The Hidden Letters of Velta B. (22 page)

And then one day the stone lifted. The glaring blocks of light at the window didn't blind me. That morning I let Mrs. Arijisnikov at the post office know that I needed a job. I knew she would put the word in her husband's ear. Mr. Arijisnikov had a mobile knife-sharpening service and always knew who'd just been fired and why. Sure enough, before true nightfall, Father went down to the river with Mr. A. to fish and “take a cup of tea.” That is, they were down at the water's edge sharing a bottle, a necessary procedure before, during, and after any transaction, business or otherwise.

That very afternoon Mother burst into my room. “Hurry,” she said, helping me into my scrub clothes. “Mr. A. got you in with the Zetsches.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Zetsche!” Mother exclaimed.

“Where?”

Mother bit her lip. “At their new manor house.” Our old manor house. She was not fully resigned to the loss of the manor, I knew this. But she'd bite her lip till it bled before she said a word about it to me. “They need a cleaner who knows what a scrub brush is made for.” Mother bent and tied my shoes. She didn't have to do this for me, but her doing that so I wouldn't have to produced in me a sudden rush of emotion. I kissed Mother's cheek.

“Don't get carried away now,” Mother said, handing me her best bucket and even her gloves.

The Zetsches seemed both ordinary and incredibly mysterious. Was it that they'd cleared a grove of birch to make way for their circular drive with the walnut-size chunks of rock and agate? Or was it the new miniature iron stallions lining their drive? Five horses, each no taller than a meter, anchored the verge of green lining the drive. Each horse had been cast in a different pose: one ran, one grazed, another looked as if he were nuzzling an invisible open hand while another reared on its hind legs with its forelegs scissoring the air.
Extraordinary,
I thought, trying to calculate the cost of such ornamentation. But as I made my way to the rear of the house, the place where every worker knows to go, I could not help noticing the sheer volume of bird droppings smearing the head of each horse. This struck me as exceptionally ordinary.

I rang the bell and kept my gaze on the intricate hinges, metal tongues that curled to flames. Ancient and anciently familiar, I'd seen this door many times when Rudy and I crept around the property. But in those instances, the door was a portal to our own past, a fragile invitation. Now I felt like a voyeur, an interloper eavesdropping on a conversation that had at one time included me.

A small shadow moved behind the glass pane. The door opened. Mrs. Zetsche stood there, no higher than my shoulders. She surveyed my shoes, my legs, my hand gripping the bucket and brushes. As she did, a veil of stale air, heavy with cigar smoke, hit me solidly as a slap. I blinked.

Mrs. Zetsche grimaced. “My Mr. Zetsche loves to smoke. It's not good for him, of course, but every man needs his vices.” She laughed, a high-pitched twittering that settled on my shoulder. She ushered me through the rooms: the billiard room, the kitchen, the pantry, the wine cellar, the downstairs lavatory, the dining room, Mr. Zetsche's downstairs and upstairs smoking rooms, the upstairs lavatory, and her pride and joy: the indoor/outdoor conservatory where she kept Meyer lemon trees and even some pots of weedy looking bamboo. They'd renovated the interior so completely that, had I not trespassed so regularly as a girl, I would not have recognized it.

“My Mr. Zetsche had only the best glass installed for the conservatory. He knows how I love my lemons.” More twittering.

I could hear how terribly Mrs. Zetsche loved Mr. Zetsche, and this spoke volumes about the kind of man he was behind closed doors. And he did give Father the slightest of raises last year when so many people died in the same month and Father had to dig like a man possessed. But as the day wore on, I realized that the Zetsches were, at least in the domestic matters of housekeeping, more ordinary than mysterious. Even though Mr. Zetsche's trousers were cut smaller than those of most men's, his clothes and bedding needed the same amount of soap and bleach as ours did. And Mr. Zetsche's bathrooms looked and smelled like any other bathroom. The only difference was where most people only had one toilet to dirty, Mr. and Mrs. Zetsche had two.

And then there were those miniature iron stallions. As I cleaned the windows, I watched the birds—pigeons and crows in the main, but even a stork from time to time—swoop low over the drive. They let loose with green spatter, spotting the drive and back steps but more often than not smearing the proud horses.

