The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [217]
Dorothy knew well enough, in the abstract, what she was hearing. Unlike many of her contemporaries she knew how the sex act was performed, in principle. She had watched dogs and horses. They did not take all this time over it. That was interesting. What could be going on? The scientist in her took notes, and the tired, overwrought girl wished that her neighbours would speed up even more, and come to an end, and allow her to sleep. She could hear a murmur of voices, after the banging stopped. She dozed. And woke again, as the banging enthusiastically recommenced. That, too, was unexpected and odd. It was characteristic of Dorothy that she wondered, not who was banging whom, but how it was done, and why it had that rhythm.
In the morning the girls had two hours’ lessons, in maths, in German, in literature. They were taught sitting on a little balcony overlooking a kind of farmyard and a vegetable and herb garden. Charles did not come to the lessons—he was a young man, not a schoolboy, even if his education was unfinished. Sometimes he slept in, and sometimes he wandered out into the streets, and sat in the cafés. Then they paid cultural visits to galleries and museums, and returned to the pension for lunch, beer, conversation and a siesta.
Griselda was aware that Dorothy was tense like an overstrung bow. When they found themselves alone, Dorothy would turn to Griselda and say, we must find him, we must look for him, it is what I came to do. She begged Griselda to ask Tante Lotte about a puppet show run by a man called Anselm Stern, and Griselda demurred. She was shy. She was reserved. She did not know how to set about it. But after a few days, during a particularly lively lunch, full of intense little eddies of argument and expanses of foreign laughter, Tante Lotte brought them apple cakes, and sat down for a moment to talk to Joachim. What have you seen, she asked him. The classical statues? The State Museum? You must take everyone to the new cabaret, the Elf Scharfrichter, it is very clever and shocking. What do the young women like to see?
Dorothy understood most of this. She pushed her finger into Griselda’s flank, surreptitiously. “Tell her,” she said, “tell Frau Susskind what we want to see—”
“Once, in England,” said Griselda, “we saw a puppet-show. The—the Puppenmeister—was called Herr Stern. Anselm Stern. He acted a version of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Sandman, and Cinderella. It was—very interesting. Do you know anything about him?”
“But of course,” said Tante Lotte. “He is a famous artist. Marionettes and puppets are famous in this city. There is Paul Brann, whose work is witty and magical, and there is Anselm Stern, who has made his own theatre in a cellar—it is called Frau Holle’s Spiegelgarten—he is more mystical and poetical—but all the artists admire each other, all exchange ideas, all came together in the Künstlerhaus to make a funeral feast for our great painter Arnold Böcklin. You have seen Böcklin? He had a wild imagination, a fantastic vision … you should visit the Spiegelgarten.”
(A garden of mirrors, Griselda whispered to Dorothy.)
“Fräulein Dorothy is particularly interested in puppets?”
“She wishes to become a doctor. It was I myself who was entranced by the Sandman.”
“It will be very easy for you to find out everything,” said Tante Lotte, rising. “Those two young men, over there, are Herr Stern’s sons, Wolfgang and Leon. They are often here, Wolfgang studies art—not at the Munich Art School, he’s too revolutionary in his ideas to stay there and paint cows and angels. He also helps with puppets—he is more satirical than his father—he has been working with the Scharfrichter on a puppet play about the European kings and queens—the Fine Family—in three Sensations and a Prologue—dangerously comical—Leon is still at school. He is a more serious boy. I shall introduce you.”
Griselda put an arm around Dorothy, as Tante Lotte strode away to the other side of the room. In the early days—when they had been cousins—Dorothy had been the strong one, the protector, the unfazed. Now it was she who