The Children's Book

30

They arrived at the Pension Susskind, in Schwabing, which was managed by Joachim Susskind’s aunt, Carlotta. Katharina Wellwood, being German, imagined this place as a severe and upright dwelling, spotlessly clean, with dull and wholesome food served promptly at fixed hours. “Lotte” Susskind she saw in her mind’s eye as a tall figure in black, with a châtelaine at her waist, an impeccable white collar, and a shiny knot of greying hair. Olive imagined something more informal and rosy—her vision of Lotte Susskind wore a fresh apron over a large bosom, and baked sweetmeats for the lucky residents. In fact Joachim Susskind’s aunt was a young aunt, though she had two teenage daughters, Elli and Emmi. She was bony and angular, dressed in flowing blouses and sweeping skirts, with a mop of wild wiry hair, and a pointed, slightly witchy chin. The pension was a rambling building, with balconies and corridors joining structures which might once have been stables or dairies. Dorothy and Griselda had adjacent attics under the eaves, minimally furnished, with little wooden box-beds, plain wooden tables, muslin curtains and fat feather quilts. The walls were painted apple-green, and the woodwork was mustard-yellow. Dorothy wondered if this was usual in Germany. Griselda knew it was not. Charles had been here before, and was greeted by Lotte as a returning prodigal.

The pension was amiably noisy. It was inhabited by very diverse people. There were two very large men with huge heads of hair and tangled sprouting beards, one red, one dark. They sat in shirtsleeves, in a corner of the eating-room, and argued—about the cosmos, Griselda thought, trying to understand the southern German accents and eccentric terminology. There were two very buttoned-up, precise men, with slick black hair and small moustaches, who wore pince-nez with black rims, and with tiny circular handles on the eye-pieces like moons on a planet. They went in and out—to work, presumably—but over dinner joined in the arguments about the cosmos. There were also three young women—art students at one of the independent women’s art schools. The Royal Bavarian School of Art admitted only men. One of the young women was clearly well off—she had many changes of dress, elegant hats and elaborately dressed hair. The other two were patched and darned and serviceably clothed. All three laughed a great deal. There was a perpetual smell of paint and varnish in the pension. Elli and Emmi, when they came home in the evening, turned out to be younger versions of these three. Both had their mother’s bony and somehow rackety good looks, and struck up casual and amusing conversations with the other inhabitants. They had simple dresses under aprons streaked with spilled colour. They hugged Charles, as though he was a family member or old friend, and expressed surprise when he introduced Griselda as his sister. We didn’t know you had a sister, said Emmi and Elli in unison, and laughed. Griselda felt awkward. Dorothy, who understood nothing at all of what was said, felt more awkward. The place was buzzing and humming with chatter and argument, and it is hard, when you are seventeen, in a foreign land for the first time, not to feel that the laughter is mockingly directed against you, and the camaraderie designed to exclude you. She had a moment, standing stiffly amid the clamour, when she wondered why on earth she had disrupted her life so furiously to come here and feel lost. She was rescued by Toby Youlgreave, also a stranger to this world, who could read German as a good folklorist must, but had no speaking vocabulary and also no acquaintance with Bavarians.

“We shall feel like old inhabitants in two or three days, I imagine,” he said to Dorothy. “All this will come to seem quite normal and ordinary.”

The pension was, it became clear, open to all sorts of café society—artists, Bohemians, students, wandering mystics and anarchists—at lunch time. In the evening the guests of the pension dined together, round a large table, from charming flower-rimmed plates. There was soup, full of cabbage, and sausages and large pork cutlets, and a heap of potatoes and a delicious pudding of red berries and cream. Much beer was served, in large earthenware mugs. Afterwards, one of the precise men produced a flute, and one of the art students sang, in a husky voice, whilst the guests tapped with feet and fingers, until everyone joined in, beards wagging, throats swelling. Toby drank several jars of beer and joined in, humming the tunes. Dorothy said she had a headache, and went to bed.

