In other words, I did my damnedest to cultivate some Christmas spirit. I had only limited success. The gold bracelet I bought mother recalled the glitter of Helen’s diadem; a street sign reminded me that the small town of Dachau was only a few miles away and made me wonder why I was worrying about the fate of a few chunks of lifeless metal, compared to the wreckage of human life in that awful cataclysm.
Even the toy stores didn’t cheer me up. German toy stores are superb, but I was pretty sure my nieces and nephews would prefer copies of American superheroes made in Taiwan to the beautifully crafted castles and storybook dolls and stuffed, cuddly animals. I loaded up on heroes for the kids and consoled myself with a stuffed kitten. I adore stuffed animals, but I have a hard time building a collection because Caesar keeps eating them. The kitten was lifesized and amazingly lifelike—a Siamese with seal-brown ears and tail, a pink nose, and blue glass eyes. At the moment, however, I was not too fond of blue eyes, what with Schmidt dogging my every move and John not dogging me….
I also bought a robe and nightgown. They were Italian-made, sheer white batiste dripping with lace and embroidery. After I got back to work that day, I spread the robe out across the desk and stared at it. I cannot honestly say I do not know what possessed me to buy such a useless, extravagant item. I knew exactly what had possessed me. It wasn’t even my style; as my mother keeps insisting, I look better in tailored clothes.
When the telephone rang I lunged for it, hoping the caller would be someone interesting enough to take my mind off my increasing insanity.
At first I didn’t recognize his voice. Even after he had identified himself, I remained doubtful. “Are you sick or something? You sound funny.”
“Humor is not my aim,” said Tony. “This is a business call.”
“The word was ill-chosen,” I admitted. “Seriously—are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in Illinois, of course. Are you going to the meetings this year?”
“Which meetings? Oh—Turin. No, I don’t think so.”
“You went last year.”
I had not taken him seriously when he said the call was business; one never knows when the IRS may be bugging one’s telephone. But the formal, almost accusatory tone was not like the Tony I knew.
“Last year the meetings were only sixty miles from Munich,” I explained patiently. “And there were several sessions on art history. Are you going?”
“Yes. I—uh—I had hoped to see you.”
“Well, you won’t unless you stop over in Munich.”
“May I? I wouldn’t want to interfere with your plans—”
“Tony, you sound like Miss Manners’ older brother. I’d love to see you. I can’t think of anything I’d like better. I have no plans—I’ll be all alone—”
“What about that weird little boss of yours?”
“Schmidt,” I said in exasperation. “His name is Schmidt, as you know perfectly well. I usually do spend Christmas with him unless I go home, but this year he’s going to his sister’s. He can’t stand the woman—she’s one of those tightlipped disapproving types—and he hates her husband, too; but she trapped him and he couldn’t think of an excuse—”
“Oh,” Tony said, in a sepulchral bass rumble, like Boris Karloff. “All right. How does the twenty-first suit you?”
I assured him nothing in this world or the next would give me greater pleasure than to pick him up at the airport on December 21.
“Okay,” Tony mumbled. “See you then.”
The click of the far-off receiver caught me with my mouth open and my rapturous enthusiasm half-expressed. He sounded as if he was even more depressed than I was. Instead of cheering one another, we might end up in a joint suicide pact. Then something else hit me. Tony had not asked me to marry him.
Tony always asked me to marry him. He had been asking me for years. One of the reasons why he disliked Schmidt was that he blamed the old boy for luring me from the primrose path that led to the cottage door and the little frilly aprons and the houseful of babies. This was completely unjust, since I wouldn’t have married Tony even if Schmidt had not offered me a job.
Not that I wasn’t fond of Tony, who is tall (really tall, I mean, six inches taller than I am), dark, and handsome, if you like the lean aesthetic type, which I definitely do. I met him at the midwestern college where we were both starving instructors, and we had spent one wild summer in Germany on the trail of a lost masterpiece of medieval sculpture. The successful climax of the hunt had won me a job offer from Schmidt, and it hadn’t hurt Tony’s career either; he was now an assistant professor at the University of Chicago with a consultative post at the Art Institute.
I loved Tony, but I wasn’t in love with him—nor was I in love with the idea of marriage as such. I’m not knocking the institution; it seems to work fine for a lot of people. But not for me. Not for a while, at any rate.
Anyway, he had probably decided to propose in person. That must be the explanation. I had only imagined he sounded odd. Maybe he was recovering from flu. Maybe my own evil mood had affected my hearing. He was always good company—dear old Tony—a face from home, someone with whom to share the festive season….
I started to feel more cheerful. Things were working out after all. It was a good thing John had not responded to my loony message. There were no two people I was less anxious to introduce than John and Tony. Unless it was John and Schmidt.
John’s failure to respond didn’t mean he was dead. He might not see the advertisement. He might see it and choose not to reply. A superstitious man might regard me as something of a jinx. Not only had I wrecked several of his business ventures, but I had been indirectly responsible for the infliction of grave bodily harm upon his person. The ad had only appeared a few days ago. He might yet…
If I married Tony, I would never have to spend Christmas alone ever again.
