The Fox in the Attic (33 page)

What other solution was there?

Mitzi wasn't to be told yet ... yes, and how would she take it when they did tell her? But Otto was aware this was something no one would ever quite know. Mitzi had too much courage—too much self-control. When they told her, she'd just obey orders, poker-faced: make the best of it.

Looked-at like that the whole thing was near-blasphemy! But reason told him there must be plenty of similar cases.

Otto was still turning this treadmill when the clock struck two.—Bed! He was doing no good here. So at last he lit his carying-candle and put out the lamp. But this dimmer light only made vivider his mental image of the niece he was soon so totally to lose. Mitzi had never been his favorite among Walther's children (surely one always likes boy-children better than girls?) but he was deeply concerned for her; and now as he passed her door on his way to his own room this concern turned to an impulse so strong it surprised him: he
must
see how she was! Quietly he opened the door, and listened candle in hand to the darkness inside.

Not a sound. She seemed to be sleeping, but he'd better make sure. So Otto pushed the door wider, and went in to look.

As Wolff had reached habitation-level, the first door he came to stood open onto the stairs. Since it was right on his line of retreat (this room normally not used), he slipped inside to investigate; and by stovelight recognized his English rival.

“THIS ONE SHALL DIE BY FIRE ...” The Voice was so loud Wolff wondered it didn't wake the sleeper; but Augustine never stirred.

Fire
... Wolff knew at once what to do, when the time came (for he had done the same thing once before, to a police-spy at Aachen): he must drag this young man out of bed pinioned in the sheet and too suddenly for any struggle and kill him by holding his head against the red-hot stove. Already (remembering Aachen) Wolff heard the sizzle, smelt cooking bone and hair. It ought to be quite easy—
when
the time came: but that was not yet, might not even be tonight. For this kind of killing was not like a quiet stabbing: even if he gagged his victim too with the bedsheet he could hardly count on no noise at all; there was Mitzi, and he must not risk rousing the house till there was only himself left to kill.

He knew now where the Englishman slept. But Mitzi came first: it might be more difficult to discover which room was Mitzi's, nevertheless that was the next thing Wolff had to find out.

Augustine stirred, and half-woke just as a reddish shadow vanished through his door.

Quiet as any shadow Wolff prowled on down into the pitch-dark hall. Here there were many doors. But here again Fate was smoothing his path tonight; for one door stood ajar, with a light inside. Through the chink Wolff could just see the head of the bed; and at what he saw there his skin flushed hot from head to foot—for it was all coming true. That hair spread over the pillow in the candlelight was Mitzi's!

The candle which lit the room was hidden from outside, where Wolff stood. But just then the shadow shifted, and warned him just in time that someone else was in there before him! He checked himself on the threshold.

Standing at the foot of the bed, Otto had just raised his candle to look at her.

Asleep (Otto thought), with her hair all loose undone, Mitzi looked not even a young girl yet—only a child. Asleep, he saw with relief, she shut her eyes exactly as everyone else does: asleep, no one could tell.

Walther and Adèle—even Franz—had they no imagination? Surely they loved her more even than he did: then had they no notion what the life they were sending her to must be like for her? For someone so immature still, so human, so ... earthly? Almost one heard those great gates creak as they slowly crushed shut on her!

Otto pitied his niece so deeply that almost (he thought) it were better the poor girl had died.

Outside in the hall a loose tile clinked as Wolff retreated. He was back in his attics long before Otto had left Mitzi and gone to his room.

Wolff knew now where they
both
slept: he could do it whenever he liked! Fate whose servant he was wasn't fickle (said Wolff to himself as he ousted the fox from its nest in those warm abandoned furs): Fate was helping him; and Fate wasn't fickle! When the time did come for a killing she always gave him the signal: till then, he must wait.

Morning again! Monday's wintry sun up, and those twin molehills in the blankets erupting into two little boys pulling on leather knickerbockers much blackened and polished at the knees and seats: buckling on belts which each carried a decorative sheath-knife, its handle a roe-deer's foot.

After breakfast Augustine praised those knives loudly; for he saw they were cherished cult-objects and he hoped to give pleasure. But this marked praise seemed only to cause consternation; and it mystified him still further when, in a solid glum lump, all four children followed him to his room.

