Entwined

by La Plante, Lynda

Louis read the articles while Helen paced up and down. “If she was adopted in Berlin, perhaps this is the connection. Louis, I am sure she was adopted…”

  “I did not know she was adopted, believe me, I didn’t know. Where is all this leading us? If you think there is a connection, what should I do?”

  “Just be honest with me, trust me. You must trust me, because if you don’t, then there is no point in my being here.”

  He took her hand in his and gave her a small bow. “I apologize. I am grateful to you. I don’t really know how I would have coped without you.”

  His hesitancy was touching, he seemed so vulnerable. “I know what you’re thinking, Helen. But my mother gives me a small allowance; everything is tied up in trust funds for my children. When Vebekka came into her money, it was a relief, it meant I could care for her and continue to live as I always had. My decision to have her institutionalized is in no way connected to her fortune—it’s gone. In fact, I will be dependent on my sons for the upkeep of the chateau, the apartments.”

  “And your life, Louis? What about your life?”

  “I still have my allowance, and I can sell the polo stable. It will break my heart, but if it comes to that, then so be it…I think it is time we went to bed, if you will excuse me…”

  He slipped his arm around her shoulder. “Good night, Helen.” He gave her a light kiss on the cheek.

  She walked toward her bedroom, not even turning as she said: “Good night, Louis.”

  She was certain that one could be very easily drawn into a life of luxury, of Rolls-Royces, of fabulous restaurants, flowers and expensive gifts. Louis was a very handsome man, his light, almost careless kiss made her all the more aware of how much she was attracted to him, and how easy it would be to take their relationship one step further. Helen knew he had mistresses, but she also knew that such a life was not for her. Suddenly she faced her own loneliness. She had always justified being alone, thinking to herself it was her choice; she even considered herself a very private person.

  “You are so private, Helen, that no one even knows you exist!”

  She said the words out loud, to her own reflection in the bathroom mirror. She brushed her teeth, washed her face, and returned to her bedroom—everything was neat and tidy, the bed cover was turned down in anticipation. She lay for a long while staring up at the ceiling. It was time she returned to Paris. She had given enough of her time, and with very little thanks. But then she remembered Vebekka. It had been at her instigation that Vebekka had come to Berlin. Helen was too deeply involved to extricate herself. But from now on she would distance herself from Louis.

  Helen left the hotel very early the next morning. She did not wake Louis, but left a note saying she would meet him at Dr. Franks’s and to be sure he took the newspapers to the clinic.

  Helen looked along the taxi stand and saw the chatty driver who had taken them to Charlottenburg. He was dozing in his Mercedes. She tapped the window, and got in beside him.

  “Same address?”

  “Yes, the same! Frau Klapps, I want to get there before she leaves for work.”

  “No problem, there’s no traffic at this hour.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Inspector Heinz was at his desk by seven-thirty and began to plow through the vast amount of paperwork. He worked on until eight-thirty, then opened the morning paper. There was a large article on the front page with a picture, MAMA MAGDA DEAD. He read the piece, turned to the next page, and then flicked back. Now there was a coincidence: He had seen Ruda Kellerman entering Mama’s club on the same night Mama Magda had died. He scribbled a note on his ever-ready pad and continued to read, checking on the time because he wanted to be at the records bureau when it opened at nine.

  Rieckert came in with a black eye and a Band-Aid on his cheek. Torsen looked at him, and asked what kind of trouble he had run into. Reickert sat down. “Acting on your orders, sir, we tried to disband the hookers working off from the trailers. We warned them and told them to move their trailers. Out of nowhere, four big bastards jumped out, armed with iron bars, and they bloody beat us up. Kruger is in the hospital. ,,

  “Did you make any arrests?”

  “You must be joking. We hardly made it into the local station’s courtyard. We radioed them to open the gates for us. The bastards chased us, were on our tail for miles, their car was a hell of a lot faster than ours: a big four-door Mercedes! When we got there they banged and hammered on the gates. Have you heard about the damage they did?”

