The Sensualist Read online

  The Sensualist

  A Novel

  Barbara Hodgson

  TO DAVID

  Table of Contents

  TOUCH

  Chapter 1: ROSA

  Chapter 2: FRAU KEHL

  Chapter 3: ANNA

  Chapter 4: IN VIENNA

  Chapter 5: THE JOSEPHINUM

  SIGHT

  Chapter 6: ROSA

  Chapter 7: FRIEDRICH ANSELM

  Chapter 8: VESALIUS

  Chapter 9: HERR THÜRING

  Chapter 10: THE SECRETARY

  Chapter 11: LEAVING VIENNA

  Chapter 12: BUDAPEST

  SMELL

  Chapter 13: ROSA’S HAIR

  Chapter 14: THE SEMMELWEIS

  Chapter 15: MUNICH

  Chapter 16: ROSA’S WEDDING

  HEARING

  Chapter 17: GÜNTHER

  Chapter 18: THE LIBRARIAN

  Chapter 19: THE CUSTODIAN

  TASTE

  Chapter 20: THE INVENTORY

  Chapter 21: ROSA’S FAREWELL

  Bibliography

  About the Author

  Copyright

  TOUCH

  CHAPTER 1

  ROSA

  Helen woke up in the middle of the night wearing someone else’s breasts. Not her own insignificant, almost non-existent bumps, but huge, pendulous, full ones. Breasts whose only master was gravity, whose creases ached in bands across her ribs, whose weight cascaded irrepressibly onto her lap. Breasts that could round shoulders and cave in chests.

  “Damn,” she murmured to herself, “it’s begun,” and then went back to sleep.

  She woke up again several hours later, her neck stiff, her right foot buzzing with sleep and her ears pounding from nearby clacks and screeches of mutinous machinery. Semi-conscious, eyes still tightly shut to preserve the safety of her darkness, her hands groped about her body hoping to deny the memory of the disquieting alteration. Her body was her own, not another’s, she felt with relief. Then she remembered that she was on the train to Vienna and opened her eyes. A mountainous, old, mustached, bewigged, bespectacled woman occupying the aisle seat in the opposite corner of the train compartment, perched precariously, chins and jowls askew, staring and smiling intently.

  “God, she’s grotesque,” Helen said to herself. And so she was. Her head, arms, legs, all stuck on in some parody of humanity—lumps of fleshy dough fashioned by talentless hands.

  “Good morning,” said the woman. She spoke in English, but her accent was German. Her piercing eyes were magnified well beyond their plausible size.

  The greeting put Helen into the quandary that repeated itself daily during her travels and left her craving the safety and solitude of her work. She often studied and admired practitioners of indifference and believed that refusing to respond to the advances of strangers was to fulfill an almost divine duty. This admiration, however, was powerless against the considerable influences of female forces from her past: mother, aunts, and teachers, all as inflexible as their foundation garments; all insistent that, if one had the misfortune to be thrown amongst foreigners, then politeness and pleasant conversation were not only marks of quality, but were the sole reliable survival techniques available to women. Helen was consequently torn between her desire to ignore the greeting and her need to please even this stranger. She managed to satisfy the conflict by mumbling “Good morning.” And although uncomfortable at the thought of having been watched, of still being watched, her upbringing also prohibited her from demanding that the woman stop. She had to retreat, either through departure or through indifference, so she withdrew into her corner and concentrated on trying to reorient her body.

  She rubbed her eyes, dry in their sockets, and ran her hands through her hair in an attempt to subdue the pandemonium that night had inflicted on it. Each fine strand abraded her fingers as though spun of steel. She wiped away the faint silver path of dried saliva that had escaped from the corner of her mouth. Her foot was still asleep so she wriggled it and tapped it vigorously to rid it of its pins and needles. Her throat was parched and her mouth felt dusty and abandoned as if left open all night. She put the back of her hand to her forehead to see if she had a fever and was distressed to feel the hot skin of an impending cold— the last thing she needed, especially now, en route to a foreign city and in the middle of winter. Her fingers ached to touch her raw throat, and so she let them caress and press the swelling glands. Pulling the collar of her shirt up around her neck, she swallowed several times, wincing against the discomfort reverberating into her ears, willing the dry heaviness to go away, but electrified by the starched caress of the collar against the lobes of her ears.

