Parallel Stories: A Novel (142 page)

And, as if happy about the unexpected silence and attention that she managed to provoke with her impoliteness, she turned toward Countess Imola and said loudly that she had known old Milton Bradley, he was a great mind, a great scientist, and a fascinating man.
*

Schuer quickly and very expertly expressed astonishment.

Karla, you don’t say, I really had no idea you knew him.

They played this irksome little game all the time; to test the other, to see whether he or she could see the other’s closely held cards and, if possible, find a way to deceive each other. They could gauge the status of their altercation by the irritation shown on the other’s face. The goal was to drown the rival in a sea of contradictory information. This time, however, Schuer pretended to be surprised so he could come to his wife’s aid and shunt the table talk onto a different track, the conversation that he himself had initiated and steered so incautiously in its present direction. His wife did not appreciate scientific discussions at her table. With her good bourgeois attitude, she disdained miserable scientists anyway, had nothing but contempt for all of them, no matter how famous. They could impress her, at most, with their wealth. They always began talking innocently enough, but within a few minutes they would either speechify heatedly or arrive at details she did not consider it proper to hear.

Especially at the table, least of all at the table.

But, dear Otmar, I even told you about their summer home in Wyoming built right next to a loud rushing mountain creek.

How could you be so forgetful, Otmar.

But more important than anything else, he was among the first ones, perhaps the very first, to pay attention to the characteristics of pigmentation, those finely shaded differences. Indeed, in the process of definition one can grade the differences infinitely, and this is what enables us to describe racial peculiarities. If we are initiating the countess into our little professional secrets, I think we shouldn’t keep these details from her. The primary differences show up in the color of hair or skin or even eyes, and in a measurable way, provided one has determined the appropriate means and method of measuring. He could not have known it, old Milton. He did not find it. But I do know, because I have found it. He worked with, as it were, sensory methods.

He simply described what he saw on the skin. He had moving words for it.

If you study these details, Karla, I can say that you actually catch creation at its constitutional, or immanent, work. That’s what he said to me, verbatim. Now, please, you may imagine I was very interested in this, in catching creation doing its constitutional work. I’d say nothing could interest me more. This is how old Milton gave a religious or esoteric dimension to the issue, so we wouldn’t stand helpless in the face of creation. I was fascinated by him, by his America, by his world. Because of their Negroes, Americans can’t avoid posing these questions. You can see it for yourself, Karla. All human beings are put together of the same materials, but each one differently because of his or her particular line of heredity. We have to admit that the entire completed work cries out for an esoteric interpretation. The countess should also know that Bradley was of course interested primarily in bastards.

He examined things by looking at them from the wrong side, as it were. He’d notice a crude difference between two things for which he had no explanation. Well, he would say, let’s see what happens when these other different elements are intermixed.

And now she chuckled just as her boss had done earlier—a sign that, again, only she and her boss understood around the table.

Bradley could not have—please forgive me, Otmar, for arguing with you—but he could not have provided a definitive explanation and neither can we, she continued, wiping tears away. A person can have at best a definable idea. That’s the extent of one’s science.

Finding a trail in the jungle and following it.

Today the baroness discourses about philosophical questions of science in a very sentimental frame of mind.

Oh, not at all, answered Karla pensively; her response caused such a deep silence around the table that the gentle rustling of the maple trees could be heard.

Despite Bradley’s paternal advice, I decided I had better start out on a trail I’d found myself, not found by others, she continued quietly a moment later.

Karla, that’s a very heroic statement coming from you, Schuer exclaimed; now he wanted to end the scientific discussion yet was happy they were showing the countess their spiritual teases and professional tussles.

You’re making fun of me, Otmar.

On the contrary, I admire your insight.

An eye, as you know, has a definite cross section. It can be sliced in two; one can make up to fifty sections. That’s all. I’ve gone further than others in distinguishing among the parts,
en tous cas.
Nothing has interested me except these sections, she continued dryly; she was enjoying her scientific superiority.

I had no other ideas, but at least I had this one.

She was happy at least to have come between the other two, however briefly.

The sections gave more differential answers than old Milton’s exemplary literary descriptions.

But I don’t necessarily deserve credit, she cried.

Credit and scientific achievement do not necessarily go hand in hand anyway, Karla, Schuer remarked, if only for the sake of balance.

That’s correct, the baroness replied contentedly.

Schuer let her have this set of the match because he knew what still lay in wait for her.

Then there was another quiet spell, with all of them silent as people are when they turn inward for brief reflection. Baroness Karla had managed to wedge herself between them, which not only made their feeling of belonging together painful, but also called their attention to what they had done, and made them realize that because of Karla they would never again be this close, so innocently and unconsciously.

And who knows what else might have happened to them in this seemingly calm moment if it were not for the cry of pain.

Sieglinde shouted out a surprisingly short cry, like a strong groan of mental anguish, and everyone looked at her in surprise. As if they were acknowledging her personal existence for the first time, as she sat there in her dark-blue puff-sleeved little dress trimmed with rickrack.

She kicked me, cried the little boy, beside himself, by way of explanation.

Because he pinched me, the little girl said, and her cheeks flooded with tears, tears of moral outrage, he’s so mean, so mean, always mean like this.

But her self-discipline was functioning very well indeed; she spared them the sounds of crying.

Which made the little boy lose his inhibitions, and he began shouting desperately, she was the mean one, how could she be so mean, she should be ashamed because it was just the other way around, she was the mean, evil one.

Then the third one started to cry, as if some unprecedented unfairness had befallen her too.

