Mavis Gallant - The Cost of Living - Early and Uncollected Stories

Everyone had been so cruel, so unkind, she would tell the children, drying her eyes. Frau Stengel and her husband had lived in Prague, where Herr Stengel, who now worked at some inferior job in a nearby town, had been splendidly situated until the end of the war, and then the Czechs sent them packing. They had left everything behind — all the tablecloths, the little coffee spoons!

Although the children were bored by the rain and not being allowed to go out, they enjoyed their days with Frau Stengel. Every day was just like the one before, which was a comfort; the mist and the rain hung on the windows, Frau Stengel’s favorite music curled around the room like a warm bit of the fog itself, they ate chocolate biscuits purchased from the glass case in the dining room, and Frau Stengel, always good-tempered, always the same, told them stories. She told about Hitler, and the war, and about little children she knew who had been killed in bombardments or separated forever from their parents. The two little girls would listen, stolidly going on with their coloring or cutting out. They liked her stories, mostly because, like the room and the atmosphere, the stories never varied; they could have repeated many of them by heart, and they knew exactly at what point in each Frau Stengel would begin to cry. The girls had never seen anyone weep so much and so often.

“We like you, Frau Stengel,” Jane had said once, meaning that they would rather be shut up here in Frau Stengel’s pleasantly overheated room than be downstairs alone in their bedroom or in the bleak, empty dining room. Frau Stengel had looked at them and after a warm, delicious moment had wiped her eyes. After that, Jane had tried it again, and with the same incredulity with which she and Ernestine had learned that if you pushed the button the elevator would arrive, every time, they had discovered that either one of them could bring on the great, sad tears that were, almost, the most entertaining part of their lessons. “We like you,” and off Frau Stengel would go while the two children watched, enchanted. Later, they learned that any mention of their father had nearly the same effect. They had no clear idea of the nature of their father’s illness, or why it was sad; once they had been told that, because of his liver, he sometimes turned yellow, but this interesting evolution they had never witnessed.

“He’s yellow today,” Jane would sometimes venture.

“Ah, so!” Frau Stengel would reply, her eyes getting bigger and bigger. Sometimes, after thinking it over, she wept, but not always.

For the past few days, however, Frau Stengel had been less diverting; she had melted less easily. Also, she had spoken of the joyous future when she and Herr Stengel would emigrate to Australia and open a little shop.

“To sell what?” said Ernestine, threatened with change.

“Tea and coffee,” said their governess dreamily.

In Australia, Frau Stengel had been told, half the people were black and savage, but one was far from trouble. She could not see the vision of the shop clearly, and spoke of coffee jars painted with hearts, a tufted chair where tired clients could rest. It was important, these days, that she fix her mind on rosy vistas, for her doctor had declared, and her horoscope had confirmed, that she was pregnant; she hinted of something to the Kennedy children, some revolution in her life, some reason their mother would have to find another governess before spring. But winter, the children knew, went on forever.

This morning, when Jane and Ernestine knocked on her door, Frau Stengel was sitting by her window in a glow of sunshine reflected from the snow on the mountains. “Come in,” she said, and smiled at them. What pathetic little orphans they were, so sad, and so fond of her. If it had not been for their affection for her, frequently and flatteringly expressed, Frau Stengel would have given them up days ago; they reminded her, vaguely, of unhappy things. She had told them so many stories about the past that just looking at the two little girls made her think of it all over again — dolorous thoughts, certain to affect the character and appearance of the unborn.

“Mother doesn’t want us to go to the movies with you,” began Jane. She looked, expectant, but Frau Stengel said placidly, “Well, never do anything your mother wouldn’t like.” This was to be another of her new cheerful days; disappointed, the children settled down to lessons. Ernestine colored the pictures in a movie magazine with crayons, and Jane made a bracelet of some coral rosebuds from an old necklace her mother had given her.

“It’s nice here today,” said Jane. “We like it here.”

“The sun is shining. You should go out,” said Frau Stengel, yawning, quite as if she had not heard. “Don’t forget the little rubbers.”

“Will you come?”

“Oh, no,” Frau Stengel said in a tantalizing, mysterious way. “It is important for me to rest.”

“For us, too,” said Ernestine jealously. “We have to rest. Everybody rests. Our father rests all the time. He has to, too.”

“Because he’s so sick,” said Jane.

“He’s dead,” said Ernestine. She gave Gregory Peck round blue eyes.

Frau Stengel looked up sharply. “Who is dead?” she said. “You must not use such a word in here, now.”

The children stared, surprised. Death had been spoken of so frequently in this room, on the same level as chocolate biscuits and coral rosebud bracelets.

“ He’s dead ,” said Ernestine. “He died this morning.”

Frau Stengel stopped rocking. “Your father is dead ?”

“Yes, he is,” said Ernestine. “He died, and we’re supposed to stay here with you, and that’s all.”

Their governess looked, bewildered, from one to the other; they sat, the image of innocence, side by side at her table, their hair caught up with blue ribbons.

“Why don’t we go out now?” said Jane. The room was warm. She put her head down on the table and chewed the ends of her hair. “Come on,” she said, bored, and gave Ernestine a prod with her foot.

“In a minute,” her sister said indistinctly. She bent over the portrait she was coloring, pressing on the end of the crayon until it was flat. Waxy colored streaks were glued to the palm of her hand. She wiped her hand on the skirt of her starched blue frock. “All right, now,” she said, and got down from her chair.

“Where are you going, please?” said Frau Stengel, breathing at them through tense, widened nostrils. “Didn’t your mother send a message for me? When did it happen?”

“What?” said Jane. “Can’t we go out? You said we could, before.”

“It isn’t true, about your father,” said Frau Stengel. “You made it up. Your father is not dead.”

“Oh, no,” said Jane, anxious to make the morning ordinary again. “She only said it, like, for a joke.”

“A joke? You come here and frighten me in my condition for a joke ?” Frau Stengel could not deliver sitting down the rest of the terrible things she had to say. She pulled herself out of the rocking chair and looked down at the perplexed little girls. She seemed to them enormously fat and tall, like the statues in Italian parks. Fascinated, they stared back. “What you have done is very wicked,” said Frau Stengel. “Very wicked. I won’t tell your mother, but I shall never forget it. In any case, God heard you, and God will punish you. If your father should die now, it would certainly be your fault.”

This was not the first time the children had heard of God. Mrs. Kennedy might plan to defer her explanations to a later date, in line with Mr. Kennedy’s eventual decision, but the simple women she employed to keep an eye on Jane and Ernestine (Frau Stengel was the sixth to be elevated to the title of governess) had no such moral obstacles. For them, God was the catch-all answer to most of life’s perplexities. “Who makes this rain?” Jane had once asked Frau Stengel.