Two White Queens and the One-Eyed Jack

by Heidi von Palleske

  “Do you eat marzipan? Because I have some.”

  Johnny smiled and nodded. The ocularist reached over to Johnny’s ear and seemed to pull a red, tinfoil-wrapped chocolate out of nowhere.

  “I will tell you a secret now, Johnny. I once tried to be a chocolatier instead of an ocularist, but it didn’t turn out so well.”

  “Why not?” asked Johnny.

  “Because all my bonbons looked like eyeballs! You see, we all have a destiny and you can deny it all you like and, when you do, life gives you a push. You fail or fall. Funny how in English those words are so alike! You are lucky, you got your push very early in life.”

  “I don’t feel very lucky.”

  “Well, I didn’t feel very lucky when my marzipan chocolates all looked like eyeballs! But there you go! So what, you fell from a tree. So what, you have only one eye. It brought you to me, didn’t it? And I just pulled a marzipan from your ear!”

  Johnny looked at the ocularist for what seemed a very long time. He didn’t want to admit that he didn’t quite grasp the concept of destiny. Unless destiny was part of the long list of things you could no longer do after you fell from a tree.

  “I think that I would love to eat marzipan eyeballs.”

  “Come, let me show you something.”

  As Siegfried passed his almost closed door, toward his storage drawers, he caught in his periphery the only too familiar shape of Hilda, spying from behind the door. He passed by without a word. That would be another secret kept to himself. He put a finger to his lips as he opened a steel drawer, the metal screeching against metal. He motioned for Johnny to come closer, for him to peer inside.

  A hundred eyes stared up at Johnny. Each with a light of its own. They glowed, they reflected, they seemed to move when Johnny moved. How was that possible?

  “You have lost your external sight in one eye and, for that, you may mourn. But there are two types of seeing, my young friend. There is the outward-looking and the inward-looking. Now you must do both. You will appear to the world to be not quite as special as you are because no one else will know that you can see in two directions while most of us can see in only one. Now we both have work to do. I will make you the best eye possible, and you will have to start doing the seeing. Inward-seeing. And that, my new friend, is called insight.”

  Johnny wasn’t sure what it all meant but he felt a rush through his body. A tingle that started somewhere in his gut and spread, in circles, outward.

  “Bewahre doch vor Jammerwoch!

  Die Zähne knirschen, Krallen kratzen!

  Bewahr’ vor Jubjub-Vogel, vor

  Frumiösen Banderschntzchen!

  Eins, Zwei! Eins, Zwei! Und durch und durch

  Sein vorpals Schwert zerschnifer-schnück,

  Da blieb es todt! Er, Kopf in Hand,

  Geläumfig zog zurück.

  Es brillig war. Die schlichte Toven

  Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben;

  Und aller-mümsige Burggoven

  Die mohmen Räth’ ausgraben,” Siegfried recited, his voice low and full of dramatic intonation. Johnny stared at him, eyes wide, rapt. He had never heard anything so strange.

  “Do you know this poem? I am sure I have mixed it up a bit.”

  Johnny shook his head no.

  “It is very famous. The ‘Jabberwocky.’ Some people call it a nonsense poem, but I think it makes a lot of sense. It is about fear and finding courage. It is about defeating the monsters that stop you from being all you can be.”

  Johnny wiped his crusted eye. Whenever he was uncomfortable he touched his unseeing eye. All this talk of monsters made his eye itch.

  “One day, one day, my boy, you will find your courage again. You are destined to defeat the Jabberwock himself!”

  Hilda listened while Siegfried addressed her son. She had agreed to wait outside while Siegfried did his initial consultation with Johnny. That was after they had that awkward first meeting where they each regarded the other middle-aged version of the young people they once were.

  “What happened to your wonderful hair?” she had blurted out when she first saw him.

  “You have gained so much weight! You were such a skinny girl!” he had responded.

  Hilda had thought to herself, No wonder I went to North America. German men are so blunt. No tact.

