Christopher's Ghosts (12 page)

“Sleeping pills. We don’t know.”

Lori’s eyelids were closed, long thick lashes against her cheek. She was deathly pale. Paul could not tell if she was breathing. He realized that Hubbard was not sure, either. Hubbard fell to one knee and placed his ear against Lori’s lips. For once no smile lingered just behind his long bony face, ready to break out.

Paul knew this: someone must act. “Car keys!” he said.

“I don’t know where I put them,” Hubbard said. He seldom did; the family spent hours looking for things he had misplaced. He was always writing, always in his trance, even when he did not have a pen in his hand. But he was not writing now. He was within this moment in this world and nowhere else.

Where was Lori? Paul wondered. Was she thinking, dreaming, was her mind empty for the first time in her life, did she know where she was or what was happening or how far gone she was? No more than a minute had elapsed since Paul had rushed from Rima’s room. Now Rima appeared, barefoot and barelegged but otherwise fully clothed. Without asking permission, she walked past Paul and between the two men. She took Lori’s
face in her hand. She was not gentle. She peeled back an eyelid and looked into the eye, took a pulse in the neck, listened and then smelled at the mouth. She took Lori’s lower lip between her finger and thumb and squeezed it hard, then twisted. Lori uttered a sound and recoiled from the pain.

“There is no time for the car,” Rima said. “How long has she been like this?”

Hubbard did not reply. His face was slack, his hands trembled. It was obvious that he could not think, let alone speak. Paulus answered Rima’s question. “She was still awake at nine. I heard her coughing when I walked past her room.”

It was one-thirty in the morning now.

Rima said, “What did she take?”

“Something to make her sleep, we think. Only she knows what or how much.”

Rima said, “Paul, get a bowl. Be quick.”

He was back in an instant with a heavy china wash basin. “Bend her over,” Rima said to Paulus. “Paul, hold the bowl. She’s going to vomit.”

Rima opened Lori’s mouth, holding the jaw with one hand, and thrust her forefinger down her throat. Watery vomit shot into the bowl. Lori threw back her head and gasped for air. “Don’t let her do that,” Rima said. “She could inhale her own vomit and suffocate. Keep her throat straight.” Rima said. Paulus complied. Rima wiped the inside of Lori’s mouth with a forefinger, snapped it clean over the bowl, then with the same finger massaged the back of Lori’s throat again. She vomited once more, less explosively. She was breathing visibly now, gasping for air, and moving in small ways—her face changed expressions, her head jerked, her limbs twitched.

Rima said, “Paul, run a cold bath. Lots of water. Be quick. Gentlemen, please take her to the bathroom.”

Hubbard lifted her into his arms. The bathroom was downstairs, off the kitchen. Cold water, tinted with rust, gushed from the big iron faucets.

Rima said, “Into the water, on her back.” The men hesitated. “Now,” Rima said. Hubbard and Paulus did as they were told. Lori
moaned, thrashed, tried weakly to escape from the freezing water.

“Someone bring towels and blankets,” Rima said. “Make coffee.”

“She hates coffee,” Hubbard said.

“Tea, then.”

The water was now up to Lori’s chin. Her blue nightgown wafted around her legs in the water as if stirred by a current.

“She’s shaking like a leaf,” Hubbard shouted. “She’ll catch her death of cold.”

He made as if to lift Lori from the tub. Rima said, “No. Not yet. First she has to wake up.”

Lori’s eyes opened, as if she had heard Rima’s words. Rima said, “Look at me.”

“I don’t know you,” Lori said, coughing.

“No, but I’m trying to help you.”

They were speaking German. Rima held up three fingers. “How many fingers, dear lady?”

“Three.”

“What is the name of your son?”

Lori did not answer.

“Good girl,” Rima said. “You’re being careful. You’re awake. But now you must stay awake. Do not go back to sleep. It is strictly forbidden. Do you understand?”

Lori glared at her but did not answer.

To Paulus, Rima said, “Get her out of the water now. The baroness—where is she?—and I will get her out of that nightdress and dry her and wrap her in blankets. After that she must get dressed and walk until she is completely awake. That may take hours. We will take turns, Paul and me first, then you and Herr Christopher, Herr Colonel Baron. Do not let her go back to sleep. And, Paul, get rid of the sleeping powders immediately.”

