The Crooked Maid (30 page)

They set off. Robert seemed unable to impress on her their need for haste, had to pull her along by the crook of her arm like a reluctant child. They didn’t have far to go: the remand prison was in the same building that housed the criminal court. They sped down corridors the length of a city block. As they approached the prison entrance Poldi came to a sudden halt and dislodged herself from Robert’s grip.

“I en’t ready,” she complained, touching her temples in an oddly affected gesture, Bette Davis coming down with
le petit mal
. “I have to look my best. Otherwise, what good is it to visit, eh, pet?”

She smiled at her hand mirror, licked a smear of lipstick off her teeth.

It was Poldi’s first visit to the prison. Ever since Wolfgang’s arrest she had refused all contact, claiming at first she was too sick to leave the house (she did in fact suffer from almost constant nausea and could be heard throwing up not only in the mornings but practically any time of the day and night), then insisting she’d make “a bad impression on them guards” and would “conspire ’em against him” (she proved resilient to Robert’s argument that the guards had nothing whatsoever to do with the outcome of the trial). Wolfgang, for his part, had seemed undecided whether or not he wanted to see his wife. At times he had asked about her, badgering Robert for all the details of her pregnancy and asking questions of such physical intimacy that they flustered his stepbrother. Then entire days would pass when he displayed no interest in his wife and dismissed any suggestion of a future visit, often in terms crudely insulting to Poldi.

Robert had come to see his stepbrother three or four times a week since their first meeting three months ago and, in the course of time, had grown familiar with his bewildering range of moods. Quite often, during the first few minutes of these visits, Wolfgang appeared to Robert a changed man, which is to say thoughtful, chastened, engaged in the scrupulous examination of his past. But inevitably a sneering, mocking mood would take possession of him before the visit was over, and more often than not the interview ended on a caustic, even sour note.

Part of the frustration of these exchanges derived from their setting: visiting rules demanded that they not discuss the trial, nor Wolfgang’s supposed crime. Often they found themselves reduced to the rehearsal of childhood anecdotes. It was, Robert had explained to Eva, not a situation “conducive to the baring of souls.” She had laughed and warned him he should beware his didn’t curdle on exposure. Robert, undaunted, had redoubled his efforts to talk Poldi into making a visit. Three days ago she had finally agreed and at once launched into frantic preparations. It was only now that she’d suddenly grown tardy.

As it turned out, there was no need for any hurry. The young man who
represented the judge during these meetings had himself attended the trial and had arrived, Robert was told, “not a minute ago,” as had the prisoner, who was even now being conducted into the visiting room. They signed the guard’s ledger and listened to his recital of the rules.

“So you finally got her to come, Robert,” the man added familiarly, tracing with his eyes the clumsy, looping letters with which Poldi had spelled out her name. He started relating some prison gossip, then thought better of it when he noticed Poldi’s mood. “Nervous, are we? Come in, then, it’s right over here.”

Indeed it was hardly more than ten steps. As though by silent agreement they stopped one more time outside the door.

“You go on ahead, Frau Seidel,” the guard encouraged her gently.

Poldi faced her little mirror before opening the door.

4.

Wolfgang was smoking. He sat slouching on a chair, both elbows on the table, the cigarette wedged between fingers that were threaded through his hair. When he heard the door, he looked up with no special show of interest. His eyes found Poldi, arrested her step; examined her from head to toe with great deliberation and a certain virile cruelty. She in turn submitted to his gaze, a little shamelessly, it felt to Robert, pushing her chest forward (she had filled out in the course of the pregnancy) and allowing herself to be appraised.

“What’s that, then?” Wolfgang said, his eyes on the abundant fabric of her sleeves. “A curtain?”

She coloured but did not reply.

“I should leave you two alone,” said Robert, already retreating.

“No, no, stay,” Wolfgang instructed him, his eyes still gathering in his wife. “I insist. My whole life is played out before an audience these days.” He gestured to the judge’s assistant and the guard, who were standing by the far wall and whispering to one another in low voices. “You might as
well join the crowd.” He shifted his gaze to Robert. “But I forgot. You
want
to leave. You are terribly disappointed with me. After all you’ve heard, I mean.” He pointed at Poldi, a stabbing motion, sharp and accusing. “Was she there?”

