The American Lady (9 page)

“Now? A poetry reading? I don’t kno
w . . .
in fact, my sister was going t
o . . .
”

Ruth had suggested that they look through some old photographs that afternoon. She had dug out some albums the evening before, so many that Marie could hardly believe that they were all pictures from Lauscha. Johanna always hired a photographer to come to all the important family occasions, be it the twins’ birthday or the opening of the new warehouse in Sonneberg, and of course she always sent a few pictures to America. She had even insisted, once, that the photographer take a portrait of Marie sitting at her lamp. He’d grumbled quite a bit when he saw what the gas flame did to his light-exposure levels, but in the end the picture had come out all right. To Marie’s eternal embarrassment Johanna had insisted on putting it at the end of the catalog with the caption “
A woman’s hands create the finest artworks in glass
.” The customers seemed to like it, though—the orders had come flooding in that year.

Marie smiled. She’d been looking forward to rummaging about in the memory box. But if Pandora was kind enough to invite he
r . . .

She took her jacket. The photograph albums weren’t going to run away, after all.

“Let’s go and hear how it’s done!”

It was a little after one o’clock by the time Wanda finally found the front door of the overcoat factory. She was supposed to have been there at one o’clock sharp—at least that’s what her future boss, Mr. Helmstedt, had told her. But she had turned a corner one block too early, and then had to retrace her steps. When she had finally found the right area, she couldn’t quite remember where the factory was and had wandered around for a while trying to spot an address on the buildings. She was hot and thirsty by the time she recognized the huge building on the corner of the block that housed the factory. Clamping her handbag under her arm, she ran toward it.

I do hope Mr. Helmstedt won’t mind my being a little late,
she thought as she ran. As she approached the building, she wondered why there were so many other women standing around the factory gates. Surely they couldn’t all have one o’clock appointments?

“On strike?” Wanda looked from one face to the next, startled. “But this is supposed to be my first day at work!”

The women standing near her laughed.

“You can forget about that!” one of them said, standing in front of the gate with her arms crossed. She was obviously the leader, and she had such a strong accent that Wanda had trouble understanding her.

“We are the League of German Socialist Women Workers, and we’re organizing this strike. And we won’t accept defeat like last time!” she shouted. She was screaming in Wanda’s face as though the defeat were all her fault.

Wanda took an involuntary step back, then several hands shoved her forward again.

It couldn’t be true!

It took her a little while to understand what the locked gate and the mob of shouting women meant: her future boss would be waiting for her in vain, as there was no way she could get inside the building.

She was so agitated that she clutched at the brown linen cloth of her simple dress. She had spent ages choosing exactly what to wear. She hadn’t wanted to look too fancy, but she also wanted to make sure she didn’t look too much like the workers—if she was to be a supervisor, they had to have some respect for her.

But now? It seemed that it had been wasted effort. Another dress that Mother could give away to the poor and needy! Off to the rag bag!

The idea suddenly seemed so funny that she had to laugh. Her laugher sounded shrill, hysterical.

The strike leader stared at her, furious. “Women like you are to blame when we workers don’t get the rights we’re fighting for. You don’t take anything seriously!” She raised a finger and jabbed Wanda hard in the chest before she had a chance to dodge.

But Wanda wasn’t even listening. There were tears running down her face, and she couldn’t stop laughing. When Harold heard about thi
s . . .
he’d think she’d made the whole thing up.

Some of the women standing around began to laugh as well. It was the laughter of despair, not merriment, but it was infectious all the same. All of them had families at home, children to feed, and they had no idea how they would put food on the table in the coming weeks. Who could blame them if they were beginning to wonder what they had done?

“Go on, laugh!” their leader yelled. “Can anyone tell me what’s so funny? We’re on strike, remember! But if you’re ready to betray the cause, go on then, enjoy life! Go see a film, why don’t you? Go spend your money on cheap trinkets. Go find a man to whisper sweet nothings in your ear!”

The other women grew uncertain at these remarks, almost frightened. What was wrong with going out and having a little fun at the end of a fourteen-hour shift?

Wanda saw the look on their faces out of the corner of her eye. For a moment she felt a mixture of respect for their bravery and sympathy for their cause. But she was so upset about her own situation that the feelings died away as quickly as they had come.

