The Sensualist Page 4

  Helen, in turn, telephoned the Vienna newspaper and then the hotel, receiving the same answer that Jimmy Singleton had received: that Martin had left and wasn’t expected back.

  “And, so, why am I here?” she asked out loud. “Because I’m his wife and this is what a wife should do? Because I’ve always wanted to see Vienna? Because I’m selfish and actually quite interested in the article he’s writing and in the anatomical art collections in Vienna? Because I want to know whether or not I have to go on writing him these crazy letters?”

  The door of the compartment opened up once more. She looked up, startled to be disturbed again so soon, but it was only the conductor. He was standing at the door, his gaze riveted by the finger bone on the seat. With an apologetic hesitation, he picked it up and measured it methodically against his own stout fingers. Shaking his head with each evidence of poor fit, he put it back down and started removing objects from his own pockets. While he did so, he perched on the edge of the seat, his knees stretched wide apart for balance and his jacket bunched up untidily around his hips. He extracted a silver whistle with a dark, worn leather neck strap, a foot or so of dental floss (which he quickly stuck back), a ticket, a set of keys, and a candy bar wrapper with some of the chocolate still left in it. He put the objects on the seat next to him and spread everything out so that Helen could see what he had. She watched him with dismay, wondering what was expected of her. The conductor smiled expectantly and then invited her to take her pick. She sighed inwardly but leaned over to better look over his treasures. She chose the ticket. He nodded approvingly, put the remaining objects back into his pockets, stood up and departed, closing the door behind him.

  She’d forgotten to give him the ring.

  The door opened again almost immediately, this time admitting the woman with the dog. So, thought Helen, the parade isn’t over, after all. The woman panted and huffed, still laboring perhaps from her run for the train, but more likely from a chronic shortness of breath.

  “Ah, here you are. I’ve been looking all over for you,” gasped the woman as she dropped the bag onto the seat opposite. It landed with a justifiable squeak. She herself sat down heavily onto the middle seat. The dog’s nose emerged from the bag, but the woman stuffed it back in and jumped up to close the door. She then upended the bag, dumping the terrier out head first. He was a café-au-lait color with big black eyes, serious eyebrows, and tufts of hair sprouting randomly about his body. Helen, convinced that he was about to shiver himself off of the seat, offered her hand to try to show that she was a friend. He ducked the hand and eyed her suspiciously.

  “He loves to travel on trains,” announced the woman. “My name is Anna.” She shook Helen’s hand vigorously. “My dog does not have a name. Please do not give him one; I don’t want to spoil him. I would like to ask you if you found anything in the toilet earlier this morning. Something that I may have left.”

  “What might you have left?” asked Helen, “I didn’t see anything, but it would help if I knew what you were looking for.”

  “Oh, it makes no difference, I probably didn’t even bring it with me. It’s so easy to forget essentials, don’t you agree? It really must be in here somewhere.” She opened up her purse and dug around, cooing to her dog intermittently. “Ah, here it is! I had it all the time.” She flourished a large battery-operated men’s shaver, flicked it on, raised her dress to above her knees, and bent over to shave her legs which, Helen noticed, had likely never been shaven. After the first pass of the shaver Anna sat back up and blew the hair off of the end with a big puff.

  “Do you mind?” snapped Helen, aghast yet intrigued. Anna reminded her of one of her aunts—Gertrude—her father’s only sister. Aunt Gertrude had tried desperately to join the league of women formed by her mother and her mother’s sisters but they steadfastly refused her admission. She wasn’t serious enough; she talked to herself; she smelled too often of overexertion; she knitted uncomplimentary socks of castoff unraveled green wool. Gertrude had believed that she qualified if only because of her Christian name. The issue became a thorn in the family’s side, not because Gertrude truly wanted to belong, but because she realized that no one wanted her. Helen could remember the conversations between her mother, aunts, and their friends, held in the otherwise unused living room on sunny afternoons, curtains drawn tight as armor against the sun. The living room anything but. Gertrude did this outrage and Gertrude caused that offense. The horror these women had for Gertrude had everything to do with the fact that she wasn’t married, that she lived alone. Helen’s Aunt Tessa never married, she lived alone, but at least she didn’t act like she missed it; she didn’t carry her state of solitude like a disease. Gertrude, on the other hand, was a living walking breathing reproach to spinsterhood, and she drove everybody crazy. Yes, this Anna was like her Aunt Gertrude.