  “This is madness, are you telling me the pimps chased…chased the patrol car?”

  “Yeah!…overtook us twice, it was a near miss, one got me through the window—I had to have a stitch, cut my head open!”

  “Could you recognize them?”

  Rieckert sat bolt upright. “I’m not going back there, they’d bloody kill me. They’re huge, muscle guys!”

  Torsen’s attention returned to his desk. He looked down at the paper. “There will be war out there. Mama Magda’s died, last night. Most of those trailers are hers, so God knows what’s going to happen!”

  Rieckert leafed through the newspaper. “She must have been worth millions, I’m surprised nobody bumped her off before.”

  “It was a heart attack, she was over eighty…and the size of an elephant.”

  Reickert made himself more comfortable on the seat. “They open tonight, will you be using your ticket?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The circus, they gave us free tickets, remember? They open the big show tonight.”

  “I’d forgotten…yes, yes, I think I will use my two.”

  Reickert left for the kitchen and Torsen called the nursing home and asked to speak to Nurse Freda.

  “I have tickets for the circus…tonight, I’m sorry it’s short notice, but I was wondering…if you aren’t on duty, if you would care to…”

  Freda giggled that she would love it. She acted so pleased that Torsen blushed with embarrassment. They arranged to meet at seven.

  Torsen issued his orders for the day, and said if he was needed he could be found at the records bureau. He left, taking one of the few patrol cars in good condition.

  Tommy Kellerman was buried by a rabbi from the Oranienburger Tor area. His body was taken to a run-down quarter where Eastern Jews lived. No one attended his burial. The plain black coffin was taken from the morgue before sundown, as Ruda Kellerman had requested. The costs were forwarded to the station, and Torsen planned to pass them on to Ruda Kellerman, care of the circus.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Vebekka had slept soundly, and had even eaten some breakfast. She found herself in a small, white-walled room, with an old iron bed frame painted white. The chest of drawers was also white, but a bowl of flowers provided some color. At the center of the door there was a keyhole, but no handle on the inside. A white tiled bathroom was off the room, but it had no door and no mirror. There was no telephone.

  Dr. Franks drew up the only chair in the room.

  “How are you?”

  “I’m fine. Do I have to stay in this room?”

  “Only for a little while, then we’ll go into my study. You remember you were there yesterday?”

  She nodded. Franks told her that her husband had called and he would be in after breakfast. If she felt like it she could have a bath and get dressed. If she needed help, all she had to do was ring the bell by her bed, and Maja would be with her in no time.

  She put her head back and said: “They should never have brought me here, it’s very closed in, I feel it…”

  Franks cocked his head, and held her hand. “Feel what?”

  “I don’t know, a presence. I’ve felt it before, but not this close.”

  Franks threaded his fingers through her long perfect slim hands. “Maybe we will find out what this presence is, make it vanish.”

  She gave him a sad smile. “They’ve sent me away this time, haven’t they? Ah well…I suppose
it had to come.”

  “You are not away, Vebekka, you are here, in my clinic, until we sort things out. You do want me to help you, don’t you?”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “I don’t think anyone can help, I hoped He came closer to her. “I want more than hope, my dear. I want what you want, I want you to get well, I want you to help yourself, and for you to help me help you…okay?”

  He returned to his office and picked up his notes, carefully transcribed from the day before. He had underlined two passages:

  1. Get me to lie down and talk to me, so I would be calm.

  2. Put her in a cupboard and throw away the key.

  These were Vebekka’s own words, describing what her mother had done and had told her to do. Franks was sure that the key Vebekka’s mother had told her to throw away was at the root of her problems. He was so engrossed in thought that he hadn’t noticed right away that his phone was blinking. The baron had arrived, bringing the newspapers. He told the receptionist to show the baron in, a little irritated he was so early.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Frau Klapps opened the front door while eating a piece of toast. She was about to slam the door in Helen’s face, but Helen put her foot across the threshold.