Mrs. Zetsche followed my gaze. “Every day, Inara, you must clean and polish the horses before Mr. Zetsche comes home. This”—Mrs. Zetsche held a forefinger in the air—“is why we had to let the last girl go; my Mr. Zetsche once rode a racehorse to the winner's circle and now there is nothing Mr. Zetsche dislikes more than to see an unkempt horse.”

I nodded solemnly. Mrs. Zetsche handed me a soft-wire curry brush and a yellow polishing chamois.

All that week I washed sheets, sanitized bathroom sinks and commodes. I aired the gauzy sheers and heavy brocade draperies that hung floor to ceiling at the windows. I even polished Mr. Zetsche's hunting medals: a row of discs the size of gold coins that he was awarded for superior marksmanship. On the first floor, envy assailed me at every turn. Oyster spears, nutcrackers, and even the ice bucket scooped out of lunar silver caught in the act of hardening. I wanted these sleek implements that exuded elegance. I wanted the sheers and the heavy brocade at the windows, the long rectangles of oil paintings on the walls. I wanted the fine leather-bound books, the sets of encyclopedias. I wanted Mr. Z.'s gardenias forced into blooms of cobalt and calamine. I wanted the vermillion and orange Kilim floor runners that softened my every footfall.

But on the second floor, a strange unease crept over me. Despite Mr. Z.'s exhaustive renovations, from time to time I came across an old drawer pull, a door handle, or something as intangible as light streaming through a sheer that reminded me that Velta had lived here. And then there was that mirror. It was set within a cracked leather ox harness anchored to the wall.
Who puts a mirror in a harness?
I wondered, as I approached the glass, a bundle of laundry in my hands. A hush, a close stillness, descended as if I were in the presence of something hallowed. I put the laundry on a plush-backed chair. The mirror warped, wrinkled, bulged as if water had gathered behind it. Rivulets of silver upon silver ran down the glass. From behind that water a woman stared at me.
Not Velta,
I told myself. That is not Velta, her hair plaited round her head, her somber eyes gazing at me. Not her white hand, her white hand with the long white fingers beckoning me toward the glass. She is not reaching out to me from the other side; it is not her voice calling my name.

One day I came home to find Father at the kitchen table, his head resting in his hands and the trumpet of the phone out of the cradle. I knew from the slump in Father's shoulders that it was Mr. Zetsche on the line.

“But, sir,” Father said, “Old General served in one major war and lived through two occupations. Such a grand animal deserves some dignity.”

“Listen.” And we all did. For a small man, he had a big voice and it carried through the line and filled the room. “I have known many stubborn horses in my day. You have to take a firm hand with them—it's the only thing they respect.”

Father held the trumpet of the phone away from his ear and stared at it.

After a long moment, we heard something like a whinny. “Just fill the dirt back in around the body a little. Maybe place a spray of carnations nearby. But first things first. I've set a stake to mark where I will stand and say a few words. Before everyone arrives, I want you to turn over a few shovelfuls of soil.”

“Why?” Father could not contain his bewilderment.

“I'll be wearing my tall shoes,” Mr. Zetsche said. “I don't want to fight with the shovel.”

The rain fell all night and through the next morning, but by the time of the groundbreaking ceremony, the clouds stretched and lifted. The sky was still gray, but a lighter, brighter gray. Pearl gray Stanka called it, sniffing at the sky with suspicion. As we approached the emptied cemetery, now the future site of the Riviera, I had my eyes and thoughts trained on the soil. This ground had been broken many times, of course—during the wars, during the occupations—but history seemed of no consequence to Mr. Zetsche, a man with his eyes cast toward the future.

On principle, half the town did not participate in the festivities. In those days, Mother still cleaned for Dr. Netsulis, who became famous for once engineering a cow with five stomachs instead of four. Now he spent most of his time making messes in his home laboratory. On principle, he did not attend community events. The Ilmyens stayed shut up inside their house, tighter than green walnuts. Even Babel wasn't at the fence. As chief caretaker, Father had to at least make an appearance beneath the dark alders. But the rest of us couldn't resist. We had nothing better to do. Girls wearing foil costumes greeted us all, handing out cigars to the men and sleek silver-wrapped Laima chocolates to the women. Mr. Zetsche, in his tall shoes, smiled benevolently. He gripped a gold-plated shovel in one hand and a microphone in the other. He held the shovel over a patch of freshly turned earth as if it were a talisman, a compass, a bit of enchantment. And then he talked. And talked. Father gazed wistfully at the gold-plated shovel, but I found myself unable to look anywhere else but at Mr. Zetsche's neck, in particular his Italy-shaped birthmark that burned as brightly as red wine on his face. At one point, when he spoke again of the prosperity we'd all enjoy with the advent of the Zetsche Riviera, the toe portion of the birthmark knocked against his Adam's apple.

