“So what sort of films do you look at in America, Mrs. Benedetto?”
“Ah. You noticed I am married.”
“It was the first thing I noticed about you,” he said. “Well. The second.”
She smiled sadly. “Ah, Mr. Dougherty, ten years ago I went back to America, stayed upstairs in the bed in my mother’s house and watched ‘Kojak’ reruns late at night on a little black-and-white TV…. Now I’ve got a big color set and seventy-eight channels, and I still find myself up in bed late at night watching ‘Kojak’ reruns.”
He didn’t laugh. He sat there with his face in his hands, his thoughtful expression filling her with longing.
There was a rustling, hurried change out in the yard. The musicians began their Mozart.
Reluctantly, Temple took his leave. His eyes stayed on her until the door shut with a thud.
Claire decided to go up to the bell tower and get some shots from there. Every time she’d tried to get up there, some forensics person was either scraping stone, or Isolde’s twinkle lights were being hung. One thing or another. And to be honest to herself, she had to admit she was apprehensive. She didn’t mind going up now, in the daylight, though. It was almost a pleasure, a cleansing. She took the white-washed steps of the tower, laying to rest the awful time she’d come up in the daylight, when she’d seen Hans’s body. Never mind. This was a new time, the beginning of a new time for them all. She went up swiftly. There was nothing there. The guardrail was so low, Hans might well have slipped. She leaned over. Christ, it was a long way down.
She got up and felt the bell. She ran her fingers around the inside. There were no niches other than the rim. No little hiding spots she could find. Well, obviously. All those years. Had they been there, someone surely would have found them.
She couldn’t get a picture of Hans, couldn’t get a handle on his life, his personality. There was something missing. She couldn’t hate him. Couldn’t like him. And yet Isolde had liked him, cared about him enough to make love to him. There must have been something lovable about him.
She went down the stairs, wanting to see his room. There was no one around. Unable to resist, she poked her head into Cosimo’s room. It was a small room, chaotic and churned up with plants and snippings of plants in glasses on the sills. There were birdcages, open. No doubt Cosimo would let out anything caged. There were cookies, Butterkekse and Bahlsen Cookies in wrappers all over the room, just in case of famine, no doubt. It was very much like her own son’s room. Busy little molecules of dust churning happily about in tall wedges of sunlight. An upright piano was half buried in handwritten sheet music. Comic books and classics were shoved into overloaded bookcases. She went back out and walked toward Hans’s.
She stood outside his room. Open. All the rooms were open and the windows open too. Symbolic, she supposed. What better time, she thought, and went in.
The room was as one would expect: big furniture, very German. Strong, unyielding furniture, crisply clean windows with white starched curtains. She looked around absently, lifting the blotter on his desk. That was where she always stuck her important papers. There was a list. The reason it caught her eye was that it was old, like Iris’s scrap-books, like her own parents’ wartime mementos. It was a list of names. Clients. Guests of the Mill, addresses to the side. Third from the bottom—her heart almost stopped at the sight—was written “Iris von Lillienfeld” in old German script, with an English address. Just below it, subsequent addresses had been penciled in, then scratched out. The last read “Richmond Hill.” Claire slipped the paper into her waistband.
She went into the family room, closed the door just a bit, and went straight to the clock. With her back to the door, she took our her deluxe eyeglasses repair kit she’d picked up at the supermarket cash register back in Queens. Carefully she turned the clock over. It really was a superb little screwdriver. She got the screws open and the gold plate off in no time at all. She had a vision of herself discovering the diamonds, the brilliant stones trickling out like the sands of time come loose. She got the buckle open. She turned the clock. She looked. Empty. Just the tick-tock back and forth of the ingenious inner workings. Just then, she heard the floorboards behind her creak. She turned halfway and leaped in fright, almost tipping the clock to the floor. She caught it with one hand and stood face-to-face with Fräulein Bibi Wintner. “Ho!” she grasped her chest with the other hand. “You scared the life out of me! I thought it was a ghost!” She laughed.
Fräulein Wintner looked at the clock in Claire’s hand.
