The Life of Objects (4 page)

I knew that I was staring, but I couldn’t help myself. She was about thirty years old, younger than the countess and just as lovely, although there was something boyish about her, and secretive. She wore a navy-blue suit with two gold clips in the shape of question marks, a white crepe shirt with a narrow collar, and navy spectator pumps. Her lipstick was bright red. Her hair, the color of wet straw, was parted in the middle and twisted into a flat roll at the back of her neck. She was as weightless as a ghost.

“You didn’t go to Mass with Inéz,” she said, wiggling her fingers deeper into the gloves.

I was too surprised to speak.

“Even if you’re not religious, you can believe in grace.” She was so odd, so unlike anyone, even the characters in the books I’d read, that she made me uneasy. To make matters even stranger, she said, “But then I suspect that your moment of grace is yet to come.” Then she asked where I would like to begin. It took me a moment to understand what she meant.

I pointed in front of me, and she slid a drawer from the wall and carried it to the table. Inside the drawer, on black velvet, were the yellowed hem of an alb sewn in
point de France
, a narrow panel of
point de Venise
, its delicate black dots sewn in a pattern of birds in flight, and a cravat of lace bees in what appeared to be mixed bobbin-and-needle lace. When I’d had my fill, I nodded, and she replaced the drawer with another.
“These are only fragments, of course,” she said, not troubling to conceal a yawn. “The larger pieces—wedding dresses and altar cloths—have already been sent to the bank.”

There were designs of windmills, stags, pyramids, cherubs, the Eiffel Tower, sailing ships, and double-headed eagles. There was simple Irish crochet work. She pointed with a gloved finger to a stiff linen ruff. “Sixteenth century. I think.” She opened one of the books and found the description of the ruff, reading it to herself.

I again heard the sound of a bell, rung, I’d learned, to remind the Metzenburgs and their guests that it was time to dress for dinner. She pulled off her gloves and dropped them on the table (inside out, I noticed). “You have no interest in the women who made the lace,” she said. “The blinding headaches and the torn fingers. It’s the trousseau of the Dauphine that intrigues you. The handkerchief of the queen.”

Had I not been so overwhelmed, I would have told her that I wasn’t interested in the history of lace or even its romance. When I first taught myself to sew, it was the discovery that I could make Ballycarra disappear that had compelled me. More than that, I could make myself disappear. But as I no longer wished to disappear, I said nothing.

On my way to the servants’ dining room at night, I sometimes passed a sour-faced, elderly woman, half squirrel, half bird, in an old-fashioned long black dress, carrying a tray with a plate of steamed fish, boiled potatoes with parsley, and beetroot. I sometimes saw her on the back stairs, a sweep of glittering
evening gown draped across her two outstretched arms or carrying a tray of opera gloves, but when I tried to catch her eye, she refused to look at me.

When I asked Kreck about her, he grinned maliciously, the tips of his dyed black mustache nearly reaching his ears, and said that she was Frau Metzenburg’s maid, Fräulein Roeder, who did not eat with the rest of the household. He’d been quick to add that although Fräulein Roeder’s food was prepared for her especially, he and I ate the same food as the Metzenburgs. My mother, who’d worked as a young bride in a big house near Ballina, often complained of the indignities suffered by servants, particularly in regard to food, and I’d been happy to hear this from Kreck.

We met each evening for dinner at six o’clock, sitting across from each other as we ate the delicious food. He often seemed preoccupied, even distressed. I thought that a little conversation might cheer him, but when I attempted it, he did not bother to answer me.

I tasted for the first time that week an avocado pear and a pineapple, which I later sketched from memory to send to Mr. Knox, along with drawings of the birds I saw in the Metzenburgs’ garden. I seldom thought of my mother and father, although I wrote to them (describing the food). I missed my old schoolmaster more than I missed my parents.

Because it was assumed that I would not break anything, given the deftness of my fingers, I was asked to wrap the Metzenburgs’ collection of porcelain and pack it in crates of bran—that
there were no other servants, except Kreck, who had a tremor, and the equally aged cook, Frau Schmidt (Fräulein Roeder, it was made clear, only attended to Frau Metzenburg), may also have been a consideration.

