Small G: A Summer Idyll

  There was Dorrie, half visible in the dark, advancing as Luisa opened the front door. No need to signal nor to speak; Luisa led the way upstairs.

  What was she to expect on the other side of the apartment door? Luisa steadily pushed it open: nothing. She took Dorrie’s hand to guide her in, released her to relock the door.

  They tiptoed into Luisa’s room and shut the door. Both bent with silent laughter for a moment. A single lamp partly lit the room, and Dorrie looked round as if the room were new to her. She started removing her blue cotton jacket, still silent, glancing at Luisa.

  Luisa had turned her bed down—the sheet and the light counterpane. A blue blanket lay folded across the foot of the bed. Luisa slipped out of her shoes. She felt suddenly shy, and it was like a pain, paralyzing her. Next her slacks. Dorrie was moving faster.

  “Gonna keep my socks on,” Dorrie whispered. “I’m the one who’s got to leave in a hurry!”

  Dorrie also kept her underpants on, but stripped on top. Luisa felt obliged to do the same.

  “Got to look good on top,” said Dorrie. “That’s fine. OK?” She gestured to the bed.

  Luisa got under the sheet, then Dorrie slipped in beside her.

  “Good to leave the light on—don’t you think?” said Dorrie. “We’re that type, y’know, like to do it with the light on?” She struggled, but a laugh came out.

  They listened for a few seconds. Nothing.

  “We’ve got to make some noise,” Dorrie whispered.

  “I know. I could turn my radio on.”

  “Can you reach it?”

  Luisa turned on her abdomen, extended an arm beyond the pillows. The radio sat on a bookcase. Classical music, and Luisa left it, rather low. She did want to hear Renate in the hall, when she came.

  “Luisa—” said Dorrie, squeezing Luisa round the waist with one arm. “You don’t know how I’ve waited for this moment!”

  Now Luisa laughed loudly, really shrieked.

  “Shall I do it again?” Dorrie giggled. “Ahem!”

  Silence still.

  “When I think, I could’ve visited you many a night!” said Dorrie. “She is a sound sleeper! Wow!”

  Silence. Then Luisa heard something in the hall.

  “Luisa?” That was it, Renate.

  A pause.

  Dorrie, her arm round Luisa’s waist, said, “Put your arm around me. This has to look right.”

  “Luisa?” The door was opening. “Wha-at—” It was like a scream. “What’re you doing here? Luisa! Get up, you—get out!”

  Dorrie was out and up, dressing. “We’ll be out, don’t you worry!”

  Renate’s arms flailed. “Out! Out!” She addressed Dorrie who was zipping her slacks.

  Luisa, on her feet, grabbed her blouse.

  Dorrie dodged Renate’s fists, though one blow did land on her neck.

  “What kind of place do you think this is?” Renate cried. “Get out, get out!”

  “’Bye, Luisa!” said Dorrie at the room door, and Luisa had a glimpse of Dorrie’s shining eyes and wide, amused grin before she vanished in the direction of the apartment door.

  Renate was limping after her. “Human filth! Filth!”

  When Luisa entered the hall, Renate was at the apartment door, still yelling, following Dorrie down the stairs now. The minuterie was on.

  “Out!—ah-h!” That was a cry of terror.

  Luisa got to the open door in time to see Renate tumbling down the stairs, bare feet visible for an instant amid the fabric of the Chinese dressing gown, and to see Dorrie’s figure in the hall below, heading for the next stairs. A loud crack and bumping sound followed: Renate’s head had struck the wall at the foot of the stairs.

  “What in heaven—” cried a female voice from a door below.

  Renate, a crumpled heap, lay against the wall she had hit.

  Dorrie reappeared in the hall. Another neighbor opened a door.

  “It’s Frau Hagnauer!”

  “Knocked senseless! I’ll get a wet towel!”

  A woman pulled at Renate’s arm, while a man tried to move her lower legs so she could sit up on the landing.

