Sleeping in Flame (32 page)

I sat there awhile calming her, telling her she'd fallen asleep and cried out something about her suitcase falling. But I told her to look --

there it was up on the rack. She'd only had a bad dream.

When it was clear she was all right, I got my bag and left the compartment. Before going, I put her to sleep. Nothing was simpler.

In Cologne the next morning, I had a two-hour layover before my next train left. After a bad cup of coffee in the station restaurant, I found a phone and called Maris. I told her I was in the hotel and they'd given me a nice room overlooking the great cathedral.

"How does it look? Is it like St. Stephen's?"

I had never been to Cologne and knew nothing about it. The only things I saw were trains and tracks and commuters. Closing my eyes, I said _it_ again and vivid pictures of the Gothic cathedral, the fourteenth-century stained glass windows, and the Magi's shrine inside the church came sliding into my head. I went on to quickly describe parts of the city, including the

Roman-Germanic Museum and its million-piece "Dionysus Mosaic," even the cable car over the Rhine. She told me I sounded like a travel guide and she was jealous.

I got off the other train in the afternoon. I needed only three hours to do what was necessary.

The only real problem was finding the place.

On the train back to Vienna I didn't dream, but looking out the window at the sun rising over the Austrian countryside, I let my mind go its way and this is what I saw. Or felt. Or knew somewhere inside.

It is summer in East Hampton, Long Island. Victoria Marshall's parents own a house there by the ocean and invited me down for the weekend. That evening we'd gone to a play at the John Drew Theatre. It was boring, but the interesting part of the two hours was Victoria's hand on my thigh. It wasn't like her. At college we'd spent months rolling around on my narrow bed, touching and pushing clothes aside, getting too hot and too frustrated for our own good. She wants to be a virgin when she gets married, but she also loves me and doesn't know what to do.

She wants us to sleep together, but she also wants to keep her promise to herself. I love her but she is beginning to confuse me.

Her hand rubbing my thigh in the theatre, inches away from the eyes of her High Episcopalian parents, tells me something is very different tonight.

Is this it? Is she saying yes?

The parents know their daughter and don't worry that anything untoward might happen if they're not around to keep an eye on my shenanigans. They have one drink with us after the show and go off upstairs to their bedroom.

Victoria and I are sitting on the couch. I have a drink in my hand but things have gotten so heated in me that the ice has melted. She waits until the toilet flushes twice up there and the
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familiar sounds of people getting into bed are over before she turns to me, her eyes full of smoke and promises.

She says nothing, but when she reaches over to touch me, I almost pull back because the moment has really come and I can't believe it. Not only does she touch me, but pulls me to the floor with her.

She whispers, "Do you have something with you?"

"Yes."

"All right." She begins to take off her clothes. Me too. When we're naked I remember at the last minute to take it out of my wallet. Hands trembling, I tear it open but leave it in its wrapper. I am afraid the floor will squeak and tell on us, but it is a silent conspirator.

We kiss and touch and everything is hot. Plus, everything is not just this, it is leading up to the moment I've been waiting for almost a year. I

touch her between her legs and she is wetter than I've ever felt. This is unbelievable. Moving away, I reach for the rubber. It comes gliding out of its envelope and expands into a circle in my hand. I have no trouble putting it on. Turning to her, she is more beautiful than ever. I rise up and gently part her legs. They move open quickly, and already she is moving her head from side to side.

I can't get in. I move and use my hands and she does what she can, but it is no use. I simply can't get in. Her eyes are wide open now and they say something I can't hear. Is she afraid? Have I scared her into thinking she is too small and will be this way forever? Is it disgust? How could I be so bumbling and inept? How could I do this to her?

We try more and more until my penis gives up any hope and says good night. We lie on our sides, fingertips still touching, but we are lost. What now?

I see all this, but it's nothing new. I was there and remember too well that embarrassing night.

What _is_ different is something else I see with my new eyes. Something outside the house, sitting on top of the Marshalls' Cape

Cod roof.