“Herr Felix beseeches your pardon,” Kreck said in his stilted English, “as this will not be your accustomed duty, but when you are finished with the Nymphenburg, there is the Augsburg silver. And the Vincennes.”

As I wrapped the porcelain in newspaper before settling it in the bran, my fingers grew black with newsprint, and I had to wash my hands frequently. As I went back and forth to the pantry, I lingered in the rooms, looking at all of the treasure that had accumulated over the years. The objects seemed more real to me than the people. I’d never seen anything as pretty as the silver plates decorated with bees, snails, and mulberries that had been bought, Kreck said, at the Duchess of Portland’s auction. The dinner service with mythological figures in red and gold had been used by Frederick the Great at Sanssouci. A fluted white beaker and saucer, painted with plump Japanese children, had come from the palace in Dresden. Kreck, who seemed to know a great deal about the objects, had his own opinions. He thought the Duchess of Portland’s silver plates
too
beautiful, causing me to question my own taste.

As I helped to fold a pair of velvet curtains, appliquéd with green monkeys, that had been hanging in Herr Metzenburg’s bedroom—Kreck moved stiffly, due to his age and to palsy, turning the act of folding into a curious dance—I began to understand what the countess had meant when she said that
Herr Felix had a weakness for the playful, a gift she attributed to his instinctive
cocasserie
(which at first I took to mean “coquetry”). His bed linen and towels were embroidered, she said, with a silhouette of his pet donkey, Zara. The floor of the summer dining room was covered with fragrant apple matting. Plaster owls with yellow glass eyes blinked from the red lacquer cases in the library. The peonies in the pink drawing room were in tall blue-and-white vases ringed with what looked like the bars of a cage. Meissen, said Kreck when he saw me looking at them, but I didn’t understand him.

Herr Metzenburg watched while we packed the carved panels of saints and a tiny velvet bed with silver Gothic spires, embroidered with seed pearls and emeralds. A bed for the Christ Child, Kreck said. I’d asked him if the Metzenburgs were Roman Catholic, but he hadn’t answered me.

Several pieces were too large to manage on our own, and Herr Metzenburg hired porters from an auction house to help us. He watched apprehensively as the men moved a melancholy barefoot Christ, the size of a child, sitting on the back of an equally downcast donkey. It was called a
Palmesel
—there is no word for it in English, he said—and it depicted Christ’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. His expression as he watched the men pull it across the room—it sat on a wooden platform with four small wheels—was both rapt and anxious, his hand reaching to steady it. “The donkey would have had a leather bridle, which Our Lord held in his right hand.” He said that almost all
Palmesel
had been made in the fifteenth century by local craftsmen. “Do you see how subtle it is, despite its
apparent crudeness? The plump, perhaps even overfed donkey, Christ’s scarred hands, the cracked hooves?” A special packing crate had been built to carry the statue, but it was too large to bring into the house. Herr Metzenburg led the procession as we solemnly escorted Christ and the donkey to the street where their crate awaited them. “There is a
Palmesel
in Verona I’ve been trying to get my hands on for years,” Herr Metzenburg said with a smile. “It is said to contain the bones of the donkey that Christ rode into Jerusalem.”

With the gradual disappearance each day of the Metzenburgs’ belongings, the rooms grew larger and the ceilings higher. Although my experience of valuable objects had been limited to commemorative pickle forks (our dinner plates at home were called delft), I believed Kreck when he said that Herr Felix’s taste was
vorzügliche
. Exquisite. My first German word.

One afternoon, I slipped a small silver dish into the pocket of my apron and a pen and an amber cigarette holder that Frau Metzenburg had left in an ashtray, and later I arranged them on a table in my room as if they were my own. I threw away my old Ballycarra list and made a new one. I wanted a navy wool coat with a gray fox collar, a good haircut, a silver brush and comb engraved with the letter
M
(for “Maeve”), and a few of what Kreck called
einige schöne Dinge
—perhaps a blue enamel desk set to match the pen, and an ivory sewing box.