“At your orders, Miss,” Paulus said. Rima smiled at him, a small polite smile. He said, “If ever I need resuscitation, my dear, I will call on you, if I may.”

Hilde appeared, bearing teapot, sugar bowl, milk pitcher, and cup and saucer on a silver tray. The china was paper-thin, with blue Chinese
scenes painted on it. Rima’s mother had had dishes very much like these. Rima, kneeling by the tub, held Lori’s head above the water. “Wake up, Lori!” she said over and over. “Stay awake!”

Lori’s large gray eyes stared at her with hatred, then closed. Rima shouted at her, “Open your eyes at once!” Lori lifted a hand to strike this impertinent stranger, but her muscles would not obey her and her arm fell helplessly into the water.

“Baroness, please help me,” Rima said. Hilde looked for a place to set down her tray. Paul took it from her.

To the men Rima said, “Out, please, gentlemen.”

When the women emerged from the bathroom, Lori was dressed in slacks, a turtleneck sweater, a headscarf, and stout shoes. She staggered as she walked. By turns her eyes were empty or suspicious or burning with anger, as if controlled by a switch. Her jaw was slack. She still breathed through her mouth. Despite her elegant clothes she was a shocking sight to Paul. He had never before seen his mother when she was not in complete control of herself and everything around her.

Paul said, “Does she need a jacket?”

“You’re not taking her outside?” Hilde said. “It’s dark, it’s damp. Her hair is wet. It is dangerous to her health. This is a sick woman.”

“The moon is out,” Rima said. “The night is warm. Breathing fresh air will be good for her.”

Hilde said, “You don’t know our sea air, young lady. Nor is the moon a healthy influence.”

Hilde had taken enough orders from this impertinent stranger who was hardly more than a child. The tea that Hilde had made for Lori had gone cold while she carried out one incomprehensible instruction after another. Now Lori would have nothing on her stomach. She needed something hot to drink. She needed a doctor.

Paulus said, “The girl is right. Lori needs fresh air. Exercise!”

“How do you know she’s right?” Hilde said. “We don’t even know who she is.”

Paulus lifted his eyebrows. Did Hilde think that Rima was deaf? However, Rima, her arm around Lori as if she had known her for years, seemed unaffected by what had just been said about her. She waited for
a decision, her eyes on Paulus.

Paulus said, “She’s been right about everything else so far. Also, she is a guest in this house and she is a friend of Paul’s.”

“A very
close
friend,” Hilde said.

Paulus had been married to this woman for two-thirds of his life. He knew exactly what she was saying, and now he understood why she was so angry. He had seen her in this state before, for similar reasons. Hilde must have caught these children in bed. Paulus was tremendously pleased. He himself had not had his first honest girl until he was twenty.

“If she and Paul are close, all the more reason to regard her as a friend,” Paulus said.

Hilde knew that she had been overruled—another betrayal. She sniffed, turned on her heel, and left Paulus with the female he preferred on this particular night. Paulus opened the front door.

“Ring the bell when you wish to be relieved, children,” he said.

 3 

For the next hour Rima and Paul walked Lori up and down the gravel drive, under the beeches. The gibbous moon provided more than enough light. The night was tart, a bit damp but not chilly. Lori was not yet fully conscious. Sleep was calling to her. Or perhaps, Paul thought, it was death. In either case Lori was trying to answer. When her head bowed, Rima shook her hard and shouted into her ear: “WAKE UP!” From time to time Lori stumbled or coughed convulsively and as if talking in her sleep, muttered nonsense to herself in a voice so choked that Paul and Rima could not make out the words. Paul recognized the tone; there was no mistaking it. She was furious, she was arguing with some invisible presence. Paul did not even try to understand what his mother was saying. He was afraid of what he might hear. When she lost her balance or coughed, he wrapped her in his arms, kissed her cheek, murmured her name.

“She’ll be all right,” Rima said, at the end of one long coughing
spell.

“Has she caught a chill?”

“Maybe, from the cold water, but she’s strong.”

Paul said, “You have no idea.”