“Ah,” Claire said, her face going red, “I was just admiring the clock. Some clock, eh? I mean the works. They don’t make them like that anymore, do they?”
Fräulein Wintner squinted meanly at her. She carried a basket of Stella’s hand-embroidered towels. Fresh lavender had been tucked in between every other towel.
Fräulein Wintner was dressed for the wedding, looking, Claire thought, a little more Viennese mother-of-the-bride than German housekeeper, but then, why not? She wore an awfully glittery, if well-cut, suit. There was nothing resembling a Tracht about it, which Claire suspected was the very idea. Temple Fortune would have to cut each scene she marched into, wouldn’t he?
But why, Claire wondered, would she dislike Temple Fortune? She rested the elegant clock on its side and demonstrated the way she was putting the gold plate neatly back on. She shook her head philosophically as she spoke. “I know this must look sort of silly. Everyone downstairs and me up here poking through this old clock. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you what I was looking for.” She chuckled ineffectively.
Fräulein Wintner retained her grim demeanor. “I would advise you to say nothing,” she finally interrupted Claire’s babbling.
“Oh, look, I know this looks awkward but I—”
“You will remain here until I return with the Polizei. Now we know for sure who’s been doing the stealing.”
“Oh, no, you misunderstand.” Claire laughed. “What, you thought I was trying to steal the clock? Uh! No! No, you see I was looking at the way it was made, see. A friend of mine has a broken one at home and I was just having a look to see how it was ma—”
Fräulein Wintner had turned and left her standing there. As she left, Claire heard her mutter “Dreckige kleine Jüdin!” (Dirty little Jew!) So it was true. The first thing that went wrong dredged up the same quick conclusion, did it? Lovely. Then Fräulein Wintner was gone.
Claire heard the heavy door lock click into place. Was it possible? She’d locked her in! Claire’s first thought was that Johnny would kill her. Oh, God. This was all she needed. She had to get out. She went and tried the door. Locked nice and tight, all right. What a fix. Oh, boy. She walked around in a frantic circle. She spotted the phone. She picked it up and got an open dial tone. Delighted, she dialed her sister Carmela’s number. It was early morning in New York.
“Hello.” Carmela had on her Bette Davis voice. This meant she was working and/or smoking.
“It’s me.”
“Ooh. Innocent abroad. Homesick?”
“No. Yes. How’s Dharma?”
“Central Park Zoo with Andrew.”
“Good, give her my love. Carmela, could we be Jewish?”
“Why, because our name is Breslinsky with a y?”
“I knew you were the one to ask.”
“Claire, you know this.”
“I do?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“No!”
“Tch. Daddy changed it back from Breslin to Breslinsky before he met Mommy. It’s supposed to be Breslinski—with an i. They’d dropped it to sound more American.”
“So he just spelled it wrong?”
“No, he looked in the phone book to make sure he spelled it right. Only he looked in the Kew Gardens phone book. So there were tons of Breslinskys: Abe to Zepheriah—all Jewish. By the time Aunt Kadja yelled at him, he already had his driver’s license and insurance and all that with the red tape. He just left it as
it was.”
“Gotcha. Oh, and listen. One more thing. You know the book, Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time?”
“Painting,” Carmela said. “Angiolo Bronzino. Sixteenth century. Upsetting.”
“Also a book,” Claire said. “Recent. Ursula Braun.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Big critical success, award-winner. Well, anyway. That’s the film they’re making here. Temple Fortune.”
“Mmm. Heard of him! Yummy.”
“Gotta go,” Claire said.
“See if Mr. Fortune needs any good American scripts.”
“Love you.”
She hung up the phone and looked around her opulent space. Wait. She remembered there was a balcony. She’d seen Puffin Hedges coming in from it the other night when they’d all been in here. She found it behind the Spanische Wand, an elegant old screen like the ones used primarily by saloon girls in Westerns to dress behind. The balcony door behind it was wide open. Relief! She sauntered out onto the balcony and breathed deeply the air of freedom. She even aimed her camera, still around her neck, at the crowd below and zoomed in on them. After a few what she suspected were magnificent shots of Mara Morgen in her fancy aubergine costume (looking for all the world like the character she was supposed to be), Claire raised a distressed hand and waved to the film crew.
