The History of History - By Ida Hattemer-Higgins Page 0,117

pushed her hands about in the drawer, she found a little perfume bottle, marked on one side with the word freesia. Margaret’s face darkened. She hoped it would not be raining outside. Where was her umbrella? The days were so dark, with all the clouds.

Over Western Schöneberg a heavy fog was floating. Margaret waited for someone to come out of the outer door at Salzburgerstrasse 8. She sat on the stoop. Her back curved with fatigue, her head she held down, her hands she tucked under her thighs. After a while there was a rain so light that although she could not feel it against her cheeks, the earth around her began to crumble with it.

The time of her life that had belonged to Amadeus was present beside her, coiled like a snake. It flushed her with a certain smell of hopelessness, a piece of moss stuck to a shoe tramped indoors—impropriety and shame. The trouble was this: she felt that the young woman who had loved Amadeus was not she—it was someone else. Or no, not someone else! But it was a character in a play for which she had only memorized the lines, nothing more than a dramatic idea she had had—an idea that she had given power over her tongue for one long, endless summer that went on for years. But it had never been more than an idea. She had been high on love, how could it have been woven into life?

Finally an old woman came out of the house and Margaret caught the door. She stepped into the foyer. The light in the foyer—the soft, rich foyer—was milkier than last time. It was almost melting in the rain. Margaret looked for a long time into the mirrors at her gently doubled and tripled reflections.

She looked for the ghost, she looked for Regina Strauss. But there was no motion in the mirror. The silence was strong; it hurt her ears. She moved her hands to break the stillness. The silence crept.

She went out the back door of the foyer and into the courtyard. She followed the little path that led farther into the greenery. She emerged in the back garden where the goldfish pond nestled in the high grasses, surrounded by tall juniper. All the plants whispered, rustling, given voice by the rain. She looked into the pool and saw the goldfish under the plink-plank of the drops; they were of the darkest orange, like strips of fire.

The rain slowed to a drizzle, and then stopped. The pond was dark, but even with the grey light, here too was a reflection, and Margaret saw a bit of herself shaking in the ripples. And then for a moment, she thought she saw herself, but underneath the fish—deep underneath the fish.

A movement caught her eye. Under the water, there was a white and moving face. Pale, silken hair, and dark, pooling eyes.

The black reflection of the tree branches cut into the woman and seemed to bind her at the bottom of the pond. The flame-like fish swam above her eyes.

Margaret put out her arms and reached down in the water, deep down. She touched the woman’s shoulders. She could feel the collarbone under the cold. Under the skin, the bone was seashell; it cut upward, and the woman’s elastic skin contracted.

Regina Strauss turned her face up to Margaret, her neck dripping back. Her dark pupils widened into rabbit-hole mirrors.

Margaret leaned forward toward the little pond. When she found Regina’s wet arms under the water, she was moved by instinct: she dragged them out into the air, and laid them, dripping, over her own head. She assumed the posture of a supplicant: she knelt and pushed her forehead against the muddy bank.

She bowed down to the water.

She bowed down to Regina.

She prayed to Regina, to the woman who was near.

And then she began to hear a sound, rising out of the water. She put her ear toward it. She heard a moan; she heard the woman’s voice crying out three-dimensionally. She could hear the voice, thick with bubbles, and she submerged her ear to listen as it gradually became intelligible. Regina was speaking quickly.

TWENTY-EIGHT • Dreams During Illness

Listen, Margaret, listen. When it first started I began to say to Franz, lying beside him at night, “We’re pressed so! If we were made of carbon, we’d already be squeezed into diamonds”—making light of it, you see. And he would kiss my hand, call me “my diamond.” Now that it’s all