Falling Stars (27 page)

When we closed the door behind us and turned, we all stopped and stared in awe. The long, dark hallway was dimly lit by black candles in ivory holders mounted on the walls. Light dripped down in a waxy pool over the tiled floor. The candles flickered as though they'd been left by someone hurrying past, fleeing from discovery, diving into the darkness like a toad seeking the cover of murky water. All was still, but from somewhere above us, we could hear muffled voices. They sounded like words trapped in the building's ancient pipes, words spoken ages ago by others as young as we were and just as afraid. Of course, we assumed it was Gerta playing her records.

"Why is the hallway like this?" Rose was the first to ask. "I feel like I'm descending into a cavern or something."

"Obviously. Gerta is not the only one living in her own private world," Cinnamon muttered.
"I don't think we should go any farther." Ice said. The chill in her voice made my own teeth start to chatter.
"What's there to be afraid of?" Cinnamon pondered, sounding more like she wanted us to agree than give her an answer. "So she goes for a dramatic decor. Big deal. Right?" she asked Rose.
"I don't know." Rose said, obviously having trouble swallowing.
"Oh, just come on," Cinnamon directed and started forward. When no one moved, she stopped and looked back at us. "Well, are you coming or not?"
We practically inched our way down the corridor. Along the way we passed a niche that contained a statue of a woman holding up a baby and gazing toward the heavens as if she was offering the child as some sort of sacrifice. The child's eyes were closed and looked already dead and gone.
"Not exactly a very joyful work of art," Ice muttered.
Cinnamon grunted her agreement and we continued, pausing to look at a window drape that was hanging from one corner. There was a large rip in it as well. On the tile below it was what looked like large drops of blood. The blood trailed to the doorway of the room on the left. It nailed our feet to the floor.
"What happened here?" Rose wondered aloud.
"Whatever it was, it happened a while ago. Why keep
it
like this?" I asked.
"Let's get out of here," Rose whispered. "'We're going to get into so much trouble."
"We've come this far," Cinnamon said. "It's too late to turn back."
Now that we were much deeper into the house, we realized the sound we heard in the walls was not voices from any recording of a song. It sounded more like someone chanting and moaning. Drawn by a morbid curiosity that seemed overpowering enough to move our numb bodies, we stepped up to the doorway and gazed into the room.
No one could speak: no one could utter a sound.
The room was in chaos. A chair was turned over and the small settee was toppled on its back. A lamp was sprawled over it and still lit. A bottle of wine lay broken on the right. Then our eyes fell to a large knife, the blade stained with what surely was blood. When we all moved a few inches to the right. Rose grabbed my arm so fast and so hard. I was positive she had driven her nails through the skin. Her cry was like a dagger itself, piercing my breast.
"What's that?" Ice cried, pointing.
It was an arm and a hand just visible behind the overturned settee.
I felt my own blood drain from my face.
No one spoke or moved until Cinnamon stepped forward and walked around the settee. She stood there gaping. . . and then she shook her head and smiled.
"What's so funny?" I asked.
"Come here and look for yourselves," she said. We all did.
There on the floor was a wax figure of a woman in a black dress, a slash across her right wrist. It was very lifelike-- or I should say, deathlike, because the eyes were glassy, like the eves of a corpse, but the skin looked so real. There was even a wedding ring on her finger and a working, expensive looking watch on her wrist.
"What's going on here?" Rose asked.
Cinnamon started to shake her head and then stopped, her eyes widening.
"Of course," she said. laughing. "This is like a museum."
"What? How?" Ice demanded. "It looks like a madhouse to me."
"That's because you guys haven't been forced to watch Madame Senetsky's greatest performances as part of your curriculum here. Howard and I have, and this corridor, all the trappings, even the statue... it's all from a German film she did called Mehl Medea-- My Medea. Its something of a twist on the famous Greek story, a modern-day version. Madame Senetsky played this wife, betrayed by her husband. Just like Medea, she gets back at him by killing their child and then she takes her own life in a very dramatic finale. It's a dark and depressing movie, but according to Mr. Marlowe, it's considered a classic, and Madame Senetsky's performance described as pure brilliance."'
"What's that have to do with all this?" Rose asked.
"She's built the set that was used in the movie for the final scene, and that's why I say it's like a museum or a homage to the performance. If you look closely at this waxwork," Cinnamon added, moving around to gaze down at the face more closely. "you'd see it's a very accurate depiction of a young Madame Senetsky."
We all studied the face and nodded in agreement.