  Siegfried had thought to himself, No wonder I never married. German women are so blunt, so tactless.

  But now, as she listened by the door, she experienced something else. Something so rich in familiarity that she felt herself being drawn into every word he spoke. His kindness was weaving a web around her and she felt panicked. She was claustrophobic and filled with regret.

  What had happened to her marriage? It all began so well. There was a time when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. In the beginning, the differences between them only ignited the sexual match. She was on an adventure, away from her homeland, away from her mother’s watchful eye and, with John Sr., she could finally be herself in all her unbridled passion. He could just walk into a room and she would feel a dampness, an urgency, rushing through her body. It would take her over, as if their love was another vibration altogether, freeing their true selves. The rest of the world didn’t exist in those moments. Not bills or responsibilities. Not past sorrows or heavy secrets. It was only then, during their lovemaking, that she was capable of being in the moment, mindful of the now. It was only then that she felt safe, desired, and loved.

  It was easy to think that the change started when Johnny had fallen from the tree because the grief was just too much for both of them. John could not bear to look at his son’s wound. He never cleaned the eye or dealt with Johnny’s endless infections. He never consoled him when he came home, embarrassed that he looked different from the other kids, sad that he was no longer good at sports, teased and destroyed. Oh, what brutes children were!

  Hilda knew that her husband still loved their son, but she also knew that the grief was too much for him. He spent more time talking to his daughters, where he could navigate safely, and Hilda became the only support for the boy. As the couple’s bond became more about grief than passion, John had to find flickers of joy elsewhere. Well, why not? Hilda had become as heavy as a German dumpling! Not physically, of course. Oh yes, her hips had become fuller with each child. And yes, she wasn’t as thin as she once was. But she was strong. Fit. What they would call a handsome woman. Handsome, strong, striking even. But not soft and pretty. And because John could not bring comfort to his son, he looked for distractions in women who needed him. Women who could make him feel strong. Women who were less than his wife. His distractions were all softer, weaker, easier. Distractions that could alleviate his guilt for being a father whose usefulness was ebbing each and every day. Distractions that could see him for the man he was and not the sadness he was destined to carry.

  Hilda knew this. She was bonded to her husband although she knew that somewhere along the way he had stopped seeing her, even before the accident. It started drop by drop, event by event. A child born and suddenly her breasts were vessels for feeding a baby and not something her husband enjoyed fondling anymore. Then another child and the endless work, the bills, the tiredness. It was with the second that sleep became more inviting than sex. By the time Johnny was born, their roles were well-defined for a functioning home. She was a mom. A homemaker, a maid, a caregiver, a cook. She served a purpose and, in doing so, had ceased to be a woman.

  Unlike Miss Argyle. Pretty Miss Argyle, who had a smile uncontaminated by the worries of motherhood. Miss Argyle, who could be breezy and optimistic even as the house of cards was scattering all around them. Young and fresh Miss Argyle, who hadn’t lived through a war, hadn’t had to deal with rations, or boarders in her home. Miss Argyle, who never had to see her father executed for war crimes. How delightful to be so very free. How delightful to be the foam on the top of a cappuccino!

  “Do you like marzipan?” she heard Siegfried ask young Johnny. She kn
ew that Siegfried would pull a sweetie out of her son’s ear and that he, in turn, would be enchanted by the magic, just as she had been when she was his age and Siegfried was a young man, a teenager, really, but in those days, a boy was a man by the time he was sixteen.

  Hilda felt the tight grip of regret squeeze at her heart. She waited for that tight fist to loosen, but it wouldn’t. It just kept squeezing. What had she sacrificed, and for what? Oh, how she would like to believe in magic again. She would like to have the faith of childhood restored to her somehow. She would like to find that protective circle of her girlhood. Gott, how she wanted to believe that there really was magic and not just sleight of hand.

  But if her ocularist friend from her past could give her son an eye, he would also give him confidence. And for that, she would trade everything. For that, she would make herself believe in magic again.

