From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

by E. L. Konigsburg

“Yes I did.”

  “Did you cheat?” he asked.

  “Jamie, when the stakes are high, I never cheat. I consider myself too important to do that.”

  Jamie asked, “How come you don’t sell the sketch? You could get quite a boodle for it. Being that it matches up with the statue and all.”

  “I need having the secret more than I need the money,” I told him.

  I knew that Claudia understood. Jamie looked puzzled.

  “Thank you for sharing your secret with us,” Claudia whispered.

  “How do you know that we’ll keep your secret?” Jamie asked.

  “Now, now, a boy who cheats at cards should be able to answer that.”

  Jamie’s face broke into a huge grin. “Bribery!” he exclaimed. “You’re going to bribe us. Hallelujah! Tell me. I’m ready. What’s the deal?”

  I laughed. “The deal is this: you give me the details of your running away, and I’ll give you the sketch.”

  Jamie gasped. “That doesn’t sound like bribery. That doesn’t even sound like you, Mrs. Frankweiler. You’re smarter than that. How do you know that I won’t slip about your secret as I did about the museum?”

  That boy really amused me. “You’re right, Jamie. I am smarter than that. I’ve got a method to keep you slip-proof about the sketch.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m not going to give you the sketch outright. I’m going to leave it to you in my will. You won’t tell my secret because if you do, I’ll write you out of my will. You would lose all that money. You said that the sketch was worth quite a boodle. So you’re going to be very good about keeping this secret. Claudia will keep quiet for a different reason. Her reason happens to be the same as mine.”

  “Which is what?” Jamie asked.

  “Simply because it is a secret. It will enable her to return to Greenwich different.”

  Claudia looked at Jamie and nodded. Something I had just said made sense.

  I continued, “Returning with a secret is what she really wants. Angel had a secret and that made her exciting, important. Claudia doesn’t want adventure. She likes baths and feeling comfortable too much for that kind of thing. Secrets are the kind of adventure she needs. Secrets are safe, and they do much to make you different. On the inside where it counts. I won’t actually be getting a secret from you; I’ll be getting details. I’m a collector of all kinds of things besides art,” I said pointing to my files.

  “If all those files are secrets, and if secrets make you different on the inside, then your insides, Mrs. Frankweiler, must be the most mixed-up, the most different insides I’ve ever seen. Or any doctor has ever seen, either.”

  I grinned. “There’s a lifetime of secrets in those files. But there’s also just a lot of newspaper clippings. Junk. It’s a hodgepodge. Like my art collection. Now, you’ll tell me all about your running away, and I’ll add that to my files.”

  Whereas Jamie’s excitement bubbled out of him in grins and spurts of jittering around the room, Claudia’s excitement flowed not bubbled. I could see that she was a little surprised. She had known that Angel would have the answer, but she had expected it to be a loud bang, not a quiet soaking in. Of course secrets make a difference. That was why planning the runaway had been such fun; it was a secret. And hiding in the museum had been a secret. But they weren’t permanent; they had to come to an end. Angel wouldn’t. She could carry the secret of Angel inside her for twenty years just as I had. Now she wouldn’t have to be a heroine when she returned home … except to herself. And now she knew something about secrets that she hadn’t known before.

  I could tell that she felt happy. Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place, but there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around. Claudia could have kept her doubts to herself, but she was an honest child, an honorable child.

  “Mrs. Frankweiler,” she said swallowing hard, “I really love the sketch. I really do. I love it. Just love, love, love it. But don’t you think you ought to give it to the museum. They’re just dying to find out whether the statue is real or not.”

  “Nonsense! What a conscience you suddenly have. I want to give it to you. In exchange. If you and Jamie want to give it to the museum after you inherit it, then you give it to the museum. I won’t let the museum people near here. If I could keep them out of Connecticut altogether, I would. I don’t want them to have it while I’m alive.”

