“The Washerwomen’s Ball?” Kaspar said. “I’m not sure what that is. Perhaps Fräulein Silbermann—”
“My brother spends all of his time at the university,” Waldemar cut in, to all appearances embarrassed already.
“As well he should!” said the widow. “It’s to your credit, Herr Toula, that you’ve never heard of it.”
“It’s a filthy extravagance,” one of her courtiers chirped. “The women wear rags on their heads — women of the best families — and their underthings only, which means — in most cases — that their most intimate garments, by which I mean to say, if you’ll excuse the term, their knickers—”
“It’s a kind of masquerade,” said the widow, silencing the boy with a glance. “The gentry of this city, out of a mixture of lasciviousness and boredom, dress up as their inferiors, and behave accordingly. It’s a way of getting past their inhibitions.”
“You sound postively Freudian, Frau Bemmelmans,” said Sonja.
Slowly and ratchetingly, with an almost audible creak, the widow’s head revolved in her direction. “I beg your pardon, fräulein,” she said dryly. “I’m an adherent of no party or religion. My views are my own.”
“I applaud that, Frau Bemmelmans. But I was referring to the teachings of Dr. Freud, a physician in the Ninth District, who specializes in bourgeois hysteria. He and his disciples believe that our actions are guided by a second self: an animus, so to speak, hidden from the conscious mind—”
“That sounds like a religion to me,” the widow said, snapping her head back into place. “I’ve never heard such idiotic prattle.”
Sonja gave a high-pitched, brittle laugh. Kaspar had heard this particular laugh before — on a number of occasions, in fact — and he knew enough to take it as a warning. “I see your point, Frau Bemmelmans,” he said quickly. “I think what Fräulein Silbermann means, however, is that—”
“I went to the Washerwomen’s Ball last year,” said Sonja. “I rather enjoyed myself. It helped me to get past my inhibitions.”
“Is that so,” said the widow. “How interesting.”
“I think what Fräulein Silbermann means,” Kaspar put in, laughing weakly, “is simply that—”
“Oh yes,” Sonja singsonged. “I felt just like the purest child of nature.” She sighed prettily and took Kaspar’s hand. “Didn’t I, honeypot?”
“Sonja,” Kaspar stuttered, doing his best not to redden. “I really don’t—”
“And afterward Kaspar took me home and gave me a thorough, uninhibited buggering. It really was extravagantly filthy.”
No one spoke for a medium-sized eternity. All eyes — Sonja’s included — were fixed on the widow. Now would be the moment for those sabers to come out, Kaspar thought. But the widow, when she finally replied, was more decorous and genial than ever.
“By all reports the balls are colorful affairs — one can see how they might magnetize the young. Citizens of all breeds and pedigrees intermingle freely there, or so I understand.” She turned her mannish face toward the assembled gallants, allowing the entire room to bask in her goodwill. “I’m told the Israelites, especially, lend a feral sort of spice to the proceedings.”
The specifics of Sonja’s reply are not recorded in my grandfather’s entry for the fourth of October, but it sufficed to bar her — and Kaspar as well — from the villa indefinitely. What my grandfather does describe, however — and in great detail, as if he knew that it would prove significant — was Waldemar’s response to Sonja’s antics. While the ardent young men around him rolled their eyes and gnashed their teeth, Waldemar sat straight-backed in his chair, as still as the bust of Schubert on the mantelpiece behind him. There was something in his eyes, however — or behind his eyes, Kaspar wrote, crossing out the preceding phrase — that gave the lie to his debonair manner. He was looking at Sonja more closely than Kaspar had seen him look at anything.
But even that’s not right, my grandfather corrected himself. Not entirely.
I can sense his hesitation at this point in the narrative, Mrs. Haven — I can feel him pausing, pencil in hand, as a memory wriggles up into the light. He’d seen that same expression four years earlier, he remembered, in the brining-room laboratory in Znojmo. He and his brother had discovered a nest of cicadas in a tree in the town square, and their father, in the spirit of scientific instruction, had dropped one of them into an empty beaker. “Cicadas can be spirited little devils, but their metabolic rate is remarkably slow,” he’d explained to his sons, covering the beaker’s mouth with a chipped china saucer. “They can go without food for a very long while. Shall we determine just how long a while that is?”
After a dozen panicked circuits of its enclosure, the cicada had stopped moving, and Kaspar had quickly lost interest; but Waldemar’s reaction had been just the opposite. Over the following weeks, his brother had passed progressively longer stretches of time staring down into the beaker, his eyes blank, his mouth slightly open, his body as fixed as the cicada’s own. He’d begun to neglect what few duties he had, and Kaspar had seen to them in his stead, waiting patiently for someone to notice. Finally, at the close of an afternoon on which his brother had spent more than an hour in his customary trance, Kaspar had snatched up the beaker, inverted it with a flourish, and slammed it down against the oilcloth-covered bench. Waldemar had let out a groan, as though he’d just been given devastating news; but when he looked up at Kaspar he was smiling with unmistakable relief. “I didn’t know how to stop,” he’d said in a faltering voice.
Kaspar had told him to think nothing of it, then glanced down at the cicada — still trapped under the upended beaker — and asked him what should happen to his pet. To his astonishment, his brother had turned away without another glance. “It makes no difference now,” he’d said. “You can go ahead and crush it, if you like.”
Half a century later, looking back on his youth from the safety and comfort of a screened-in veranda in upstate New York, my grandfather would recognize this episode for the milestone it was: an inconspicuous wedge — no greater than the V of two spread fingers — from which the rest of their durations would diverge.
* * *
Strolling home from the widow’s villa, Sonja was flushed and euphoric, calling Kaspar all manner of names, both affectionate and insulting, and cutting capers in her saffron-colored dress. By the duck pond in the Stadtpark she announced that she loved him, then turned and vomited into the filthy green water, as if to fix the moment in his mind.
“I feel the same,” Kaspar said, helping her back to her feet. “I adore you, Fräulein Silbermann.”
She nodded thoughtfully and took him by the collar. “Your mustache is regrettable,” she whispered, wrinkling her nose at the smell of her own breath.
Though they had slept together several times already, the night of the widow’s party expunged all precedents. Sonja seemed to grow younger as the act progressed, but also less opaque, more knowable to him; the fact that Kaspar knew what would happen — and even, approximately, in what order — did nothing to dull the shock and gratitude he felt. As her climax approached, her playfulness fell away and she took his hands emphatically in hers. The ritual never varied: they might approach their mutual destination from any direction they chose, but the final pitch was as deliberate as the dismantling of a bomb. Positioning Kaspar behind her, Sonja would bring his left hand to her mouth and sink her square front teeth into his palm; his right index finger, when the moment arrived, was guided, gently but unambiguously, to a spot he’d otherwise have blushed to touch.