  There are no ready shapes, no moulds. No set standards. Each eye is a work of art. A one-of-a-kind blown-glass piece, with a delicate touch of coloured glass placed exactly at the right moment. A glass eye is alchemy and art. It requires patience, precision, and a finicky attention to detail.

  For Siegfried, it was more than that. He had his tools of the trade, the many cylindrical tubes of cryolite glass, the colouring glass, the Bunsen burners, the shaping tools, the pliers. He had scars on his fingers from burning them as he turned the glass, rolling it at an even pace to shape the small masterpiece. Yes, a masterpiece! Every glass eye had to be a masterpiece of his making. How many times had he blown air to shape the orb? How many times had he spun the hot glass into the required shape? How many times had he purified with fire, mated colour to colour with touch, and then detailed it all with precision?

  Cryolite is the only glass material used for the prosthetic glass eye. The milky-white glass becomes translucent at high temperatures, becoming malleable and easy to manipulate. The moment the white cryolite changes to clear, a perfect sphere must be blown. It stretches slightly into a delicate bubble and then it is cut away from the tube. Next, coloured glass is put onto the whitening sphere with an array of colouring rods, by touching and inlaying coloured glass into the hot cryolite. Eyes are not merely blue or brown or green; eyes are a kaleidoscope of little shapes and colours, as layered and as dense as an Impressionist painting. From a distance, an eye may appear one colour or another, but the art is to see that each iris is a tapestry of hues and rings and specks. Every shade, every fleck, is another bit of glass, carefully chosen, heated, and placed. Layer by layer by layer by layer. After the iris, it is time for the pupil to be added. The ocularist uses a shiny black glass, and this is perhaps the trickiest moment. Get the pupil wrong and an eye will look crossed, wonky, off-kilter. Its placement must be exact to the seeing eye, not a fraction off. Finally, the anterior chamber of the eye, the cornea, must be reproduced. Through this, the design of the iris gets its own spatial depth which should complement the sitter’s seeing eye, giving the person, repossessed of an eye, balance, confidence, and beauty.

  For Siegfried, the process was never the alchemy. The alchemy was in the unknown. Something he could never explain to the makers of acrylic prosthesis. The eye had to be a reflection. Something from the sitter’s soul had to be present in each and every eye he made. A glass eye didn’t just match the other eye, it had to do much more, and, although the glass eye could not see, it also could not lie. The eye might be said to be the mirror to the soul, but a seeing eye could also evade, look away, and deny. Siegfried’s creations would never do that. Because he always captured a little of the wearer’s soul, trapped it in the darkness of the pupil, his glass eyes reflected an inner truth.

  What had Siegfried seen in Johnny’s soul? At first, he seemed just a shy and unassuming boy. Hesitant and polite with just enough curiosity to see him through the adventures of life. But after two or three visits he began to see something else. The boy who climbed too high then fell to the earth was another Icarus. He was insecure and unassuming because his eye, his current acrylic eye, did not reflect his soul at all and so his true nature was half hidden. His soul was deep-thinking and poetic, but it also had a desire to reach higher heights, to reach toward the heavens even if it meant the failure of a fall. What did the boy need most? Courage. And the only way to force courage was to display an honest truth at all times. To strip away all artifice, and to lay bare every vulnerability.

  And so he began. The flame was a blue hot torch. It engulfed the glass, encircled it like hellfire. But Siegfried had never feared hellfire. He used it. He harnessed the flame, used it for his own purpose. The flame that destroys is the flame that creates and the glass that melts is the glass that forms. The layers of colours are the many layers of one’s understanding, and the black of the pupil is the depth of a soul.

  Siegfried worked through the night, both eyes straining for exact precision. That is the irony of it. A man with one eye could never be an ocularist, because spatial awareness, balance, and the ability to see well enough to work in infinitesimal detail were required.

  How many more masterpieces would he be able to make before he grew too old, too shaky, too tired or until his eyesight lessened? He had time yet. Maybe twenty years or more. But who would learn from him? Who would make this boy’s replacement eye when he became a middle-aged man and Siegfried was no more?