It is hard to get to sleep in an unknown room, with unaccustomed bed coverings. Dorothy shifted and stirred and dozed and jerked awake. She could see a thin, curved penknife of a moon, steel-bright on a blue-black sky. She heard a strange sound, a regular banging and flapping, banging and flapping, thump, thump, thump, speeding up as it continued, which it did for a long time. It was accompanied by a creaking sound of bed-slats, and also by a mixture of moaning and giggling. Then there was a wailing cry, and silence.

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 had to protect. To be introduced to two unknown and foreign brothers, with no warning and no preparation, was a shock. Dorothy had gone white, and was breathing rapidly. She whispered

“I didn’t know … I didn’t know he had children … I didn’t know he was married…”

Wolfgang Stern was tall and gangly, with long, thin arms and legs. He wore a loose shirt and a large floppy bow tie. His brother, equally thin, was smaller and neater, in a dark buttoned-up suit that might have been a uniform. Wolfgang had unruly, long, black hair in a cloud round his head: Leon—who must have been younger than Dorothy, but not by much—had a precisely cut hairstyle and a neat tie. Both had large dark eyes, like Dorothy’s. Both were, or so Dorothy in her wrought-up state immediately felt, recognisable. They were faces she knew. She stared, and then looked down, feeling how odd their intent gaze was.

Griselda talked, with nervous warmth. She introduced Dorothy, in her schoolgirl German, and spoke a sentence or two about how much, in England, some years ago, they had admired their father’s interpretations of Hoffmann and the Grimms.

“Really?” said Wolfgang. He bowed over Griselda’s hand. “He would be enchanted to hear that. And your name?”

“I am Griselda Wellwood. We are—cousins—”

“And one of you—you I think—must be the mysterious, beautiful sister of Karl whom we see in the Café Stefanie and the Scharfrichter—Karl has been rather quiet about his sister. I think he is rather quiet about many things.”

“So I am finding out,” said Griselda.

“We shall be very happy,” said Wolfgang, “to take you to one of our father’s plays. Maybe Karl and Herr Susskind would like to come too? And your other companion—Herr Youlgreave? My father would be honoured.”

He could not stop looking at Griselda. This was not unusual. Many young men looked with excitement at Griselda’s pale and beautiful face. What was unusual, Dorothy thought, noticing as always, despite her own agitation, was that Griselda was responding. She was looking equally persistently at Wolfgang. She was looking down at the table, and up into his eyes, and her lips were parted. Toby Youlgreave came over from another table, where he had been talking to Joachim and Karl, and also noticed the alert stares of both Wolfgang and Griselda. He knew that Griselda was in love with himself—he had known it for a long time, and never said a word. Recently, however, as Griselda had grown into her beauty, and Olive Wellwood had grown stouter and angrier, he had begun to wonder if… and whether… he was not entirely pleased to see the smiling German so eager to make friends. He agreed, in a reserved way, that they would all enjoy a visit to the Spiegelgarten. He spoke about what he remembered of Anselm Stern’s work. The beautiful automaton in the Sandman was peculiarly fine. She was differently artificial, in a world where all the actors were in fact artificial. He said this in a mishmash of German and English, to which Wolfgang replied in a similar way.

“I have some pitiful in English,” said Wolfgang to Griselda. “You must teach me more.”

Leon, like Dorothy, said nothing, only looked on.

Later, in Dorothy’s bedroom, the two girls discussed the Stern brothers. Griselda was overexcited. She said it was wonderful suddenly to have two such interesting brothers. Dorothy sat stony and tears stood in her eyes.

“It is not wonderful. I wish I had never come. I wish all this had never happened. I wish I was the same as I used to be.”

Griselda was immediately sympathetic and said they need not go to the Spiegelgarten if Dorothy didn’t want to. Dorothy said grimly that they must go.

“I can’t bear mess and muddle,” she said. “I thought if I found out—about him—I should be clear in my head. But I see now, it might all be worse mess and muddle.”