I now and then caught sight of Frau Metzenburg as she glided from room to room, repeating her husband’s lengthy and precise
orders as she cajoled the hired men and calmed Kreck’s nerves. If she bothered to acknowledge me, I blushed.

As there was no one left to do errands and Herr Metzenburg no longer wanted delivery boys coming to the house, Kreck had to shop each day, a task that made him so irritable that I offered to help him. Herr Metzenburg, who saw us one afternoon as we returned to the house with our parcels, thanked me for helping, but told me that he did not wish me to walk alone in the city, although a stroll in the nearby Tiergarten would be safe. There had been acts of violence that summer against Jewish shopkeepers, and I noticed that many windows and doors in the shopping district were marked with crude drawings and inscriptions.

Kreck, despite Herr Metzenburg’s warning, began to send me on errands alone, and I soon learned my way along the streets and alleys. Although I was frightened at first, especially on the streets that had been looted, and worried that I would be lost or stopped by the gangs of men I saw in the street, I felt useful and efficient, checking off the errands on my list as I proudly instructed the shopkeepers to charge my purchases to the Metzenburgs’ account.

I wrote to Mr. Knox describing the Tickell’s thrush, redheaded buntings, and icterine warbler I saw in the Tiergarten. I also told him about the ruined shops and frightening caricatures on the walls of the buildings. When I read the letter for spelling errors, I was surprised by its worried tone. I didn’t want Mr. Knox to think that I was afraid, or in danger, and I copied the letter onto a new sheet of paper, leaving out the description of the shops.

As we wrapped the last of the Vincennes, Kreck said, “I’m surprised that Herr Metzenburg hasn’t received another visit from Herr Hofer. He came once, but did not remain more than a few minutes.” He made a face, but I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or relieved. “It’s well known that our Führer doesn’t admire the Romanesque, in which Herr Metzenburg has a particular interest, although Reichsmarschall Göring has a passion for it. He has coveted Herr Felix’s collection since the old days. It is thanks in part to the Reichsmarschall that prices are so high.” He also said, lowering his voice, that one of the Reichsmarschall’s friends in the Foreign Office had that week offered Herr Metzenburg a posting in Algiers. Although Herr Felix refused to leave Germany, he did not wish to prevent Frau Metzenburg from going, if that was what she desired. Kreck said that Herr Felix wanted to be with his treasures, but Frau Metzenburg wanted to be with Herr Felix. Sometimes, Kreck said, Herr Felix acted as if his objects had lives of their own. I was curious to know more, but two porters came into the room to remove a crate, and Kreck fell silent.

We moved to Löwendorf at the end of October, traveling in two cars, one of them driven by Herr Felix. A few boys were standing at the gates when we arrived, shoulders hunched with the chill, and a white-haired man from the village, Herr Pflüger, waited hat in hand in the gravel court in front of the house. He insisted on helping with the numerous suitcases, and I could see that Kreck didn’t like it.

The house, known as the Yellow Palace, was a large, square, symmetrical box of yellow stone in the classical style, two stories high, with marble urns at the corners of the flat roof. On the ground floor, five arched windows, their shutters painted sea green, looked onto a terrace with marble statues. There was a park with a narrow river running through it, and at the bottom of the park, a small temple with a striped awning on its roof. A large house, the Pavilion, built for Frau Metzenburg’s parents when they married, was in the park and, in the distance, a forest called the Night Wood.

Kreck, who’d been sent to Löwendorf ahead of us to see to the unloading of twenty-three wagons of treasure, took me through the rooms. The house had been built by a student of Karl Friedrich Schinkel for Frau Metzenburg’s great-grandmother, the Baroness Schumacher. There was gold-and-black lacquer furniture in the dining room and music room, and a chandelier with fifty-six candles in the hall. The walls of the dining room were painted with Chinese figures, outlined in silver. A low divan of white silk ran along two sides of the drawing room, whose walls were covered with rectangles of pale green silk framed in gold. In the paneled library, there were lime-wood bookcases, two desks, leather chairs, and a long table for reading maps and manuscripts. In each of the rooms, Kreck had filled pale green vases with leafless stalks of allium, the only flower that Herr Felix allowed in the house in winter.