  Claudia wiped her forehead with the sleeve of her sweater and asked, “Why not?”

  “I’ve thought about that for a long time, and I’ve decided ‘why not?’ What they’ll do is start investigating the authenticity of the sketch. They’ll call in authorities from all over the world. They’ll analyze the ink. And the paper. They’ll research all his illustrated notes and compare, compare, compare. In short, they’ll make a science of it. Some will say ‘yes.’ Some will say ‘no.’ Scholars will debate about it. They’ll poll all the authorities, and probably the majority will agree that the note and the statue are really the work of Michelangelo. At least that’s what they should conclude. But some stubborn ones won’t agree, and thereafter the statue and the sketch will appear in books with a big question mark. The experts don’t believe in coincidence as much as I do, and I don’t want them to throw doubt on something that I’ve felt always, and actually known for about twenty years.”

  Claudia’s eyes widened, “But, Mrs. Frankweiler, if there is the slightest doubt that either the statue or the sketch is a forgery, don’t you want to know? Don’t you want the last little bit of doubt cleared up?”

  “No,” I answered abruptly.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m eighty-two years old. That’s why. There now, Jamie, you see, I slip too. Now I’ve told you how old I am.”

  Jamie looked at his sister and asked, “What’s that got to do with anything, Claude?” Claudia shrugged.

  “I’ll tell you what it’s got to do with it,” I said. “I’m satisfied with my own research on the subject. I’m not in the mood to learn anything new.”

  Claudia said, “But, Mrs. Frankweiler, you should want to learn one new thing every day. We did even at the museum.”

  “No,” I answered, “I don’t agree with that. I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything. And you can feel it inside you. If you never take time out to let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you. You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything with them. It’s hollow.”

  Both children were quiet, and I continued. “I’ve gathered a lot of facts about Michelangelo and Angel. And I’ve let them grow inside me for a long time. Now I feel that I know. That’s enough for that. But there is one new thing that I’d like to experience. Not know. Experience. And that one thing is impossible.”

  “Nothing is impossible,” Claudia said. She sounded to me exactly like a bad actress in a bad play-unreal.

  “Claudia,” I said patiently, “When one is eighty-two years old, one doesn’t have to learn one new thing every day, and one knows that some things are impossible.”

  “What would you like to experience that is impossible?” Jamie asked.

  “Right now, I’d like to know how your mother feels.”

  “You keep saying that she’s frantic. Why do you want to feel frantic?” This came from Claudia. Now she sounded like the real Claudia Kincaid.

  “It’s an experience I would like to have because it’s part of a bigger experience I want.”

  Claudia said, “You mean you’d like to be a mother?”

  Jamie leaned toward Claudia and whispered in the loudest, wettest whisper I have ever heard, “Of course that’s impossible. Her husband is dead. You can’t be a mother without a husband.”

  Claudia poked Jamie, “Never call people dead; it makes others feel bad. Say ‘dece
ased’ or ‘passed away.,”

  “Come now, children. Put away the file. You must tell me all about your adventure. All, all, all about it. What you thought and what you said and how you managed to carry off the whole crazy caper.”

  10

  I KEPT THE CHILDREN UP LATE GETTING THE DETAILS. Jamie and I played war while Claudia talked into the tape recorder. Jamie ended up with two aces and twelve cards more than I; the game cost me thirty-four cents. I still don’t know how he does it. It was my deck of cards; but I was somewhat preoccupied listening to Claudia and interrupting her with questions. And then there was that telephone call from the children’s parents. I knew you’d tell them, Saxonberg. I knew it! What a combination you are: soft heart and hard head. It was all I could do to persuade them to stay home and let me deliver the children in the morning. Mrs. Kincaid kept asking if they were bruised or maimed. I think she has read too many accounts of lost children in the newspapers. You realize now why I insisted that they stay overnight. I wanted all sides of the bargain kept, and I had to get my information. Besides I had promised them a ride home in the Rolls Royce, and I never cheat when the stakes are high.