"Didn't she make any good, happier films?" Ice asked.
"Yes, of course, but this is considered one of her masterpieces." She continued to gaze down at the waxwork.
" 'What greater punishment can you inflict on a man who betrays you than to take his child?' That's a line from the film." she said. "Of course, she couldn't live with herself afterward and so... this tragic and gruesome ending."
We continued to stare at the wax version of our mentor. There was great detail, right down to the small birthmark on the edge of her chin.
"I just thought of something strange," Rose said. "Stranger than this?" I asked.
"Well. Evan told us that there was the possibility of Gerta committing suicide. right? There was some talk of that in the stories he found in the old papers. remember?"
"But Gerta didn't die. She's upstairs!" I cried.
"Yes, but that was what Evan said he read. And then Madame Senetsky's husband committed suicide soon afterward. That was definite, wasn't it. Cinnamon?"
She thought, her eyes narrowing.
"Yes, I see what you're saving." She looked at the wax figure.
"But the wife committed suicide in this movie, not the husband," Ice pointed out.
"Minor point," Cinnamon said with a smile. "'Madame Senetsky dies on the stage and in movies in many productions, but not in real life.
"In real life, she lives on to perform again and again."
Suddenly, a shadow seemed to slide across the wall. We were all still, listening.
"I don't like this." Rose said, embracing herself. "There are too many dark places here. Let's go back. Let's stop frying to learn about her past and Gerta's before..."
"Before what?" I asked.
"Before we find out too much," Cinnamon answered for her. "Right, Rose?"
"Yes," Rose said. nodding. She was reliving her own family tragedy. her father's suicide. I could see it playing behind her eyes. Reviving something like that surely turned her spine to cold stone.
The sounds from above changed. Now, we heard music.
"Isn't that "Shortrnin Bread'?" I asked Ice. She smiled and nodded.
"We've got to keep going. We're in this far. How can we turngback now?" Cinnamon pondered.
Rose wasn't happy about it, but we continued into the private residence.
Once past the corridor of candles, as it became known in my mind, we found more normal
accommodations: a small kitchen with a round wooden table and four chairs, another living room with plush furnishings, but also pieces that looked like they would be more at home on a stage, like a royalpurple velvet lounging chaise embellished with gold cording, albeit looking never used. There were two large oil paintings, one of which Cinnamon identified as a portrait of the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt and the other as a portrait of the French playwright Moliere. There were Tiffany lamps, crystals glittering like pieces of ice in the lamp light, a small secretary in the far right corner, and a hutch filled with expensivelooking memorabilia.
One door down we discovered what had to be Madame Senetsky's bedroom.
It
was a very large room with a bed Cinnamon described first as a small stage. It was round, with a crest of big fluffy pillows against the grand, curved headboard built out of what looked like rich mahogany, and in which was carved the words, To hold as t'were the mirror up to nature."
"What does that mean?" Ice asked.
"It's from Hamlet, part of what Hamlet says is the purpose of theater," Cinnamon explained while she gaped at the oversized furniture, with mirrors everywhere, even in the ceiling. There was a large magnifying
^,
mirror at the vanity table, which ran the length of the room and was covered with a variety of makeup, brushes, and pencils. There were jars after jars of skin creams, many of whose labels boastfully announced the end of wrinkles. In an open closet to our left we saw shelves of wigs, same of which we recognized as ones Madame Senetsky had worn at dinners and on other occasions. The clothing closet on the right looked as long and wide as each of our bedrooms.
The walls of the room were papered in pink with figures of mythological creatures like satyrs, sileni, gorgons, and centaurs. Statues of what looked like Greek gods and goddesses stood on pedestals in every available corner.
Most interesting, perhaps, was the tile floor. Each tile was about a foot in diameter and depicted a scene from a famous play. It looked like the entire history of the theater was painted on the floor.
"Someone could go mad in here, never being able to not look at herself and see every blemish or hair out of place." Rose commented, turning from one mirror to the next.
"Doesn't that look like a spotlight?" Ice asked, pointing to a can light in the ceiling directed at the bed.
"Bizarre," Cinnamon said. "I bet she performs her death bed scene from Othello often."
We walked on until we came upon a stairway that spiraled up. It wasn't as grand as the one that greeted us on entry to the house, but, like that one, it had a rich-looking mahogany balustrade and carpeted steps.
We contemplated it, and then Cinnamon nodded,
"This has to be the way to Gerta's apartment. Let's go up." she said. and we started up the steps. At the top we found a door with a key in the lock.