He has been up there the whole time, watching. Squatting like a Fuseli creature, his hand over his mouth, he's laughing and snickering, trying to keep quiet so that no one inside will know something is up on the roof listening to the hopeless silence of two nineteen-year-olds.

I called him on the phone.

"How'd you get my number?"

"I'd like you to come to dinner."

"When? Where'd you get this number?"

"Can you come tonight?"

He was silent, suspicious, but there was nothing he could do anymore. I knew that, but he didn't.

"Tonight? Why tonight?"

"I have to talk to you."

I convinced him. We'd have his favorite meal, done the way he liked it.

I told him I'd had a dream and remembered how to cook it. I even called him Papa once and that must have done it. He agreed. Seven o'clock.

I called Maris and told her I'd be home a day early. Then I went shopping.

They wanted to help, but I said they were my guests and I wouldn't hear of it.

At the market I bought _Tafelspitz_, _Kren_, applesauce, the makings for tartar sauce. Two bottles of good red wine from Styria. An old menu but one all of them would feel comfortable eating. If we ever got around to eating. No matter what happened, I didn't think it was going to be a long evening.

They loved television; couldn't get over it. They watched a documentary about famine in Africa,
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a Bud Spencer film, a choral group from the Vorarlberg that sang some songs they knew. That made them especially happy.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in the kitchen. Maris was such a good cook that I hadn't whipped up a big meal for a long time. I enjoyed the hours putting the pieces together.

I was done at six and went in to take a shower. This was going to be a big evening and I wanted to look right for it.

At six-thirty they insisted on setting the table. I let them because I think they were so embarrassed that I'd cooked the meal.

The bell rang promptly at seven. I walked down the hall, accompanied as always by Orlando. He walked faster now that he could see, but his sweet personality was still the same.

When I opened the door I only saw a big bouquet of flowers wrapped in shiny plastic paper.

Tilting his head to one side, he peeked out from behind them and said, "I brought you some flowers. You used to like roses."

I smiled and took them. "I still do. That's nice, Papa. Come in."

I let him pass me and gestured toward the living room. "Dinner's almost ready."

He went forward a few steps, but then Orlando began weaving his way in and out between his feet, almost tripping him. "Get out of here! I hate cats!"

He put his hand out, fingers spread. Orlando fell over, dead in an instant.

I put my hand out, fingers spread, and the cat opened his eyes again.

The old man stopped, back to me, and didn't move.

"Your name is _Breath_, Papa. Come on, dinner's ready."

He walked slowly forward. What else could he do?

At the door to the living room he saw the two women sitting on the couch. Both had their hands folded carefully in their laps over the wide spread of their silk dresses. For two such plain-looking women, in that moment with their faces lit expectantly, they were quite lovely.

"Papa, I'd like to introduce you to the Wild Sisters. Dortchen and Lisette."

For the first time he turned and looked at me. "What is this?"

"You're all my guests for dinner."

"What the fuck is this, Walter? Who are they?"

"You don't know?"

"I wouldn't _ask_ if I knew!"

I turned to the women. "Please excuse my father, ladies. He must be tired."

He grabbed my jacket and pulled me to him. "What are you doing, Walter?

What's going on?" There was no fear in his face, only distrust and malice.

Did I feel any pity for what I was about to do? Pity for the man who'd once upon a time raised me like a son and taught me everything he knew? Taught me everything I knew once again now?

I laughed in his face. "Do you want to eat first, or should the ladies begin?"

He said nothing, only continued glaring at me, holding my jacket.

"I think we should start with the story," Lisette said in her small, cultured voice. "A good story always enhances the appetite."

"I agree," Dortchen said.

"Good. Then please do."

The two women looked at each other. Lisette told Dortchen to begin: _Once upon a time there was a little man whose name was Breath. It was a strange name, but because he had such strong magic inside, whoever had created him chose a name no human would ever guess._

Papa let go of my lapel.