  When it came to be Jamie’s turn to talk into the tape recorder, I thought that I would never get him to quit fussing with the switches. He enjoyed saying something and then erasing it. Finally, I scolded him, “You’re not Sir Lawrence Olivier playing Hamlet, you know. All I want are the facts and how you felt. Not a theatrical production.”

  “You want me to be accurate, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but I also want you to finish.”

  Claudia asked for a tour of the house while Jamie told his story. She asked about everything. We rode the elevator up to the third floor, and she went from one room to the next. I hadn’t been through the entire house for a long time, so I enjoyed the tour, too. We talked; we both enjoyed that also. Claudia told me about her routine at home. When we came back to the black marble bathroom, she told me how she came to take a bath there earlier. I allowed her to pick the bedroom where she would sleep that night.

  Very early the next morning I had Sheldon drive them to Greenwich. I’m enclosing a copy of his report for your amusement, Saxonberg; you ought to be in a mood to laugh now.

  The boy, madam, spent the first five minutes of the trip pushing every button in the back seat. I transported them in the Rolls Royce as you requested. He pushed some buttons at least twelve times; others I stopped counting at five. He seemed to regard the button panel, madam, as some sort of typewriter or piano or I.B.M. computer. Without realizing it he pushed the button to the intercom on and neglected to push it off. In this way I overheard all their conversation; they thought they were privately sealed behind the glass screen that divides the front seat from the back. The girl was quiet while the other tested things. Everything, I might add.

  Finally, the girl remarked to the other, “Why do you suppose she sold Angel in the first place? Why didn’t she just donate it to the museum?”

  “Because she’s tight. That’s why. She said so,” the boy answered.

  “That’s not the reason. If she were tight, and she knew it was worth so much, she would never have sold it for $225.”

  Thank goodness the girl interested him in conversation. He stopped pushing buttons. Besides neglecting to turn off the intercom, he also neglected to turn off the windshield wipers on the rear window. I might add, madam, that it was not raining.

  “Well, she sold it at auction, silly. At an auction you have to sell it to the highest bidder. No one bid higher than $225. It’s that simple.”

  The girl replied, “She didn’t sell it for the money. She would have shown her evidence if she really wanted a big price. She sold it for the fun of it. For excitement.”

  “Maybe she didn’t have room for it anymore.”

  “In that museum of a house? There’re rooms upstairs that… oh! Jamie, the statue is only two feet tall. She could have tucked it into any corner.”

  “Why do you think she sold it?”

  The girl thought a minute. (I was hoping she would answer soon, madam. Before the boy got interested in the buttons again.) “Because after a time having a secret and nobody knowing you have a secret is no fun. And although you don’t want others to know what the secret is, you want them to at least know you have one.”

  I observed from the rear view mirror, madam, that the little boy grew quiet. He looked at the girl and said, “You know, Claude, I’m going to save my money and my winnings, and I’m going to visit Mrs. Frankweiler again.” A long pause, then, “There’s something about our running away that I forgot to say into the tape recorder.”

  The girl said nothing.

  “Wanna come, Claude? We won’t tell anyone.”

  “How much did you win last night?” the girl asked.

  “Only thirty-four cents. She’s ‘a lot sharper than Bruce.”

  “Maybe my twenty-five cents from the cornflakes came already. That would make fifty-nine.” The girl was silent for a few minutes before she asked, “Do you think she meant that stuff about motherhood?”

  The boy shrugged his shoulders. “Let’s visit her every time we save enough money. We won’t tell anyone. We won’t stay overnight. We’ll just tell Mom and Dad that we’re going bowling or something, and we’ll take a train up instead.”

  “We’ll adopt her,” the girl suggested. “We’ll become her kids, sort of.”

  “She’s too old to be a mother. She said so herself. Besides, we already have one.”

  “She’ll become our grandmother, then, since ours are deceased.”

