The Grimscribe's Puppets (31 page)

By the side of the track to her house, Gerda had once found an old battered brown suitcase. It had stickers all over it proclaiming the destinations it had been to or pretended it had—Paris, Rome, Berlin, Athens, and San Francisco. Probably places the owner had only dreamed of, like Gerda. In the suitcase she found just one thing. A postcard with a picture of a red pool on it framed by frost, addressed to a person in England. Winter 1977. On it the words, ‘My childhood was full of nightmares, of events that did happen, and of those yet to come.’ Events. Things. Images effortlessly conjured up. Ones that should not be thought about. How had the postcard ended up in New Zealand away from its destination? Gerda had a feeling many objects somehow made their way back to New Zealand.

When she was thirteen, Gerda earned a little money, took the train into Wellington that summer, and found her way to Cuba Street where she bought some colourful clothes, hoping that they would make her happy. The psychedelic swirls of yellow, red and purple just made her feel sick. No flowers for Gerda—to be worn in
her
hair. A southerly wind whipped through the city, reminding her of the time she had clung to trees. She tucked herself in close to the buildings.

Gerda’s ancestors had come to the country as settlers although it had been an unsatisfactory settlement. Six generations out from Europe and the only thing Gerda cared to do was to make black bread and almost as black plum and berry jam from their little orchard. The crop seemed to yield less and less each year. Kay’s hands were always covered with it and she knew what to expect when he dipped his fingers into it—sometimes she washed the squashed juicy blackberries off her thighs and sometimes she left them there. Six generations out from Europe and no close relations to speak highly of—they were all dead or had gone off to find better work in Australia. The wop wops of New Zealand hadn’t suited them at all.She just thanked whoever that there were none of the snakes that her Aussie neighbours had to put up with. She had heard of the Kiwi man who had gone off to the Australian mines and been killed by a snake. The strips of bark hanging from the trees often reminded her of the hated creature. Kay had put a rubber snake in her bed once, which she had prodded a few times with a stick to make sure it was rubber, although she knew there were no snakes in New Zealand, and then she had got him back tenfold by putting something very much alive in his bed.It wasn’t too hard to find cockroaches. Kay hit her with a skipping rope that had been left lying on the floor. She had never forgotten. Still her brother was the only kin she had, now. She hated her dependence on him, but it was inevitable. She had nothing to look forward to in that relationship.

And lately Dr. Jaspers killed more than he cured. Not deliberately. The life seemed to ebb away from his patients, the ones who still wanted his services out of some misguided loyalty. There had been rumours that he had experimented on a few—used some herbal remedies.She had heard he had talked of suicide. Then that he had brightened up a little and tried Maori medicines.The kill or cure ones. He was a small, thin man with a slight stoop, and he then would diminish his height even further by bowing his head down to look at you over his glasses to see into your heart. Gerda knew he would find nothing in hers except some strange connection with Kay, which was more of dependence than with feeling.

One morning, Gerda found her brother with his head on his crossed arms lying across the kitchen table. He looked up as she entered the room and she saw that his eyes were blood shot. Dark circles hung below them.

“You didn’t sleep well, then?” The question was just a way of breaking the ice. She knew he didn’t sleep well at all.

“Nope. And I have to go to work. Dr. Jaspers told me that if I couldn’t solve the problem of the red weed he’d have to let me go. Nothing grows for me either, now.”

“Why now …what could be different?” She knew he didn’t know the answer but she asked it just the same. The silence was unbearable some days.

“Nothing. Each year I do the same thing and it usually turns out fine, but since that red weed came along, nothing grows.”

She rinsed some bowls in the sink and put them on the side. She looked up and out of the window. The branches of the manuka and totara trees seemed closer than ever.

When Gerda knocked on the door of the doctor’s house, he seemed a little surprised to see her but let her in. The house had once been quite beautiful, she thought, but the burgundy hall carpet was quite faded and led to an equally dull room. Little colour within but packed with books on tables, and on dusty shelves. It had started to rain and it could be heard quite clearly pounding the tin roof—a grand design of a house, typical of the villa style but large, very large. Gerda thought of the books she had read,
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
came to mind. She was only just hanging on herself, and why? She thought of little monsters with no neck, and smiled.

