Secret Dreams (56 page)

The mannikin's pen dipped to the inkwell and poised over a clean page. Hesitantly the wooden hand began to draw. At first the hand felt awkward, but soon the fingers grew surer and surer. Slowly a picture emerged … the beautiful Lady of the Veils. She was running as she had on the water jug, the wisps of thin gauze clinging to her body, her thighs, her breasts….

A Sister Nun plucked the pen from her hand.

“What's this, eh? Pictures in the copybook? We can't have that. No, no, no, we can't have that!” The Sister Nun slipped the copybook under her arm and marched off.

The mannikin watched her go with a terrible longing. The word
Stop!
surged up her throat, right into her head. The first living sound in that empty cave in so long. She tried to speak, to call out, but alas, the only sound was her fingers' dry tattoo as they pattered on the wooden desk.

She rose from her seat. A halting step. And then another. She hobbled over the stone floor, blundering down the long vaulted hall, wanting to cry, Sister, come back, bring the Lady back, please come back! But she had been a mannikin too long to talk, too long for words — and so the Sisters grabbed her clumsy puppet body and returned it to the trunk.

A semicircle of seats rose in tiers like polished wooden sentinels. The mannikin dimly saw strangers' faces gawking down or whispering among themselves. A pleasant voice came out of the light and said:

“Students! Let me thank you for coming. I think we can all agree the Odessa Sanatorium is lucky to have procured this subject from the Convent of Saint Agnes for our demonstration. The convent sisters claim our subject knows how to both read and write — but the manifest evidence does not bear them out. Shall we proceed directly with the demonstration? That's right, gentlemen, wheel over the galvanic …”

They lifted the mannikin onto the black table. The speaker showed a leather thong to the crowd. “We place this leather thong between the teeth so no damage occurs to the tongue.”

Dots of grease were smeared on the mannikin's head. “We apply graphite petroleum to the subject's temples to promote conductivity from the terminals to the nerves. Do not be alarmed if the lights dim at the moment of charge. Are we ready? Very good. On three, then … One —

The mannikin saw Mother sitting in a wooden seat, brushing her hair.

“Two —”

Then the beautiful Lady of the Veils sat there instead.

“Three!”

A soft blow clubbed the dummy's head. The amphitheater vanished, strangers, Mother, beautiful Lady, and all.

Then one afternoon a few weeks later, they packed the mannikin's limp body in the old steamer trunk. Once more sent back to the hands of her family. With deep regret, said the director of the Odessa Sanatorium.

Subject unresponsive.

“And so in the end you came to me….”

The tattered remains of her old book lay on Herr Doktors stiff leather couch. “But how did my book stay with me all this time? Through all those years — my old book and Mother's silver brush. How?” Fräulein pondered the frayed binding as if it had further tales to tell

“Open the curtains,” she said. “I want to see the light now.” It was an overcast, stormy day. Fräulein shielded her eyes for a moment, then rose from the couch to stand by him, one hand resting on the back of his chair. “Someone must have stowed the brush and book in my trunk. Hidden, so I always had them with me.”

“Someone?”

“Father,”
Fräulein answered. “Father hid the book and the brush for me. He put those precious things where I could reach them, when all else was gone. His last effort to save me. Funny …,” she mused sadly. “I don't really feel like thanking him.”

Herr Doktor snorted. “Can't say I blame you.”

She struck his face with her open palm. “Stop laughing! How dare you laugh at me!” A handprint glowed on his cheek.

“I wasn't laughing —”

“And I say you were.” Her face had taken on a dark, threatening cast. White heat curled inside him, an urge to strike her back, yank up her black wool skirt, spread her legs, hold her by the hair as he —

Ja! The act of Ritual as they played the Queen; the hunting and the killing, the stalking and the bloody death, and then, at the very end, Fräulein as she lay prostrate before him, open and willing, spread among the pillows he had slain … Yes, God, he wanted her then. To think he tried to cauterize that red desire with a black velvet gown and a dinner party! What a fool!

“Don't you wonder why I never laugh?” she demanded now.