Robert shook his head. “She didn’t want to come in. Besides, there were no tickets. She waited outside the door.”

“Look at her blushing, though. She
knows
. She eavesdropped.”

Robert did not reply. All at once he remembered where she’d waited for him, pressed into the shadows of the wall, like a child pretending she’d been good.

“Well, screw it. So everybody knows.”

Neither Robert nor Poldi made any movement to sit down. Robert looked very pale in his dark suit.

“Go on, little brother. You have something to say?”

“How could you?” Robert asked meekly. “Beat a little man like that?”

“What, the one with the cracked glasses?” Wolfgang gave a crooked grin. “And what do you bet he has another pair at home? Without any crack. You can picture him at his sink in the morning, trying out both pairs. Or maybe he dropped the glasses on the way over—by accident of course. But look, the Herr Assistant-Court-Official is getting nervous. We mustn’t discuss the trial.”

He shook his head in mock exasperation that nonetheless seemed to bleed the anger out of him; flicked away a curling inch of ash and ground the cigarette into the tabletop.

“You remember, Robert, when we were children, Dad would take us fishing sometimes. He insisted we clean our own fish. First you slit them open with a narrow knife. From asshole to gills, so to speak. And then—” Wolfgang hooked two fingers, mimed the process of wrenching out the guts, then wiped his hand upon his tie. “I remember you didn’t like it at first. You may even have cried. But after a while—” He shrugged, sour, amused. “You got to be pretty good at it, little brother. The blood didn’t bother you at all.”

Wolfgang turned his attention back to Poldi. He rose from his chair
and walked over to her until they were no more than a foot apart. “You’re sure it’s mine, eh?”

She nodded, dry-eyed, hands folded over her stomach.

“Ah, give us a kiss, then.” He pulled her towards him, kissed her lips in a greedy, forceful manner, then immediately pushed her away again; swore, rounded the table, dropped back onto his chair. “Time you went, kid. You need your beauty sleep.

“That’s my wife,” he added, much too loudly, as though yelling at the guard. “Tits out, preggers, half her teeth missing. Wasn’t me, in case you wondered.” He flushed in renewed anger, bared his own teeth, raised one fist in a mock punch. “And they say I called them filth. What if I did, though?”

He lit a new cigarette, turned once again to Poldi, looked pained. “You’re still here? Stop staring at me with those cow eyes. You heard it: I throw old men out the window. Me, the father of your child. Sleep on it, I tell you, see how it sits with you in the morning.”

Calmly, not rushing, Poldi turned and walked to the door. Robert made to follow her, but Wolfgang stopped him.

“How is
Mother
?” he barked at his back.

“She is well. She sends her regards.”

“Does she now? Any special message perhaps?”

Robert shook his head. “She says you are sure to be acquitted. She is praying for you.”

Wolfgang grinned. “Praying? That means she’s nervous. Tell her I’m thinking of testifying. Making a clean breast of it, once and for all. And Robert, tell her I’m parched in here. Can she send me some bottles? She’s rich now, isn’t she? She can afford to splurge. One can’t take it with you: make sure to tell her that. She’s the type who thinks you can.”

Robert ran out then, caught up with Poldi, crushed by the feeling he did not know his brother at all.

Three

1.

He told Eva about it later. They were sitting on the floor of his bedroom, her legs splayed, her back against the bed frame, Robert sprawling with his bottom between her hips, leaning lightly on her chest. These days they often sat like that. She could not see his face this way but, then again, he could not see her back. He had a lovely, narrow, upright neck. She liked to breathe him in: stick her nose in the space where the collar gaped at the nape and inhale. It was the smell of being cared for, sweet, a little sweaty, suggestive of bedtime as a child. To believe in it was like believing in God, or Father Christmas. She reached around with both her hands and laced her fingers across his chest; held him tight against her doubt.

In the course of the past two months, Eva and Robert had established a pattern for their relationship. They spent the day apart, hardly talking, he busy playing messenger between Wolfgang and the world; she procuring necessities on the markets, running the household, avoiding his mother. At night they met, shyly, in the corridor outside her room. On the whole there was little talk, or rather little conversation. He liked to speak, upend his mind. She would listen and ration her responses, from caution, habit; because she distrusted the contents of her head. Lately she’d found a better foil for the darkness of her thoughts.

