Great House

by Nicole Krauss

  Gigi led the way up the stairs, still nibbling at his cookie, such a weightless, nimble child, or maybe he just seemed so against the dark, oppressive architecture of Cloudenberg. When we reached the landing, I glanced at the Brueghel to see if the boy was gone, the man with the hat drowned. But the figures were too small to make out from where I stood, and Gigi was already hurrying ahead, turning the corner. Finishing the last bite of cookie, he brushed the crumbs onto his nubby pajama pants, took a small Matchbox car out of his pocket, and ran it along the wall. Then he slipped the car back into his pocket and took my hand in his. We walked down one long corridor after another, ducked through doors and up stairs, and as we walked, Gigi sometimes leaping, ambling, and scurrying ahead, sometimes doubling back to take up my hand again, I felt myself losing my bearings, a feeling that was not at all unpleasant. The surroundings became more and more stripped of ornament, until at last we were climbing a narrow set of wooden stairs that wound higher and higher, and I realized that we were inside one of the castle’s turrets. At the top was a small room with four narrow windows, one facing each direction. The glass of one was cracked and the wind came through. Gigi switched on a lamp whose shade was covered in stickers of animals and rainbows, some of which someone had, in a moment of boredom perhaps, attempted to scratch off. On the floor were blankets, a pillow with a faded floral case, and some shabby stuffed animals piled together to form a kind of disheveled nest. There was also half a loaf of stale bread and an uncapped jar of jam. I had the feeling we’d arrived at one of those animal burrows one finds in children’s books, filled with homey furniture, with all of the trappings of human life on a miniature scale, only instead of descending down under the earth we had ascended into the sky, and, instead of warmth and comfort, the boy’s feral hideaway reeked of isolation and loneliness. Gigi went to one of the windows, looked out, and shivered, and as he did I had a vision of our turret from the outside, a shining glass cabin containing two experiments in human life floating in a dark sea. There were three or four metal soldiers with chipped paint frozen in battle on the sill. I wanted to put my arm around the boy, to tell him that everything would be all right in the end, not perfect, not even happy perhaps, but enough. But I didn’t move to touch or console him, and didn’t speak for fear that I might startle him, and because I lacked the proper words in French. Taped to one wall was a photograph of a woman with wild hair and a scarf thrown around her neck. Gigi turned and saw me looking at it. He came over, took the photo down off the wall, and placed it under the pillow. Then he slipped under the pile of blankets, curled into a ball, and fell asleep.

  I slept, too. When I woke for the second time during that long night Gigi was snuggled against me like a cat and the sky was turning pale. Not wanting to leave him alone, I lifted him into my arms as gently as I could. Having never had siblings, he was, as far as I can remember, the first child I ever lifted and carried, and I was surprised by his lightness. Years later, carrying my own son, mine and Yoav’s, I would sometimes think of Gigi. Stirring, he muttered something incomprehensible, sighed, and resumed sleeping on my shoulder. I walked down the stairs with him, his body limp and legs dangling, back through doors and down corridors, and by some trick or accidental shortcut I emerged at last through a low door that led into a short corridor, which itself spilled into another corridor that finally deposited me in the large foyer where Leclercq had first greeted us under the enormous glass light fixture, just barely swaying above his head like the sword of Damocles, or so I thought then, unnerved as I was by the castle at night, which I only had the courage to navigate because Gigi continued to exhale his warm and gentle breath in my ear. I retraced the steps Yoav, Leclercq, and I had taken the day before. Passing the large mirror again, I half expected to find the boy exposed as a ghost, void of reflection, but, no—there, in what little light there was, I could make out the outlines of our two figures. When I came to the door, or what I thought was the door Leclercq had unlocked for us in order to show us the view of the garden, I shifted Gigi’s weight into one arm and tried the handle. It gave way easily. Leclercq must have forgotten to lock it behind us, I thought, and stepped into the room, intending just to glance for a moment at the view of the garden in the gray light of dawn, a light I’ve always loved for the threadbare fragility it brings out in all things. But the room I now stood in was dark and had no view, or the view had been cut off by heavy drapes, and though it was possible that Leclercq had returned to draw them before going to sleep, it seemed unlikely. As the seconds passed, I began to sense that the room was far larger than the one I had previously been in, more like a hall than a room, and I became aware of some sort of mute presence in the shadows, shadows, I soon was able to make out, that were crowded with shapes of various sizes assembled in long rows, a great, melancholy mass that seemed to extend in all directions before dissolving into the far corners of the vaulted hall. Although I could see very little, I sensed what the shapes were. I was suddenly reminded of a photograph I’d come across some years earlier while researching the work of Emanuel Ringelblum for one of my college history courses, an image of a large group of Jews in Umschlagplatz, adjacent to the Warsaw Ghetto, all of them crouching or sitting on shapeless bags or on the ground, awaiting deportation to Treblinka. The photo had struck me at the time, not just because of the sea of eyes all turned toward the camera suggesting that the scene was subdued enough that the photographer could make himself heard, but because of the thoughtful composition which the photographer had clearly taken pains over, taking note of the way the pale faces topped with dark hats and scarves were mirrored by the seemingly infinite pattern of light and dark bricks of the wall behind them that trapped them in. Behind that wall was a rectangular building with rows of square windows. The whole gave the sense of a geometric order so powerful that it became inevitable, where each common material—Jews, bricks, and windows—had its proper and irrevocable place. As my eyes now adjusted and I began to see, rather than just vaguely feel with some unnameable sense, the tables, chairs, bureaus, trunks, lamps, and desks all standing at attention in the hall as if waiting for a summons, I remembered why that photograph of the Jews in Umschlagplatz had come back to me at exactly that moment, remembered, in other words, that it had been during that same period of research that I’d also come across photographs of various synagogues and Jewish warehouses that had been used as depots for the furniture and household items the Gestapo looted from the homes of deported or murdered Jews, photographs showing vast armies of upended chairs, like a dining hall closed for the night, towers of folded linens, and shelves of sorted silver spoons, knives, and forks.