"This is it." Cinnamon declared. She turned the key and we entered what we knew to be her living room. The needle was stuck on the record again. For a moment we all stood in the opened doorway, gaping. Then Ice moved to the phonograph and stopped it from grinding.
"Gerta?" Cinnamon called.
There was no response. Cinnamon nodded at the bedroom and we walked slowly across the room to the doorway. She was there, sitting in a chair, her arms and hands resting on the chair's arms. Now she was fully dressed in her manly clothes, a dark brown suit and brown tie, wearing a wig that resembled Edmond's hair with a deep part down the right side, and looking more like Edmond than herself. She sat calmly, staring at us, her legs crossed.
"Whom do you wish to see?" she asked in a deeper and more adult-sounding voice.
It took us all by surprise, and for a long moment, no one, not even Cinnamon, could respond. The only lamp that was lit in the room threw a pale glow over Gerta, deepening the shadows around her eyes, making them look more like small pools of ink in her pale face,
"We've come to see Gerta," Cinnamon said.
"Gerta? I'm afraid you're too late," she replied. "Gerta is gone
."
"Gone?" Rose asked. "Where did she go?"
"She's out, shopping for new clothes," she replied.
"Shopping for new clothes? What is she saying? I don't understand her." Rose complained, with her lips pulled back and her eyes set to shed tears of frustration and fear.
"Let's get out of here," Ice said in a throaty whisper, her gaze cold and full of warnings.
"Take it easy," Cinnamon said. "Relax, everyone."
"I'm with Ice." I said. "Let's go. Cinnamon."
"Wait." She turned back to her. "How can Gerta be out? Doesn't she have to stay in here?" Cinnamon asked. Moving closer to her.
"Not if she doesn't want to, not anymore. She found a way to go wherever and whenever she pleases," she replied with a bright smile.
"What way? How can she do that?" Cinnamon asked more firmly.
"Cinnamon," Rose urged, grasping her arm. "Don't."
"How can Gerta leave?" Cinnamon continued, ignoring Rose's plea.
Gerta turned away. I thought she wasn't going to respond and that would be that, but she snapped her head back so fast and hard. I thought she could have cracked her neck. Her face was now dressed in a rage, her lips pulled up and back so her clenched teeth were showing.
"Don't you blame her. Don't you dare blame her, too," she warned, spitting her words through those teeth.
"We don't blame her. Right. girls? No one here blames her a bit. We just want to know about her. We're her friends. That's why we came back to see her."
Gerta considered us, studying everyone's face very carefully. I thought. Then she leaned forward slowly.
"She was very unhappy where she was. She wanted to go home, even if it meant being Gerta Berta," she said with obvious bitterness in her voice. "But they wouldn't let her go, no matter how she cried and begged. There were bars on her windows and her door was always kept locked until they came to take her out for walks or to go eat or to go to the rec room or to see the doctor."
She sat back.
"No one can blame her," she emphasized again. "How else could she have gotten out?"
"Right," Cinnamon said. "We understand and we don't blame her a bit. How did she do it?"
Gerta smiled.
"She figured it out. She wasn't stupid."
"No, she wasn't. How did she do it?" Cinnamon insisted on hearing.
"First, she had to get out of her body. They were keeping her body locked up. Sometimes, she could do it easily. When her body was asleep, she could very quietly slip away, but she couldn't be away long enough. Her body always realized she was gone and woke and pulled her back inside.
"Once, she was just outside the window. She was on her way home and then, her body trembled and shuddered until it woke and pool:" she said, clapping her hands so quickly, sharply, and
unexpectedly, we all jumped. "She was brought back again, back into her body."
"So what did she do?" Cinnamon pursued.
I wished she hadn't. I had enough already to provide me a few weeks of nightmares, and from the looks on Ice's and Rose's faces, I saw they had enough, too.
"There was only one way. She had to put her body to sleep for good so it couldn't pull her back. Under her bed hung a broken bedspring. She crawled there and bent it back and forth, back and forth until it snapped off. It was sharp enough to rim it over her wrist until it unzipped her skin and let the blood drip out. Her body was screaming and begging and promising never to call her back again, but she didn't believe it. Bodies lie, you know. They tell us things that aren't true all the time.
"They tell us we're hungry and we're not really hung7. As soon as we begin to eat, we throw up.
"They tell us we're not tired, but when we try to do something, we can barely move.
"They tell us it's morning when it's still night. They tell us we're warm when we're really cold. They lie, lie, lie to keep us quiet.