Secret Dreams (46 page)

Fräulein replied at once, in her neat, careful handwriting. She gave her RSVP to Zeik, who waited like a footman in the hall. After he left, she stood in front of the dresser mirror. Her hair had grown since winter. Falling in thick, lustrous tresses to her shoulders, by May it was long enough to braid in a twist.

On her dresser lay the silver hairbrush and matching mirror from home, long buried in her trunk. They were made of solid sterling, their long fluted handles molded in fruits of the vine, with bunches of grapes and other berries growing among the leaves. Each handle ended in the knob of a ripe fruit: the brush in a peach, the mirror in the plump bottom of a pear.

Fräulein picked up her brush and put it down. In the corner sat the gift box, the seal unbroken. She had not dared open it. Each morning she said to herself, “Today I'll do it. I'll open it today.” Sometimes she'd even get as far as plucking the red ribbon with her finger, but finally she always shrank from it, saying, “Not now … later.” And went to the window, staring below. Before long, sitting on the stone bench in the garden, promising, “I'll open it when I get back to my room. This time I really will…. Maybe tonight.”

The day of the party came, and the box remained unopened. As she climbed the stairs from the garden, all the strength and courage went out of her.
It's too late nom
, she thought.

In her room, Nurse Bosch had gone to her trunk and laid out some underthings. The big woman looked at her with soft, dismayed eyes. “Bless me, child. You haven't even looked inside!” Just like a fairy godmother, come in her hour of need to help her dress for the ball. Only, Fräulein knew no handsome prince waited … no glass slippers. She felt light, and a dizzy pain went through her head.

“I'm not going,” Fräulein said, braver than she felt. “You can't make me.” For a moment she expected Nurse Bosch to turn into a bee or a pig. But the woman merely pulled a silk slip from the trunk and shook it out in the direction of the elegant gift box.

“Open it, child.” i wont.

“Open it.”

Fräulein stamped her foot. “It won't fit.”

“How do you know?”

“He doesn't know my size.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know!” Fräulein wrung her hands. She began to weep. “It'll never fit. Why did he buy it? People will laugh.”

In the end Nurse Bosch opened the box and peeled back the rustling pink tissue. She held the black velvet gown against her stout body. Her huge breasts plumped out the bodice, making the dress look even more slender and willowy. The four crystal buttercup buttons twinkled fitfully in the light from the window.

“It's the new style,” Nurse Bosch said knowingly. “Off the shoulder and no more bustles. If you have a buttocks you show it. If you have a buttocks like me, you don't wear this style.”

Fräulein looked doubtful. She had never imagined owning a dress like this, one she could go places in and be seen. Her hands strayed to her behind, speculating on the fit. In a moment she forgot her fears. “Let me see! Let me see! I want to try it on!”

Alas, when poor Fräulein pulled it over her head the bodice proved too loose in front and the backside too tight by far. Nurse Bosch almost had to yank it over her derrière before the dress squeezed into place.

“I told you so! I told you!” she cried, her tears spotting the velvet.

Now Nurse Bosch lost her temper. “Stop it this instant, you silly goose! Didn't your mother ever teach you anything worth knowing?”

“Nooooo!” Fräulein wailed mournfully. ‘‘Nothing. Never!”

‘Then stop crying and listen. You may be crazy, but you're not a fool. No dress fits at first.”

“None?” Fräulein sniffled suspiciously.

“None. Now, there's no time for the dressmaker's, but we have some laundry girls who can sew you up in a sack before you've said Hans Christian Andersen! Just peel yourself out of that.” Nurse Bosch was gone before Fräulein thought of protesting the idea of strangers seeing her without clothes — when the woman scolded from the hall, “And don't you dare cry on the fabric!”

Fräulein worked her way out of the dress and glared resentfully at the closed door. “Sew me up in a sack,” she muttered. “Well, they didn't invite you to dinner, did they, Nurse Fatso?”

The laundry girls oohed and aahed so appreciatively, Fräulein let them admire her in the dress and
out
of it as well. One of the girls had been apprenticed to a seamstress. “At least the length is right,” she said. “And that's a help. But you'll need a quarter inch at the bosom and half an inch at the rear.” For a fleeting second Fräulein wondered how to grow a quarter inch on such short notice. But the two laundry girls looked at each other and giggled. “Begging your pardon, we don't expect Fräulein to grow it herself. We'll take it in and out as needed.”