  Smothering in the incredible heat and mustiness of the compartment, she looked around, attempting to reacquaint herself with her surroundings. As it was early still with no sign of day, the only light came from a single incandescent bulb inset into the ceiling between the two banquettes. Accustomed to moving from city to city in sterile, impersonal transportation—jet planes, bullet trains—waking up in the antiquated, almost moldering train had disconcerted her for a few moments, and she fought against the urge to ask the woman, to reassure herself, that this was still the train to Vienna. She shifted her legs, easing a dawning cramp in her buttocks, and it suddenly occurred to her that her body was a festering orchestra of twinges, itches, and spasms. Her hands were conducting this disharmonious symphony—never resting in their travels from hair to throat, eyes to mouth, nose to flanks. She looked over again at the Gargantuan figure opposite, inconsiderately displacing essential air. Lack of air. That was the problem. She was suffocating, sealed in time with a woman consuming more than her fair share of precious oxygen. The woman was wearing a tightly fitted, buttoned-up, malodorous astrakhan wool coat, and on her feet were leather boots that reached up to just below the vague evidence of her ankles.

  “It’s hot in here, isn’t it?” Helen asked.

  “No, it is quite cold,” replied the woman.

  Helen nodded, absently wiping sweat from along her upper lip, and sat back, focusing her eyes on random objects in the compartment. In the dim light everything seemed rather grey and constructed out of shadows: the maroon upholstery that had worn into a darkish stained grey, the enameled metal walls that were covered with light grey finger prints, even the colored tourist picture of the Alps on the wall opposite that had faded to a monotone ashy-grey She gazed upon her restless hands navigating the banquette’s stiff bristly fabric and then elbowed the armrest down and flung her left arm onto it. The bare wrist peeking out from under the frayed cuff of her sweater reminded her that she had taken her watch off the night before and had put it in her pocket. She pulled it out, wound it, and slipped it back around her wrist, taking an unaccountable pleasure in permitting the retracting joints of the bracelet to pinch her skin as she did so. It was 7:25 A.M.

  Aggravated by the unflinching regard of the woman and in an effort to stop fidgeting, she pushed back the vinyl blind that covered the exterior window and hid her face from view. She started to rub away some of the condensation fogging the glass, but the icy cold moisture numbed the tips of her fingers and rivulets of water ran along her hand and down her wrist and arm. She stopped clearing the window and looked at her hand in disbelief, as if seeing it for the first time. When had she experienced such cold before? This was a chill that penetrated to the core of each finger, stiffening the joints, tightening the tendons. Protected from the woman’s scrutiny, she leaned her hot forehead against the window—instantly relieved by the cold—and put her now icy hand under her sweater to cool her body. She again felt her breasts. This body does feel different, she thought, but she was interrupted by the woman.

  “What do you see out there?”

&nb
sp; “Nothing, it’s still too dark.”

  “You must see something—if only snow, my dear.”

  “Yes, snow.”

  “And perhaps a frozen lover?” The woman chuckled gently to herself then let a docile but jangling warble escape through the gap between her parted lips.

  Helen closed her eyes, exasperated by this senseless string of questions, and kept her forehead resting against the glass.

  The woman’s physical appearance and cloying stares were suddenly utterly defeating. Helen had been refusing to admit her vexation, preferring to blame, instead, her insane dream, her budding cold, her disturbed sleep—anything. What could she say in response? How could she stop the woman from continuing to plague her? She sighed out loud.

  “Look hard and look fast. You might find him here, but you won’t find him in Austria.” The woman laughed again, louder this time as if to clarify her desire to share her broad-minded drollery. “There are no lovers in Austria, frozen or otherwise!”

  Helen raised the blind slowly and deliberately. The sky had lightened marginally, enough to show endless whiteness outside, whiteness as far as she could see. A frozen lover would have no trouble hiding out there, she thought to herself. He’d want to hide. Someone like me wouldn’t warm him, ever. She looked at her watch again. 7:30. Still in Germany.

