Laura Schlitz - Splendors and Glooms

A little gasp came from Lizzie Rose. Parsefall looked back at the two girls. Something had passed between them. Lizzie Rose reached across the table to press Clara’s hand.

“I’m so sorry,” Lizzie Rose whispered.

Clara shook her head violently.

Parsefall gaped at them, feeling as if a joke had been told and he’d missed the punch line. “Wot is it?” he demanded.

“They’re —” Lizzie Rose lowered her voice. “They’re in heaven, aren’t they? I’m so sorry.”

“Wot?” repeated Parsefall.

Clara spoke brusquely. “My brothers and sisters are dead.”

Parsefall considered this. His eyes went back to the painting. “All of ’em?” he said incredulously.

Lizzie Rose hissed. “Parsefall!”

“There was cholera.” Clara spoke hurriedly, as if eager to get the explanation over with. “Quentin was just a baby. That’s Selina by the column — she was the eldest. She was seven, and Adelaide was six, and Charles Augustus and I were five. He was my twin.” She hesitated a moment and plunged on. “Papa thinks the contagion was in the watercress. I was naughty that day. I’ve never liked eating green things, and I wouldn’t eat the watercress at tea. So I wasn’t ill, but the others died.” She bent her head and brought up one hand as if to cover her face. “Of course, it was dreadful for Mamma. For Papa, too, but Mamma nearly died of grief.” She cleared her throat. “It was seven years ago. I’m twelve years old today.”

Parsefall looked back at the picture. “You’re five years old in that?” he asked, jerking his thumb at the canvas.

“Not in that picture,” Clara told him. “That was painted four years ago. Mamma had an artist come to the house — she wanted a picture of the way they might have looked, if only they’d lived. Of course we have photographs — and their death masks.” She indicated four white casts over the piano. “Mamma says we must keep them alive by thinking of them all the time. We must never forget them or stop loving them.”

Parsefall stared at the death masks on the wall. “Wot’s a death mask?”

Lizzie Rose kicked him under the table.

“They take plaster,” Clara said very calmly, “and press it over the — the dear one’s face. And then later take more plaster and make a mask. That way —” She stopped and covered her mouth with her hand. She did not seem grief stricken so much as embarrassed.

Parsefall’s eyes went back to the four white casts. “That’s nasty,” he said. “Stickin’ plaster on somebody’s face wot’s dead. It’s ’orrible.”

Lizzie Rose kicked him a second time, harder. But Clara’s blue eyes met Parsefall’s. Something flashed between them. It was almost as if she said, I think so, too.

“It’s good to remember the dead,” said Lizzie Rose. “My mother and father died of diphtheria a year and a half ago. It makes me sorrowful to remember them, but it’s good, too. I think of my father when I practice my music, because he taught me to play. And I sleep with my mother’s Bible under my pillow. I have her ice skates and a pair of coral earrings set in gold. Of course, I’m too young to pierce my ears, so Mr. Grisini is taking care of them for me. But he’ll let me have them when I’m sixteen.”

Parsefall snorted. He had a very good idea how Grisini had taken care of Lizzie Rose’s earrings. He’d seen the ticket from the pawnshop. He pointed to the teapot, and Clara reached for it. “Would you like another cup of tea?”

Both children accepted. Parsefall saw one piece of toast remaining, broke it in half, and gave part to Lizzie Rose. Lizzie Rose rolled her eyes at him to signal that this was bad manners, but Parsefall didn’t care.

Clara took her last sip of tea — she hadn’t had any toast, Parsefall noticed. Her eyes strayed to the puppet theatre.

“Would you like to see the puppets?” Lizzie Rose asked, and Clara’s face lit up. “Come and see.”

The children left the table — Parsefall with a piece of toast between his fingers. “We carry them in bags to keep them clean,” Lizzie Rose explained proudly; the calico bags had been her own invention. “The fog makes everything dirty. Before the show, we unwrap them and hang them on the rack —”

“The gallows,” Parsefall corrected her. He grinned ghoulishly at Clara. “It’s called the gallows. We ’ang ’em on the gallows, just like men.” But Clara was too intrigued to be squeamish.

“We have to set them up just so, because it’s dark under the curtain,” said Lizzie Rose. “I make their costumes — Grisini can sew as well as I can, but he doesn’t like to. I just made a new frock for Little Red Riding Hood — isn’t she pretty?”

Clara admired the puppet with her hands behind her back. She looked as if she were used to being told not to touch things. Lizzie Rose had an inspiration. “Would you like to work Little Red? You hold her by the crutch — that’s the wooden bit at the end — and pull the strings.”

Clara dangled the puppet. Timidly she jerked a string. One wooden leg kicked.

“The hardest thing is making them walk,” Lizzie Rose told her. “It’s easy to make the fantoccini dance, but hard to make them walk — isn’t that funny? I still float them sometimes — that’s what we call it when their feet don’t touch the floor. That’s a sign of a bad worker. Let Parsefall show you.”

Parsefall took the Devil from the gallows and made him saunter toward Clara. The manikin had joints at the ankles; he walked with a swagger, but his wooden feet brushed the carpet with every step. Clara squeaked with delight and clapped her hands.

“Grisini and Parsefall do the figure working,” Lizzie Rose explained. “I play the music. I’m not good enough to work the fantoccini, unless Grisini and Parsefall have their hands full. But Parsefall’s good.” She laid a hand on Parsefall’s shoulder. “Parsefall has magic in his fingers.”

Clara looked at Parsefall’s hands. She gave a faint start.

Parsefall understood why. His fingers were clever enough, but there were only nine of them. The little finger on his right hand was missing. There was no scar, nothing ugly to see. It was just that the little finger was not there. Parsefall didn’t know what had become of it. He was almost certain he had once had ten fingers, and it tormented him that he couldn’t remember what had become of the one he lost.

“You’re so clever,” Clara said admiringly. “Both of you. You know how to make the wagon into a stage, and play music, and work the puppets.” She sighed. “I wish I could do things.”

“I’m sure you can, miss,” Lizzie Rose soothed her, but Clara shook her head.

“No. I embroider, of course, and I can play the piano, but there isn’t any use in it. Mamma doesn’t like music, because it makes her head ache, and we have too many cushions already.” She swept the room with a glance that was almost contemptuous. It reminded Parsefall of what he had intended earlier — to rid this room of one of the objects that crowded it.

“Would you like to help me take the rest of the fantoccini out of the bags?” Lizzie Rose asked, and Clara brightened at once.

“Oh, yes, please! May I?”

Parsefall hung the Devil puppet back on the gallows and turned his back. The two girls went on talking. The chirping, purring sounds in their voices seemed to indicate that they were becoming friends, but Parsefall paid no attention to their words. He was searching the room for something to steal.

What should he take? The room was stocked with valuables, many of them small enough to be portable. Parsefall knew what he wanted: something that would fit in his pocket without making a telltale bulge, something valuable but not so precious that its absence would be noticed immediately. He surveyed a table full of knickknacks: a mosaic box, a wreath of wax flowers under glass, three china babies with gilded wings, and an assortment of photographs in silver frames. Another table held a porcelain bowl full of dead rose petals, a prayer book with mother-of-pearl covers, and more photographs.