“Have it ready in an hour,” commanded Nurse Bosch.

“Yes, Ma'am, but we'll need another half hour to steam out the creases.”

“Don't explain it,” Fräulein pleaded. “Just do it. We're almost late already.”

“And whose fault is that, missy?” replied the nurse.

“Oh! Please don't be angry. Just help me do it. Help me now.”

The laundry girls stood dumbly at the door. “Well, be off!” Nurse Bosch barked. They vanished in a swish of the gown. Then, more gently, “All right, young lady. But you have to promise me, no more crying. Save your red eyes for the end of the night, not the beginning.”

And so with that, the nurse sat Fräulein down before her dresser mirror and began to put up her hair. Suddenly the girl realized just how foolish she'd been to delay. “What about shoes?” she despaired.

“Show me your feet.”

Reluctantly the girl revealed her paper-white feet; long gray toe-nails grew out like dragon claws. Cracked nails, the skin around them chapped and flaking. “Narrow …,” the nurse muttered. And, as she left the room, snapped, “Clip ‘em! You're not Puss in Boots, y'know.”

In a few moments she waddled back into the room with a pair of black satin ballet slippers. To Fräuleins delight, the slippers fit. “Fine,” Nurse Bosch remarked. “Frau Horst will have to dance
Swan Lake
without them tonight.”

Frau Horst was an elderly woman, rich as sin, in a private room nearby. “Does Frau Horst dance
Swan
Lake
every night?”

“No.” Nurse Bosch calmly finished pinning Fräuleins hair. “Once in a while she wears white slippers and does
The Nutcracker
with the Bolshoi.”

Fräuleins pinned hair swept up in a wave, curling into itself at the base of her neck. But she didn't notice any of that. Instead she saw a sallow, yellow face stuck in the dresser mirror like an old cheese in a cupboard. She gaped at her horridness, realizing the worst: “No powder, no rouge, nothing for my eyes …” Her hands rose to tear out the pins, fingers working like spiders' legs.

Nurse Bosch's heavy face appeared in the mirror. “Don't you dare touch that, missy,” she scolded. “Don't you
dare
undo my work, or I'll really show you Tragedy!”

Fräuleins hands hovered about her head, not daring to pluck at the pins. “You can't talk to me like that — you're not my m-m-m! You're not my f-f-f !” Shouting, “I'll tear them out if I want to. Tear out the pins and cram ‘em down your fat throat, you —”

Just then the laundry girls returned with the dress.

“Won't need it,” Fräulein snapped savagely. “Nothing for my face. Take it away.”

“Don't be ridiculous.” The first laundry girl took a small pot of kohl from her skirt pocket and put it on the dresser. “You don't think we'd let you go out looking like a dayroomer, do you?”

Fräulein stared dolefully at her reflection, but her spidery fingers had fallen from her perfect hair. “Are they laughing at me?” she asked meekly.

“Put on the gown,” the big woman told her softly. “While I fetch some rouge for your face. And as for you two imps” — she scowled at the laundresses — ‘lend her a hand if you're not too fey.”

Nurse Bosch borrowed a purse full of cosmetics from one of the young women in Accounting. After a little skillful application, Fräulein gazed at herself in the dresser mirror. Her hair and face and shoulders emerged from the black velvet gown like a lily from a dark stem. Nurse Bosch fished a string of pearls from her uniform pocket and clipped them around the girl's neck.

“They were my mother's. They're real. Don't lose them.”

The laundresses gawped at Fräulein with open mouths. She was so radiant,
so
… When she touched the pearls around her neck, tears started to her eyes. How was this possible? She hid her face, unable to look at her reflection. “I —-1 don't know what to say,” she stammered. “Everyone at the party will stare at me. And I won't know what to say”

Nurse Bosch stepped back, quietly admiring her work.

“Say nothing, then.”

The time had come.

Zeik cleared his throat, announcing the arrival of the carriage. “Ladies, the coach awaits….”

They wrapped a light cloak about Fräuleins shoulders and took her to the carriage in a sheltering flock. A stranger might not have recognized the looming hospital but seen instead a fairy palace, with countless lights winking behind high windows in the gathering dusk. Seeing not the inmate of an asylum but a young countess stepping daintily down the wide marble steps, while her footman and ladies in waiting helped her into the carriage, and the horses stamped their feet and their silver breath wreathed the coach lamps.