  Luisa had descended half the steps. Someone was asking her what had happened. Renate was dead, Luisa thought; her eyes stayed half open like her mouth, her head lolled on one shoulder.

  “Call a doctor!”

  “An ambulance!”

  “Luisa, what happened?”

  Luisa glanced at Dorrie. “She followed my friend out—and she fell.”

  Two men insisted over a woman’s protest in carrying Renate into an apartment, where she was carefully placed on a sofa. Someone mentioned tea.

  “I’m staying with you, Luisa,” Dorrie said.

  Dorrie looked white as chalk, Luisa thought, as if she were dead. Suddenly Luisa’s ears were ringing, her knees seemed to sag. A woman seized her elbow, and Luisa sat down awkwardly in an armchair. Then Dorrie poked a damp towel into her hands.

  “Head down in-in-into this,” Dorrie said. “Face down, go ahead!”

  There was a long doorbell ring, plus knocking. The police arrived, accompanied by a doctor.

  “This has sugar. Good for you,” a woman said, handing Luisa a mug of hot tea with a spoon in it.

  Dorrie held the mug for Luisa.

  The other people in pajamas and dressing gowns were answering the questions of the police who had clustered at the sofa.

  “Her card of identity?”

  Luisa told them where it would be, in Renate’s purse in her bedroom, in her wallet there, and Luisa would have gone up herself, if Dorrie and a couple of the women hadn’t restrained her.

  “I’ll get your keys, dear,” Dorrie said. “Where are they? You can’t stay here tonight.”

  Sympathetic words from a couple of the women. A shocking accident! So sudden! Luisa was welcome to stay with either of them, to sleep on a spare bed. Renate had vanished from the sofa. The police took Luisa’s name, looked at her card of identity, which she had got from the wallet Dorrie had brought. One policeman asked what had happened, and both Luisa and Dorrie said that Dorrie had left the apartment, and Renate Hagnauer had started down the stairs. A neighbor could confirm this: Luisa standing outside the apartment door, and the other girl Dorrie down in the next hall, when the neighbor had opened her door and seen Renate on the landing where she had just fallen.

  “She’d been shouting at someone,” the woman said. “I heard her—that’s why I opened the door.”

  “Shouting?” said the officer.

  “As if she were angry. Sometimes she gets angry, I know. I can hear her voice.”

  Luisa swallowed tea. Then Dorrie was beside her.

  “I’ve phoned. Let’s go,” Dorrie said.

  “Phoned?”

  “I spoke with Rickie. He told me to phone—later tonight, you know? And I locked the apartment door.”

  The one policeman who remained was leaving too, and Dorrie was saying to one of the women that Luisa shouldn’t sleep in the apartment upstairs tonight, and the woman agreed.

  Luisa and Dorrie were down in the street, walking, Dorrie holding Luisa’s arm. Dorrie had brought a tweed jacket of Luisa’s. Luisa’s keys were in her pocket.

  “Rickie’s waiting for us at the Small g,” Dorrie said, walking faster. “Come on, do you good!”

  Luisa took deep breaths of the cool night air, and saw again the shocking image of Renate’s bare feet, one small and normal, the other rather like a thick S—Renate’s feet seen from three meters away, motionless after the fall. “You told Rickie?”

  Dorrie gripped Luisa’s hand. “No—I just said we’d be there in a couple of minutes.”

  Luisa relaxed her arm. Dorrie had been partly supporting her.
>
  “You’re OK now. Good,” Dorrie said. “Look, you sleep at my place tonight or at Rickie’s. But it’s your decision. No arguments about it with Rickie.”

  “OK.”

  There was Rickie with Lulu under the grapevine trestle at Jakob’s main entrance. “Both of you!” he said, laughing.

  Dorrie glanced at Luisa. “I was thrown out, but—” Dorrie lowered her voice. “Renate fell down the stairs.” She fairly whispered the last word. “She’s dead, Rickie.”

  Rickie frowned. “You’re—”

  “It’s true,” Luisa said. “She fell. She was wearing a long dressing gown—tripped.”

