The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [78]
Outside, they began the uphill walk to Neuschwanstein. Phoebe looked around for the blond girl, half hoping she would follow them up and watch them in this second castle, too, but the girl had vanished.
“Was he really crazy?” she asked Wolf. “King Ludwig?”
“Well, it was the middle of the Industrial Revolution and the guy was building King Arthur castles and galloping around in a medieval sleigh,” Wolf said. “Not to mention inviting his horse to the dinner table.”
King Ludwig had poured money into building Neuschwan-stein, Wolf said, his fairy-tale castle, adding wing upon tower upon phony grotto room until his kingdom went bankrupt and the panicked subjects revolted. They put him into custody by a lake, where a few days later both Ludwig and his doctor mysteriously drowned. “In two feet of water,” Wolf said. “Nobody’s ever figured that one out.”
Tourists wobbled past in horse-drawn buggies. A smell of pine filled the hot, clear air. “I think he wasn’t,” Phoebe said. “Crazy.”
“You nostalgies,” Wolf said.
Ludwig’s Neuschwanstein was the closest thing Phoebe had seen to Oz or Wonderland, lozenges of smooth bright marble in the walls, grotto rooms choked with fake stalactites. Over Ludwig’s throne hovered a fat mosaic Jesus made from what looked like broken candy. As Phoebe wandered the gleaming rooms, a swell of emotion rose in her, a sweet sorrow. She understood him, that was all. She understood this king.
At the tour’s end they filed down the massive staircase. “Poor Ludwig,” Phoebe said. “He was a tragedy.”
“Poor Bavaria,” Wolf said.
“But look what he made!”
Wolf glanced at the painted ceiling. “This?”
“Don’t you like it?”
“Sure, I like it fine. But was it worth the price?”
His knowing tone annoyed her. “I think it was worth any price,” Phoebe said.
Wolf stopped, turning to her. “You can’t be serious,” he said, and seemed to wait for her to admit she was not. “You honestly think this Disneyland was worth bankrupting a kingdom for?”
“Maybe,” Phoebe said sullenly.
Wolf made a dismissive noise. “Tell that to the folks who were killing themselves to put food on the table while old Ludwig was picking out curtains!”
They stared at each other. “There were no curtains,” Phoebe murmured.
Wolf left the castle ahead of her, boots tocking the marble floor. Outside, he ran his hands through his hair and looked at the sky. Timidly Phoebe approached him. “Why does it matter?” she said.
“It doesn’t.”
Chastened, they walked in silence through steep, wooded hills behind the castle. Phoebe moved off the path for a better view of Neuschwanstein, like a ghost ship lifted on swells of green sea. She imagined King Ludwig looking down from one of its baked-Alaska windows, promising her that she was right—it had all been worthwhile. Behind her hung the ravine. Phoebe felt its openness at her back, cool air rising from far below.
Wolf passed her on the path, boots crunching the gravel. “Phoebe?” he called. Impulsively she dropped to her knees, crouching among the leafy bushes. Let him search, she thought, let him worry she’d vanished. She waited for some time among the ants and flies and little branches, but Wolf did not call again. The sound of his boots faded away.
After several more minutes Phoebe crawled sheepishly from her hiding place. “Wolf?” she said, but heard nothing except the bustle of birds. “Wolf?” Fear seized her—suppose he’d left, just gone off and left her. Phoebe pictured herself alone again, alone like the girl in the castle, alone as she’d been for weeks, until yesterday. She crashed through the brush, scraping her shins, finally bursting onto the wide main path where Wolf