Prodigies

by Angélica Gorodischer

  31. The Women of the House on Scheller Street

  Awaiting the last breath of summer, the first puff of autumn, Madame Helena ordered the front door left ajar and the chancel door locked once tea had been served in the house on Scheller Street. Because a coach had been requested at six on the dot and because without a doubt the doctor would come to see Katja as he had promised the day before, that day the door to the street would remain open although the chancel door was closed as always. Anxiety could be seen gathering like fog in every corner and angle where walls met, visible to anyone who noticed the shaking lights, who listened to the whispers of women who had lived part of their lives in those rooms, men clearing their throats as they counted their accumulated money not really over something bothersome in their throats but due to a kind of invincible spiritual unease that awoke each time strong hands and weak will undertook that sordid duty. But Katja slept in a poor imitation of the sleep of nubile girls, slept as far from Scheller Street as possible, so disconnected to life that she seemed to see Wulda at dawn, and if Katja did not see her, then who, what other woman could have guessed the little frights that afflicted injured women and disenchanted men who had once lived there and returned to those rooms to sigh, fear, resist, and delay when death drew near. Only Katja knew these things; not Lola who was always so immersed in life that she accepted whatever came, shouldered it and stripped it of all pain and mystery; had she seen the agitation in the house, Lola would have opened all the windows to let the wind enter, or would have embraced the pale shadowy women and fed their men something that would have let them rest without need of Mass or psalms; not Wulda, who only looked at Katja when she was not anticipating her happiness in this world alongside Hans Boher and wishing that the eyelids of this sleeping girl were transparent so she could see her thoughts and soothe her with the words that surely she was awaiting in her sleep. Wulda stayed at night and Aunt Bauma thought it was proper to offer abnegation to the Virgin but not be absent at dawn for housecleaning before going to work; Wulda sat on the empty bed beside Katja and watched her, dozed a bit, got up to count her breaths, closed her eyes, slept, woke, leaned over the ill woman’s chest and tried to hear her heart as she had seen the doctor do, lay down again and slept again and got up again until the sun rose and she went to the kitchen to make Lola’s breakfast, the first meal of the house. Wulda did not mind being beside her, in fact she looked forward to it, sure that Katja would be brought back to life with the warmth of her body, would talk, would tell her something, would finally ask for something.

  Silence was prolonged that day beyond tea time: Madame Helena had entered the empty dining room late and the General had just left, and then she had shut herself in her office on the lower floor. She was there when the coach arrived for Miss Esther. The coachman knocked, waited, and knocked again, and Madame Helena opened her door at the moment when Wulda was almost running toward the chancel door. Madame Helena gave her a severe look: nothing abrupt, no running, shouting or even strident laughter, that was the first thing she instructed those who came to work in her house. Wulda, oblivious to all this, opened the door, asked the coachman to wait, and came back. Madame Helena told her not so fast, please, the house wasn’t on fire and the river wasn’t flooding, go notify Miss Esther that the coach had arrived and come down carrying her suitcase. The women of the house on Scheller Street, sitting on the stairway, leaning on the walls, a petalless flower in hand, looking from the windows, closing parasols, deploring that another one of them was leaving, going so far, suffering so much, and with so many hopes to forget, and one of them remembered the moment when she had left through that same door never to return in life, but Madame Helena, very upright and calm, was the only one who had returned in life; she only thought that it was a difficult afternoon with Miss Esther’s departure, the doctor’s visit, the answer that she was awaiting from Mr. Ruprecht to whom she had sent word that the suite was available, and perhaps the arrival of the new maid who had promised to be there at eight although with staff whom you have not personally trained you can never be sure of anything. She had made life suit her tastes, she had organized time into a serenity that made her feel proud and essential: without her, what would have become of the house on Scheller Street? A tangle of problems, constant disarray, insolent servants, disastrous hours, disorderly people, untidiness and even uncleanliness everywhere. Or it would be an abandoned ruin. Or the house of a family like every other with problems, arguments, anger, and even tragedies like that boy she herself had seen die beneath the hoofs of the bolting horses due to the irresponsibility of a mother who had let him play in the street so late. The women who had left the house on Scheller Street wept in silence for their dead children and dried their tears when Miss Esther and Wulda came down the stairway. There was a quick farewell full of smiles and good wishes, a peremptory good-bye and hardly a murmur, and that would have been the end of it except that Wulda had turned back to the house after carrying the suitcase to the coachman at the moment when Miss Esther left: they met face to face, and Madame Helena, who had shaken the traveler’s hand, watched with surprise as Miss Esther put her hands on Wulda’s shoulders, brought her face close, and kissed her on the cheek. Miss Esther got into the coach, and it left. Wulda turned with a dance step, held herself tight tight tight as if she were cold and felt in one blow all the happiness that she was going to have in this world with Hans Boher. Madame Helena looked displeased. The women who had lived there told each other that it had been worthwhile to answer that warm call like returning to the nest and see the afternoon die at the house on Scheller Street.