For a moment the lump blocked his doorway in silence. Then, “Have you told yet?” ten-year-old Trudl asked him in a deep, harsh voice.

Trudl was speaking “good” German carefully, for Augustine's benefit; but what did she mean by “told,” he wondered?—Ah, about that fight-in-a-snowstorm of course! But after himself saving the situation for them why on earth should she think he'd “tell”?

“No,” said Augustine, smiling.

Trudl nodded (after all, if he had told Papa they'd have heard of it!). Then she signed to the two little boys, and with yard-long faces they began unbuckling their belts. Trudl snatched both the knives and held them out to Augustine: “Here you are, then,” she said, and watched him intently.

“It's a waste!” said the younger girl, Irma. She addressed the ceiling cynically: “If he takes them he can still ‘tell' just the same.”

“No! D-d-don't give them yet!” stammered Rudi. “Make him swear first!”

“‘Make him
swear
'!” jeered Irma. “When he's English, you little nit-wit? What good's that?”

“B-b-but ...” Augustine was so flabbergasted he even caught Rudi's stammer: “I-I-I ... I don't want your knives!”

“We all thought that was what you meant,” explained Trudl, non-plussed. “You as good as said so!”

For answer, Augustine thrust back the two knives violently —and they fell to the ground.

“He wants something else, then,” said Irma, flatly. Heinz fumbled out a rather sticky pre-war fifty-pfennig piece, looked at it disparagingly and returned it to his pocket. There was a pause.

Then, “What will you take, to promise?” asked Trudl anxiously. “If it isn't the knives you want?”

“I expect all he wants is to tell—when he's ready,” Irma suggested. “He likes keeping us waiting: it's fun for him.”

But at this Trudl flung herself furiously on Augustine, grabbing his jacket as if she was trying to shake him. “You must say what you want!” she cried: “You must you must you must!”

“Yes, now's your chance, Greedy!” said Irma, addressing Augustine directly for the first time. Then she exchanged glances with the twins: “Else we'll tell Papa ourselves and take our whacking—and that way you'll get nothing!” she added spitefully.

“Yes—serve him right!” said Rudi, refixing his knife to his belt. After all, even a caning might be better than blackmail: “Who minds a sore b-b-bum?” he added, lordly.

“
I
do ... he
must
promise,” Trudl miserably muttered. Astonished, the others stared at her hostile and uncomprehending: “I'm too old to be beaten, now ... it gives me the ‘funny feeling.' I'm older than any of you!”

The situation was so bizarre Augustine hardly knew if he was on his head or his heels. In vain he tried to convince them he'd hate for them to be beaten: that he'd no intention of telling tales—but all gratis, he wanted nothing: but no, his silence had to be bought! Their attitude was that otherwise no Englishman's word could be trusted. This astounded Augustine, for surely “an Englishman's word is his bond” is known the world over? (It astounded this anti-patriot, too, to discover how angry this ignorant attitude made him!)

In the end, Augustine gave in. “Very well,” he said, “I'll tell you.” There was an anxious silence, while resources were inwardly totted. “I want the biggest snowman there's ever been; and you've jolly well got to build it for me.”

They started at him in paralytic astonishment. A grown-up want a snowman? Mad ... utterly mad! Eight eyes fixed on him fearfully, the whole body retreated backwards.

“Before lunch!” Augustine called after them cheerfully: “It's a bargain—don't forget!”

Whew! he thought: and these were her brothers and sisters—the same flesh and blood as his Mitzi!

What a fool he'd been, Saturday, not to take his chance in the chapel and speak to Mitzi! He'd had no other chance since; and indeed so long as she kept to her room how could he—short of going to Walther and demanding to see her?

No doubt Cousins Walther and Adèle were wondering what he was waiting for; but what did the old idiots expect? Augustine was quite prepared to ask Walther's leave for the marriage
after
speaking to Mitzi, but it was just too Victorian if Walther expected to be asked for permission
before
! “Leave to address my attentions ...” yes, it looked very much as if that was what Walther did expect, hiding Mitzi away like this!