  “You are yourself once again.” The woman resumed speaking in a stilted but pleasant voice.

  “Pardon?” She was pulled from her thoughts by how extraordinarily apt the statement was, but the woman simply smiled, nodded, and shoved the glasses that had been slowly creeping down her nose back up flat against her eyes.

  Helen looked at the racks above the seats, mentally cataloguing the large quantity of luggage heaped up on both sides. When had this woman come in, and how did she arrange all of these bags without a commotion? Perhaps that was when she had first woken up, disturbed by the arrival. Tasteful luggage—including a hat box, terribly beautiful with a glossy black case and a black and red floral lid. She instantly wanted this hat box very much; she had always wanted to travel with a hat, to pretend that she was a part of an earlier time. “Heidecker’s” claimed the elegant script on the creamy label. “Berlin,” she read to herself, squinting.

  “Go ahead, please, take it down and have a look in it,” the woman said, her pride barely masked.

  Helen demurred.

  “No, please, take the hat box down. I want you to look at it.” Helen pushed herself steadily into the seat back. She reached out with both her hands and clasped her knees, stretched her arms taut and with a burst of energy jumped up, and then, off guard from a sudden dizziness, nearly collapsed, but managed to grab the luggage rack before her knees gave way beneath her. Pausing for a few seconds while the blackness rippled before her eyes, she was finally able to maneuver the hat box to within reach of both hands. The film of perspiration turned to beads of sweat that crept slowly along the ridge of her eyebrows and clung to the corners of her eyes. Moisture dripped from her armpits and rolled down her sides. “I really am sick,” she thought.

  “I don’t live in Berlin anymore,” said the woman, mistaking the concentrated look on Helen’s face. “It’s no fun since the wall came down, and it is such a bother to get there from Vienna. Do you know Berlin?”

  “No,” said Helen, grimly focused on moving the fragile box. She wiped her eyes on her shoulder, and finally succeeding, sat back down, set the box on her lap, and looked over at the woman.

  “So, open it.”

  Helen gingerly lifted off the top and set it aside. She then peered into the box and saw an enormous black wig with some of the hair pinned into neat little curls and the rest teased into a frenzy of knots and split ends.

  Helen didn’t know what to say. She had expected a hat.

  The woman, smiling expansively, looked at her. “Take it out,” she urged.

  Helen went rigid with distaste. “No, I’d rather not.” She pronounced the five syllables with infantile precision. She reached for the lid and firmly shut away the repugnant object. Time to get out of here, wash the night away, pray for this pest to disappear.

  The woman sank back in her seat, shrinking and fading as if deflated by disappointment. Ignoring the woman’s sullen look, Helen replaced the box upon the luggage rack and then squatted down between the two seats, blindly patting the floor around her, looking for her shoes. She found one of them stuck in the corner near the window and the other on the opposite side, next to the woman’s feet. Hesitating for a moment before grabbing this shoe, as if worried she’d seize the wrong one, she noticed the placement of the woman’s feet was one of prudery, humility even, with the toes turned in to face each other; the feet themselves angled to rest on their arches; the low, functional heels raised slightly as if resisting contact with the floor. The flesh, crammed and miserable in the tight black boots, fought against the modesty of the angles, creasing the leather and threatening at all points to escape and roll unrestrained onto the floor.

  A sudden jerk of the train nearly threw Helen to her knees and broke her reverie. She scooped up her shoes, squeezed her feet into them without bothering to untie the laces, crushing the backs as she did so.

  “We all lose parts of ourselves from time to time, you know,” the woman commented, contentedly removing pins from the wig on her head, throwing them one by one onto the floor. “You just have to be careful what you replace them with.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Helen, “I don’t follow you.”

  The woman leaned towards Helen. “Parts of ourselves, you know.” She patted her own huge bosom, sagging in spite of the assistance of the tightly buttoned coat, and blinked meaningfully. She then sat back and burped lightly, a smile resting on her lips. The pins continued to drop and skid about.