Yes, yes, they waved back when they saw her and moved quickly on to their next shot off in the distance. They didn’t have much time to get all this superb atmosphere, and they were making good use of it.
Claire waved to the crowd closer to the Mill, but they were so drunk they didn’t even notice her.
She called to Friedel the gardener, standing on the sidelines and dancing with no one; but the small orchestra Blacky had hired was just under her, and she realized that her frantic wavings were not much different from the expressions of the rest of the revelers below, who were dancing and carrying on in their own sort of desperate merrymaking. Claire sighed unhappily. She peered over the side to see if she might climb down. It was a straight drop. Unfortunately, the bougainvillea vines were temporary, springing from great clay pots that could be transported indoors during the cold winters. There was no strength there. The wisteria vines she wouldn’t have minded shimmying down, but they were attached to the next balcony, the one next to Cosimo’s room. She waved her arms again. Blacky, far off and dancing with Isolde, saw her and, misunderstanding, waved heartily back. He seemed deliriously happy. She would have to wait till the end of the song. Unfortunately, the oompah-pah band in the center of the garden picked up the slack at the last beat of the song and dived right into “The Blue Danube” waltz.
She waved harder. Blacky bowed politely and whisked his Isolde into the air and around and around.
The police! Forget upsetting Johnny. Blacky would never forgive her for bringing the police to his wedding. She thought what to do. She couldn’t very well hang over the balcony. At the very best they would say she was drunk, and there she would be, trying to cause havoc at her ex-boyfriend’s wedding. She might also fall. She saw Temple Fortune in the distance. He was working on the long shot, with Mara and the festivities of the Mill in the background. Claire aimed her long lens at him off in the distance. He was too far away to capture in focus, just out of her range, but the figure of him leaning tenderly over Mara’s glamorous form gave her a lurch of jealousy. Mara’s romantic costume fluttered like a dream in the wind. She put the camera down. Someone was just beneath Claire. She tried to yell at him, but he didn’t even hear her. Claire sank to the floor, giving up. Suddenly she was overwhelmed with self-pity. She ought to be more upset by this business with Fräulein Wintner, but seeing Temple Fortune so attentive toward Mara left her weak. You’d think she was a teenager. She knew she ought to be more worried about her husband home alone, but she wasn’t. She was glad to be away. She almost hoped he wasn’t alone. Lord knew, they had reached the point where instead of greeting each other with joy or even with the searching eyes of the concerned mate, they each performed their solitary little dances of exhaustion at the injustice of routine—their routine. With their eyes glazing over, they’d shake their heads and sigh. “Oh God,” they would say. “Oh God”—and look away to the window or wall or the next unavoidable chore that wouldn’t be there but for each other. She tried to help, but she couldn’t change.
She realized, finally, how much power Temple Fortune was beginning to have over her emotions. She was surprised to notice herself trembling.
There was an open vin d’Alsace on the wrought-iron-and-glass table. It sat respectfully in shards of melting ice. Claire picked it up. Gewürztraminer 1988. From Ribeauvillé. Hmmm. No glass. No need to be fancy. She tipped it into a translucent teacup. Heaven. She had another. Was this Blacky and Isolde’s wedding-celebration bottle? She would have liked to share it with Temple Fortune.
She wouldn’t let him know, let anyone know, how he made her feel. What good would it possibly do? As far as she knew, he felt nothing with which to compare and justify her ardor. He was hungry to devour her body, of that she was pretty sure. But so, she imagined, would he be hungry for other flesh, all sorts of young and ambitious and available flesh. She would be no end-all for him. She was nobody special. She was no longer young. Only a fool would imagine he would care for her in the grand sense. Only a fool. She put her head down on the sturdy walls of the expensive yellow Scotch broom planter (someone at least had money) and allowed her growing-older, worn-out heart finally to let go by screaming fiercely.