  32. Medical Science

  Night took possession of Scheller Street, and Novalis, baleful and melancholic, passed again like a shadow through Katja’s dreams, in her sleep awaiting the lips of Julia the Savior. Facing the fire, Lola feels Katja’s torpor place itself between her and the world: but what does it matter, dinner is ready and served on platters that Wulda is taking upstairs almost nimbly, almost floating as if she were now accustomed to the task that she was not going to have to do anymore because Madame Helena had spoken with the new servant in her office, a strapping girl with red hair and full lips who came recommended by Madame Hartenbach. Lola, annoyed and tired, or as she tells herself discouraged and exhausted, sits at the table in the kitchen storeroom waiting for Wulda while, in the checkerboard of the sky, Aristarchus of Samos enjoys plotting the new design for the constellations. Lola does not care if Wulda is late, perhaps Madame Helena has called her in, perhaps she has had some problem with the platters, all she wants to do is sit still like a stone so that nothing happens, so that death does not come to take her along with Katja because she is suddenly sure that Katja is going to die; she has a thick bitter taste in her mouth that has risen up like a silent invader from her stomach and she thinks she is also going to die, that death is going to come disguised as a pilgrim or civil servant dressed in black with a big hooked nose and ravenous little eyes and is going to look at them, at her and Katja, look at them hard, ponder whether to take them or not, and in the end is going to decide yes and gesture for them to follow and they will have no choice but to obey, and then she feels a pain sharper than all the pain in the world and she breaks in two holding her belly in her hands.

  Impatient but trying not to show it, Madame Helena asked Herta the Red questions while the women of the house on Scheller Street milled around her, touched her hair the color of dying fire, sniffed her, and checked under her arms, down her neckline, between her legs, and behind her ears. Herta’s eyelids were fine and dark and had visible blue veins when the girl blinked. Madame Helena was telling her that for the time being she would have to sleep in an improvised bedroom because there was a sick girl, a convalescent girl she corrected herself, in the servant’s room. The rich and slender women, women in pink and gold who had lived in the house on Scheller Street, covered their mouths to roar with laughter so the public would not consider them impolite coarse country girls like the one in dormition whom
death was going to take before dawn. Oh, Luduv, Katja sighed, don’t leave me alone, and Luduv got up and Novalis’s arm could be seen at the far end of the street where a coach pulled by bolting horses appeared every night to run past and disappear in a gray cloud of clay kneaded by the Lord’s hands under Aunt Bauma’s attentive gaze. Mr. Pallud entered the brightly lit salon and seeing that he was alone, left, paused in the corridor at the foot of the stairs looking at the place where Katja had fallen face-up against the edge of the steps and thought that he should go see her, thought that he would want to be there when Kati-Kati opened her eyes, thought that perhaps she would never open them again, and then returned to the salon at the moment when someone knocked on the door. Mr. Pallud remained in the salon, merely listening, not leaving, not moving, and heard the door being opened, heard the doctor’s voice, another door, the voice of Madame Helena, of the girl who served dinner, and another voice of a woman he did not know: if the fish-man devoured the princess, what would become of him? He would go back, he decided, he would go back to his room immediately and wait there for the commotion of doctors and strange women to be over. In the corridor he passed the doctor and Madame Helena, and they all said good evening, but he saw no one else.