  I don’t know how long I stood there, at the edge of that field of unemployed furniture. By then Gigi had grown heavy in my arms. I closed the door behind me, and found my way back to our room. Yoav was still asleep. I lay Gigi down next to him on the bed and watched them, two motherless boys, asleep side by side. Something creaked and strained in the low depths of my stomach. I was aware that it had been left to me to watch over them, and, while the sky slowly lightened, I did. Remembering it now, I can’t help but feel that the soul of the child Yoav and I would have together, little David’s soul, at that moment crossed quietly, unnoticed, through the room. My eyes became heavy, then closed altogether. When I woke the bed was empty, and the shower was on in the bathroom. Yoav emerged in a cloud of steam, freshly shaven. There was no sign of Gigi, and when Yoav made no mention of him, neither did I.

  Breakfast was served in the smaller of the two dining rooms, at a table still large enough to seat sixteen or twenty. At some point in the night or early morning, Kathelijn, the maid, had returned. Leclercq sat down at the head of the table, dressed in the same sweater vest he’d worn the day before, though now he wore a gray sports jacket on top. I searched his face for some evidence of cruelty, but found only the dilapidated features of an old man. In the daylight, all I had imagined about the hall of furniture seemed absurd. The obvious conclusion was that it had been collec
ted from the many estates the Leclercq family had owned before they went bankrupt and were forced to sell them, or simply that it had been moved to that room from the unused parts of the castle.

  There was no sign of Gigi. The maid appeared at various stages of the breakfast, but always retreated quickly to the kitchen. I thought she looked at me with a touch of displeasure, but couldn’t be sure. Toward the end of the meal our host turned to me. I understand you met my grandnephew, he said. Confusion clouded Yoav’s face. Leclercq continued: I hope he didn’t disturb you. He often gets hungry at night. Normally Kathelijn leaves a snack by his bed. I must have forgotten. Who do you mean? Yoav asked, turning from me to Leclercq and back again. My niece’s son, said Leclercq, buttering a piece of toast. Is he visiting? Yoav asked. He’s lived here with us since last year, Leclercq said. I’m very fond of him. It’s quite a change to have a child running around the place. What about his mother? I interrupted. There was an uncomfortable pause. The muscles in Leclercq’s face strained as he stirred his coffee with a small silver spoon. She doesn’t exist for us, he said.

  It was clear that nothing more would be said on the subject, and after an awkward silence Leclercq apologized for having to hurry off, explaining that he planned to leave for town soon to have his glasses fixed. Then he stood abruptly and asked Yoav to follow him so at last they could discuss whatever it was we had come so far for. I was left alone. I got up and peeked into the kitchen, hoping to catch sight of Gigi. It saddened me to think I wouldn’t see him again. There was a tray laid with a child’s cup and bowl, but the kitchen was empty.

  We loaded our bags into the trunk of the Citroën. A large cardboard box lay across the backseat. Leclercq came out to see us off. It was a cloudless winter day, everything bright and sharpened against the sky. I looked up at the turrets of the castle, hoping to see a movement, or even the boy’s face, but the windows were white and blind in the sunlight. Come again, Leclercq said, though of course we never would. He opened the passenger door for me, and when he closed it again it was with unnecessary force and the windows of the old car rattled. As we drove away, I twisted around in my seat to wave at our host. He remained motionless, demented and sad in his broken glasses, the great hull of Cloudenberg rising up behind him, taller and taller by some trick of perspective, as if a sunken ship were rising back up out of the depths of the sea, until the driveway turned a corner and I lost sight of him through the trees.

  On the drive home, Yoav and I were both quiet, huddled in our own thoughts. It was only as we left the depressed outskirts of Brussels behind and once again were on the open motorway that I asked what it was his father had sent him for. He glanced at the rearview mirror and let a car overtake us. A chess table, he said. We must have spoken of other things then, but what they were I no longer remember.