  “I know this is an intrusion, but I have to speak to you. Please, I won’t take more than a few moments.”

  Lena turned and walked into the hall, pulling the door open. She led Helen into the living room.

  “I have to leave for the bus in fifteen minutes!”

  “I understand. I’d be happy to give you a lift to the bureau in my taxi.”

  Lena walked out of the room and returned carrying a cup of coffee, but did not offer Helen one. She stood with her back to the large bookcase.

  “I told you everything I know. I don’t see how I can assist you any further.”

  “You have worked at the records bureau for many years? Is that correct?”

  Lena nodded. She picked at a stain on her skirt with her fingernail, the same gray pleated shirt she had worn on Helen’s previous visit. She sat in the typist chair, looked to Helen as if to say, “You may continue.”

  “I have checked the hospitals for any record of your sister. You mentioned that she worked at one of the large hospitals just after the war, when she came back to Berlin. They all referred me to the records bureau. You head the bureau, don’t you?”

  Lena continued sipping her coffee. When Helen asked her just how long she had worked in the bureau, she swiveled slightly in the seat.

  “You have no right to pry into my affairs, Miss whatever-your-name-is. I have told you all I know. Now please I would like you to leave.”

  “If you won’t help me then you leave the baron and me no choice but to go over your head at the bureau. I want to know whether your sister adopted a child, and I want to know the background of this child. I don’t care, Frau Klapps, if the adoption was legal or illegal, all I am interested in is to try to help a woman who lives in a nightmare.”

  Lena stared into her empty coffee cup; a small muscle twitched at the side of her mouth.

  “We all have our nightmares.”

  “No, no, we don’t. Are you telling me that a sister, a sister you grew up with, didn’t make contact with you when she returned to Berlin, that she didn’t try to see you?”

  Lena looked up, her eyes filled with hatred—whether for Helen or her sister, Helen couldn’t tell. She banged the cup down on the table.

  Helen was losing patience; she didn’t mean her voice to rise but she couldn’t help herself. “All I want is to know more of Rebecca’s background, I am not interested in yours…”

  Lena whipped round. “Please keep your voice down, I don’t want my husband to hear you!”

  She clasped her hands together. “No one has ever been interested in me. When we were children it was always Rosa this, Rosa that. She was the beautiful one, the clever one. She had everything, looks, brains…everything. And you know something else? She was always happy, always smiling, as though she had some secret, something filling her life. My father doted on her, worshiped her…she broke his heart.”

  Lena tightened her lips. Helen remained silent.

  “She refused to listen to him. He pleaded with her to break off her relationship with David Goldberg, it was very embarrassing for him, for all of us. My father was a very well-respected scientist, with many connections, my brothers—” She lifted her hand to her forehead, as if unable to continue. She turned her back to Helen and faced the bookshelves. “When Mama died, I cooked and cleaned and waited hand and foot on him. But he wanted Rosa, always wanted Rosa. She made a fool of him, a fool of us all, but she refused to listen…and then, then she became pregnant.”

  Lena remained with her back to Helen, her arms wrapped around herself.

  Helen had to know more. “You told me Rosa had an abortion, but I need to…”

  “It was not an abortion.”

  Helen half rose to her feet: Rebecca was their daughter after all?

  “My father and my brothers locked her in the house, and my father…he performed the operation himself, he sterilized her.”

  Helen sat back, shocked.

  Lena’s hand shook as she patted the coiled bun at the nape of her neck, but she looked defiantly at Helen. “Rebecca is not my sister’s child.”

  Helen’s face remained neutral, but she pressed her hands firmly against her thighs.

  Lena moved closer, and stood in front of Helen. “I lied to you, I did see my sister again. She was working at the main refugee hospital with children picked up from the streets, from the camps, from everywhere. It was my job to keep a record of how many, of their names—that is if they knew their names. My father and my brothers were dead. I lived in the cellar, in the rubble of our old home, for years…and I hoped, hoped she would come back one day.”