  “And that will be our secret that we won’t even share with her. She’ll be the only woman in the world to become a grandmother with never becoming a mother first.”

  I drove the car to the address they gave me, madam. The shades were up, and I could see a quite handsome man and a young matron watching by the window. I also thought I saw our own Mr. Saxonberg. The boy had opened the doors even before I had completely stopped. That is a very dangerous thing to do. A much younger creature, also a boy, came running out of the house immediately ahead of the others. As I drove away, this younger one was saying, “Boy! what a car. Hey, Claude, I’ll be your sponsibility the rest of …”

  The children, madam, neglected to say thank you.

  Well, Saxonberg, that’s why I’m leaving the drawing of Angel to Claudia and Jamie Kincaid, your two lost grandchildren that you were so worried about. Since they intend to make me their grandmother, and you already are their grandfather, that makes us—oh, well, I won’t even think about that. You’re not that good a poker player.

  Rewrite my will with a clause about my bequeathing the drawing to them. Also put in a clause about that bed I mentioned, too. I guess I ought to donate it to the Metropolitan Museum. I haven’t really begun to like donating things. You’ll notice that everyone is getting these things after I’m dead. I should say passed away. After you have all those things written into my will, I’ll sign the new version. Sheldon and Parks can be witnesses. The signing of the will will take place in the restaurant of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. You’ll come there with me, dear Saxonberg, or lose me, your best client.

  I wonder if Claudia and Jamie will come visit me again. I wouldn’t mind if they did. You see, I still have an edge; I know one bit more of a secret than they do. They don’t know that their grandfather has been my lawyer for forty-one years. (And I recommend that for your own good, you not tell them, Saxonberg.)

  By the way I heard a radio interview by the new Commissioner of Parks in New York City. He said that his budget had been cut. When asked by a reporter where the money that should have been spent for the parks was going, the commissioner replied that most of it was going towards increased security for the Metropolitan Museum. Suspecting that something special had prompted this move, I asked Sheldon to call his friend, Morris the guard, to find out if anything unusual had been discovered lately.

  Morris reported t
hat a violin case was found in a sarcophagus last week. A trumpet case was found two days later. Morris says that guards who have worked at the museum for a year have seen everything; those who have worked there for six months have seen half of everything. They once discovered a set of false teeth on the seat of an Etruscan chariot. They sent the children’s cases to Lost and Found. They are still there. Full of gray-washed underwear and a cheap transistor radio. No one has claimed them yet.

  AN AFTERWORD FROM THE AUTHOR

  In 2002, E. L. Konigsburg wrote an afterword for a special thirty-fifth anniversary edition of From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. It is reprinted here, along with material from the 1968 Newbery-Caldecott Awards Dinner.

  I WAS ASKED TO WRITE A FOREWORD TO THIS 35TH anniversary edition of From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, but I myself never read forewords until after I’ve read the book, and then I read them only if I really liked the book and want to know something more. So instead of a foreword, I have written an afterword and hope that you are reading it now because you liked this book and want to know something more.

  Since its first publication in 1967, there have been a lot of somethings-more that have changed New York City, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and me.

  Strangely, the events of September 11, 2001, that have changed forever both the conscience and configuration of New York would not have changed Claudia and Jamie. The skyline that they would have seen when they arrived in Manhattan would not have been very different from that which we now (sadly) see. The twin towers of the World Trade Center were not completed until 1973, six years after From the Mixed-up Files was first published. The conscience of the city, too, has changed since the terrorist attacks. The spirit of the city is courteous and patriotic now; in 1967, New York was the scene of student protests, antiwar demonstrations, and race riots. But Claudia and Jamie would have been as unaffected by the spirit of patriotism and cooperation now as they were by the spirit of protest and contentiousness then, for neither civic pride nor civil disobedience was part of their emotional landscape. Theirs was a journey inside, and Claudia’s war was with herself.