  “I do beg your pardon. When one lives alone one often forgets oneself.” Well, that was the first part of Helen’s assessment verified. She was relieved, for she had liked her Aunt Gertrude. Anna put the shaver back in her purse and clamped it shut, then swept her dress back down over her knees.

  “Oh, I see you’ve cut your hand. How did you do that?”

  Helen gestured to the shards of glass beside her, but then noticed that the dog had been staring intently at the objects. She placed her hand over them protectively before he could be tempted to take off with the bone. He stood up on the seat on all four legs and shook himself grandly until all of his hairs stood on end.

  “May I see that?” asked Anna, pointing to the box.

  “Sure.” Helen passed it over, awkwardly balancing it with her one free hand.

  While Anna inspected the box, Helen managed to get the dog to sit down again and to accept a couple of pats on the head. She reached out towards his paws and quietly asked him to shake hands with her. He lifted his paw, rested it lightly in her outstretched hand, and nuzzled her ear. “I could get you a new pair of shoes,” he whispered.

  Helen sat back with a thud. “Can your dog talk?” she asked Anna.

  “Don’t be absurd,” laughed the woman. “What else have you got here?” She put the box down on the seat on Helen’s side of the compartment and reached for the woodcut. Holding it carefully by the corners, she crowed with delight. “Ah, Andreas Vesalius, the Fabrica, the Epitome, the Tabula, what a wizard!”

  “Oh, so you’re familiar with the history of anatomy?” asked Helen. The Epitome and the Tabulœ were the names of his other books. Anna’s outburst had jarred her memory.

  “Anatomy? No way,” Anna shrieked. “Vesalius is a collector of important books, and he is, needless to say,” she said it anyway, “always dusty.”

  “But you just mentioned three of his important books,” said Helen.

  “Yes, I told you,” Anna sighed, “he is a collector. He lives in Munich. My sister knows someone who goes to Munich all the time to get books from Vesalius. She’s told me all about these particular books; they are very rare, you know. You’d like my sister; you have a lot in common.” She draped the paper back onto the seat, delicately took hold of the end of the finger with its ring, smiled and leaned towards the dog, waving it temptingly in front of his nose. The terrier rotated his head following the rhythm of her dancing hand, his eyes glued to the bone. “Ah,” she said, “how he loves jewelry.”

  “Don’t you think it’s the bone that’s attracting him?” asked Helen.

  “The bone? What’d you take him for, a carnivore?”

  “Isn’t that what dogs usually are?”

  “This dog happens to be an artiste.”

  Anna dropped the finger back onto the seat. She picked up the magnifying glass and put it under the feeble ray of sunshine now wavering through the window. In seconds the concentrated beam burnt a dark streak down the floor between the two banquettes. Anna screamed with laughter. Helen jumped up and opened up the window, thinking only of dissipating the stink of singed linoleum before it crept out to the corridor. She grabbed both the magn
ifying glass and the box, embracing them in a formidable stranglehold.

  “I’ve been helping my sister follow Vesalius for many years, you know. Did she give you this box?”

  “Who’s your sister?”

  “Oh, you’d recognize her if you saw her,” Anna said evasively, distracting herself by playing with the ends of her hair. She refocused suddenly. “Will you give me the box? She never gives me anything.”

  “I don’t think so.” Exasperation had comandeered Helen’s voice.

  “I see. Well, will you give me a piece of glass?”

  “I don’t see why not,” said Helen, relenting, “take two.”

  “Thanks, I will.” Slipping the glass into her dress pocket, Anna stood up and ordered the dog back into the bag. He buried himself headfirst, leaving only his scruffy tail showing. He had at least stopped shivering.