Mother laughing as Little It's diarrhea ran down Father's leg. As the home brew poured down her throat. As the rubber snout jabbed in. As the little girl's bottom exploded in the brass pot. “I never thought you had anything to laugh about.” A shadow fell across his desk. Suddenly she knelt beside his chair. She took his hand in hers and petted it like a child. Touching it to her cheek and pressing it to her skin. Waves of light and warmth flowed into his lifeless fingers. How could it be so wrong if she made him feel this way? Why so forbidden when they both were aching for it? To flow together, to mount and crash, sinking again like the ocean on a strip of sand while sandpipers danced along the brink. Finally he knew what she was supposed to look like. All through the times of starvation and the skinny shrieking filth — she was really this ripe, blossoming face, a sullen fruit that parted and took you inside the sweet flesh.

“Sometimes a man laughs when he enjoys a forbidden thing/' she told him. “But when a woman laughs, she doesn't laugh through her mouth or throat.” Her voice grew low. “Sometimes she laughs through the dark place between her thighs….”

Here, she gripped his first two fingers, holding him in the warm fold of her fist. She gave his fingers a brief squeeze,- the pulse of it ran into his arm and down his spine. A coupling of hands, a fleshy palm and strong fingers doing what a man and woman were supposed to do. Only holding hands. Just hands. And as she spoke their hands made love again. “So when Î laugh, my insides laugh too …”

The pulse of her flooded through his arm.

“But I haven't laughed in a long time. Not since Father watched me through the open door. Since I played on the floor. Not since the Black Time.” Her eyes glittered darkly. “Don't you like it when I laugh?”

His fingers fused to a single root. Her relentless fist pressed once more, and the pulse of her hurled in. Was she feeling any of this —-or was it all him, sick and depraved?

So innocently. “Don't you like it when I laugh?”

“I like it,” he said hoarsely. The office slipped away and the dark came to his eyes, the dusky place between Nanny Sasha's thighs. There came the faintest rush of air as Fräulein whispered:

“Doesn't Frau Emma laugh?”

Again, the pulse, as she worked her fist around his thick fingers. “Emma …,” he said vaguely. Those times with Emma seemed shallow, jerking spasms — not the sobbing convulsions he knew were coming. “No,” he whispered. “Î don't think Emma ever laughs.”

“Not like this,” Fräulein teased. The pulse pounded in his chest. She gazed at him through heavy-lidded eyes, rocking on her knees. Now eyes closed, her mouth slack, purring:

“Not like me?”

“Not like you.”

She clung to his arm, her voice satin and breaking. “When I laugh it means î want someone. Want him badly …”

He touched her swaying head, spreading her hair. His cuff link unfastened and fell on the floor. She swayed, going rigid and slack. Her free hand clawed his arm as her coupling fist sapped the life from him.

“Don't all women laugh?” he demanded.

But she made no answer. So he held her hair, forcing her eyes into his. “Don't all women?”

“I don't know,” she moaned. “Don't
know!”

Hot tears gushed from his eyes, blinding him. She tore her head from his grip. The coupling of their hands broke. She panted and hung her head. In his lap, his pale, weak fingers stared up at him. Damp and limp. It was over.

She feebly straightened her clothes. Sometime during it all, he had pulled down the shades. He could not see her face. They let the hollow silence of the room protect them for a while. Neither met the other's eyes. She made ready to leave.

“Don't forget your umbrella,” he said stupidly.

At the door she stopped, then asked the dark room:

“Shall I come tomorrow?”

“Please …,” he whispered fiercely. “Tomorrow. Always.”

And when she had left he fell asleep at his desk, a dead black sleep until the maid knocked on the door, announcing the arrival of the next patient.

That night as he lay in the darkness, Herr Doktor had the strangest sensation — that the girl had entered his bedroom and was standing quietly in the shadows, watching as he lay in bed with Emma. So beautiful, the Lady of the Veils brought to life … While beside him Emma kept groaning in her sleep, as if she sensed something amiss. At last, weary of his wife's restless slumber, Herr Doktor drifted off into a troubled doze. Yet with half-closed eyes he still saw the dim white figure standing in the shadows. Slowly a bit of her shroud fell from her. Then more, as from a statue. She unwound, unraveled, lengths of drapery falling to her feet. She was spinning like a top, like a spindle, she was twirling round and round…. And her voice said, “I will come to you tonight. Tonight and every night. In the place where we can be together. You know the place.”