“Good afternoon, Gerda. I was just going to have tea. Would you like something? Are you hungry?”

Gerda remembered her manners. “Thank you. That would be good.”

“When I say tea—I mean wine and cakes. That is what I drink and eat at this time of day.”

Gerda nodded and Dr. Jaspers left. She roamed around the room picking up books and putting them down, being careful not to disturb the red ribbon bookmarks found in each one. Oddly enough, they were placed a few pages from the end in almost all of them. She picked a book up. Red cover with a woman in Victorian dress sitting down—etched in gold.
A Book of Fifty Drawings
by Aubrey Beardsley. Dr Jaspers returned as she put it down. He noticed what she had been looking at. She sat back down on a settee, folded her hands on her knee, and waited patiently. He entered the room twice. On the first tray lay plates of cakes and tarts and on the second a bottle of red wine and the most exquisite glasses she had ever seen. They were a cranberry colour with flowers and leaves carved upon them. She hoped she would not break one. Dr Jaspers quickly poured her a glass of wine without spilling a drop and handed it to her with a smile.

That day Gerda let herself enjoy what he gave her. The cakes were covered with white icing and they had tiny silver snowflakes scattered across the surface. She thought of frozen ponds and small ice skates. A drop of wine spilled from her lips onto the icing and she, without thinking, licked it off the cake. Dr Jaspers watched her over the top of his glasses.

At last she mentioned her brother. “Kay has tried to get rid of the red weed. It isn’t his fault that it has taken such a hold.”

“I know.”

“Then why will you be letting him go?” That sounded too polite, she thought.

“Out of desperation, my dear. I’ll hire someone new, and perhaps they can do something to clear it from my land.”

“Give him another chance?”

Dr. Jaspers put his glass of wine down. “Perhaps,” he said. He hesitated. “If you come for tea each day. I need the company. Then I will consider it.”

Gerda thought about the implications of that. If coming into the house led to what she thought it would… would it be so bad? Worse that the mundane and routine existence she went through day after day.

She nodded.

“Good. Then that is settled. Shall we say we have an agreement for two weeks? Perhaps longer?”

Gerda nodded again.

“But there is one more thing.”

Here it comes, thought Gerda.

“I noticed you looking at that book by Aubrey Beardsley. I like to draw. I’d like you to pose for me. Nothing too over the top… you understand?”

Gerda nodded again. It perhaps won’t be too bad, she pondered as she helped herself to another iced cake. Mentally, she was working out where the line was she would not cross and she couldn’t find it.

They continued to chat for another half hour, both sipping at the wine and nibbling at the small cakes. At the back of her mind Gerda was trying to tell herself that the wine wasn’t affecting her, but when she got up to leave she swayed, just a little. Dr. Jaspers reached out and held her arm to support her. His touch was icy. She jumped a little and then looked down at his fingers. The nails were strangely long for a man. White as if covered in nail varnish. The fingers—delicate, too.

The next day she came back and after a brief conversation about how he wanted her to pose he placed the easel, paper and pencils exactly where he wanted them. Dr Jaspers handed her a glass of wine and pushed the plate of cakes forward to her across the table.

Then he handed Gerda a floor length red silk kimono. He indicated that she could change in another room. There seemed so many so she just picked one, the dining room as it happened, with heavy curtains that she let be whilst she changed. The kimono was way too long for her but she hitched it up when she walked. On entering the room, Dr Jaspers asked her to lie down on the chaise lounge. Her silver hair hung loose around her shoulders.

“May I adjust your robe?” he asked.

Again the nod. No words.

He exposed one of her breasts—a pearl of a nipple, and backed away quickly. His ice-cold hand had brushed her skin but she had tried to ignore it. Her head lay on a crimson pillow and as she lay there, she felt herself get drowsy. She slept. And as she did so, Dr Jaspers drew. He drew with precision as if conducting some minor operation. He stared for an awful long time before he put pencil to paper. Gerda dreamt of dark open empty spaces and when she did finally awake,for an instant her vision was filled by the deepest red.