  “But, how rude of me!” screeched Anna suddenly. Helen started up in a fright. “I must give you something in exchange,” she prattled on as she looked around the compartment all the while patting hips, tummy, buttocks. Her eye lit on the sack. She grabbed the dog’s collar with such force that it wrenched the clip and tore away from the poor animal’s neck, reducing the dog to a whimpering, cowering mutt. She ignored its pathetic snivels and detached the tag with great difficulty, panting furiously as she did so. Finally succeeding, she cried out in triumph and tossed it over to Helen who caught it just as it was about to fly over her right shoulder. The dog, traumatized without his collar, would not come out of the bag again.

  Anna stood up. “If you see my sister, tell her that I need to talk to her. You’ll know her—she doesn’t resemble me at all.” Before she turned to leave, she stuck the tip of her finger in her mouth, chewed on it coquettishly, then waved it in a gesture of farewell.

  Helen was alone again in the compartment. The dog had spoken to her; she was sure she hadn’t imagined it. She looked down at her feet and saw immediately why he had offered to get her a new pair of shoes—hers seemed to be burnt to cinders. She brushed away the ash; it fluttered into the air and disappeared, leaving her shoes, at least, intact.

  CHAPTER 4

  IN VIENNA

  Do men still wink? This one did. His name was Herlsberg. First name? Who knows. If he had one no one was letting on, least of all him. The wink could have passed for a spasm, anywhere else but here. Here was the editorial offices of Vienna’s largest daily newspaper where Herlsberg held the post of editorial assistant. The wink was an excuse for not speaking English and for pretending not to understand Helen’s dusted-off textbook German. The managing editor had spoken English—and he wasn’t parting with any of his name—but Herlsberg spoke next to none, and thus the wink.

  Helen the martyr spending her first full Viennese day at the newspaper, finding out more about Martin’s research, going through the contents of the mailbox that he had retained there. The editor had described the article that Martin was writing as an exposé on anatomical art thefts. He didn’t know any particulars, nor did he seem interested; after a cursory conversation he left her in Herlsberg’s care.

  That Martin had been working on something to do with anatomical art was a striking coincidence. Helen tried to explain how astonishing this was to Herlsberg, but, realizing the futility of doing so, she turned her attention to the overflowing mailbox as he spun about and went into his own office. Her brain filled with confusion and blood flushed her face, leaving her momentarily blinded and dizzy, when she realized that a good number of the letters in the box were from her, none of them opened. She separated her letters out from the rest and looked at the envelopes one by one, furious and saddened. They dated as far back as October. She went to the door of Herlsberg’s office. “When did you last see Martin?” she asked.

  “December 12th,” was his reply. She nodded and went back to stare at the box. Contemplating momentarily the idea of opening the envelopes and rereading her letters, she decided instead to bury them into the depths of her bag. Left on the desk she ‘d been provided were a much-diminished pile of mail and telephone messages from other people.

  Before going through these, however, she fished about in her bag and pulled out a bottle of water. The sore throat and fever that had started on the train had not gone away and in the stuffy, overheated editorial offices she felt more ill than ever. The still coolish water helped relieve the burning, and so she began the task of organizing the remaining letters.

  “I feel like a jealous wife,” she muttered to herself.

  “Was?” Herlsberg’s voice startled her. She looked up and saw that he was watching her from the door to his office.

  “Sorry,” she replied in German, “I was talking to myself.” He stared at her for a few seconds more and then went off through another door. He came back a few minutes later balancing a saucer and a glass of steaming amber liquid. He set them down onto her desk and pointed to them. “Tea,” he said unnecessarily and returned to his office.

  The telephone messages were from art galleries and museums in Vienna, a museum in Budapest, and a library in Munich. “It would have been interesting to work with him on this one,” she thought to herself as she picked up the telephone to call the name written down on the first message slip on her pile—the director of Vienna’s Josephinum museum.

  “Herr Direhtor Garz bitte, “she practiced to herself while she dialed the number. “Können Sie…”

  A man’s garbled voice on the other end of the line interrupted, identifying himself incoherently.