  Medical science worries about what is lost: sleep, appetite, composure, blood, or strength; it attempts to recover them and when it cannot, to replace them; it touches bodies, probes them, searches them, opens them and sews them up, both holy and profane, infinitely wise, infinitely ignorant, using only two weapons, desire and rejection, always defeated by death, always defeating death. With two fingers, the doctor very gently opened one of Katja’s eyes. The women whimpered but he did not hear them, studying what he saw in the eye. He lowered the eyelid with his fingers, carefully again, and palpitated the sleeping girl’s head. Luduv! Katja said because she had seen him come in through the window, and he smiled at her. The doctor said there was little hope that Katja would ever wake up, to wait twenty-four hours more and if the situation had not changed, he would recommend taking her to Mercy Hospital. He left the room with Madame Helena after having wiped his hand on a white kerchief moistened with alcohol, and behind the door that Madame Helena closed, the women of the house, laughing, welcomed Luduv, and Katja sat up to hug him. In the corridor on the first floor Madame Helena and the doctor encountered young Gangulf who accompanied them downstairs. At that moment and as Wulda went ahead to open the chancel door, a sharp howl exploded in the house, a long desperate shriek like an animal snapped by a steel-toothed trap it had not seen. The house stopped, the air went still, breaths ceased, the party in Katja’s room jumped out the window in a flight of gauze and braids and satin slippers and Luduv’s floating hair, Katja’s eyes shining, mouths full of laughter, and it was lost in the sweet air of the heavens where Novalis’s blue flowers opened. Madame Helena and the doctor looked at each other and only Wulda moved and ran down the stairs toward the kitchen. When the doctor arrived, he saw Lola’s head resting on Wulda’s lap, who was stroking her forehead. Lola, enormous as the world’s oldest mountains, dress stained with blood, and smiling, lifted up her hands looking for something to grab before another tense pain came. She knows what this is, finally she knows, and when the sorrow for Katja disappears she begins to look around as if he were there with her, the man with the gold teeth who pursues her and surrounds her and corners her on the top floor of the tavern next to the river.

  Much can be said of medical science but not that it wastes an opportunity when desire is bellowing and the lady of death has left, satiated. The doctor took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and fell to his knees next to Lola:

  “You, girl,” he said to Wulda, “get behind her and hold her hands, and you, madame,” he said to Madame Helena, “open my case, give me those scissors, that’s it, that white cloth, the forceps, and look for towels to take the baby.”

  Miss Esther, rocked to sleep by the train, dreamed that the next day she would walk on the deck of a ship; Mr. Pallud paced impatiently in the corridor; young Gangulf also thought about ships; for the first time other hands closed the doors of “Miraflora” while the General felt death brush past him and move on this time and this time only; and Miss Nehala Simeoni tried to get up from her armchair to go to the door to see if the servant was coming with the dinner tray. In London, in the boarding house of Mrs. Stewart, Madame Nashiru took clothing from her suitcases and placed them in the wardrobes while in the dining room Mrs. Stewart told her guests that the woman she had just introduced came from Tokyo to open a jewelry store in London that would sell pearls, especially pearls, pearls from Saboga, Niushu, and the warm seas of Siganda. Madame Helena climbed the stairs laboriously, heavily, which she had gone down with such composure and decision every morning before the clock in the salon struck eight: she hoped that Herta could serve dinner with decorum, hoped the night would pass soon, that another day would arrive, that Wulda would leave, that Katja would get well, that Mr. Ruprecht would come and occupy the suite on the ground floor that opened to the garden, that everything would be the same as before, tranquil, quiet, restrained, and unchanging for a long time. The house creaked in the night, and the women’s laughter echoed all along Mill Alley, on the water in the river, in the treetops, on the balconies, a small round thought like a cherry warmed by the sun on the facade of the house on Scheller Street.

  About the Author

  Angélica Gorodischer, daughter of the writer Angélica de Arcal, was born in 1929 in Buenos Aires and has lived most of her life in Rosario, Argentina. Her more than twenty books include Kalpa Imperial, Trafalgar, and Tumba de jaguares. She has received many awards for her work, including most recently a Konex Special Mention Award.

  About the Translator

  Born in Wisconsin, Sue Burke moved to Madrid, Spain, in 1999. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in many magazines and anthologies. She has worked as a journalist and editor and is a member of the American Translators Association and the Asociación Española de Fantasía, Ciencia Ficción, y Terror.

  Read More Angélica Gorodischer from Small Beer Press

  Trafalgar

  translated by Amalia Gladhart

  paper · $16 · 9781618730329

  ebook · 9781618730336

  When you run into Trafalgar Medrano at the Burgundy or the Jockey Club and he tells you about his latest intergalactic sales trip, don’t try to rush him. He likes to stretch things out over seven double coffees. No one knows whether he actually travels to the stars, but he’s the best storyteller around, so why doubt him?

  Read excerpts on Lightspeed, Tor.com, Eleven Eleven, and Belletrista.

  “Elegantly constructed images and smooth narrative twists make “Trafalgar’s” enchanting oddness all-encompassing and unforgettable.” — Seattle Times

  “Perhaps the strangest thing about these tales is how easily one forgets the mechanics of their telling. Medrano’s audiences are at first reluctant to be taken in by yet another digressive, implausible monologue about sales and seductions in space. But soon enough, they are urging the teller to get on with it and reveal what happens next. The discerning reader will doubtless agree.” — Review of Contemporary Fiction