Meanwhile the strike leader was still speechifying. “If you’re serious about the struggle, learn solidarity!”

Small drops of spittle flew through the air and landed on Wanda’s face and dress.

“Listen to me: attend the Socialist Women Workers’ meetings. Don’t waste your time with lollipops and dance floors when you could be reading Tolstoy!”

A few of the women clapped.

The leader turned to look at Wanda. She was clearly spoiling for a fight.

“What are you doing here?” she asked quietly. “This is no place for the likes of you.”

Wanda wiped away the last of her tears. The fit of laughter was gone now, as were her dreams of earning her own money and taking responsibility for her own life.

“I admit it: I don’t know all the details of what you’re striking for, and perhaps you’re right that I don’t belong here,” she said. She felt a dull pang of pain as she thought,
So where do I belong?
“But I know one thing for sure: You won’t win an inch of ground if you go about it like this, all dour and joyless. You can’t forbid these women to laugh—you may as well forbid them to breathe!”

She looked at the woman disdainfully.

The others standing around them began to mutter quietly.

Wanda was happy to see that the strike leader didn’t know what to say next.

She began again. “The way you’re bossing them about, you’re no better than the ones you’re fighting against! That’s what I think, anyway. Make it more positive, even fun, and you’ll have a lot more people join in, don’t you think?”

She turned abruptly and walked off through the crowd, her head held high.

“So why don’t you take her place if you’re so much better at it?” called a voice from the back.

“Yeah, come on, why don’t you join us? We can always use someone with a big mouth. And we can use a bit of fun too.”

Wanda’s mouth went dry. Her tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth.
Should I
. . . 
?
But she had no idea what the strike was even about—she didn’t know the first thing about workers’ rights.

“Leave the poor baby alone; I can see from here that she’d give up at the first hurdle!” one of the older women called.

And Wanda slunk off with her tail between her legs.

Another hope dead and buried.

9

As they walked over the rubble, Marie had to lift the hem of her skirt several times to avoid snagging it on a particularly big stone.
I wouldn’t have all this trouble if I were in trousers,
she thought as she picked her way after Pandora, who had hurried on ahead. The air smelled of smoke and engine oil, and seagulls wheeled in the sky above, so she knew they must be somewhere near the harbor. There were no shops or restaurants, no tenement blocks or children’s playgrounds, just an endless sprawl of huge warehouses. They had been walking between the vast buildings for half an hour now.

“Are you quite sure the reading is happening here? It’s the back of beyond!” Marie said at last. She would never find her way home on her own, that much was certain.

Pandora turned and looked at her. “Have you already lost the taste for adventure, darling?” She marched on, undismayed. “Listen, anyone can stand up with a book in their hand at a reading in a café. But never mind, we’ll be there soon.”

Marie raised her eyebrows. All of a sudden she wished Wanda had been able to come along. But her niece had to supervise the garment workers. She smiled at the thought. Wanda was probably feeling just as uncertain as Marie, but she would never admit it.

It was even hotter in the warehouse than it had been outside in the blazing July sun. The building was roofed with sheet steel, and the trapped air was baking hot. Marie’s hair stuck to the nape of her neck as soon as they walked in.

She looked around while Pandora bustled off to find a drink.

The venue was nothing more than a vast lumber room; over to one side was a huge stack of old chairs and tables, suggesting that the place had been used previously for meetings. On the other side was a heap of folded cardboard boxes, tin canisters, and rusty iron bars. Marie had no idea what they were for. The floor was covered with pigeon droppings, and the birds fluttered about in the rafters every time the door opened. Marie figured there must be fifty people there already, and more were arriving every minute.

“Wherever have I ended up?” she muttered when she saw Pandora coming back toward her. She pointed in surprise at the glasses the dancer was carrying. “Where did you conjure those from?”

Pandora smiled. “Let’s not waste our breath talking about this dive. You’ll see soon enough that the venue is all part of Sherlain’s art. And as you can see, it’s not quite so uncivilized as all that.”

Marie sipped her wine while Pandora told her more about the poet. If Marie still believed that Pandora was eccentric, she was soon corrected. Compared to Sherlain, Pandora was as mild as a lamb!