Dorothy found it hard to sleep. Her feather quilt was heavy and hot. She felt a surge of homesickness for Todefright. Her mind fixed on her Todefright brother, Tom, and his golden, slightly maddening, innocence. Tom was part of an idea she had had of an English family, the children running wild in safe woods, in dappled sunlight, the parents smilingly there, when they came home, scratched and breathless, from the Tree House and its simple secrets. They had all been one thing, the whole graduated string of busy children, all the same, all different, as children are, and they had all been absorbed by daily life and ever so slightly confined and constricted by it—a feeling which she now sensed as a luxurious indulgence. She knew the garden and the staircases, her little bedroom and the Tree House, as she knew her own body, her hair under the brush, her thin feet, her wiry hands. Only nothing was what it seemed. Violet was not an old maid of an aunt. Phyllis was only half her sister, Hedda with her cross and nosy habits of investigation and suspicion turned out to be wiser than Tom and Dorothy, her elders and superiors, who knew nothing. She thought hard about Tom, in order not to have to think about Humphry and Olive, past and present, real and imagined. Long-legged Tom, running and running with purposeful absence of purpose. He had sensed that the Garden of England was a garden through a looking-glass, and had resolutely stepped through the glass and refused to return. He didn’t want to be a grown-up. Dorothy had always known she was going to grow older, and had been slightly impatient to get on with it. Now, she thought Tom might get away with his unknowing, and almost envied him. The Downs were full of young, and not so young, men in breeches and tweed or jackets, carrying rods or guns, with linen hats flopping, striding from pub to pub and talking wisely about trout, and weather, and the diseases of trees.

Tom, she thought, as she almost wept over him, was no more and no less her brother than these two dark Germans, the flirtatious one, and the quiet one. Well, that wasn’t true. She had shared her life with Tom. They had played at families in the Tree House. They had held out hands to each other as they climbed, rode or strode naked into deep ponds.

It was hard to admit that she was homesick for those two deceivers, Humphry and Olive, who had turned out to be snakes in the grass as well as Adam and Eve in the Garden. She let her mind get round to Humphry’s “act” as she referred to it in her head. She remembered his hand in her nightdress, her own mixture of excitement and revulsion. “I love you,” he had said, “you know I love you, I have always loved you.” And she had never for a moment doubted that he did—all along the lie of their life together—and what was more, she was just enough to recognise that he did indeed love her—as a father should—and had always done so. They were a modern, liberal, Fabian family. He was no paterfamilial tyrant, no ogre, no invisible person who disappeared to Work and was unknowable—as his brother was, in many ways, to Karl and Griselda. He knew how to play with his children. He had played with all of them, laughing and inventive, and still did. She had ridden on his ankle as a horse, when she was tiny, she had later ridden behind him on a bicycle in the lanes, he had steadied her. And loved her.

She had always, perhaps naturally, loved her father much more than her mother. She sensed that Olive had attention to spare for only one of her children—and that was Tom, not Dorothy. From quite early, she had refused to play Olive’s game—to live in a fairy story, not on the solid earth with railway trains and difficult exams. Olive wanted to love her as a hedgehog, and she wanted to be human and adult.

It is just my bad luck, she thought, wryly and tragically, to have a mystery parent who turns out to make fairy stories—and sinister ones—with automata and dolls.

• • •

They went to Frau Holle’s Spiegelgarten together, Toby and Joachim, Griselda and Karl, and Dorothy. They had arranged to meet Wolfgang and Leon at the door of the house in the Römerstrasse where the marionette theatre was. Dorothy had thought of confiding in Toby about her reasons for coming, and had decided against it. She had an instinctive knowledge of his relations with her mother—she had not, unlike Hedda, wanted to investigate these—and this made him, in a puzzling way, into yet another father or father-substitute. She wished that Wolfgang and Leon did not have to be present, and yet—since it was impossible, obviously, for her to speak to Anselm Stern in their presence—they allowed her to defer the encounter. She would watch him, and think what to do.

The house was high and forbidding. It had runes—Toby said they were runes—painted on its doorposts and lintels, and a Jugendstil painting of an apple tree, with gold and silver fruit, in the architrave. The young men met them at the door. They went through a dark inner corridor directly to the back of the house, which was lit through a stained-glass window, with more runes, in ruddy gold on white, and a medallion depicting a figure in a circle of flames.

