yard, maybe, only the wood must be half rotten to make so dull a noise. No good to burn.

  She expected her pillow to be white, and white sheets on the bed, and a white curtain to pull close around at night, and she expected the bells from the convent chapel and wondered that they had not woken her—or if they had, but she had been so deeply asleep that the sound did not register. But after a moment her eyes focused, and Heike saw that the pillow was robin’s egg blue, and the coverlet a deeper navy, and there was no curtain save for the sheers over the window, and the sound was not an axe, after all, but the breeze as it came in, batting at the blinds. The blinds swinging inward and then falling back against the frame.

  Thunk.

  Shush.

  She pushed up on her elbows and worked the pillows higher. Her limbs were elastic. Her limbs were wet rope.

  There was a cut-glass tumbler on the nightstand with a single deep red rock rose floating in it, the stem stretching straight down like a rough ladder to the tabletop beneath. She felt for a moment as though she had been travelling. The room was strange to her. She felt she was supposed to know it.

  She turned slightly to the left and reached out for something by instinct. Not something. Someone. Daniel, so that he wouldn’t get too close to the edge and roll off the bed. Her fingers following the coverlet’s quilted stitches like text, like words in a reader.

  She blinked. Downstairs she could hear a kind of commotion, shouting. Eric’s voice, a controlled rumble, and then a woman, too, the higher register cutting in crisp and distinct:

  — How could you? Why would you keep this to yourself?

  This is what had woken her, this argument. She remembered now. She had been dreaming of the bed by the window in the noviciate sleeping quarters, a dream that held on.

  On the vanity, her little bottles and powders were all laid out, the silver-plate brush and mirror lying face down, and in the large mirror above she saw a woman, blond hair across one eye, tucked loosely behind an ear. Her hand flat and searching against the coverlet, itself still tucked smooth around the bottom corners of the bed. Her own reflection.

  What was she searching for again?

  Dani. But she was alone in the room.

  The door burst open.

  — Oh! You’re awake now. Thank goodness, you’re awake.

  Heike started. It was Arden in the doorway, hesitant, then rushing forward:

  — I’ve only just found out what happened.

  Heike blinked again. The room a little sharper now.

  — Where is he?

  She peeled back the coverlet to loosen it.

  — Eric’s only just told me. About Daniel. Arden dropped onto the side of the bed, a hand on Heike’s arm, the grip tight.

  — Daniel. Heike repeated the name, nodding, and then shifted back, startled: Daniel? What are you talking about?

  Arden pulled a bit closer on the bed.

  — Try, sweetheart. Think. Eric says he gave you something to help you sleep that first night. He says you had a breakdown. She took Heike’s hand and squeezed it. But golly, darling, that must’ve been some crazy sleeping pill. The maid says you’ve been in bed for three days. You had a reaction of some kind, I guess.

  Heike let her hand rest in Arden’s hand. Arden’s cool thumb pulsed against the inside of her wrist.

  — Three days?

  The words seemed to float away from her. She couldn’t connect to them.

  — I came up to see you earlier, but you were out cold. He wanted you to take something else . . .

  — I don’t remember.

  Arden gestured to the flower on the nightstand.

  Heike looked more closely at the tumbler. A kind of effervescence in the base of the glass, the remnant of some little white thing dissolved slowly away. Eric was always giving her such tumblers. She’d lined them up along the edge of the nightstand once, a quiet row.

  — We went to a party, Heike said.

  — Yes, exactly. At Leo Dolan’s house.

  — There was a fire on the beach.

  Arden waited.

  The setting sun and the chestnut leaves and the blue tablecloths all coming back now, prismatic, like an odd dream. Dolan giving her a drink and a cushion to sit on. Driving in an open car, the wind whipping at her shoulders. The gully: the aspen leaves whispering all around.

  Then no sound but silence, and that awful heaviness pressing down on her in the dark, high over the woods, the pond and the little house hidden somewhere below.

  There was something else, too: something she couldn’t put her finger on. She’d been terribly upset. What was she worrying about? It slipped away again.

  She pushed up and fought at the covers.

  — I have to get up. I have to find him.

  — Whoa, whoa. Slow down. You’re still recovering. Arden shifted back on the bed a little and then stood up, gesturing to the doorway with a sideways nod. He’s downstairs, she said.

  — Dani. Dani is downstairs? He’s here?

  Heike stumbled up, half-tangled, the bedsheets dropping to the floor around her. She had a cotton nightdress on, and she wanted to strip it off. The little buttons moved about under her fingers and refused to go through their holes.

  Arden bit her lip.

  — No, darling. I meant Eric. Eric is downstairs. I don’t know where Daniel is. I couldn’t get anything out of Eric, and he told me you were up here and I just ran to see you instead. He says you were raving.

  Heike pulled the nightgown over her head and sat hard against the footboard, gripping the fabric to her breastbone with both hands, as though it were something precious. Her hands wrapped in the cloth to stop them trembling.

  — Look, let’s get you on your feet. You need som
e strong coffee in you, that’s all. We’ll figure this out. Arden went to take the rumpled nightgown, but found that Heike would not or could not let go of it. She took both of Heike’s hands in hers and held them still. I don’t know much more than you do, she said. I was hoping you’d remember something. Three days . . . Her voice was shaking, and she stopped, her eyes flicking briefly away, then back to Heike again. She started over: Three days is a long time. Let me help you.

  — No, no! Heike pulled her hands away and held them up like a fighter or a traffic attendant. Give me any clothes, anything. There is no time!

  — There is time. Of course we’ll find him. The police have been here, yes?

  Heike stood up for a moment and then, head spinning lightly, came back to rest on the end of the bed. She looked down to still the dizziness.

  — The police. She said this almost like it was a question, then tilted her head up to look at Arden before answering. Yes! Yes, is he still here? The policeman? What did he say?

  Arden shook the nightgown out and folded it over her own arm. Her face was both drawn and somehow plaintive, like someone who has stayed up through the night drinking and reading bad news.

  — Heike. You haven’t heard what I’m saying. Daniel went missing days ago. You’ve been in bed ever since.

  — No. No! I don’t believe you.

  Heike stood up again, and the blood rushed through her arms and legs. She could hear the whoosh of it, a sudden heat in the back of her neck, her cheeks. The breeze came in through the blinds, and they swayed and fell and made their noise, and she wrapped an arm around her breasts. The fresh air made a little gooseflesh rise along her belly.

  — It can’t be three days. It can’t.

  The sunlight through the sheers, the cool air on her skin; everything was sharp and getting sharper. She could see herself, her own reflection in the vanity mirror. She stepped forward and noticed then the little Dresden girl, still there, her colours more pastel in daylight. Almost hidden in the brightness. Caught in the three-way mirror, like Heike herself, paler and paler in each repeated reflection.

  She reached out to touch the little doll, then froze in place. The heavy stillness that night at the gully: she’d felt the same odd quiet pushing down as she’d come along the drive, alone, toward the house, to find Daniel gone. And the birds. She remembered that now: sunrise, and no birdsong, no sound at all. Her hand hung in the air, suspended. In the reflection, another hand, a hand leading Daniel away, down, down, to the stream, slipping into the tall bulrush, into the cattails.