Sherlain had left her husband and their seven-year-old son when she was twenty-four years old, and broken off ties with her whole extended Irish family. She raged against the Irish church, accusing it of stifling the life of its flock and of being the enemy of pleasure and a pack of hypocrites. It hadn’t taken long for Sherlain’s family to denounce her in turn; her father had forbidden anyone, mother, cousin, or uncle, to speak to Sherlain ever again. Even her son was not allowed to talk to her. They were forbidden to so much as mention her name. It was as though she had never existed.

“That’s all a bit much, isn’t it?” Marie asked, frowning. “How does your friend manage on her own?”

“She gets by,” Pandora answered with a shrug, then continued.

Once she had left respectable society, it didn’t take long for Sherlain to run into money trouble. She lived in a damp basement flat without a single window. Some weeks the poet was so weak with hunger that she couldn’t even get out of bed. Friends brought her food, though she was loath to accept it.

“But why does she do all this? She could write poems even with a husband and child,” Marie said in dismay.

Pandora just shook her head.

Sherlain believed that she was a kind of Celtic goddess. When she turned her back on the Irish church, she had taken up the old Celtic rites of her country. Heathen rites, Pandora explained.

“Of course it’s just a way of breaking society’s rules,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “But Sherlain finds her salvation in words. Sometimes she’ll stay up all night long writing, and by morning, she has a single poem. Just one.”

Marie raised her eyebrows. “I don’t want to say anything unkind about your frien
d . . .
but do you really think I can learn anything from her that will help with the dry spell I’m going through?”

“You’ll have to decide that for yourself,” Pandora answered cheerfully.

There was a stir among the crowd at the front.

“It looks as though things are about to get started. Come on, let’s go up to the front!”

Privately Marie had already packed Sherlain away in a box and pasted on a label with the word “Madwoman.” But then a thought came to her: a lot of what Pandora said about her friend was very much like what Alois Sawatzky had told her about the German poet Else Lasker-Schüler. She lived in dire poverty too, had broken with conventional society, and lived her life according to some “cosmic laws” or whatnot. There must be something special about these madwomen after al
l . . .

Suddenly a drum pounded, breaking her train of thought.

Four young men, all cloaked in white robes, set out dozens of candles in a circle and lit them. All at once a tension filled the air, as though a thunderstorm were brewing. A shiver ran down Marie’s spine.

The poet came into the hall, dressed in a billowing silk robe. Her rusty red hair glowed as though on fire and hung loosely down her back with not a clasp or hairpin anywhere. The drum pounded again, and the four young men bowed deeply.

Marie swallowed hard. She had been determined not to let this crazy poet impress her, but no sooner had Sherlain knelt down inside the circle of candles than Marie was utterly transported.

What a woman! What an aura she had! All of a sudden Marie found herself thinking,
She’s a goddess
.

Sherlain lit a cigarette. Instead of inhaling, however, she spluttered in disgust and coughed it back out. Then she began to recite from a scrap of paper, without a word of greeting or introduction, between drags at the cigarette. At first she was quiet, so quiet that many at the back of the crowd couldn’t hear her at all. Her voice grew louder, though, after the first few words.

. . .
seven summers, seven sins,

hell above me, sweet haven below

my memory lost in glorious mercy

my shell empowered with lus
t . . .

Another shiver ran down Marie’s back, an unsettling prickling feeling, as she listened to the poetry with her eyes closed. The sounds of American English were still strange to her but she heard the joy in the bright vowels,
i
and
e
, and the sadness in the dark
u
’s and
o
’s. Sherlain’s voice changed from one moment to the next, sometimes soft, sometimes hard. She was a musician, coaxing her voice like an instrument, making sounds it had never been intended to create.

Although she couldn’t understand every word and only had a rough idea of what the poem meant, Marie felt she had never heard anything s
o . . .
melodious.

. . .
dazzle, moon, dazzle

for me and for all

to follow thee!

The poet swung a whip and cracked it to end the poem. The cigarette glowed next to her on the ground.

Marie stood there, her head spinning as though she had been turning in circles. Most of the rest of the audience seemed to be under the same spell; they stared straight ahead, their eyes unfocused, or shook their heads and rubbed their eyes as though they had just woken up. Then they began to applaud and shout “Bravo!”