As for Mitzi herself, what must she be thinking? She'd be feeling deserted, she'd be asking herself what sluggard sort of lover was this: she might think he'd had second thoughts ... she might even suppose that sacred moment of one-ness in the courtyard had meant nothing to him!

All eyes were upon him—so Augustine supposed: everyone was waiting for Augustine to speak! It never occurred to him no one—not even Mitzi herself—had
noticed
him falling in love.

Mitzi was indeed feeling deserted that morning; but deserted by God, not Augustine.

Waking (for Mitzi that morning) had been like waking in an unexpectedly empty bed:
God wasn't there
—it was as simple as that! Yesterday God talked in her ear, breathed over her very shoulder: wherever she turned there wasn't the tiniest interstice but God was there: yet today, when she called to Him she could hear the words of her prayer traveling outwards for ever into infinite empty distances. Nothing even echoed them back to her—for
nothing
was there.

So today Mitzi was indeed alone in her darkness, and indeed in despair.

Mitzi had taken for granted that first day's first ecstasy was going to be her condition from now on for ever. It had never occurred to her once God had found and possessed her she could ever lose Him again. Had her eyes of the spirit also been smitten with blindness? Was that possible? For God
must
be there!

Mitzi thought of that game where the seeker is blindfold but the onlookers help him by saying “You're cold!” or, “You're hotter now ...” Surely she was not truly alone, with the glorious saints (she was told) all around her? Crowds of them, clouds of them—
onlookers
, all of them seeing where God was? Would none of them say “hot” or “cold” to her? For God MUST be there!

Or had Mitzi but eyes, to read with! The Learned Fathers (she knew) had all been here before her, in this “dark night of the spirit”: at least they'd be company for her—give her hope.

St. Teresa of Ávila ... Teresa had written of “seasons of dryness,” times when even that greatest of the mystics found prayer was impossible; but surely Teresa had something too, somewhere, about the “three waters” which solace that dryness? Mitzi alas had paid little attention in school when the nun read that bit aloud to them: now she hadn't the haziest notion what those “three waters” were (and for that very reason felt certain that here lay the key to her problem). The “first water” was ... what was it? Oh had she but
eyes
, to read that book over once more!

But again,
why
had God done this? Why (and now her soul trembled in mutiny), why show her the depths of His love if He meant to withdraw it? Oh cruel the love that so used her! Truly Mitzi had welcomed her blindness, if nothing but blindness could open her heart to His sweetness: but would she had never known bliss rather than know it and lose it—on top of her blindness.

Yet Teresa ... Oh could she but READ ... and that was the state of her mind when she heard a knock at the door, and her uncle walked in.

*

It had struck the uneasy Otto that morning how lonely the girl must be feeling: so far as he knew, no one much visited her except old Schmidtchen—and it couldn't be good for her, moping alone in her room all day with nothing to do. Leg or no leg he must get her to come for a walk with him. Of course, he himself couldn't walk far; so perhaps it would be better after all if Franz took her? Or what about that young Englishman: surely he'd spare an hour to give the poor girl an outing?

He must find out if she'd like that; and so he had come to her room. But one glance was enough: Mitzi was huddled in a chair beside her untasted breakfast, and her face wore a look of such strain she was certainly fit for no stranger's company. She answered incoherently, too: she seemed unfit to converse, even with him.

But Otto was determined not to leave her like this, now he had come. Perhaps she would like him to read to her? At that suggestion she trembled, but nodded. “Well: what shall I read, then?”

But alas, to listen to “Teresa” with him watching! It must strip Mitzi's soul bare, and today her horrible soul wasn't fit to be seen—not by anyone's eyes. Just because she so longed for Teresa, then, Mitzi chose at a venture Thomas à Kempis. Thomas seemed safer—more congruous too (she told herself) with her uncle's disciplined mind. And who knows? He
might
even prove helpful.

But Otto's calm unspeculative voice made Thomas's dry mediaeval apothegms sound even drier still: Otto gave the words a sharp intonation like musketry instructions and Mitzi's attention soon wandered.
She had been green, and now she was cut down—dried and withered like grass
...