The whip cracked over the horses' heads,- carriage wheels clattered away down the drive. Was the beautiful countess but a dream? Who could tell? Only the four servants remained, like mice at the huge palace door, waving the young lady farewell….

Herr Doktors house was made of white stone. Rain had left damp streaks down the window casements like tears on a pale face.

In the entranceway the maid took her cloak. A marble stair climbed to the upper floors, with veined steps and a gleaming black ebony rail. French doors opened onto a parlor. She heard a music box playing, Borodin, his Gypsy rhapsody or
The Steppes
, but the music box had none of the throaty horns and mournful winds, so it played its Gypsy dance a touch too brightly. She also heard Herr Doktors voice, then a deeper note she didn't recognize, and last the gay splash of a woman's laugh.

Getting dressed was well enough, but what now? What if she went inside the parlor and saw bees hovering over the carpet with drinks in their claws? What if Herr Wolfpants turned on his hind legs and growled, “Can I offer you a cocktail, Fräulein?” It seemed easier to turn around and never look back. Flee to the hospital, to her room, right into bed. But the sound of the carriage rattling off into the night left her stranded where she stood.

“This way, please,” the maid said, as if unsure how to bring the girl into the company. Fräulein moved stiffly toward the French doors, her hands growing cold. She paused before a long gilt mirror in an ornate golden frame. A frame carved to show woven thorny branches, like a secret doorway to an enchanted forest. As if all you had to do was make a wish;
Mirror, mirror on the wall
…

The stunning figure of a woman stared at Fräulein from the glass. A lithe and elegant creature in a black velvet gown that clung to her body like a handsome serpent's skin,- and each time the beautiful figure moved, the row of crystal buttons flashed along one shoulder. While the other shoulder lay exposed, bare and pale as living alabaster, altogether perfect. And the face that stared back at her, stared with dark and knowing eyes. Assured. Self-possessed. The eyes of a woman.

“Me …," Fräulein whispered.

Someone touched her softly on the wrist. She recoiled, obliterating the vision in the glass.

“Welcome, Fräulein.” Frau Emma wore a burgundy satin skirt, its narrow pleats seeming to make her rise out of the floor like a pillar. As if part of the hallway, the stairs, the rest of the house. At her throat she wore a green agate brooch. A faint chill seemed to flow from Frau Emma, a river of cool nobility, making Fräulein immediately think,
This is his wife
. Thank heaven the woman wasn't an insect or an animal, that the fingers on her wrist weren't paws or hooves or claws …

“Won't you come in?” she asked.

Fräuleins first impulse was to curtsy. Which she did once, smartly. But that only made Frau Emma smile in surprise, saying, “Am Î as daunting as all that? Just come and meet everyone.”

“Thank you. I will.” If only Fräulein could tell Frau Emma how magnificent she was. But she never found the words before the woman led her into the parlor. Conversation stopped. Herr Doktor turned from the mantel and, with a graceful flourish, presented a distinguished elderly gentleman. The hospital's Direktor Bleuler. The elderly man seemed to have been struck dumb, speechless. And then suddenly she felt both men's eyes rove over her like angel's fingers touching the string of pearls. Was she blushing? Her hand rose shyly to her throat.

She liked Direktor Bleuler. She liked his rosy cheeks, his white beard,- she liked the way he looked at her with that crisp twinkle in his eye. Like meeting Father Christmas in formal dinner wear,- how becoming in frosty black and white.

“Enchanted,” Herr Direktor said, taking her stiff fingers in his soft monkey's paw. She fought the urge to jerk her hand away. He clicked his heels in a short formal bow, saying kindly, “I never would have believed it, Fräulein. I never would have.”

“Never believed what?”

The group of them, considering her with an odd look in their eyes, as if seeing for the first time … A slender young woman in a gown that sucked the very light from the room, leaving the sight of her alone. White shoulders and throat rising out of a black sheath. The feeling of power restrained, as though her whole body threatened to emerge from the black velvet gown entirely on its own, When several long moments passed and Herr Direktor made no answer, Fräulein did the only thing she could think of. She pressed the soft monkey's paw back.