The commotion might have lasted only as long as it took the children’s mother and Miss Bartleby to rise threateningly from their seats. The two older children, knowing their obligations, stood up, resigned and very pale, and the little one slid off her elevating pillows. The guests could not imagine that this sort of thing was happening at the table for the first time. But before his mother had grabbed him by the collar, the little boy was looking at what he’d left on his plate with some alarm.

As if he were expecting punishment for that too.

Except the guests realized not that he was looking at his plate but that he was about to collapse right in front of their eyes. Before they could rush to his aid, his pretty head knocked against the table and, with a groping hand sweeping off napkins and utensils, he crashed between the shoved-aside chairs.

This prompted the two hesitating guests to rise too, and only Schuer remained seated for another few moments. Although in cases like this his upbringing required only that he remain calm, he also issued a contrary command.

Follow the ladies’ example, and if they are not sitting, you stand too.

The same scene again, said the baroness dryly. You will excuse me if I leave you briefly—Countess, Baroness.

Now Schuer stood too, but he did not lose his equanimity.

Oh, I’m so sorry, cried the countess with feeling, I am really very sorry.

Even though obviously no one needed to hear her sentiments.

Suddenly she seemed to sense the silence in the house.

With practiced movements Miss Bartleby and one of the maids picked up the helpless body and, while the other maid hurried ahead, carried it out—with no special caution.

Please, don’t let this upset you, said the man as gracefully as he could, let’s finish our meal, and with his spread arms he asked them to take their seats again. He gave no explanation for the strange event. Not a word.

Not a single sign of worry.

Which both ladies found strange.

Baroness Thum sat down quickly and politely, almost defeated. She smiled a little absentmindedly to herself, and raised her fork and knife. Countess Imola stood for an additional moment, as if bewitched, her gaze following the three women carrying the little boy through the enfilade of rooms, the little girls’ shoulders, in their rickrack-decorated puffy-sleeved little blouses, shaking with suppressed weeping. Echoes of her childhood, alive with loneliness, came crashing down on her. A childhood filled with sameness, uniformity; the way the two little girls’ shoulders in their identical little blouses trembled identically; it was as if Imola had also reached the end of uniformity’s magic.

Which was not a feeling, not a decision, not a thought; it was something that simply happened.

She did not dare look at Schuer again, or say anything. Would not have dared ask him what had happened to his son, which for him seemed usual and routine. She couldn’t have said where their conversation had left off. She was deeply ashamed of having dared to compare this terrible father to Mihály Horthy for even a moment.

How could I have done that.

How lucky it was for her and her sisters that, when their mother had left them, fate saw to it that they had their kindly father, however defeated, with whom they could weep together.

Shortly the maids returned.

The countess found their zeal repulsive—and revealing too—the way the dining room with its very bourgeois furnishings exuded gloom, the way the maids carried away the superfluous settings, indicating their vast experience in removing traces of scandalous scenes. Quickly and tactfully. This practiced, easy behavior especially irritated her.

What have I done, she was screaming to herself, what have I done. She had no idea what she could have wanted earlier from this strange man, and in what science she had wanted to stick her nose.

She had enough social experience to know that accidents like these are usually followed by other accidents, and three days later everyone will have forgotten this one. She might have become unfaithful because of a man who is ready to cheat on his wife, no, not just that, who tortures his children, whom he cannot restrain.

As if she were trying to calm down by claiming that a man like that was worth nothing and she didn’t even want him.

No one broke the silence.

Rather, the adults dutifully continued their meal, eating everything that remained on their plates in a very proper way. They smiled politely and preventively, clattering improperly with their knives and forks on the fine porcelain. They also had to listen to the noise of the others’ chewing and swallowing. Even as a little girl Countess Imola had found this maddening, she couldn’t understand how her kindly, tender father could chew so loudly. This was the only reason for them to speak, so they should not have to hear one another from such an intimate proximity.

One cannot chew and swallow so politely that one’s jaw, teeth, and tongue won’t make champing and smacking sounds.

Maddening.

Yet in light of the receding minor family tension, it would have been considered just as inconsiderate to leave food on one’s plate. And cutlery cannot be used on porcelain without making a noise; no such fine porcelain exists.

And there are no perfect manners either.

They finished their meal quickly enough, though, and the maids took away their plates. Countess Auenberg could hear herself making her report to her woman friends of this visit. Charming people, but I have never sat on such an uncomfortable chair.

At the Schuers, the serving tray was not carried around a second time. Everyone ate as much as he or she had taken or asked to be served the first time around. In the painful silence they did not have to wait long for the dessert, which slightly surprised, in fact irritated, the countess, accustomed to the French habit of pacing the courses. Done this way, the meal was not a repast but merely a hurried intake of nourishment. Luckily, dessert consisted of small portions of an excellent
soufflé glacé au café
, each portion ornamented with a single roasted coffee bean. Without being noticed, Countess Auenberg pushed aside the tiny coffee bean with its oily shine in the shell-shaped saucer; Karla Baroness von Thum zu Wolkenstein and Otmar Baron von der Schuer, however, dutifully took theirs into their mouths and loudly crunched them between their teeth.

Schuer was first to speak once they had ended the long-lasting crunching in the frozen silence of the house, and once all three of them, ceremoniously and relieved, had touched their large damask napkins to their lips.

With her permission he would accompany the countess
to the living room
, he said in English, probably by accident. He and the baroness had originally planned to withdraw for a brief conference and he didn’t want to alter their plan, but he was certain he could count on the countess’s understanding and patience.

The countess, wearied by some strange distraction that might also be called coolness, neither answered nor looked at him.