  IN THE MONTHS that followed, Yoav, Leah, I, and even Bogna, who had not yet left, began to settle into a familiar routine. Leah was absorbed in learning pieces by Bolcom and Debussy for her first recital at the Purcell Room, I was doing my time at the library, Yoav began to study for his exams in earnest, and Bogna came and went, returning everything to its proper place. On the weekends, we rented a pile of movies. We ate when we felt like it, and slept when we felt like it. I was happy there. Sometimes, waking early before the others, wandering the rooms wrapped in a blanket or drinking my tea in the empty kitchen, I had that most rare of feelings, the sense that the world, so consistently overwhelming and incomprehensible, in fact has an order, oblique as it may seem, and I a place within it.

  Then one rainy evening in early March the telephone rang. Sometimes it seemed that Yoav and Leah knew when it was their father even before lifting the receiver: a glance, quick and deft, flew between them. It was Weisz calling from the train station in Paris to say he would be arriving that night. Immediately a tense mood swept through the house, and Yoav and Leah became restless and agitated, coming and going in and out of rooms and up the stairs. If we leave for Marble Arch now you could be back in Oxford by half past nine, he said. I became furious. We argued. I accused him of being embarrassed of me and wanting to hide me from his father. In my own mind, I became again the daughter of those who covered the fine sofa with a plastic slipcover only removed for guests. The daughter of those who aspired to a higher life while never believing they were worthy of it, who bowed to an idea of all that hung above them, out of reach—not only materially, but spiritually, that part of the spirit that tends to satisfaction if not happiness—while diligently tending their disappointment. And if I became those things in my mind, Yoav, too, became something he wasn’t: a person born into an elevated life, who, as much as he loved me, could only ever play host to me there. Looking back, I see how much I misunderstood, and it pains me to think of how blind I was to Yoav’s pain.

  We fought, though what we said, exactly, I can’t now say, since in our arguments what began as something direct always, deflected by Yoav, became indirect. It only ever occurred to me afterwards: he had talked about something, reasoned with me about something, defended himself against something without ever really addressing or even naming the thing at all. But this time I dug my heels in and carried on. In the end, exhausted, or at a loss for further strategies, he grabbed my wrists, forced me down onto the sofa, and began to kiss me hard enough to silence me. Sometime later we heard the front door open and then Leah’s footsteps on the stairs. I pulled up my jeans and buttoned my shirt. Yoav said nothing, but even then the pained look on his face filled me with guilt.

  Weisz stood in the tiled entryway in polished shoes holding a walking stick with a silver handle, the shoulders of his wool overcoat shiny with rain. He was a diminutive man, smaller and older than I’d imagined, scaled back in all dimensions as if occupying space at all were a compromise he’d accepted but refused to embrace. It was hard to believe that this was the man who wielded such authority over Yoav and Leah. But when he turned his face in my direction his eyes were live, cold, and piercing. He spoke his son’s name, but his gaze didn’t leave me. Yoav hurried down a few steps ahead of me, as if to intercept any conclusion his father might draw, or preempt it by a few quick strokes in a private language. Weisz took Yoav’s face in his hands and kissed his cheeks. The emotion in it struck me; I’d never seen my own father kiss a man, even his own brother. Weisz spoke quietly to Yoav in Hebrew, turning back to glance at me—something to the effect of having intruded on something, I assumed, because Yoav hurried to deny it, shaking his head. As if to atone for this grievous misunderstanding, he helped his father off with his coat and took him gently by the arm to guide him further into the house. During all of this, Leah stood off to the side, as if to make clear that this little unfortunate incident, this mistake standing awkwardly in untucked shirt and sneakers on the stairs, involved her not at all.

  This is Isabel, a friend from Oxford, Yoav said when they’d arrived at the stairs, and for a moment I thought he might keep walking, leading his father away down the hall, as though there were a houseful of guests to introduce him to, and I, by chance, the first. But Weisz let go of Yoav’s arm and stopped in front of me. Not knowing what else to do, I stepped down off the stairs like some sort of clumsy debutante.

  It’s so nice to meet you at last, I said. Yoav has told me a lot about you. Weisz winced and took me in with his eyes. My stomach contracted in the silence. And yet he has told me nothing at all about you, he said. Then he smiled, or rather lifted ever so slightly the corners of his mouth in an expression that could have been either kind or ironic. My children tell me so little about their friends, he said. I glanced at Yoav, but the man who only minutes before had been fucking me with such force had been transformed into something meek, subdued, almost childlike. With slumped shoulders he studied the buttons of his father’s coat.

  I was just leaving to catch a bus back to Oxford, I said. At this hour? Weisz raised his eyebrows. It’s pouring out. I’m sure my son would be kind enough to make up a bed for you, won’t you, Yoav? he said, without ta
king his eyes off of me. Thank you, but I really should be going, I said, because by now I’d lost all interest in sticking around to take a stand. In fact, I had to suppress the instinct to flee past Weisz and out the door, back into the world of streetlamps, cars, and London crosswalks in the rain. I have an appointment tomorrow morning, I lied. You’ll take an early bus, Weisz said. I glanced at Yoav for help, or at least some guidance as to how to extricate myself without causing offense. But he avoided my eyes. Leah was also absorbed in staring at something on the cuff of her shirt. It really isn’t any trouble to go tonight, I said, but weakly, perhaps, because by now I worried that to continue to protest might seem rude, and because I had begun to sense just how difficult it was to refuse their father.