Schatzie followed the three of them into the room. “My dear Countess,” said Felix, “there is no need for you to accompany us. Perhaps you would prefer to wait outside.”
Anna made a small protesting movement with her head. Felix’s bowed chest swelled with something like pride. “Well, then, that is fine.” He gestured toward the room, which lay pristine in its expanse before the arrival of the days’ patients. “And afterward, if we have time, perhaps I shall show you my experiments, my notes.” He turned to the Rat proudly. “Since we saw each other, my dear Countess, I have been engaged in much important work. New breakthroughs in science,” he continued. “The face of mankind is going to change, must change. There are advances possible now that you and I have never even dreamed of.” Anna looked interested.
Today, Felix did not spend much time with Maria. He was excited at having the chance to share his work with the Countess, known even during his youth for her intelligence and interest in new ideas. She turned her beautiful deep eyes toward him. He could hardly keep his attention on what he was doing. Perfunctorily, he lifted the child onto the examining table. He unbuttoned her dress and laid his hairy ear on her narrow chest. He breathed heavily for a moment or two, then took out his stethoscope. “Have you been eating?” he asked fiercely. “You see,” he said to Anna, who stood waiting, her spine bent and eyes downcast beside the examining table, “I am quite busy here in New York. There are so many children who have need of me.”
This time, he did not fully undress Maria. This time, he did not place her hand on his “broken leg.” This time, “Hänschen klein” lay quietly, obediently in his little house. He did not stare at her fixedly. As Anna watched Felix sympathetically, Maria squeezed her legs together very tightly under her candy-striped little dress and let herself float toward the ceiling. She tried very hard to be dead.
But no one was noticing this. Maria was somewhat piqued to see that Felix’s attention was not at all on her. His eyes were fixed on Anna. The Rat was watching him with a rapt, admiring expression. Her eyes held an odd sheen. And Uncle Felix, he was staring at Anna’s face, and at her deformed spine as, absently, he palpated the spine of the child. Maria squirmed away from his hands. But he didn’t notice. He appeared hypnotized by the White Russian Countess.
Maria twitched angrily under his hands. “Good girl,” he said, rearranging her dress. Quickly, he palpated her stomach. Maria let herself float up to the ceiling of the room, near the large light, big as the eye of God. Then Felix was done, his hands tucked again into themselves, and Maria was restored to herself as well. He smoothed her dress and lifted her down. “Fine; getting better,” he muttered. To Anna, he said, “You must bring her back, of course. She needs treatment once a week. So many problems. Her mother…”
The Rat nodded, and the two adults locked eyes for a moment.
“But perhaps, my dear lady, you might come back again yourself?” suggested Felix. “I would like to show you all I have been doing.” For the doorbell was ringing, and Felix padded quickly out of the room, Schatzie in tow. “Come in,” they heard him say.
Anna seized Maria’s hand in hers, adjusted her coat, and walked toward the front door. “We must not keep you,” she said. “I know how good you have been to Ilse and the children.”
Felix bowed his head modestly. “Will you do me the favor of dining with me, my Countess?” he asked.
The Rat nodded. “With pleasure.”
“Perhaps this Sunday next?”
“There is nothing on my calendar,” replied Anna. “It will be good to sit with an old friend again.”
Felix started to close the door gently behind them as they left. But just before the door closed completely, he suddenly cocked his head and, catching Maria’s eye, grimaced, raising one eyebrow, and stuck out his tongue. It happened so quickly that only Maria noticed. “Bad girl,” he hissed. “Uncle Felix will be watching you.”
A veil of shame flushed over Maria’s body and she cringed, clinging to Anna’s hand. She felt something in her chest that closed; something that might be called “heartbreak.” But why? She didn’t understand. Hatred for the Rat came over her. She understood in the gaze between Felix and Anna that her doctor preferred another. “They look at each other like two sick cows,” she told herself, despising them both. She didn’t know how two sick cows might regard each other, but she liked that disdainful phrase, “Like two sick cows!” Maria had come, in a way that even she knew was perverse, to crave her visits with Doctor Felix. Now she saw her power was nothing compared with the power of Anna’s eager face. Maria felt hot all over. “I am dead,” she whispered to herself fiercely. The more she said that, the more her body betrayed her. She felt nothing, she told herself, nothing at all. It was only the grown-ups who pretended to be alive, walking around and laughing. The stupid grown-ups. “I am dead,” she told herself. And the sensation of those words, repeated, was delicious.
Chapter 18 THE SPINKZ MOVE
A month later, Herbert leaned over the table and took the hands of his son David in his stubby, gnarled ones.
David was tired and rumpled and impatient. This time, he hadn’t slept well on the overnight train from Washington and had gone immediately to the Automat from the station. Herbert waited, regarding his son with both affection and a surprising distance, as if he hadn’t recognized in this man the boy he had been.
“We found this,” David said, “in a letter.” From his pocket he carefully pulled a wrinkled page, then smoothed it out under the greenish cafeteria light.
Herbert leaned forward. There was something oddly familiar about the crumpled page with the small spidery markings upon it.
“Look at it, Father. Do you not recognize it?”
Herbert looked more closely. Then, peering at David for affirmation, he looked again. “But it is my writing.”
“Yes,” David replied. “Read it. What does it say, your mixture of Esperanto and chess?”
“So that’s what happened to it,” Herbert said. “I was wondering what had happened to the rest of the game. Maybe I had mailed it. But then I never got an answer.”
“I recognized it immediately when they handed it to me to decipher,” said David. “But then I thought, ‘What is it doing here? Why here? And what is he telling us?’ ”
“ ‘He’?” asked Herbert. He had not imagined that all his correspondence would be intercepted.
David brushed aside the comment. “And then I saw it was my father, up to his old tricks again. A chess game. A flirtation with a lady, is it not so?”
Herbert smiled, not bothering to hide his crafty delight. “Of course. It was my move. The famous Spinkz opening.”
“And then I thought,” continued David, “ ‘Why does he write in Esperanto? Why now? There’s only one lady in the world who might still be interested in Esperanto.’ ” He sat back, proud of his own cleverness.
But at this, Herbert protested, laying his hand upon the arm of his impetuous and wrongly informed son. “No, David, there are many. And, you will see, soon there will be many more. It is a world language. You will see. Like chess. A universal language for mankind.”
“Father,” said David, cutting in impatiently. He had heard this all so many times before. What did the old man know? Look at the state of things right now. Why did his father, his irritating, idealistic father, so insist on clinging to his idealism despite all evidence to the contrary? David swallowed his impatience. Let the old men carry on; the young would make the changes.