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By Root 1988 0

and Dorothy might be allowed to wander the streets of Munich without a guardian or chaperone. Toby and Joachim took their responsibilities seriously. It was agreed that Karl was a good enough watchman, and the girls managed to persuade him to go “shopping” with them, the next day, and in fact take them as far as the Spiegelgarten. They found the door to the street open, and went in, as before—it was a bright morning, and the next performance was announced on a noticeboard for late that afternoon. Karl was happy to leave them, when they asked if he would. They arranged to meet later in the Café Bettina, unlike the Café Stefanie, a quiet place where women art students gathered to drink tea and coffee.

There was no one in the little courtyard, where the fountain chuckled perpetually. Dorothy and Griselda went into the auditorium, and waited for their vision to adjust. There was no one there, either. But they could hear movements behind the theatre, whose curtains were closed and still. A rattle, a swish, felted footsteps. Griselda whispered “We could call out—” Dorothy said “Come on,” in the tense voice she had used since they came. She was terribly strung up, Griselda thought, following her. She was resolutely calm, and it was costing her.

Behind the stage was a space which was a mixture of a workroom, a storeroom and a wardrobe. Lifeless figures hung in neat lines from parallel rods, like clothes in a wardrobe, or, thought Dorothy with a pang, like those dead trophies on the wall of the gamekeeper’s hut, which Tom had found. Chins sagged, hands and feet dangled. Griselda thought of gibbets. There was a glass case along one wall, full of faces, faces in wood, faces in clay, faces in painted porcelain, some with wigs, some without, grotesque and elegant, sweet and evil, all with that peculiar quality of great marionettes, which is to have one unchanging expression, one character, which can, in motion, mysteriously express many moods and passions, simultaneously fixed and serene, and purely expressive. There were neat piles of the black lacquer boxes in which the marionettes had travelled to Todefright. There were workbenches, with tools—chisels, screws and nails, files and knives—with jars of glue and boxes of silk, satin, felt, floss, illusion, sackcloth.

It was a dark room, but lit by a skylight. Under the skylight, on a kind of throne, padded with red leather, sat Anselm Stern, clothed in black—a velvet jacket, narrow trousers. He was sewing. He had a female marionette bent over one hand, her skirts flung forward over her face, and he was stitching somewhere between her waist and the fork of her dangling legs, which were made of stuffed cloth, but ended in pointed china toes. He seemed to stitch as a marionette would stitch, each push of the needle, each long pull of the thread, exquisitely performed. He said, without looking up

“Wer sind Sie? Warum sind Sie hier? Das Kammer ist geschlossen.”

“We—I—need to speak to you,” said Dorothy. “It is important.”

Griselda translated this into German. They stood together in front of his chair, like two schoolgirls before a master. Griselda’s dress was duck-egg-blue and shining. Dorothy was in severe dark green. She clutched her purse. Anselm Stern spoke again, briefly.

“He says, if it is important, then tell him what it is.”

“My father told me,” said Dorothy, and stopped, confused. “That is, I have been told that—who I thought was my father is not my father. He told me that you are my father.”

Griselda translated. The hand with the needle paused, and then pierced again.

“So I came to see you,” said Dorothy, calmly desperate.

She had not known what she expected this father to do, on hearing this announcement. For a moment, he did not look up, but tightened his mouth and drove in another stitch. Then he laid aside the doll, carefully, and looked straight at Dorothy. It was a studying look, neither friendly nor unfriendly, but searching. “Who are you?” he said.

“My name is Dorothy. Olive Wellwood is my mother. My—her husband—is Humphry. He seems to be sure of what he says.