“So it looks like he’s found some joy in it,” she said, when Robert had finished his account of Poldi’s prison visit. “Being a villain. At least she didn’t cry. Almost dignified. Or did she start howling once you were outside?”

Robert shook his head; a twist of bone and tendon in his neck. She stuck her tongue out, touched a mole straddling his hairline; withdrew it again to listen to his answer.

“I found her outside the courthouse. She was tearing the sleeves off her dress, tearing at the seams, but she had sewn them on so hard, the fabric tore instead; a crowd of people around looking at her like a madwoman. When she noticed me, she set off for the tram stop. I tried to console her, but she wasn’t listening. All of a sudden she turned and said, ‘He needs me.’ She said it so tenderly, it nearly broke my heart. ‘He was horrible to you,’ I said, but she shushed me, fingers to my cheek. ‘Don’t you see?’ she said. ‘He’s ashamed.’ I thought she meant the dress, she’s not much of a seamstress, after all, and it did look a bit of a mess. ‘We can buy you a new one,’ I started, but she just laughed. ‘Oh, no, not like that,’ she said. ‘He’s ashamed. Because of what he did. Before you. But also before me.’ The tram came; we sat across from one another, and now her eyes were filling up. ‘The way he looked at me,’ she kept on saying. ‘He still wants me.’”

Robert paused, obviously moved. It distracted from his smell, fanned a spark of cruelty in Eva.

“He
wants
her. Wolfgang leers at her across a room and she thinks it is love.”

“Well, perhaps it is.” He turned so he could see her face, his cheek now level with her mouth. “She stands by him in any case. She wants me to take her back tomorrow, ‘so he can shout at me some more.’ When we got back to the house, she climbed the stairs like a queen.”

Eva snorted: warm breath into the windings of his ear. “You will, of course. Escort her back and watch him insult her some more. Because in your heart you’d already forgiven him the moment you left his cell. It didn’t take ten steps.” She paused, her mood suspended between tenderness and anger. “The thing is, you think he repents. It comes out all wrong, of course, but he repents. And you know what, he probably thinks so himself. That he’s—what’s the word you like so much?—‘resurrected’; ready to acknowledge the ‘blot on his soul.’ But it didn’t bother him, that
blot, not when it was just him who knew, him and his victims, and the people who paid his wages. Even last week he didn’t care one ounce about that blot; he might even have prided himself on it, that he had the strength where others were weak. But now it’s in the papers—and he, he is shaking in his boots.”

Robert did not contradict her. She felt like punishing him but kissed him instead: slipped to his side, turned him by the chin, and crushed his lips with hers. For a moment it won out against everything else, and a softness crept up in her that she longed for and feared.

“You love me, then?” Robert asked, his voice shy, light, boyish. They had played this game before. She had long rehearsed her line.

“Why not?” she smiled. “Any day now you’ll be rich.”

“Say that you love me.”

“Love?” she said, no longer quite so playful. “I’m an orphan. They cut out our hearts at the gates. Didn’t you know?”

A crow cawed, flew in through the half-open window, the curtain catching on its wing. It was Yussuf; she had raised him from a chick. He landed on the headboard of her bed; hopped onto her shoulder, then settled on his.

“You’ve stolen his heart,” she complained, then realized it was true.

“I think it’s my jacket. Black. I remind him of his mother.”

She did not show her hurt at once. It was another lesson of the orphanage: that one is a fool to divulge one’s tender spots. They kissed again, her eyes wide open, Yussuf cawing in her ear. She chased the bird, jumped up, made for the door. Mechanically, Robert stood up to follow.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“To piss. You want to walk me to the bowl?”

Her irritation spent itself in the slamming of the door. By the time she’d reached the stairs, her anger had already flown.

2.

Eva did not go to the toilet, but rather downstairs, to the kitchen, wishing to eat and to collect a bundle of food. It was past nine o’clock at night. She walked along without turning on a light, the hallway carpet crusty under her naked feet, opened the kitchen door, found a shadow pressed against the window. Frau Seidel turned momentarily, just long enough to ascertain who had come. Then her attention wandered back into the moonlit night.