Through this door, they went into a high, bright courtyard, with painted inner walls and bushes in flower in tubs and pots. A tiny fountain splashed in the centre: it was carved with efts and lizards, butterflies and snails, which from certain angles could be construed as peering faces or outstretched fingers. Griselda exclaimed with delight: Dorothy stood back. The sunlight poured in, golden and quivering in the heat like liquid. The puppet theatre was in an outbuilding on the other side of the courtyard. Its door was flanked by two carved wooden figures, one winged, hooded and slender, one short, stalwart and bearded. Elf und Zwerg, said Wolfgang to Griselda. Elf and dwarf. He added something which Toby translated as “The guardians of the other world.” How Mother would love this, thought Dorothy, grimly.

Inside was as dark as the courtyard was light. They were in a small theatre, they saw, as their eyes adjusted to seeing—the sudden change had blinded them, and filled the space with hallucinatory flashings and varied colours, intense, fading. They made out rows of benches, and on the walls mirrors framed with carved heads and foliage, some of them covered with black veils. The easiest thing to see was the high, gilded proscenium of the marionettes’ stage, covered with a blue silky curtain painted with moons and stars. A kind of blackboard to the side of these announced “Heute wird gespielt Die Jungfrau Thora, ihr Lindwurm, seine Goldkiste.”

There was a source of light behind the curtain, limelight mixed with rays of crimson, pink, sky-blue and deep green. Other members of the audience crept in and stood, getting their bearings. Music began, a faint high twanging, a wistful fluting. Wolfgang said to Griselda

“He never comes out before the play. The characters don’t speak. It is all light and movement. Sometimes he comes out after. He waits for complete silence. He is exigent.”

Leon said to Dorothy, who was on the end of the bench, “Are you comfortable?” He said it in English. It was the first thing he had directly said to her. Yes, thank you, she said, clasping her hands in her skirts.

The curtains opened. The Jungfrau, Thora, glided in. She was a delicate, lovely creature, with an exquisite porcelain stare and a mass of floating, silky, silvery hair. She wore a white dress and blue mantle, and her movements were thoughtful and precise.

She was presented with the glittering gold casket, by a kind of white-bearded, black-gowned wizard on bended knee. The set was a turret room, the starry sky visible through slits of windows, with high Gothic chairs. The Princess placed the casket on a table, and, when she was alone, bent over it and opened it. A tiny golden worm, sinuous and bearded, shot out of it like a firework, shimmered in the air, flew in circles, and went back to rest.

The story of Thora and the Lindwurm is the story of dragons and gold, Toby Youlgreave later explained. Dragons sleep on gold; a poetical kenning for gold is “ Wurmbett,” dragon’s bed. This dragon increased the gold in its casket and the size of its gold bed. The hidden treasure shone out of its box with brilliant ruddy light. The dragon grew, and outgrew its case. The curtains of the theatre slid together and reopened, and each time the dragon was larger, and fatter and more fearsomely bearded. Its eyes glittered ruby: its talons were silver: its mane frothed with coloured lights. It coiled itself round the box, tail-tip in grinning mouth between pointed, curving teeth. It coiled itself like a constrictor around the Jungfrau herself, who began to make movements of anguish and pain.

The old wizard reappeared, in another set, and prompted a series of princely, strutting puppets, booted, caped, with feathered hats and bright blades, to advance into the chamber and attack the creature. The set for these attacks was an antechamber opening onto the treasure room in which the beast was coiled up and the Princess constricted. They went in—some debonair, some a little tremulous, and were flung out in bloody pieces which spun in segments and fell. Children in the audience cried out with glee.

Prince Frotho appeared. He was a mild and workmanlike figure in serviceable moleskin brown. A serving-maid suggested in mime, he should consult the Mothers.