  Helen averted her eyes, remotely disgusted by the burp, and assembled her soap, washcloth, and toothbrush. She was about to stand up when the woman asked, “What are you here for?”

  “On the train, you mean? Going to Vienna,” Helen snapped, stifled by her revulsion, yet mortified by her rudeness. This insolence surged out of nowhere, without reason—the worst sort of reaction—unassailable in its lack of logic.

  “No, I mean what is your reason for being here?” The woman frowned to herself, concentrating on the foreign phrases. “What do you do?” She took her glasses off and steamed them up with a blast of foggy breath, wiping them off with the cuff of her coat. Whatever had been on the glasses now joined a complex array of detritus already clinging to the sleeve.

  “I’m visiting.” Helen’s clipped reply should have repulsed further inquiry.

  “Ah, how interesting, visiting friends!” exclaimed the woman. “My name is Rosa Kovslovsky, and since we have no one else to formally introduce us, I will tell you myself that I am a medical doctor, but in truth I haven’t practiced professionally for years. What is your name?” She offered her hand.

  Helen shook hands reluctantly, taken aback by the clamminess, imagining the creases of the woman’s palm imprinting themselves upon her own, sensing the whorls of the fingerprints impress themselves into her fingers, and dreaming that her sweat was Rosa Kovslovsky’s sweat—just as damp, just as cold, but graver, more fever laden, oozing. “Helen,” she said, dropping the hand.

  “Helen what, and what do you do?”

  “I’m an art historian,” she said, ignoring the first part of the question.

  “Ah, how interesting. On what style do you concentrate? Is that the correct way to pose such a question?”

  “Yes, certainly it’s correct. But I study a topic, not a style—medical illustration, anatomical art.” She winced inwardly—was there no part of her that could suppress this honesty? You don’t have to answer! she screamed at herself.

  The woman was silent for a moment and then declared, “We ‘re all experts on anatomy, you know—you only need to have one broken heart to be an expert on anatomy.”

  “Hmm, yes,” Helen sighed pointedly and stood up. “Excuse m
e,” she said and stepped carefully around Rosa’s outstretched legs, noting that the thick hose that conspired with the boots to imprison her flesh was failing and ripping along the twisted seams. Reaching to open the sliding door, needing to leave as quickly as possible—this woman was absorbing her now along with the air—she paused in spite of herself as the woman excused herself and drew her legs back towards the seat.

  “But, please, before you go,” Rosa said. The smile was briefly replaced by a look of pleading.

  “Yes?” said Helen, hesitating. The glasses were really thick, the refraction displaced the woman’s eyes. Helen didn’t know where to look.

  “It has begun, you know,” the woman finished. And with that she waved Helen a cheery goodbye, her squat fingers splayed in a childish fan. As she left, Helen could see Rosa had begun frantically tormenting her hair with jerky, hacking yanks.

  Helen turned away, let the door slide halfway back, and walked unsteadily down the aisle of the rocking train, aware that this Rosa person would be leaning out of the compartment watching her. She willed herself not to turn around, not to take another look. How disagreeable, she lamented, her stomach churning. How many hours will I be confined to this woman’s company? She resolved to move the minute she got back.

  The toilet was occupied, so Helen waited in the corridor, leaning against the cold window of the outer wall, closing her eyes, thinking about having exposed herself so ridiculously to a stranger. And what if there had been a man there instead of a woman? I’ve really got to stop dozing in the sitting compartments of night trains. Better to spend the money and get a sleeper. What an insane conversation! She suddenly inspected the hand that had shaken Rosa’s. What did she expect? It was all there, it was all hers. She wiped its palm furiously against her trousers.

  The latch of the door snapped. The sign now read ‘libre’ and the door slowly opened inward, revealing parts of a flowered shoulder, the shuffling tip of an orthopedic shoe, the muzzle of a very timid shorthaired terrier, and finally the apple-red cheeks of a jolly, grinning woman. The dog, however, wasn’t at all happy. It was cowering with its tail between its legs, its eyes rolled up high to compensate for its lowered head, and it quivered in spasms. Helen looked the pair up and down several times as they continued trying to extricate themselves from the narrow doorway.