“I was there when she wrote that poem—what a night that was!” Pandora shouted in Marie’s ear. Her cheeks glowed red. “The seven summers are when Sherlain was a mother. Hell above her is the Catholic church and its oppression. And haven is a pun of course, with
heaven
as well, you see? It means the goddess, sensuality, jo
y . . .
”

Marie waved her away, annoyed. She felt precisely the way Pandora had felt that afternoon in the museum; she didn’t want explanations. She just wanted t
o . . .
feel. By now she couldn’t care less that the reading was taking place in a scrap heap—she realized that the contrast between the ugliness of the surroundings and the beauty of Sherlain’s words was an integral part of the whole effect.

Marie wanted more.

More of this strange elixir that let her forget her own inadequacies, however briefly.

It was sheer chance that Franco was anywhere near the warehouses that afternoon. Later he would say that the gods had led him there, some higher power or destiny—but in fact it was coincidence.

He didn’t know anything about a poetry reading. None of his agents knew anything about it either, since nobody had asked the warehouse supervisor for permission, and nobody had officially rented the hall. It belonged to the de Lucca family business, just like half a dozen other warehouses in the New York docks. Unlike the others, however, this one wasn’t used to warehouse the imported wine before the barrels were distributed to the Italian restaurants in the city, nor was it used for any other, darker purposes. It had been empty for a while now. At least, that’s what Franco had assumed.

He was just haggling over the sale price with the owner of the warehouse next door, when they heard strange sounds coming from his own property.

Probably hobos, drinking and brawling, Franco’s watchman declared grimly. He ran for reinforcements.

Franco and the other warehouse owner rallied three watchmen and armed themselves with clubs. They were just about to kick down the rear door and storm the warehouse when they heard a woman’s voice from inside, hoarse but powerful.

I give you my blood

sweet lamb of mine

to still your thirst

to strengthen your spin
e . . .

Franco was startled. He gestured to his men to stay where they were. Poetry? Here? He went inside on his own, into the dark, following the bittersweet words.

No killing will follow

I promise you so

my love will be stronger

my love will come throug
h . . .

The closer he got, the more strongly the words spoke to him. He fell under their spell. He didn’t understand every word, but he knew that it was a love poem. That it spoke of the deepest love that one person could feel for another—true love—the kind of love for which a man could die. Love that could outlast the darknes
s . . .

Franco hastily wiped the sweat from his brow. He was feeling a little dizzy, but he didn’t know whether from the heat or the foul air. He never even noticed the bohemian crowd standing around in his warehouse with wineglasses in their hands; he didn’t remember his own men waiting outside for him to give them an order. He only heard this smoky, silvery voice.

Please help me, you devilish fawn

to get the night over

to make love last till daw
n . . .

A moment later, applause broke out.

“Bravo!”

“Superb!”

“We love you!”

Franco joined in the applause and clapped till the palms of his hands stung.

The poet’s words had stirred something inside him that he had thought had turned to stone long ago. Even if he had wanted to, he would not have been able to defend himself against this extraordinary feeling in his chest.

And then he saw her.

Not ten yards from him stood the unknown woman he had seen so often in his mind’s eye these last few days. Ever since he had first spotted her in Bruni’s trattoria, he had not stopped thinking about her. How beautiful she was. How graceful. How she smiled. More than once he had regretted not talking to her when he had the chance.

And here she was, here of all places!

Just like the last time, the dancer with the red shawl was by her side.

Franco went toward the woman as though sleepwalking.

Her cheeks were flushed, as though she had just woken from a long, restful sleep. Tears gleamed in her eyes.

How vulnerable she looked!

The crowd was still roaring their praise, but their shouts were nothing more than a gentle humming in Franco’s ears.

She didn’t notice him at first, since she was gesticulating wildly to where the poet stood. Then she took a step to one side—and trod on his foot.

“Oh my goodness!” She giggled and turned around. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean t
o . . .
”

Her eyelids fluttered nervously as their eyes met. She put her hand to her mouth, startled, almost frightened.

Their faces were just a handsbreadth apart. She was even more beautiful from close up. Not as young as Franco had thought at first, but her eyes were deeper than a mountain lake.

She still had her hand in front of her mouth, and her eyes were wide with surprise.