The boy filled the plastic glass, then picked it up and carefully poured the lemonade from the glass to the bottle. He did that two more times and they were out of lemonade. Heike counted out two more pennies.
— Business is very good for you, yeah?
She could see now that the two boys were not quite the same age. The smaller of the two still had her pennies in his hand, wrapped tight, and he opened his fingers slowly so as to put the money into the cash box without spilling any of it out onto the ground. Heike watched him and only recognized how long she’d been standing there when Arden took the bottle and its cap from her, sealing it up again and tucking it away in the bakery bag.
Arden took Heike’s hand. There was a breeze, and the boy’s hair fluttered, light and soft as a little chick’s. He pushed the pennies around in the box, counting them silently. His lips moved as he counted. There was a tiny dimple in his wrist.
Heike turned away.
— Take me home, will you? She stepped closer and linked her arm in Arden’s. Everything has been lost for so long, she said. Or I’ve been lost. It feels good to have found something. It was my home once: that pond, that little house. Maybe it still is. Besides, no one else is using it. She almost smiled, but it was mostly to herself. It seems a good place to start, she said.
THE LAYER OF DUST that had covered everything inside the cabin was gone. The very first thing she’d done: kettle after kettle of hot water, every corner scrubbed clean. In the bedroom, she’d found a hole through to the outside, just big enough for a mouse, or perhaps even a chipmunk, and filled it in with a torn rag and carpenter’s glue. She was waiting for some sense memory to return: the wood floor against her knees, the curve of the baseboard, the smell of the damp plaster as she wiped down the walls. At night, she lay in bed and counted the corners of the room. A way to have a wish granted.
Now she slipped her sundress over her head, trading it for a bathing suit she’d left hanging off the arm of a chair. There were some papers strewn on the wooden table, and a makeshift easel pinned with pages she’d ripped from her notebooks: bird studies, pen and ink, or the birds’ motion captured with a few strokes of charcoal. A perfect descent of black ravens, spilling down the page like a bright helix, sharp in their relief.
Trying to pick up where the other Heike had left off.
Outside, the ground was warm and firm beneath her, the path clear but banked with wildflowers to one side, under the window, the colours catching the light. Cosmos, like cocktail umbrellas floating high on tall stems.
She waded into the pond with a few long strides, swam out cleanly, then pulled up onto the raft, crouching there with her toes curled over the edge, looking down at something just below the surface.
Her body was cool from the water, her hair wet and away from her face. She pushed up to standing, a hand at her hip, listening—but there was only the low rumble of a car far up on the road somewhere, already fading into the distance, and back in the reeds, a loon. She could hear it calling to its mate and the echo of the call.
The sun was strong behind her. She turned away again to gaze down at the girl, her skin shimmering green and gold just below the surface of the pond. When she leaned out over the water, the girl pulled closer. Blond hair falling around her face, already almost dry in the midday heat. Heike had an urge to reach in and take her hand.
The breeze picked up. Her reflection rippled there.
She sprang forward off the raft, the dive almost soundless. Below the surface, her arms pulled out wide and back in again.
One good kick and she was already halfway to the other side.
Acknowledgements
I’M VERY LUCKY to have had the support of some wonderful friends, family, and colleagues in the writing of this book. First thank you goes always to George Murray, whose keen ear and eye and hours of conversation allowed me to take what felt like a dream and fine-tune it into a proper story. I’m grateful to my early readers, Andreae Callanan, Megan Coles, Miranda Hill, and Bianca Spence, for their time and their thoughtful consideration of the novel when it was in draft form. My mother, Eva de Mariaffi, for looking over the German to make sure I had it just right. My children, Nora and Desmond, Silas and August, for keeping me grounded and for the final-draft-panic high fives and kind words—and Desmond especially for the memory of his childhood adventures with tadpoles and turtles. Financial support from ArtsNL made it possible for me to devote much-needed focus to the project. As always, my agent, Samantha Haywood, provided unfailing support and sharp ideas. And, of course, a huge thank you to my wonderful editor, Iris Tupholme, who loved the book from the start and has pursued it with me rigorously—exactly what I love best.