A new scene showed a bleak stone cavern in which Frotho threw herbs into a cleft in the rock. The Mothers rose slowly from Underground, three huge figures, swaying like growing plants, with veiled skulls for faces and hunched backs. Frotho mimed his problem, mimed the Worm, mimed the Princess. So much expression, Griselda thought, from so simple a collection of wires and china and clay and cloth. The Mothers turned their horrible fixed grins on Prince Frotho and invited him to embrace them. The audience knew he must not hesitate or recoil or he was lost. He stepped out decisively and kissed each creature—they had to bow their upper bodies to receive his kiss. When he had kissed all three, they spun around and around, and changed their appearance—instead of the skull inside the skin, they showed beautiful, dreaming female faces under the now translucent skulls. They stood up proudly and did a stately dance. They had rich hair under their dark veiling. They gave Frotho a blue flower—“Rittersporn,” whispered Wolfgang to Toby, who nodded knowledgeably, and whispered to Griselda that it was “knights’ spurs,” or larkspur, a magical herb.

Armed with the Rittersporn, Prince Frotho returned to the treasure chamber, now entirely filled with the coils of the Worm, between two of which, like a captive through bars, the Jungfrau peered whitely. Prince Frotho brandished his flower and his blade. He whirled it, and the gold head followed its movements. He stabbed—once, twice, three times—and the dragon disintegrated into golden segments, like great coins, which flew in the air and settled in a heap, like money in a vault, with the grinning head on top, and the tail dangling over the front of the stage. The Prince embraced the trembling Princess. The audience applauded. The curtains closed. The puppetmaster stepped out to take his bow. He wore a black gown, absolutely plain, buttoned to the neck, and a kind of square academic cap. Toby and Griselda were clapping vigorously. Dorothy frowned and stared. He had a pale face and a thin, clear-cut mouth. He looked something like one of his own figures, bowing with deliberate grace, unsmiling, lifting his hands, and making a gesture towards the invisible cast behind the curtain, that resembled the acknowledgement of a conductor to an orchestra. His hands were thin and fine. He wore a ring with a green stone. He was alien. He was not quite in this world, and this world was alien to Dorothy, it spoke another language, and lived by other rules and habits. How could she tell who he was? How could she see him? And yet, as with his sons, she “recognised” his face, though she did not know what “recognised” meant. He bowed again, amongst the folds of his gown, and stepped back into the dark.

Wolfgang said, as a dim light glimmered in the theatre, and the audience stirred, that they must all come back and meet his father. Griselda looked at Dorothy who said in a rush that she felt unwell, she really must go home, she was very sorry, another time …

There was some ambivalence as to how far Griselda 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.”

“And you are how old?”

“Seventeen. Nearly eighteen.”

“And why have you come here? What do you want?”

Dorothy found it hard to breathe. “I want to know who I am.”

It was wildly absurd to be saying all this through Griselda’s deliberately expressionless, gentle voice.

“And do you expect me to tell you?” asked Anselm Stern.

“I thought,” said Dorothy with spirit, “that if I knew who you were, I should know more about who I really am.”

“Indeed,” said Anselm Stern. The sharp mouth smiled a wry smile. “And in your place, Fräulein Dorothy, I should have had the same thought, I think—so maybe, vielleicht, that tells us a little of who we both are.”

He was silent, for some time, thinking. He said “When were you born?”

“On November 23rd, 1884.”

He counted months on his precise fingers. He smiled. He said

“What does your mother think about the fact that you are here?”

Dorothy looked to Griselda for help. Griselda looked blank. Dorothy began to speak fast, in her normal voice, not the unnaturally formal one she had been using.

“She doesn’t exactly know, that is, it hasn’t been openly discussed. But I think my father—I think that he—has told her what he said to me, because she seems—perhaps angry, with him or with me—she didn’t try to stop me coming here, but we didn’t talk about why—I think there was an unspoken—understanding. I don’t think she meant me to know. I don’t think she knew what to say to me.” She paused. “It was a great shock to me. And difficult for her.”

She listened to Griselda’s soft German, following the rhythms of her English, half a sentence behind.

“So,” said Anselm Stern. “Ich verstehe.”

“I understand,” said Griselda.

“You are an unusually determined and outspoken young woman,” said the two voices, the German one both amused and judging, the English one hesitant.

“I like to understand things. To know,” said Dorothy.

“So I see. Had you thought what this—this knowledge—would mean to me? I have a wife and two sons. What did you expect me to do, when you had told me?”

“I didn’t know what you would do. That is up to you. You can tell me to go away. I think you believe what I say.”

