“Yes, it is Strauss,” thought Anna, listening. “The naughty one.” The music, demonic in its energy, beat against the door, desperate to be let out. “I never liked the Strausses. Neither one of them.”
The Rat preferred the throbbing passion of Brahms. Her hands, trembling under the weight of so much sound, nervously smoothed the front of her coat. She patted her hair and then, once again with all her force, leaned into the doorbell.
“Aha!” The door swung open suddenly, to present a surprised Felix. The music rushed out in a great draft and hit the Rat with full force. She recoiled but stood her ground. “Aha!” cried Felix again.
Felix was wearing a frilly apron, and on his head sat a conical birthday party hat, held in place by an elastic under his chin. Beside him, the silent but enthusiastic Schatzie waddled, wriggling her wrinkled hindquarters and tail. Schatzie, too, was wearing a hat — a birthday hat — also fastened with elastic under her immense jowls. Both dog and master looked surprisingly alike.
“My dear Countess,” said Felix, hesitating at the door. He had not expected any visitors. When he saw it was her, hope rose in his chest. But he had no right to hope, did he? He stepped aside to allow Anna to enter. “Please, I beg you. Won’t you come in? To what do I owe…” He cast a hasty glance backward toward his laboratory.
Anna held out her hands, clasping the doctor’s between them. “My dear Felix,” she murmured, “I know you do not expect me today. I hope I am not intruding. I have come to tell you something important. I count upon your understanding.” Her voice quavered a little as she said these words.
Felix and Schatzie cocked their heads together and regarded her. They looked surprisingly like twin wizards, with their conical little hats. Above the crashing of the music, Felix said, “Schatzie and I, we were just having a little celebration, just the two of us. Weren’t we, Schatzie?” The dog wagged its body in response. Felix made an apologetic gesture, as if to begin to remove the hat.
“No,” said Anna. “I don’t want to disturb…” But she allowed Felix to take her coat. She entered. The faint smell of sulfur rose from her body, now in contact with the warmth of Felix’s rooms. With a faint swoon of warmth and delight, he caught the dusty, deliciously nose-wrinkling odor that rose from her skirts. But the Rat seemed unaware of all this, her spine bent, hands primly folded, her eyes on the floor. She willed her twitching thighs to be still.
“Come in, my dear Countess.” Felix said a bit belatedly over the music. He spread his hands. “The music, you see. It is the waltzes I miss. They help me concentrate. Sometimes I play them. When we are alone, just the two of us.”
Anna sighed.
“Do you dance, my dear Countess?”
“I used to. No longer.”
“Ah,” said Felix, wrinkling his brow. Tactfully, he went across the room and lifted the needle from the phonograph. The protesting silence screeched just once, loudly, and then Don Quixote fell on the floor between them, shattering into broken shards. Felix smiled as if he had willed it. The subservient silence awaited their words. “This is better, nein?” he said. “Now we can have our little talk.”
“Tell me,” he said when he had settled Anna, now with a cup of tea. “What is it that I can do for you?” Felix sensed the Rat’s distress.
Gratefully, she raised her head, her eyes brimming, the whiskers at the corner of her mouth trembling. Her little nose twitched, and she sighed as she looked at him. She said imploringly, “My dear Doktor, it is only to you that I have come. You were so kind to me last week. And I felt…I felt…” Something was guiding her speech. She looked at him with her most melting smile. She wanted to tell him that time was running out. “I could not stop thinking about you,” she said instead. And with that, in a most helpless wave of her little paws, she gestured toward her lap, now overspread with skirt and petticoat. “You have seen?” she asked.
“Yes.” Felix nodded. “I know now.”
“And can you…” The Rat did not finish the sentence, but, holding her breath, she looked meltingly into Felix’s eyes.
Felix’s eyes took in her entire body.
“Perhaps you would like to see more, my friend. Would you like to see everything?” she asked.
Felix could hardly breathe. He leaned forward and took one little hand in his. “Yes,” he replied gently. “Yes, I would.” Then, mustering confidence, he jumped to his feet, the birthday hat still on his head. Schatzie, as if in alarm, also stood up heavily. “First of all,” said the doctor, assuming heartiness, “perhaps you would like to visit my laboratory.”
The Rat, still in the throes of mustering her courage, did not seem to hear. Felix held out his hand to her. “Come, my Countess,” he said. Trembling, Anna allowed herself to be drawn to her feet.
Within her bowed breast, conflicting emotions struggled. “Felix,” she thought. “So it has been Felix all along.” The laboratory: so it was true. Everything she had heard. “For you, my old friend,” she thought. Then, as she willed her thought waves to be transmitted, she quickly translated her thoughts into Esperanto and sent them through the clear, bright, winging air to Herbert: “It is true. It is Felix.” Did Herbert hear? He didn’t need to. “Pay attention,” Anna told herself sharply. But to Felix, she allowed only the misted, vague emotion of her lovely eyes and little twitching nose. Her iron will she would conceal; she focused on getting her way.
“Then,” she forced herself to say gaily, “perhaps you will show me your ‘everything’ first.”
“Schatzie, come!” cried Felix. “We show our friend the laboratory, nein?” Schatzie didn’t want to follow, however. The minute the Rat and Felix left the room, she climbed laboriously back onto Felix’s couch behind the screen and, sighing softly, curling her tail end toward her mouth, lay down, looked after them indulgently — play, my children, play — and closed her eyes. “Schatzie!”
“Oh, leave me alone,” thought Schatzie. “Isn’t it enough that I wear this ridiculous hat?” The elastic was bothering her, and she scratched herself. The hat lay at an angle, and Schatzie’s breath came in even snores as she sank more deeply into the faded brown velour of the cushions.
“This is my laboratory,” Felix said as he guided Anna into the small closet-like space. He had his hand on her shoulder, and he could almost reach the place where her spine had finally curved, bowing forever her little neck. A sudden urge to touch her hump came over him. But he suppressed it.
“Look,” he said as he opened the curtain that covered the labeled shelves. “Here is the secret of life, my dear Countess. This is where life begins. You,” he said, addressing her, articulating each word slowly and carefully, as if this presentation had been planned, the one he had been preparing for all these years, “you are looking at the very creation of life. Matter into matter.” He stood back, his arm on her shoulder, surveying his life’s work. “And God said, ‘Let there be light.’ ”
Together, they regarded the jars. A strange phosphorescent greenish glow rose from the shelves, and there was a gentle vibrating humming about them. Inside each jar, pale green liquid swirled, dreamily, in a counterclockwise direction. Anna stared, mesmerized.
“It is a time of rest,” explained Felix. “All life must take its rest.” The waters swirled, and an even pitch became discernible to the Rat, one single vibrating note, the note of A, held and reiterated from each jar. A, the tone of the universe. A, the tone that instruments tuned to. A, the alpha, the alpha-bet — the universal A.
“Listen!”
From the closed refrigerator, also, came the sound of A, loud and clear, piercing, as the severed quartet fingers cried out from their concealment. “Aleph. We Are Alive!” All of New York was sounding to the tone of A: the skyscrapers, the trumpets, the solemn shafts of sunlight piercing, as in the inside of a cathedral, the dark streets.