His mind teemed with images of the last hour. Mostly what he remembered was Rima. In her certainty, her competence, her instinct for command, she reminded him of Lori. Paulus was right—without Rima they might have lost his mother. Certainly Lori had been fighting hard to die. He had seen that in her eyes in the tub when she glared at Rima—this perfect stranger who was interfering with her will—and tried to strike her. She would slip away again if she could. He knew that as well as if his mother had whispered her plans into his ear. She wanted to die.

To Rima Paul said, “Your father taught you how to do what you did tonight?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Rima replied.

Paul waited for her to go on. Even at sixteen he believed, as he believed for the rest of his life, that nothing useful could be learned by asking questions.

“Actually,” Rima said, “I learned it from his medical books. They always fascinated me. I read them on the sly. Also I had some practical experience. My father did this same thing.”

“When?”

“A year ago, when they took the last thing from him, his house in Charlottenburg and everything in it, and gave it to someone who’s important in the party.”

“He took sleeping powders?”

“I think so. If it had been poison he would have died.”

“You were alone with him when this happened?”

“I found him when I came home from school. He wasn’t quite unconscious yet. The stuff took longer to work than he thought. He fought with me. He had a pistol in his hand—his officer’s Mauser from the war. I couldn’t understand that at the time. Why take poison and also shoot yourself?”

“Weren’t you afraid?”

“Of the gun? No. I knew my own father wouldn’t shoot me. For him? Yes. Terrified. You now know as well as I do what it feels like to see something like this happening.”

“But in the end you saved him, just like tonight.”

“Saved him? I wouldn’t say that. I prevented him from succeeding in what he wanted to do.”

A silence followed. Lori broke it. In a clear voice she cried, “I will not permit this!” She stopped in her tracks and struggled to free herself from Paul and Rima. She was strong, violent. After a moment Rima said, “Let her go. She’ll hurt herself.”

Paul said, “The cliffs are nearby.”

“In her condition how can she run away from you?”

Freed of restraint, and of support, Lori lurched forward, ran two or three steps, then fell. She cursed in German, coughed convulsively, cursed again. Paul fell to his knees beside her, “Mama, it’s Paul. Everything is all right. Let me help you.”

Rima stood back, watching, silent, not interfering. Her face was in shadow. Paul remembered her as she had been when she got out of bed an hour ago, her tumbled hair. Under the circumstances, it was an incongruous thought. It was absurd to be thinking of what had not happened between him and Rima rather than this ugly thing that had happened to his mother. It was worse than absurd to have a heart full of love for Rima, to feel blood rushing in his body for her, to think of nothing but her, while his mother might be dying. He was overcome by guilt, but the blood still rushed. He helped Lori to her feet. She stood still, submissive, while he brushed dirt from her clothes. Rima took her other arm. They walked to the end of the drive, then turned around and started back.

“I think,” Rima said as if her story had not been interrupted, “that my father had his pistol because he intended to shoot anyone who got between him and death. Except me, of course.”

Lori was silent now. She seemed to be walking more easily. She looked at nothing, said nothing. She was breathing normally. Paul wondered what would make a person want to die so badly that he would kill to defend his desire. But in the case of Lori, he knew, or
thought he did.

Later, while the house was sleeping—Lori, too, now that it was safe for her to close her eyes—Rima went to Paul’s room. She went back to her own bed just before dawn, the moment at which Paulus habitually snapped awake and went for his morning march along the cliffs. She saw him from the window, head high, stepping out toward the sea, walking stick in hand, a large wolfhound keeping step at his heels. His head turned left and right, he inhaled the morning air to the bottom of his lungs. He was like a stag in a state of alert. The maleness of him made Rima smile. How much like Paul he must have been when he was young.

 4 

Next morning Rima and Lori were first down for breakfast. With a brisk handshake Lori introduced herself as if she and Rima were laying eyes on each other for the first time. In Lori’s case this may have been true. Who knew what she had seen or heard the night before? Today she was perfectly self-possessed.

“I must thank you for your help last night,” she said.

“I did very little,” Rima said.

“That’s not quite the truth, as I understand it, but you have my gratitude.”

Perhaps that’s not quite the truth, either, Rima thought, looking into Lori’s steady eyes. The pupils were still dilated from whatever overdose she had taken. Because of the enlarged pupils her eyes looked almost black and so cold that it was hard not to think that Lori was making them so by an effort of the will.