Unknown - The Genius

The girl says nothing. She glances over Louis’s shoulder, at Bertha, who has begun to make a series of low, mournful chuffing noises.

“Ruth,” Louis says. The girl looks at him. “Ruth, I see that—that something has happened here.”

The girl says nothing.

“Ruth,” he says again.

Bertha turns and leaves. From the next room, Louis hears her threatening the superintendent but he tries to focus on his daughter. “Ruth,” he says. He had wanted to call her Teresa, after a great-aunt of his; Bertha had a Harriet to name for, as well as a Sarah. But Bertha insisted on a name with no connection to either of their families, which was precisely the point.

Still, love adjusts, and he has come to hold the name dear. Ruth, he says. He picks up her hand and begins to rock back and forth. Ruth. She watches him guilelessly, confusion spreading over her face as he sways and says her name.

THEIR OPTIONS ARE LIMITED. Dr. Christmas hints that he has the capacity to end the pregnancy right away, but when he does so Bertha spits at him. She of the expedient solution; apparently, she clings to some taboos.

The next day their family physician—the one who delivered the girl, the one who recommended the Home—arrives on the afternoon train. He takes a taxi to the hotel and is shown to Mr. and Mrs. Muller’s suite, into which he steps with no small amount of trepidation. Hat literally in hand, he begins to offer an apology-cum-defense.

“Never mind that,” says Bertha. “You’re going to need clothes. We have moved the girl to a nearby cottage for the duration of her pregnancy. There is a nurse with her. The adjacent cottage isn’t for sale yet but we’ll have it soon enough. You will live there until this is finished. Once the baby has arrived we’ll decide what to do with the girl. In the meantime, you will have whatever supplies you require, and we will cover your expenses, as well as whatever losses you incur being away from your practice. Until you can further determine your needs this ought to suffice. Give it to him, Louis.”

As the doctor takes the check, his hands begin to shake, the way they did that night twenty-one years ago. Louis is dismayed. There must be someone better—someone younger, with more energy and greater expertise. But Bertha will not budge. No specialist, no matter how good his training, has as much experience as Dr. Fetchett in one area: discretion. He has kept the family secrets well, and now he will be punished for his loyalty.

“I understand your urgency,” says the doctor, “but I can’t possibly leave New York for—”

“You can and you will. She’s already quite far along. Why they waited until now to telephone us is another matter, for discussion at another time. Right now I’m concerned only about her well-being and the well-being of the child. Your room key is there, if you’d like to refresh yourself. We leave for the cottage in thirty minutes.”

SHE HAS SO MUCH TO LOSE. The woman the world sees is the product of many years of hard work. In becoming that person, erasion has played as great a role as creation, a lesson she has never forgotten.

On their honeymoon, Louis took her to Europe for six months. They visited his ancestral homeland, over the Rhine from where she still had relatives. They rented chateaux; they were received by heads of state, escorted in grand fashion from one magnificent edifice to another, shown the world’s greatest art in private sessions, allowed to press their noses right up against the canvas, to run their fingers along the gold and silver surfaces. What she remembers most of all are the Michelangelos. Not the muscular David or the languid Pieth but the rough, unfinished Florentine sculptures, human form struggling to wrest itself from a solid block of marble. That has always been her great battle, a lifelong battle, won by divestiture. We shed; we lighten and rise.

She came over at the age of five, and in the beginning she was friendless. The other girls teased her about the way she said the letter s. It came out as a z. Or when she said shpelling instead of spelling. They would tease her about that, too. Shhhh they would say, laughing their little heads off. Shhhhhh. A clever joke, at once playing on her shortcomings and telling her that what she had to say was of no interest to anyone.

Her accent, then—that had to go. Day in and day out she sat with the tutor. She sells seashells by the seashore, the shells she sells are surely seashells. The exercises made her jaw ache. They numbed her with boredom. She worked. She chipped away at herself—the z’s and sh’s falling off, bits of stone and clouds of dust—until she sounded like any other American girl. It was a painful process but a worthwhile one, certainly after the War broke out.

Off came her baby fat. She kept herself away from certain foods, and gradually she emerged as a woman who could turn heads in the street. Boys wanted to be by her side, and girls wanted to be by the sides of the boys. She shed her timorousness, shed her resentment, generously extending friendship to those who had maligned her in childhood. She shed her inhibitions, becoming known as a girl not only of exceptional beauty but of great wit. She tamped down an unbecoming tendency toward sarcasm and built up a tolerance for the inanity of social niceties. She entertained drawing rooms with lightning-fast passages from the Goldberg Variations. Everyone applauded. She learned to enjoy parties, to laugh on cue, to reflect in others what they most wanted to see.

By her eighteenth birthday, several men had asked for her hand. She turned them down. She had bigger plans, and so did her mother.

Her father thought them both ridiculous, and said so.

“I don’t see why you say that,” said Mama. “They like German girls. And I know that they will want to marry that one off as soon as possible.”

Mama was right. Bertha marveled. One moment she was a debutante; the next she was a bride, dancing with her husband in a ballroom as big as her imagination.

The first years of her marriage were her happiest. She barely noticed her husband’s lack of interest in her; she was too busy making the most of her newfound omnipotence. Papa was rich, but nobody was rich like the Mullers. It became a challenge for her to dream up new ways to spend. And still she continued to rise, cultivating important relationships and pruning dead ones. She invited and was invited by others. Her wardrobe was the envy of all, her clothing cut closely in homage to her figure. She became a regular in the society pages, noted for her grace but also for her charitable work. In her name grew a concert hall and a collection at the Met. She endowed functions and sponsored schoolchildren. She was only twenty-one but already she had done so much good. Her parents were proud; her life was full; and if her husband did not desire her, so much the better. It freed her up to work on refining herself, a new person, reborn as a Muller. It was she who had to ensure the bloodline. Louis could not be trusted. He had done everything in his power to sabotage his family’s future. She came to stitch up the damage, and in doing so, she took possession of her new name in a way that he—a Muller by dint of Fate—never could. Unlike Louis, she had to work, to position herself, to choose; she became more of a Muller than he ever was; and thus her obligation ran much deeper than his, her mandate divine. How else to explain the rapidity of her ascent? Someone wanted her to succeed.

And she made sure Louis did his duty when the time came around.

During the early part of Bertha’s first pregnancy, Mama died. Before she went, she said, “I only hope your children take such good care of you.”

The disappointment, then, was twofold. Bertha felt as though she had denied her mother’s deathbed wish. After all, no defective child could ever take care of her. And the shame she stood to reap: oh the shame. Her whole life would fly apart, springs and gears and hinges scattering. All the good she did would come to naught. Who would give the kind of charity that she did if not her? Who would throw the Autumn Ball? Who would be the focal point? She had obligations to the people of New York City.