  He could cry from loneliness. Cry that when his parents died they left him to carry the torch, but he had somehow let them down. Generations of ocularists, and it all stopped here with him, in his work studio. Alone.

  He put down his torch, waited for the boy’s eye to become cool to the touch and then held it in his hand. Yes, it seemed fine indeed. He could almost see the entire boy in the eye he held. Tomorrow he would know for sure. Tomorrow would be the test. He would know if he succeeded when Johnny opened his newly placed eye, looked into a hand mirror to see, from the other eye, his new glass eye reflected back at him. Equal. And balanced.

  What had she run away from? Shame? In the innocence of her youth, she believed that shame would not cross the ocean. It would not find her in a new world. There, she could re-create herself, be whomever she wished to be and have a new lease on life. Yet here she was, back in the home of her youth, and the pull, the yank on her heart, was strong.

  She was back in the land she swore she would never see again. Not back for herself, but for the good of her son. That was the desire, the impetus of her trip. And yet, it seemed to be affecting her on a cellular level. She knew that every memory was being reopened because of Siegfried. Here was a man who knew the sins of her father and yet, even with that shame, he still treated her with kindness, still seemed to listen to her, to drink in her words. Here was a man who seemed present.

  She could come back every other year for a new eye as long as the boy was growing. She would have a reason and, with that, the thought of a two- or three-week escape every other year, she could endure the rest. The indifference. The invisibility. Her husband’s wandering eye.

  Bowling! That’s what it came down to. She could see no point in it. A big, hard ball, hurled down a laneway in order to knock things down. Pins. That is what they were called. Pins. But why knock them down only to have them set back up again? What was the point? And the noise in those places as the balls rolled along. And people yelling out, “STRRRRRIKE!” It wasn’t as if it were a real sport where one gets fit! Just a stupid pastime where people could eat too many french fries and drink sweet, fizzy pop. And laugh too hard at bad jokes.

  And flirt.

  Yes, Miss Argyle was part of his bowling team. Every week her husband went, straight after dinner, to help out the team. What about helping around the house? Dishes washed after dinner or the table cleared?

  “You could come if you wanted to,” he once said to her. But when she got her coat, pretending that she might join him, he suddenly changed his tune. Said that there were no more spots on the team.

  “I could record the scores,” she’d replied.

  “Naw, that�
��s Jean’s job.”

  “Jean?”

  She didn’t really have to ask because she knew that Jean was Miss Argyle.

  So what was it about Siegfried? Why did he seem so different from her husband? And wasn’t changing men like swapping deck chairs on the Titanic?

  For one thing, Siegfried didn’t assume. He asked questions. He listened. Like the time he had taken the two of them to the Heidelberg Castle to see the ruins. A little outing, he had called it. A bit of sightseeing, a bit of fun, before getting to work on the eye. And so he drove them all the way to Heidelberg to see the castle. Gosh, how he marched about with such confidence, as though the castle had once belonged to him.

  “We can take the boat down the Rhine, too!” he had enthused to Johnny. “But be very careful because we will go past the rock where the Lorelei wait and their singing could drive you mad.”

  “Who are the Lorelei?” Johnny had asked.

  “Ah, the Lorelei! Some people think there are three maidens who brush their long golden hair and some think it is only one.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think that they are beautiful sisters who have all had their hearts broken by men who were not worthy of them. And so they sing a haunting song of their sorrow and then, only then, do they remember that they have power.”

  “Magical powers?”

  “Oh, yes. You see they have beautiful pale hair and they brush it. It is long and it falls down to their waists in waves like the waves of that river over there. And when men hear their song and see their beauty they are enchanted and they lose their souls to them. But I think that any man who loses his soul to a beautiful woman actually wants to be caught by her!”

  “The Lorelei wouldn’t catch me! I don’t care about music. A song would never catch me. Just some sad girls singing. It’s silly!” Johnny had been adamant.