The next day after the wine and cakes, he asked her to put the kimono on again but to leave it undone. Indeed, he took the long strip of crimson from the loops, and wound it gently around her neck, tying it in a tight bow to the side, smiling as he did so. She swallowed but said nothing and glanced to her left at the white nails. She might have been completely naked for all that the kimono concealed. Again Dr. Jaspers stared for a long time before beginning to draw. Again she fell asleep and dreamt—this time she saw figures moving around when the dark turned to red. When she awoke, she had no further recollection of the dream.

After one week he let her look at the drawings. They were good—every detail caught and beautifully done.

“You are exquisite, Gerda. Thank you for letting me have the honour of drawing you.”

Gerda said nothing. Just got dressed and left, returning the following day and the day after that. Always the same pose always with the crimson bow tied to the left of her neck. This ritual went on for the next two weeks. He always sat well away from her. They had two tables—one by the side of each chair. A plate of cakes for him and one for her on each table.

He never touched her. In-between drinking wine and eating, he looked at her over the glasses—starting with the lower half of her body. She wondered when he would make his move, but he never did. He would wander around her chair as if spinning a web, but he never got too close except to arrange the bow at her neck.

At one sitting when she awoke, the doctor was staring at the canvas, a blank expression on his face which looked as if it had been set for hours. He did not move when she rose to leave.

The next day just before she left to see Dr. Jaspers she came across Kay in the kitchen with that same look at his face as he stared out of the window. He rose unsteadily from his chair and grabbed onto the table for support.

“You can’t go to work like that.” Gerda took his arm and led him to his room. She put him in bed fully clothed except for his boots. He was burning up. Pulling back the covers she undid his shirt and saw that a bright red rash had started to appear just where his heart was. Gerda tucked him in and decided she would go see Dr. Jaspers. Before she left, she locked her old dog in the shed.She had never given it any love and attention and it clung to life as if taunting her. She thought that she should have killed it years ago, but she let it be to remind her just how much she hated her life. All life. When she looked up at the stars, some already dead for the light had taken so long to reach the earth, it just reminded her of the fact they every living thing on the planet would die one day, and be forgotten.

Gerda went to see Dr. Jaspers. “Will you come and look at Kay?”

The doctor nodded.

After a brief examination, the doctor took her to one side. “I can find nothing wrong with him. Nothing at all.”

Gerda stopped going to see Dr. Jaspers, and he never came to see what had happened to her or her brother.

For a few more weeks she fed her brother a thin gruel, and ate the same herself. One morning she realised that it was her birthday that day, and therefore her brother’s, also. Kay lay on his bed but stared out of the window as usual. She found the birthday presents in the bottom of a dusty cupboard, next to photo albums; she had never cared to look at, and brought them to his bed. She thought that Kay should be dead soon. His arms lay on the bed—pale but with tracer lines of deep red running up each vein on the inside of his arm. She could see the movement under the skin. It wasn’t blood. Gerda placed her head on his chest and could hear his heart beat gently and then, nothing. She stared at him for a long time.

Gerda opened the one, which had her name on it. Wrapped in black tissue paper was a knife. The handle was the colour of Dr. Jaspers’ nails. Not that way, she thought.

She could not lift Kay off the bed, so she went to see the hunter. She spoke to him and he nodded. He said that he would do what she wanted, whatever it was. She told him where to take Kay—and what she was going to do with his body. Another agreement. The hunter was to wait for her there. Before he left, she touched him gently on the cheek and smiled.

It didn’t take her long to find the petrol and matches. She went to the beautiful villa, waited for Dr. Jaspers to leave the house, and entered. The library. Quiet. She poured the petrol on the shelves, over the books, and the carpet not so far from the door. She walked to the doorway, and looked back into the room once. She struck the match, and watched as the carpet caught fire, and scoured a line towards the books. Hundreds of books.