to fool ourselves—oh, not me, never me, you tell yourself, but believe me, sweetheart, you do—and in the course of the six months, earning a salary of my very own, hobnobbing with the haute, I had fallen into a certain fatal habit of mine, for the second time in my life, a weakness perhaps born of certain circumstances in my childhood. I mean, isn’t that supposed to be the case? The circumstances of your childhood determine your character, the entire course of your future, your fate, your destiny, all of it. You are just a mere slave to your subconscious.
Anyway, the sight of those earrings. The weight of them, the twinkle. I didn’t know whether to cry or vomit or run. In the end, I set the box on the cushion beside me and opened the clasp of my pocketbook.
“I nearly forgot, in all the excitement,” I said. “Someone stopped by the bungalow with a special delivery.”
Elfriede
November 1900
(Germany)
A letter arrives for Elfriede, postmarked London. She notices the edge of the envelope, the unfamiliar stamp half-hidden by a napkin, while she’s pouring the coffee. Maybe her heart doesn’t quite stop. But her fingers go limp, and the pot, the pot, the beautiful porcelain coffeepot slips from her hand to land in an awful crash on the silver breakfast tray. Nothing breaks, thank goodness. Only a splash of coffee on her dress. She lifts the napkin and dabs. Reads the name now fully exposed on the envelope—hers, written in firm black handwriting, Frau Baroness von Kleist, and beneath it Schloss Kleist, Westphalia, Deutschland—and the lettering around the postmark circle. lon and the date, 2 nov 1900, two days ago. Her fingers shake. She sets down the napkin, hiding the envelope once more.
A month has passed since Gerhard’s fever broke. There have been setbacks. Relapses. But like a mountain trail, his recovery trends inexorably upward, toward some summit on which he will inhabit his old, strong self. A fortnight ago, he felt well enough to rise from his bed and manage a few steps around the bedroom, supported by his valet. Now he bathes and dresses and walks in determined laps around the upper floor. Yesterday he descended the stairs, on Elfriede’s steadying arm, and spent an hour in his study. Today, the weather’s improved, and Elfriede has ordered the open landau for eleven o’clock, so she and Gerhard, together with Johann and Nurse, will ride about the estate. The fresh air and wholesome sunshine will do everyone some good. And this is all as it should be. Gerhard’s recovery is a sign from God, after all, a deliverance from evil. Yea, so the penitent shall return to her husband, and he shall be saved, and she shall covet no more neighbors, she shall harbor no more sinful love, she shall do him no evil the rest of her days, amen.
No, she doesn’t think about Wilfred. Her days are busy. Her discipline is taut. The door of her mind is shut tight against ginger hair and wide smiles and gangly limbs. But she hasn’t forgotten him. He’s there like a ghost, like the air, invisible, unconscious, life-giving, there.
Now here. Under the napkin beneath her fingertips. She tries again to pour her coffee, and this time, though the stream wavers as it falls into her cup, she succeeds. She sips the coffee and lifts the cover from her toast. The sunshine spills through her bedroom window, warming the back of her neck. She sleeps in the bedroom suite next to Gerhard’s, the bedroom that used to belong to Gerhard’s mother. When Elfriede was a newlywed, she used this room only to dress and bathe, sometimes to write letters at the escritoire near one of the tall sash windows overlooking the gardens. Once Johann was born, she moved her sleeping quarters here so the baby wouldn’t disturb his father during those nighttime feedings. A temporary measure, as she thought. Three years later, she’s returned and thinks she ought to have the curtains replaced, the bed hangings redone in a lighter fabric. The worn tapestry rug replaced with something softer. Decent, modern plumbing installed in the bathroom.
On the other side of the wall, Gerhard’s valet bathes and dresses his master. Elfriede hears their voices, though she can’t make out the words—Gerhard’s gruff baritone, the valet’s soothing tenor. In that first year of marriage, honeymoon followed by pregnancy, Gerhard used to rise much earlier, six o’clock or even five, while Elfriede lingered abed until the maid arrived