  Lena repeated the same dismissive wave, as if she were shooing away a fly. “One day, smiling, she drew this child forward, she said…‘This is my daughter, Lena, this is Rebecca.’

  Helen stood up. “You have a record?…the child’s last name?…the adoption papers?”

  “There were no papers, no documents. The child couldn’t even talk. She came from Birkenau.”

  Helen closed her eyes, and pressed her fingers to her eyelids. Suddenly she heard a loud banging, and her eyes flew open. Lena was hurling books from the bookshelf.

  “She left me, she left her family, and all I have are these…these, and a broken-down man! Rosa was happy, she was always happy!”

  Helen reached for her handbag and picked up her coat. Lena began to weep uncontrollably. “Why, why did you come here? Go away, leave us alone.”

  Helen asked gently if she could offer Lena a ride; Lena shook her head, wiping her face with her hands. “No, just go away.”

  One of the large medical books had fallen by the door to the living room. It was an old volume, and it had opened to a picture of a brain, with diagrams pointing to the front lobe. The World of Hypnosis.

  Helen picked up the book. “Hypnosis? Frau Klapps, do you know if your sister was ever…” The book was snatched out of her hand before she could say another word. Lena held the book close to her chest.

  “This was my father’s, this was my father’s book, go away…Go away!”

  Helen left, the door slamming shut behind her. She ran down the steps to the waiting taxi.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Ruda was in high spirits, singing in the shower. She washed her hair and tied a big towel around it. She called out to Luis that she would be only a moment longer. He shouted back that coffee was on the table, he was going over to check the meat delivery truck, it had just arrived.

  She whistled as she sat down to breakfast, fresh rolls and black coffee; the newspaper lay folded on the table with a large bunch of flowers. Luis had printed a card with “Congratulations!” scrawled across it; she smiled and poured herself a cup. She bit into the bread and opened
the paper—then slammed it onto the table: MAMA MAGDA DEAD.

  Ruda read the article, and then leaned on her elbows, staring at the fat woman’s face. Then she laughed, it was very fortuitous. With Kellerman dead, it was as though luck were suddenly on her side. She had a contract with Ringling Bros., the show was to open that night, and she was feeling good. Even Luis had remained sober and seemed as pleased at her success as she was.

  She finished her breakfast, then took a pair of scissors and cut out the article. Folding it neatly, she got up and went into her bedroom. She pulled up the stool, and stood on it to find her black box. She felt around the cupboard and took it out, putting it down on her dressing table. She bent down to fold back the carpet and get the tiny key. When she straightened up, her eyes fixed on the old box. She turned it around, and saw the scratches on the hinges, the indentation where Grimaldi had tried to force it open. She had replaced the lock after Tommy Kellerman had broken it, now Luis had done the same. It could be no one else. Luis.

  She unlocked the box and knew immediately that the contents had been touched. Her heart hammered inside her chest as she took out the small ribboned pile of clippings. She slipped the new cutting under the ribbon, then relocked the box. She felt as if the contents were burning into her hand…the memories began, like scars opening, bleeding…

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Inspector Heinz checked his watch, it was after nine. He asked the receptionist again if he could go into the records room, and she apologized. Frau Klapps was never late, and she was sure she would have called in if she was not coming. She suggested Torsen have a cup of coffee somewhere. Torsen scribbled a note asking for both records to be ready for him, together with any record of a marriage license between T. Kellerman and a woman of the same name, Ruda.

  Torsen headed for Mama Magda’s; he wanted to know who was taking over the club and to discuss the problem of the influx of prostitutes.

  Eric was checking over an order for flowers while examining swatches of fabric for redecorating the club.

  Torsen pushed through the beaded curtain, getting one string caught in his lapel. Eric looked up fleetingly, then returned to his color charts.