When I realized what I was thinking, I was so horrified I rushed out of the office and then had to go back for my coat. I really must be cracking up if that struck my subconscious as a legitimate excuse for matrimony. Christmas comes but once a year, for God’s sake.
The rest of the week was uneventful except for snow and sleet and Schmidt’s incompetent imitation of Super-Spy. Like the dim-witted heroine picking wildflowers along the railroad track, I was blissfully unaware of approaching danger. Actually, that isn’t a very good analogy. Trouble came at me, not along a single track, but from all directions at once, and by the time I realized what was happening, it was too late to jump out of the way.
Gerda and I had a date to go and see the Christmas crèches at the Bayrisches Museum. We were friends again; we fight at least once a month, when she says or does something that bugs me and I yell at her, and then she cries and I apologize. It’s a tradition. Visiting the crèches was also a tradition, by Gerda’s definition. I think we had done it twice before. I agreed to go because she cried, and because it seemed like a fitting part of my campaign to work up some Christmas spirit.
The crèches really are sensational. Some are small settings of the traditional manger scene, like the modern versions people put under the tree, but the best ones are vast panoramas that would fill an entire living room—miniature reproductions of village scenes, with shops and stalls and houses, and all the inhabitants pausing in their daily chores to watch the Magi riding toward the stable. The most elaborate of them come from Italy, and they feature painted terra-cotta figures dressed in real velvets and brocades in the case of the Magi and their entourage, and detailed reproductions of contemporary peasant costumes in the case of the villagers.
Some of the scenes are so complex that you can see them over and over again and still find charming details you missed before. If I were a snob and a hypocrite, I would claim that Gerda’s naïve enjoyment enhanced my own more sophisticated expert’s appreciation, but in fact I got as big a kick out of it as she did.
“Ach, Vicky, see the littl
e boy stealing apples from the fruit stand!”
“He’s the spitting image of my nephew Jim!”
“Do you think they had apples in December in the Holy Land?”
“Who cares? Look at the woman nursing the baby and gossiping with her neighbor on the next balcony.”
The corridors along which we moved with snail-like deliberation were dimly lighted in order to display the Krippen in their lighted cases to best advantage. The place was crowded, but the church-like atmosphere kept voices low and manners gentle. Except for the children. The little ones squealed with delight, the older ones with frustration as they tried to squirm through the barricade of adult bodies between them and the exhibits.
I hoisted one little imp up onto my shoulder, winning a thank-you from his Mutti, who had a baby in one arm and a bag of baby paraphernalia in the other. Gerda wrinkled her nose and moved away; like many self-professed sentimentalists, she really hates children. The imp and I discussed the scene; he was far less interested in the Christ Child and “die süssen Engelkinder” than in how the Kings stayed on the camels.
I put him down and joined Gerda at the next exhibit. She was showing signs of restlessness, for which I couldn’t entirely blame her. Even the miraculous birth pales after a dozen repetitions. “Look,” she muttered, poking me. “That man—he has been following me.”
So had a lot of other men, women, and children. I glanced in the direction she indicated and decided she was engaging in some wishful thinking; the light was poor and her follower moved on as I turned, but I caught a fleeting glimpse of a clean-cut profile, spare and handsome as a hawk’s, before darkness obscured it.
“He looks familiar,” I said thoughtfully.
“I suppose you think he is following you,” Gerda said.
“I don’t think he is following either of us. Gerda, you’re getting testy. Hunger, I expect. Let’s have a little snack; we’ve improved our minds long enough.”
After she had been stuffed with whipped-cream cakes and coffee, Gerda’s temper improved. We returned to work arm in arm, figuratively speaking.
I never lock my office door. I don’t keep anything valuable there, and the guard on duty in the Armor Room is supposed to prevent unauthorized persons from going up the stairs. I was only mildly surprised to discover that the lights were burning. Usually I turn them off when I leave, but I had been distraught, distracted, and bewildered when I left. I thought nothing of it until I approached the desk and looked at the untidy pages of my manuscript.
I’m always impressed by characters in books who can tell at a glance that their belongings have been searched. They must be compulsively neat people. Normally, I wouldn’t notice anything unusual unless my papers had been swept onto the floor and trampled underfoot. But I distinctly remembered struggling over a description of a Holbein miniature just before Tony’s call put an end to my labors. The page now on top of the pile began, “quivered as her slender aristocratic hands strove in vain to veil their rounded charms from the Duke’s lascivious eyes.”
Schmidt was the obvious suspect. He was always trying to find out what Rosanna would do next. But he wasn’t desperate enough to climb all those stairs, and as I glanced around, I saw other signs of disturbance: the drawer of a filing cabinet gaping open, a pile of books spilled sideways.
My first reaction was not alarm or annoyance, but hopeful anticipation. I had been waiting for something to happen. Maybe this was it. It, not John; if he had searched the office, I wouldn’t notice anything out of place.
Schmidt had finally gotten around to making a copy of the mysterious photograph. (I deduced that from the fact that he had stopped swiping it.) I kept it in the top right-hand drawer of my desk.
As I reached impetuously for the drawer, it did occur to me to wonder how the intruder could have passed the guard down below. He had been on duty when I came in; he had nodded and mumbled a sleepy “Grüss Gott,” but he had not mentioned a visitor.