“I think I do believe you. You were born nine months after Fasching. There are many Fasching cuckoos in Munich.”

“Fasching cuckoos?”

Griselda and Anselm Stern began to explain simultaneously. “Fasching is Karneval. All is permitted,” said Anselm Stern. “Fasching is a great mad Shrove Tuesday feast, with dancing in the street,” said Griselda, and broke off to translate Stern’s explanation. Griselda said, translating nothing,

“We have met your sons, Herr Stern. In the Pension Susskind where we are staying. They brought us to the performance yesterday. But we said nothing to them, and did not wait to see you, because of what Dorothy had to say.”

“Translate, please,” said Dorothy, excluded.

Stern said to Griselda

“And you, who are you?”

“I am Dorothy’s cousin, Griselda Wellwood. That is, I am not Dorothy’s cousin, but we have always been closer than sisters. My mother was born Katharina Wildvogel. You may remember—you were kind enough to explain the Aschenputtel story, at Todefright, when you performed it.”

“I remember. Your German is better than it was at that time.” He was silent for a few moments. He picked up the marionette he had been stitching, shook out her skirts, and looked into her painted eyes. He fingered the silky hair, which looked as though it was real human hair, tucking it into shape.

“I have always wanted a daughter. My sons are good sons, but I always wanted a daughter. What to do now?”

“I didn’t want to embarrass you, or make your life difficult.”

“This is Munich, this is Wahnmoching, this is the home of doctrinaire Free Love, where it is laid upon us to greet cuckoos as golden eggs. This is the city where you may say openly what you have just said to me, here in this inner room, and no one will think worse of you—no one that matters that is, of course, for the heavy burghers and beer-drinkers are only Matter, inessential, what they think is heavier than air. But you may not wish to say anything, on your own account. You may be ashamed, which you should not be, or embarrassed, which you have a right to be. You may wish to keep the secret you have been told and share it only with those who already know it, Herr Humphry, your mother, and the wise Fräulein Griselda here whom we must both thank, I think, not only for the bridge of language, but for the calm and philosophical atmosphere that comes with her. I could take you to meet my wife—”

Griselda blushed, and her voice faded, far behind. Dorothy continued to work for clarity.

“What would—what will—your wife think?”

“My wife is an artist. My wife models in clay and carves stone and teaches at the Damen-Akademie. Her name is Angela, and she is an Angel. She likes to be in the forefront of modern thinking. In principle, she would expect a family to welcome a discovered child. In practice, I do not know. How long are you in Munich? For if you are here for some time, we might proceed—delicately, soft-footed, sagaciously—”

Griselda was having more trouble with the translation as Anselm Stern—who chose his words carefully—began to use the slightly odd, poetical vocabulary his friends would have recognised.

“We are here for two or three months. We are studying. I am trying to learn German. I have to pass my matriculation. I am not gifted at languages, Mr. Stern. But I will try.”

“Not gifted at languages? But serious, not a hausfrau. An interesting kind of daughter. What are your gifts, your inclinations, your hopes, Miss Dorothy?”

“I mean to be a doctor. The training is very hard. I should like to be a surgeon.”

“Let me see your hands.”

He put aside the limp puppet—his own hands seemed uneasy without occupation. Dorothy moved closer to him, and he took both her hands in his. Both pairs were thin, wiry and strong. They were the same kind of hands.

“Strong hands,” said Anselm Stern. “Capable hands, delicate hands.” He gave a dry little cough. “I am moved.”

Dorothy went red, and then white. Tears threatened, and she held them in.

“You are tired, young ladies,” said Anselm Stern. “A great effort has been made, strain has been endured. We should go and drink coffee, or chocolate, and eat a pastry, and talk calmly and generally, about Life and Art, and begin to know each other? Yes?”

That night, Dorothy said to Griselda “His name suits him.”

“Stern.”

“Yes. He looks stern. Serious and stern.”

Griselda gave a little laugh.

“Stern in German doesn’t mean stern.”

“What…?”

“It’s the German word for a star.”

“Oh,” said Dorothy, revisiting the imagined figure in her mind. “A star.”