  “Herr Direhtor Garz bitte. “ A precise stab in the lingua obscura. While waiting for the connection she tried to put into order what she knew of the museum called the Josephinum. She had never visited it but knew it vividly and intimately as if she had put the collection together herself. It was an anatomist’s dream, full of wax models of the human body in various stages of dissection. Gruesome, perhaps, but they were works of art, crafted in eighteenth-century Italy. Had something been stolen from the Josephinum?

  The telephone buzzed and clicked several times, and then a voice announced that she had reached the Director’s office. She introduced herself, explained tortuously why she was calling, and asked to speak to Herr Ganz. The secretary said that the director was not in but would be free the following afternoon. Helen made an appointment, hung up, took a sip of the tea, and went on to try the next name.

  Why was Martin looking into theft of medical art? The topic was important to her, but it wouldn’t be easy to get the public’s attention or sympathy over that one. She imagined gangs of doctors dressed in their white laboratory coats plotting to break into obscure museums full of ancient stethoscopes and scalpels, jars of leeches and brains, and skeletons of abnormal human specimens.

  She tipped the dregs of the now tepid tea down her pained throat, stuffed the rest of Martin’s correspondence in her bag along with her own letters, and walked over to Herlsberg’s office.

  “Where is the Josephinum?” she asked.

  “A medical museum,” he replied.

  “No, sorry. Where is it?” she corrected herself.

  Herlsberg shrugged. “They have wax models. Interesting, if you can stand that sort of thing.”

  She gave up. “Why would Martin be calling them? Have they had something stolen?”

  Herlsberg swiveled in his seat and began typing into his computer. Helen remained standing at his door, hoping that she hadn’t just been dismissed. He read from the screen, squinting, moving his lips, then typed some more. She set down her bag and the mailbox and leaned against the door jamb, giddy from the heat. She waited for a few minutes, then shifted her weight. And shifted it back again.

  “I’m going to pass out,” she thought, alarmed.

  “Thefts,” confirmed Herlsberg.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Thefts. Art thefts,”

  “Is that all? No details?”

  He squinted even more deeply and frowned. “No,” was his clipped reply.

  “Just thefts?
There must be more information.”

  “No.” He blinked and smiled. “I will return the mailbox if that is all.”

  She was dismissed.

  “Yes, that’s all,” said Helen. “Thanks for the tea.” And she left.

  Her hotel radiated an incandescent warmth that had nothing to do with anything but the color temperature of the light bulbs. After the hours spent roasting in the editorial offices, Helen had walked in the cold, betrayed by her overheated body into believing that the harsh Vienna dusk was benignly temperate. By the time she reached the hotel she was chilled to the bone. The hotel radiators lacked the will to even try to battle the cold drafts. So, bundled up with sweater, scarf and extra socks, Helen sat on her bed cross-legged, cradled by the thick duvet, with the teapot she had brought up from the kitchen nestled between her legs like a hot water bottle.

  She sorted through the letters, tossing them into penitential piles on the floor. She would glance at the handwriting, “This one was a bellyache.” It landed on the pile on the left. “This one was chagrin.” It went in the middle. “This was,” she looked at the return address scribbled on the back, “jealousy.” It got tossed on the pile on the right. And so it went. Piles of discontent, mortification, and criticism. She sighed and fell on her back, her legs still crossed, her arms spread out beside her, her hands kneading the quilt cover, her mind wandering from Martin to the women on the train. Especially Rosa. Had she been dreaming?

  She doubted it. Every so often the straps of her brassiere dug into her shoulders, the folds of skin and fat encircling her tummy itched and flamed, her thighs—the bruisers!—her thighs ricocheted off each other, chaffing and wobbling all the while. A horrid feeling. She would pull up on the straps to relieve them of their non-existent burdens; she’d rub her flat belly, smoothing out the imaginary folds; she’d grasp the loose fabric of her trousers and stretch it further to accommodate the fantastical haunches. Something about this was real. Not the weight—any mirror did the favor of belying that concern—but the substance, containing, absorbing, assimilating. She was devouring or being devoured by another’s essence and that other could only be Rosa.