There was a blur of motion and a grating rattle, and something sprang out of the opening, striking my hand with a sharp prick of pain. Something serpentine, brightly colored. I jumped back with a scream, nursing my stung finger, where a bright drop of blood gleamed like a ruby. The snake fell to the floor.
It was a toy snake. My scream turned to a roar of rage. There was only one person who would play a childish joke like that.
Not Schmidt. He doesn’t have a dram of meanness in his whole chubby body, and it takes malice to make a practical joker. No, it had to be Dieter. Dieter Spreng, assistant curator of preclassical art at the Antikenmuseum in Berlin, frustrated comic and would-be lecher. His credentials would have gotten him past the guard…. And he was probably still in the office. Practical jokes are no fun unless you can observe the hysteria of your victim. I pushed aside the screen concealing my domestic appliances, the only place in the room where anyone could hide.
He was doubled up and shaking with suppressed mirth, his arms hugging his midsection. Finding himself discovered, he let the laughter burst out in a genial baritone shout that was so contagious I felt my wrath fading.
“All right, Dieter,” I said. “Come on out and fight like a man.”
He straightened up and brushed his thick brown hair back from his flushed, grinning face. “Caught you, didn’t I? Herr Gott, what a scream! You could play Isolde—”
“Caught me is right.” I displayed my finger. Dieter’s wide mouth drooped; he caught my hand and pressed it to his lips.
“I will kiss it and make it well. Ach, Vicky, I am so sorry; the spring must have broken—”
“Oh, yeah?” I retrieved my hand and retreated to my desk. In the act of sitting, I had second thoughts and sprang up as if I had been stung. Dieter’s mouth still sagged in clownish chagrin, but his brown eyes sparkled with amusement as he watched me. “No, no,” he said soothingly. “There is nothing on the chair; I have given up the whoopee cushion. It was too crude.”
I lowered myself cautiously into the chair. Nothing burped, whooped, or grabbed my bottom, so I relaxed. Dieter picked up the little plastic snake and shoved it under my nose. “See, there is no needle or pin to sting. As I thought, the spring was too tight; the wire broke and scratched you. Let me kiss it again—”
“Never mind. I’ll live.” Studying his arrangements behind the screen—a chair, a half-drunk cup of coffee—I added, “You made yourself comfy, I see.”
“But I could not smoke.” Dieter lit one of his awful Gauloises and puffed out a cloud of blue smoke. “I thought you would smell it and be suspicious. Can I get you some coffee?”
“No, thanks, it might be loaded with saltpeter or laxatives. What are you doing here?”
He pulled up a chair and provided himself with an ashtray by dumping out the paperclips in a small ceramic bowl. He was dressed pour le sport, as he was fond of saying, in well-cut boots and ski pants and a cable-knit sweater in a heavenly heather blend that set off his rosy cheeks and bright brown hair. The antique silver ring on his right hand glowed in the lamplight as he knocked ashes off his cigarette.
“I am in Munich to consult with Frick at the Glyptothek,” he explained seriously.
“No, you’re not.”
“Of course I am not.” Dieter grinned. “I could not get the museum to pay my travel expenses unless I consulted with Frick. I am on holiday, in fact; I hoped I could persuade you to join me for a few days of skiing.”
“No, thanks. When I go on holiday I want to relax, not be on guard for snakes in the bed and buckets of water on the top of the door.”
“I don’t play jokes on the ladies who share my bed,” Dieter said, reaching for my hand.
“That’s not what I hear. Elise—”
“Oh, Elise.” Dieter’s fingers wriggled under the cuff of my sweater and squirmed up my arm. “One cannot resist teasing Elise; she is so funny when she is angry. You are different.”
“How?”
“You are much bigger than Elise,” Dieter explained. “You might s
trike me.”
“Good point.” Dieter’s arm was now entirely inside the sleeve of my sweater, and his eyes were crossed in intense concentration as he tried to stretch his fingers a strategic inch farther. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?” I inquired with genuine curiosity.
Dieter put his cigarette in the ashtray. “I am thinking perhaps it would be better to start from the other direction—”
I pushed him away and pulled my sleeve down. “You are weird, Dieter. If I ever did decide to play games with you, it wouldn’t be in my office.”
“In a mountain chalet, then, with the snow falling and a fire on the hearth and a large furry bearskin in front of the fire—”
“I’m afraid not. I can’t get away right now.”
“Next week, then?”
“Sorry, I’m busy.”
“You are always busy.” Dieter lit another cigarette. “Why is it you always say no to me?”
I wasn’t sure myself. Dieter’s round face and dimples made him look like a kid, but he was well past the age of consent and not unattractive. Stocky and compactly built, he was an inch or two shorter than I, a consideration that didn’t seem to concern him any more than it did me. He was good company, when he wasn’t pulling chairs out from under people, and very good at his job. In a few years, when Dr. Fessl retired, he would probably be head curator—no mean accomplishment for a man in his mid-thirties. I loved him like a brother, when I didn’t hate him like a brother. But I had no desire to go to bed with him.
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