In mid-anguish, she spotted a little boy across on the other balcony. He was a stout little fellow, a bit older than her own Anthony. She knew immediately what he was up to. He was secretly gobbling a great horde of forbidden food. What did he have there? She could just make out his tremendous bowl of Schlagsahne and fresh strawberries, no doubt swiped from the kitchen.
She shrugged convivially. He shrugged back. Nothing like a kid to commiserate. Children suffer daily and come unhinged as often. “I’m locked in,” she called to him. “Ich bin eingesperrt.”
“Ach,” he mouthed, having heard her between beats, clucked sympathetically, then resumed eating his whipped cream and strawberries as they continued to regard each other from each other’s balconies. She let him have a few more husky bites, then waved him over. He imagined she meant to share her balcony and his strawberries and cream. This idea seemed to appeal to him, misery loving company, and he got off, brushed his lederhosen solidly off, then disappeared.
Claire ran to the locked door. She pressed her ear up to the wood. Nothing. He’d gone away. She looked around her, despairing, when she heard him out there, fiddling with the lock.
“Geht nicht,” he announced. “It’s locked good.”
“You speak English,” she said. “What a clever boy.”
“I go to the American school,” he explained condescendingly through the heavy door.
“I see,” Claire called back. “You’re Dirk, aren’t you? Isolde’s boy.”
“That’s right,” he said.
Her heart went out to him. She hadn’t seen him since he was a baby. He wouldn’t remember her. Immediately she understood his craving for comforting food. This couldn’t be an easy day for him. “Dirk,” she said, “I wonder if you would do me a great favor?”
“Sure,” he said to show off his American.
“There will be a lady coming along soon with a ring of keys and maybe a policeman or two. When she comes, I want you to tell her I’ve escaped. Could you do that? Would you?”
“Natürlich,” he said, and sat down on the floor to wait. Before long, Fräulein Wintner came scrambling down the hallway, her elbows out, her tempo up. There were no policemen with her, but young Dirk knew who she was. She had the keys, and she smacked of authority.
“Da war jemand drin.” He pointed to the door. Someone was in there.
“Ich weiss,” she said. I know. She turned her back on him, dissmissively.
“Ja, sie ist weggelaufen,” he sa
id. She ran away.
“Was?” she cried. “Entwichen?” She opened the lock with the key and threw open the door. In they went. She looked about. Sure enough, no one was there! Fräulein Wintner looked to the child for affirmation. He stood there, cream on his face, and pointed down the hallway to the stairs. Fräulein Wintner ran out and down the hall, leaving the door ajar. Claire ran from behind the screen. “Thanks, Dirk,” she said to the boy. They slapped each other a high five, and Claire ran down the hallway, free.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs and the gaiety of the crowd, she calmed down. And after all, it was Fräulein Wintner’s word against her own. Who was Fräulein Wintner, after all, but an employee of the house. Still, Claire had a feeling that here, as in all small villages, the one who’d put more time in was more apt to be believed. She ought, really, to make herself scarce. The reveling dancers made a good cover as they practically swept her away toward the gardens at the side of the house. From there she just picked her way across the field in the direction of the pottery.
The grass was high out here and uncut to allow the strewn wildflowers to flourish. The heat of the day rested heavily now in a low smoggy dew you couldn’t feel closer to the Mill, where it was burned off by the tumultuous goings-on. A figure darted away in the distance. It was Temple. No, no, it couldn’t be. What would he be doing here, with the film crew around the other end? Her heart called out. (Is that you I see, soft between the fruit trees?) She was a jerk. She laughed at herself. A wind stirred up. Blossoms came down like a perfect snow. She shivered and looked back to see if she was being followed when her foot trod clumsily on someone else’s. A bark of fear sprang out of her. It was a man and woman on the ground; they rolled over and he held her with beer-sodden eyes. He was flushed and intent, she was very groggy, but they managed a sporty “Grüss Gott,” and a nod as though this were all the casual norm. Claire stumbled politely on. She didn’t look back but heard them carry on the concentrated thud-thud-thud of their devotions the minute they realized she’d moved off.
Keeper of the Mill Page 16