_The little man was content with this magic for a time, but as he grew older, he realized it was
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not enough in life. What one really needed was love, especially if you happened to be Breath, who was immortal._

_One day he was out walking and saw a beautiful young maiden sitting at a spinning wheel in a barn. She was very poor, but so beautiful that the little man fell instantly in love._

"_What is your name?" he asked brusquely, not wanting her to know that already he loved her with all his soul._

"_My name is Alexandra, but I'm so sad that I have almost forgotten it._"

"_Why?_"

"_Because the king is coming tomorrow and I lied to him. I told him I could spin gold out of straw. When he sees that I can't, he'll kill me._"

_Now Breath could do this kind of magic easily. An idea came to him.

Perhaps if he spun the gold for the girl, she would fall in love with him forever._

_At the same time, he had had so many bad experiences with love that he was careful about such things._

"_What will you give me if I spin for you?_"

"_My necklace," the maiden said._

_The necklace meant nothing to him, but he didn't want her to know that.

He wanted her love, but love is a hard fish to catch and one must do it carefully._

_The little man took the necklace and sat down at the wheel, and _whizz, whizz, whizz_, three times round, the spool was full. Then he inserted another one, and _whizz, whizz, whizz_, the second was full. And so it went until morning, when all the straw was spun, and all the spools were filled with gold_.

_The girl watched with delight, but never once in those many hours did she ask the little man his name or thank him when he was done. That made him

sad, but those hours together with her alone only made his love grow until it was almost too large for his body._

I watched the expression on his face as the story went on. There was a softening there, a sadness for oneself, a sadness for the truth of history.

Dortchen spoke quietly, but besides her voice there was no other sound in the room.

_So the king had the miller's daughter brought into an even larger room filled with straw and said to her, "You must spin all this into gold tonight.

If you succeed, you shall become my wife." To himself he thought: Even though she's just a miller's daughter, I'll never find a richer woman anywhere_.

Papa stiffened. "That's right! He didn't want her. He only wanted the gold. I told her that! But she didn't want love either. She wanted to be queen."

Dortchen and Lisette looked at each other, but I gestured for Dortchen to go on. Instead, she looked at her sister and the other continued:

Everyone knows the story. The little man spun gold for the third time on the promise of Alexandra's child. After a year she gave birth. (To me). He returned and told her to keep her promise.

_The queen was horrified and offered the little man all the treasures of the kingdom if he would let her keep the child. But the little man knew she had no love for her son because her heart was as white and cold as a star.

Breath replied, "No, something living is more important to me than all the treasures in the world._"

He looked at me so sadly, nodding yes, that's all true.

_Furious that he had denied her, the queen began to rant and rave so much that her true, mean spirit showed itself. Finally, she said, "Go away, little man. I already have a court midget._"

"She hated me so much! She couldn't stand looking at me!"

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Lisette was upset by his constant interruptions. She cleared her throat loudly. _Alexandra said other terrible things. When Breath had had more than enough and knew how much she despised him, he turned one of her fingers into gold to remind her of his powers. But his heart still ached for her, so he gave her one more chance. "I'll give you three days' time. If you can guess my name by the third day, you shall keep your child_."

The story continued. The _true_ story of Breath that Dortchen and Lisette Wild had made up to tell the Brothers Grimm more than a century and a half before. The difference was that their version was exactly the same as the one Papa had told me so long ago in the woods outside Vienna. Every nuance, every detail was the same; the bed of gold, the frog on the hand that was turned into the human child for the proud queen, everything.

Earlier that afternoon, with embarrassed looks on their faces, the sisters had told me how the Grimms had laughed and laughed at the name

Rumpelstiltskin. They wanted to record the girls' story, but felt it was much too sad and wrong in its original form. Little magical men shouldn't be able to get away with stealing human children. It was simply too strange and immoral. No, their story would end with the good and virtuous queen guessing the little man's name because she was so worried about losing her child.