“Motivation is when dreams roll up their sleeves and get to work!” Mr. Zetsche pronounced, raising the shovel high and giving it a shake. That was the cue and the band struck a triumphant tune. Mr. Zetsche turned his back to the river, thrust the head of the shovel into the dirt Father had prepared for him, and tossed aside a shovelful of dirt. And another shovelful. And then another.

“Well, he has a strong work ethic,” Mr. Gipsis observed.

“But no sense of pacing,” said old Mr. Vehovskis, who in his youth was forced by the Cheka to dig a mass grave. “Look at him go!”

Inspired by his own words, Mr. Zetsche seemed determined to single-handedly carve out of the ground his beautiful dream Riviera; he just wouldn't stop shoveling. And shoveling. Busy digging and dreaming, Mr. Zetsche had not noticed how soft the ground was in places, how during his speech the water was carrying away his property chunk by chunk. Had Mr. Zetsche been aware of these things, perhaps he would have taken a break, perhaps he would not have kept digging so close to Old General. And with such vigor.

We all saw it coming: a bad idea growing like an abscess, worse by the second. But we were collectively powerless, not a single one of us able to caution, to warn, to shout what we knew we should: “Stop! No more! Not another shovelful!”

Finally, Mr. Zetsche leaned on the shovel and wiped his brow. At this precise moment, Old General, freed at last from the mud, swam away. From where we stood that's how it looked: Old General's head and neck bobbing in the water, the front half of his body remarkably buoyant.

Father shook his head slowly from side to side. Mr. Arijisnikov whistled long and low. “No, no!” Mrs. Zetsche waved her arms as if instructing Old General to turn back to shore. The band struck up another tune, something that sounded like a military dirge.

A smile slowly spread over Mr. Zetsche's face, the kind one wears when one has discovered he's just stepped in soft poop. He clapped his hands and the band stopped, all but the trumpeter whose final note wilted obscenely in the air.

“Well, well.” Mr. Zetsche brushed imaginary dirt from his hands. “Let's dance!”

Hearing her cue, Mrs. Gepkars, dripping in magenta faux ostrich feathers, emerged from behind the band. She'd been hired to teach us a new dance, and in honor of this event, she'd dyed her hair an oily purple, the shade and luster of mussel shells. She had also wound her hair into tight curls, all held in place with a multitude of metal pins. As she glided over the makeshift dance floor, large squares of plywood set on the mud, the wan afternoon light made it seem as if she had pinned tiny purple sausages to her scalp. Even this might have passed without notice if not for the fact that Mrs. Gepkars, a woman of ample body, had upholstered herself in an evening gown two sizes too small. Squeezed by the whale-bone armor of her unforgiving corset, her bosom resembled two cantaloupes buttressed to the point of bursting. In vain Mrs. Gepkars crooked her finger and tried to convince one after another of the young men, and the older ones, too, to be her partner. “For educational purposes,” she said, again and again. Calculating the risks involved, the likelihood of bodily injury, they politely declined down to the man.

The Merry Afflictions kept on with the tune and then started another. And still, except for Mrs. Gepkars, and Miss Dzelz, who had graciously assumed the male role of dance partner—for educational purposes—no one danced.

Then, in small mincing movements, Mr. and Mrs. Zetsche took the floor. A baffled hush fell upon us as we watched them. It wasn't that they were such great dancers; we simply had nowhere else to place our focus. And that, I suppose, was a part of the trouble; with nowhere else to look, we looked even more intently at the Zetsches, who danced as if this life were a waltz meant for them alone, this entire town their dance floor.

From two of Rudy's friends standing nearby came low grumblings. From behind us, the tensile murmurs of unrestrained resentment. “Hard to believe,” Mrs. Inkis whispered, “that Mrs. Zetsche's had been a farming family, Latvian and poor.” Another female voice: “And who is he, to come back so long after the troubles? Who is he to tell us how to live?” The unguarded envy in those voices—unmistakable. The Merry Afflictions doubled their efforts, tried to make the tune livelier. Still, we could not stop staring at the Zetsches.