Fräulein opened her eyes. She felt a dampness between her thighs. A kind of sorrowful ache that had no name. She was sure he was dreaming of her now. Through the window she saw a great summer moon sailing above towering clouds, thunderhead clouds in the dead of night. She found the silver-handled hairbrush on her dresser and gently touched its smooth, long silver handle to her thigh…. How
telling
Herr Doktors fingers had been. The great faces of the clouds loomed down upon her, they opened their mouths to speak. A shiver of lightning came from their eyes. The smooth handle of the brush ran up and down and deeper down again.

After many heartbeats there came a distant thunder.

Night lay over the valley. Herr Doktor had come with Herr Vienna Professor to their little village, come to celebrate the sowing of their fields, to cast seed and sprinkle watered wine upon the earth. They had been drinking from dawn until dusk, and he had lost the old codger somewhere. But that didn't matter so much, for he was drunk too. And Herr Freud should be man enough to hold his liquor. Ah, what wine, he thought, as he swilled from the jar. A picture of a running naked woman had been drawn on the clay. He patted her lovingly. Nice bottomless jar, nice Lady …

In the furrowed fields a fire leaped up from a pit. He cradled the jug and stumbled toward the leaping light. Maybe he'd find the old sot down there.

But instead he found the women.

Emma and Fräulein knelt by the wavering coals in the fire pit, their heads bent together, tittering and whispering secrets. Emma lifted her flinty eyes to him. Fräulein smiled knowingly They beckoned him, and his mind burst into flames. Ja, here and now. “Both of you,” he cried. “I want you both!”

The women straddled him in a furrow, one upon his hips, the other upon his face. He tried to squirm, but they pressed him down, his greatness rising up for them. But which one? Sweat ran from his eyes. He wanted to laugh, to scream, to shout, as the life gushed out of him. While high above, great thunderheads boiled over the mountains. Gods making love, he thought….

The raindrops began to fall/ Fräulein crawled from the trench, leaving the two of them wound together in the muddy furrow, slimed over with sweat and wine. In the orchard she crouched under the shelter of some low-hanging branches. They had tied the Green Man to the tree, but now they used a living man, Herr Vienna Professor — bound hand and foot. The old withered body shone in the slippery rain. He peered blearily into the wild dark, sniveling, “Help me. Help …”

“All right, I'll help.” Herr Doktor had suddenly appeared. He held a sapling in his hand, which rose and fell. Old Herr Professor cried out with each blow, the welts erupting on his white skin. The sapling lashed and lashed until the blood ran down the bark, lashed and lashed until the old man's limp thing stirred like a waking animal, lashed and lashed until it rose for them in a pain of ecstasy.

Fräulein found herself kneeling at the old Professor's feet. She was fighting with Frau Emma, fighting over the old man's risen thing, taking it in their hands and mouths, pushing and shoving until at last they brought him off — and with a great cry he sprayed over their furious faces and onto the damp bloody ground. While the mob sang their praises, rejoicing. “You — you! … You — you!”

Fräulein sat up in bed. Outside her window gusts of wind pelted the curtains. Fat raindrops fell recklessly on the open sill. She wiped the dampness from her chest.

Herr Doktor shuddered. Geschrei the house cat leaped to the floor. He felt the body of Emma in bed. Did she know? Or sense the change in him? He felt transparent. Ravenous. He thought of foods, of beef roasts with a crackle of burnt fat around the bone. He thought of candies in silver paper and puffed potatoes and baked pies, of tomatoes and wet, leafy salads, shining with droplets of vinegar and oil…. He saw melons for breasts and hard ripe strawberries for nipples. He saw open oysters, succulent and quivering, for the dark place between Fräuleins thighs.

Once more he looked at the body of Emma beside him,- he groped for the roundness of her behind. She grumbled and snuggled in bed; but also lifted her bottom for him. Yet when he pressed her for it, she shrank away, clamping down on herself. He insisted. She refused. He yanked her nightdress, ripping it, shoving into her. She bit and cried. She scratched his face before the end. While the cat watched, with yellow eyes.