Kathleen Spivack - Unspeakable Things

“You see this light?” Felix switched the light off again, on, off. “It’s to find out all your secrets.” He lowered the snout light toward her again. “All of your secrets, child.” Felix let his voice rise from a hiss to a hoarser one. “All of them!” He turned the light on again and bent his head toward Maria’s mouth. “Do I make myself completely clear?” he warned, his face close to hers. He held her frightened eyes in his dark pinpointed ones. “Good,” he said, as if satisfied by something. “Now, open wide,” he commanded in a more hypnotic croon. “Now, my good girl, now turn your head.”

Maria could hear his large breath as he regarded the inside of her ear. He smelled of perfume, and there was something shivery at his touch. A cold instrument entered her ear; then the headlight receded again. Felix straightened away from her again, turning to the watching adults. Maria did not hear him say anything, but there seemed a wave of laughter at the door, nervous laughter.

Felix stood up. The shadows of Maria’s mother and Philip vanished. Maria could hear them slipping out of the room, far away from her, and light shone through the doorway once again. She was terrified, for she realized that she was alone with Uncle Felix.

“I am just going to give you a little medicine,” said Felix. There was a cold draft on her body as the bedclothes were suddenly pulled away. “Turn over for Uncle Felix.” The crooning voice came and she was forced to obey. He pulled up her nightgown, and a colder patch of air lifted a chill wind against Maria’s body. “Lie still. Don’t move,” commanded Uncle Felix as he stabbed her flesh. There was a moment of silvery pain, followed by a dull ache. Maria was so surprised, she could hardly register the moment. She let herself float in a flaking cloud of snowflakes. Felix’s face broke into a jigsaw puzzle and re-formed. Had anything happened? Maria floated in fever, far away from any other sensation.

Felix pulled the blankets around her neck, tucking them in tightly. He straightened and did something to the front of his trousers. “It’s finished now,” he said loudly, in a matter-of-fact tone of voice.

Ilse entered the room again, coming closer to the bed and looking down at her daughter with concern on her face. But Maria shut her eyes, refusing even to acknowledge her mother’s presence, that large, false, untrustworthy person who had betrayed, and would continue to betray, the girl.

Uncle Felix glowered toward Maria, who lay shrinking in her bed. “Penicillin!” he said. “A wonder drug. Remarkable, my dear lady, remarkable.” Creaking, he raised himself from the side of the cot, his body hunched like question mark as he dragged himself onto his lame leg. Click-click. The leg straightened.

Maria could see Felix’s hand in his hip pocket. She loathed him for trying to fool her, for thinking she could be fooled by such deceptions. “My leg!” cried Felix, hobbling once more around the narrow room and shrieking for effect. Maria refused to smile. “Look,” Felix commanded. Slowly, he withdrew his hand from his pocket and opened it in front of the girl’s nose. She looked; she could not help it. In his gnarled palm lay a shiny green frog. Felix pressed his fingers together and the frog gave off a metallic croak. Click-click. Maria’s mother smiled indulgently. “Here, child, this is for you,” Uncle Felix said. “Now that you’ve broken my leg, you might as well have this. My poor leg is completely useless even without my little frog to help me. Here.” He put the toy frog down on Maria’s blanket, clicking it twice more for effect. “Now I must go.”

“Felix, will you stay for some coffee?” Ilse offered as the doctor limped toward the door.

“Ah, dear lady, you are indeed too kind,” said Felix in a normal voice.

Within the wardrobe, Anna woke with a start. Suddenly, she felt she would die if she stayed in the wardrobe a moment longer. The mothball odor and the smothering pressure of the stale smell of old wool pressed down on her little misshapen body. Her delicate nostrils quivered and her compressed lungs tried desperately to suck in air. She had slept for the first time in perhaps years, and now, waking, she had forgotten why she had ever entered the wardrobe. She must have climbed in. A ridiculous impulse. Why was she here? How foolish to suffocate like that, a desiccated carcass to be found perhaps days later when the family needed an extra blanket. She must get out, and immediately. She turned on the small shelf and hesitantly put one foot down toward the floor, timidly opening the door to the wardrobe just a crack. But wait, there was someone else in the room. Someone small as Anna herself almost, small and quick and unfamiliar. Looking through the crack, Anna could see Maria still in bed, and the disarray of bedclothes. It was dark again, night at the window. Had she slept away the entire day? A bit of fresh air blew in through the crack in the wardrobe door, fresh to Anna’s lips anyhow, and she sucked it in gratefully. But something told her to stay still, hidden and concealed, until the coast was clear. Peering through the crack, she observed the room and the shrieking little man who now inhabited it.

Anna saw him dart back toward the girl. He looked at her, and one eyebrow started working furiously. Up and down. “My face!” he shouted at her. “What have you done to my eyebrow, hmm? Bad girl, have you been bothering Uncle Felix once again?” The eyebrow, as if with a life of its own, waggled furiously on Uncle Felix’s face. Maria shrank back, seeing in that eyebrow hordes of black ants. Felix held in one hand the end of a long black thread that seemed somehow to be attached to the frenetic eyebrow. Maria could see the thread protruding out of Felix’s coat sleeve.

“They all love this trick,” Felix confided to Ilse. He turned back to Maria. “Bad girl, bad girl.” Maria slipped softly into the coolness, finally, of sleep. But Anna was wide awake now, watching, startled and fascinated.

Felix turned back just before following Maria’s mother into the hallway, toward a hot plate and coffee deliciously steaming. “I’ll stay with her just a minute more,” he said as Ilse left to prepare the coffee for him. Satisfied that Maria’s eyes were closed, he darted, now totally silently, back into the little room from the doorway. But this time, he did not pause at Maria’s bed. He moved silently, lightly on his feet toward the army blanket that divided Herbert’s space from that of the mother and children. Quickly, he lifted one end of the blanket where it hung on a clothesline. Anna, watching from the wardrobe, cringed back against the blankets, hoping she would not be seen. But Felix had other things on his mind. Even more silently, giving one furtive look behind, he ducked through the blanket partition. He bent down, ran his hands quickly along the top of Herbert’s bed, and then slipped his hands under the narrow mattress that lay upon it. Silently, Felix withdrew both hands. He put both hands in his pockets now, hands that no longer grasped a black thread, but something larger perhaps, something more bulky. Felix once again made as if to leave.

Maria, lying, eyes shut, entering sleep, felt the cold rustle of folded wings. Then, dimly receding as she sank gratefully into a possible relief from fever, she heard the heavy limp of Uncle Felix. The door shut behind him, and the thump of his “broken” leg punctuated the loud announcement of his presence, exiting toward coffee, her mother, and a discussion of their mutual pasts.

Carefully, Anna exited the wardrobe. The stiff envelope crackled against her breast. She stood hunched, as if in thought. But for once her mind was clear. She walked over to the child and kissed her. “My darling child, sleep now,” she said.