Kathleen Spivack - Unspeakable Things

Adeline lay in the feverish dark, plucking the same edge of the sheet between her gnarled hands. “Adeline,” Herbert whispered. The invalid did not look up. “Adeline, listen to me,” he whispered again, more urgently. She did not stop her relentless quivering and searching, as if her crabbed hands were trying to read the faces of her children in the grayed surface of bedsheets.

“Listen.” Herbert pressed his face against the unresisting chest of his wife. “The Rat is with us now,” said Herbert. “The Rat.” Adeline did not answer, but it seemed as if she had heard.

But still his wife seemed not to notice him. She stared straight ahead. “Speak to me, my darling. I implore you,” he begged, touching his large ring, the one that signified his membership in the Freemasons, to her cheek. That ring had saved so many lives. Could it save theirs?

“Herbert, they are trying to kill me,” said Adeline. “I saw them. I saw them yesterday.” She caught his gaze finally. “I can hear it. The sounds.”

“Where, my darling? Tell me.” Herbert looked at her tenderly.

“Here. Everywhere. Can’t you tell?”

“No, my darling,” replied Herbert. He stroked her hair.

He could hear steam hissing faintly through the walls, burping and snarling as it tried to fill the space assigned to it. And if he listened more closely, he, too, could hear the muffled cries of humans, clawing their way into their long death sleep. “No,” he lied. “It is only the heat. You are imagining things.”

Adeline did not answer; it was not worth it. She turned her head away from him and gazed at the wall. “My Michael.” She did not actually say this aloud. But in chorus, the steam pipes began to thrash loudly. Thick clouds rose among their own writhing. The pipes clattered, and patients throughout the building started to beat tin implements together. Plates clanged in the cafeteria somewhere in the dark basement reaches of the hospital. Steam bonged through the passageways and plates were flung onto floors. “Michael,” the lunatics cried. Adeline lay inert, still as a grave but, unfortunately, still living. A thin skeleton of a boy tried to wrap his bones around those of others. He moaned once; then the hissing of death stopped. Satisfied, death ate him.

Herbert heard. “I know.” He was sweating, pale, but dared not think further. It was too dangerous. Beside him, Adeline lay in her trance state.

Their thin, beautiful boy cried out to him. “Father! Father!” Just those two words. He raised his head from the pile of the dead for an instant; his eye sockets bored into Herbert’s own. The muttering of the steam subsided into a faint complaint around the edges of the room.

“Michael!” Herbert cried inside himself, but he dared not speak. “Adeline,” he pleaded. He caressed her closed eyes, her cheeks, closing his own eyes around the memory.

“Herbert, wake up! What are you doing?” Adeline shouted, suddenly opening her eyes and sitting upright. “The woman over there is spying on me. I know it. She stole my brooch.”

“Shh,” whispered Herbert, looking furtively across the room. In the adjacent beds, other women lay inert, muttering to themselves.

“I saw her.” Adeline’s voice rose to a shriek as she clutched her pink silk bed jacket around her throat. Her bony fingers moved convulsively. “Pig!” she hissed at the woman next to her.

“My darling.” Herbert tried to calm her, smoothing back her hair, which sprang up like a thicket of flames around her head.

“Thief! I spit on you. I spit on you! Do you know what they do to thieves where I come from?” she demanded. “Ppfft!” Adeline spit furiously toward the bed next to her, and the spittle ran down the corner of her mouth. Her face was convulsed, engorged with fury.

“My darling,” Herbert said mournfully, trying to hold her down and looking wildly around the room. He hoped no one would notice them. But such was the bedlam around each patient that Adeline’s privacy was ensured. “Thief!”

“Now, dear. Settle down.” The nurse appeared beside Herbert, holding two cups of tea. Adeline thrashed, trying to knock them out of the nurse’s hand. “Calm down. There’s a good girl.” It seemed to Herbert there was menace in the nurse’s soft voice. Adeline shrieked once more and then fell back against the pillow. “There,” said the nurse. “That’s better. Perhaps you would like some tea also?” Herbert gratefully assented, and Adeline, calmer now, took the cup in her hands.

“And what have you been doing?” Adeline demanded of Herbert when the nurse had left. Herbert tried to resume a normal, calm tone. “Professor Zatzki came to see me today,” he ventured conversationally.

“And do you remember also Frau Elkin? Helmut’s wife?” He sighed.

Adeline brightened at their names. “Ah, yes. Are they here? They, too? It is amazing to think they, too, are here.”

“Yes,” whispered Herbert. He did not tell Adeline of the losses among their compatriots, those old colleagues who had also found their way, stumbling, into the cavernous library in New York.

“Was it hard for them?” asked Adeline tenderly.

“Yes, my dear. I am afraid so.” Herbert did not tell her of the long wait, the papers, the false documents, the money, the connections, the letters, the final seal of the great ring upon papers that said death or life to a Europe gone mad. Europe was eating them all in its gaseous fury. Herbert operated in secret, but he was not alone. There were others — others, whose names he did not know — who carried out his bidding. He looked at his ring and put his hands in his pockets.

“You are a shabby little man,” Adeline said suddenly. “You know, I always liked your brother better. I should have married him instead.”

“Oh, Adeline.” Herbert sighed, pressing her hand to his lips once again. “You are so beautiful.” He sighed again, dropping her hand. She would never love him now, he knew. “I am not half the man my brother was,” he said. “But I love you with all my heart.” “Could you not love me a little bit?” he wanted to say. His heart was breaking. No, he corrected himself, it had broken already. Irrevocably.

“Look at me,” cried Adeline. “Can’t you see I am no longer beautiful? I, who was always the greatest beauty? Yes!”

Adeline sat up again, throwing her cup and saucer onto the floor with a large satisfied crash. “I was so beautiful,” she shouted to the woman in the bed next to her, “that you, you pig, cannot imagine what it was like. Papa loved me the most. I was his favorite. I was a great beauty once. Herbert, tell them how beautiful I was,” demanded Adeline imperiously.

“Shh.” said Herbert meekly. “You still are, my darling. My beauty. My sweet girl.”

Adeline’s lips curved in a satisfied sneer. “You see,” she hissed at the woman next to her, then fell back onto the pillows once again. Tears came to her eyes, and she started to sob. “Oh, Herbert”—she gazed at him—“I was beautiful once, wasn’t I?”

“Shh,” said Herbert gently, sorrowfully. “Of course. Calm yourself.”

“No,” said Adeline, despairing. The tears ran down her face. “Look at me, Herbert. Be truthful for once in your life. Even he wouldn’t want me now. Not even your handsome brother.” Sobs shook her thin shoulders.

Herbert cleared his throat. “Adeline,” he said, as if to change the subject, “you haven’t asked after the children.”

Adeline seemed to return to herself. She looked at him. “Tell me.” She regarded him searchingly, as if to really see him. “The little ones. How are they?”

Herbert smiled at her. “Today I took them with me to the library. They are so good, David’s children. Philip sat there like a good boy. And Maria, a little princess. I was so proud.” He thought of the children, patiently waiting with him day after day.