A Note on Sources
ALL OF THE CHARACTERS IN Hysteria are fictional. While I created the character of Leo Dolan, his body of work is based largely on the work of Rod Serling, an American writer/producer and creator of the groundbreaking television series The Twilight Zone. Serling really did write a teleplay for The United States Steel Hour that aired in 1956, originally based on the story of the lynching of Emmett Till, and it was changed and rewritten at least twice to suit the network executives—something Serling only occasionally spoke about in interviews. Serling’s experience with network censorship was one of the factors that led him to write and produce his own series The Twilight Zone, which did not air until 1959. In the scenes where Leo Dolan and Heike Lerner discuss his work, several real-life Twilight Zone episodes are referenced, including plots and characters from “Walking Distance” and “Nightmare as a Child,” in forms that have been altered to suit my story. Fleeting references are made to “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine,” “The Hitch-Hiker,” “The Lonely,” and “Living Doll”—these are Easter eggs that only a real Twilight Zone aficionado will spot. It was a fun surprise to find that Serling’s own production company was called Cayuga Productions.
I visited Ovid, New York, the site of the former Willard State Hospital, in 2015, and also spent time in Aurora, Union Springs, Lansing, Ithaca, Auburn, and Skaneateles. The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic by Darby Penney and Peter Stastny (Bellevue Literary Press, 2008) was useful to me in imagining the world of the asylum as it existed. The character of the old man, Marek, is based on the real-life Willard patient and gravedigger Lawrence Mocha. The authors of Lives gave Mocha the pseudonym Marek, and I have maintained it here. A man can only have so many names.
Among other resources, Ernest Hemingway’s short story “A Way You’ll Never Be” was useful in my imagining of Heike’s experience hiding out in the barn and afterward, as she escaped from Germany in 1945. I was interested in the aftermath of battle not from a soldier’s perspective, but as it might be experienced by a young girl.
Where Heike’s long solo trek across a whole country is concerned, my own great-great-grandmother, Maria Sieber, left Switzerland on foot in the late 1800s, arriving some time later in Hungary—alone, with only her little brother in tow. She was fifteen at the time. So I know such things can be done.
Epigraphs
DR. FRANK BERGER’S COMMENT, quoted here on page 9, was made to the Senate Antitrust and Monopoly subcommittee in 1960, and was reported by Joseph A. Loftus in his article “Costs Held Small in Making Drugs,” which appeared in The New York Times on January 27, 1960.
Rod Serling’s conversation with journalist Mike Wallace, quoted here on page 169, originally took place on The Mike Wallace Interview, airdate September 22, 1959.
The excerpt from L. Wilson Greene’s classified document “Psychochemical Warfare: A New Concept of War,” on page 323, was quoted by Raffi Khatchadourian in his December 17, 2012, New Yorker feature “Operation Delirium.”
The quotation from “Cinderella,” also on page 323, is from Grimm’s Fairy Tales, translated by E.V. Lucas, Lucy Crane, and Marian Edwardes (Grosset & Dunlap, 1965).
Dejan Stojanović’s poem, “A Fairy Tale and the End,” quoted on page 391, is part of the sequence “Forgotten
Place,” published in English in The Sun Watches the Sun (New Avenue Books, 2012).
The full title of the work quoted in the very first epigraph on page vii is Niederlausitzer Volkssagen Vornehmlich aus dem Stadt und Landkreise Guben Gesammelt und Zusammengestellt (Folktales of Lower Lusatia Collected and Compiled Principally from the Town and County of Guben) by Karl Gander. The translation of the epigraph is my own.
About the Author
ELISABETH DE MARIAFFI’s book of short stories, How to Get Along with Women, was longlisted for the 2013 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her poetry and short fiction have been widely published in magazines across Canada. Her debut novel, The Devil You Know, was named one of the Best Books of 2015 by The Globe and Mail and the National Post, and was shortlisted for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. Elisabeth lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland, with the poet George Murray and their four children.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at www.harpercollins.ca.
Also by Elisabeth de Mariaffi
The Devil You Know
Copyright
HYSTERIA
Copyright © 2018 Elisabeth de Mariaffi
All rights reserved under all applicable International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
FIRST EDITION
The author wishes to acknowledge the support of ArtsNL, which last year invested $2.5 million to foster and promote the creation and enjoyment of the arts for the benefit of all Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.
COVER DESIGN BY LAURA KLYNSTRA
COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK OWEN / TREVILLION IMAGES
EPub Edition MARCH 2018 EPub ISBN: 978-1-44345-342-4
Print ISBN: 978-1-44345-340-0
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
2 Bloor Street East, 20th Floor
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4W 1A8
www.harpercollins.ca
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON M4W 1A8, Canada
www.harpercollins.ca
India
HarperCollins India
A 75, Sector 57
Noida
Uttar Pradesh 201 301
www.harpercollins.co.in
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com
Hysteria Page 34