  “The police came just now,” Dorrie went on softly, though there was no one around, except a single man who came out of Jakob’s and passed them, paying them no mind.

  The Small g seemed unusually quiet just then, even its lights weaker. Ursie’s voice from somewhere inside shouted, “Ja—OK—we are closing! Finish your drinks, please!”

  “Dead,” Rickie said, stunned.

  “Rickie, Luisa can sleep at my place tonight or yours, but now we—”

  “At mine. Come on, we’ll go to mine.”

  They began to walk, Lulu leading, heading for home.

  “I didn’t bring my car,” Dorrie said to Rickie. “I could phone for a taxi from your place.”

  “Or you stay at my place!” Rickie felt expansive, hospitable. Tonight had presented a crisis, une vraie crise. Renate dead, her apprentices without a master, Luisa—free of Renate! Rickie was aware that he had had a few on this special evening when Dorrie was expected to liberate Luisa, and that the reality of Renate’s demise had not sunk into his brain.

  Rickie put his key into his lock. Then he switched on lights in his flat.

  “Come, now we make the bed,” Rickie said, pulling back the dark blue counterpane that covered his double bed.

  With three changing the sheets, the work seemed done in a trice.

  “Stay with me tonight, Dorrie. It’s a very strange night.”

  Dorrie nodded. “Sure, Luisa.”

  Rickie was to take the sofa. “If you ladies don’t mind,” he added, “I shall be here in the morning to prepare your tea or coffee.”

  Rickie poured himself a small Scotch, straight, and easily persuaded Dorrie to have the same. “You’ll sleep better,” said Rickie.

  By now Dorrie had told him about Renate plunging down the stairs, just as she rounded the banister into the hall, and of hearing the terrible crack. Dorrie said the doctor had pronounced Renate’s neck broken. Now Rickie believed. Luisa was free, and also jobless. But tomorrow they would talk about all that.

  Luisa had washed at the basin, and now she lay face down, head turned toward Dorrie in the big bed. St. Jakob’s church clock tolled one note for the half hour. Which? Rickie was out of sight in the living room. “Thank you,” Luisa said softly, not sure if Dorrie was awake or not.

  “Nothing to thank me for. Go to sleep.”

  30

  A telephone call just before ten that morning woke Rickie up, and he took the phone which was at one end of the sofa.

  It was his sister Dorothea. “How are you, Rickie? I thought it was time we had lunch together. Are you free today? Maybe at the Kronenhalle?”

  “Ah, Dorothea—” He could still lunch with his sister, he supposed, but he wanted to be on hand to help Luisa if he were needed. “I’m not sure, thank you. There’s some news here. Luisa’s boss—you remember I told you about Luisa, the apprentice seamstress?”

  “Of course. Luisa. With the boyfriend.”

  Rickie continued. His bedroom door was shut. “Her boss died last night—fell down her apartment stairs and broke her neck.”

  “Goodness, Rickie!”

  “It happened around one in the morning. So Luisa slept here. She’s still here.”

  Dorothea understood. They would talk later.

  Rickie heard the girls stirring, called a “Good morning!” and invited them to make use of the bathroom first. He donned a dressing gown and started the coffee, then set the table. He had some sliced ham, and plenty of bread, luckily.

  “I was thinking—we should walk over to the apartment, Luisa, the workplace,” Rickie said tentatively. He knew it would be easier if Luisa went with someone, and he hoped Dorrie was free. “You’ll have to tell the girls, too. They’ve all got phone numbers, I suppose.” Rickie was thinking of Monday morning, and the girls arriving just before eight, as Luisa had told him.

  “I know. I’ll do it,” said Luisa.

  “Renate must have a lawyer. Do you know of any relatives?”

  “She has a lawyer. I’ll know his name when I see it. She said something about a sister in Romania.”

  The girls made the bed (Rickie said to leave the sheets on), and the apartment was neat again when Rickie emerged from the bathroom, shaved and dressed.

  “Shall we go?” said Rickie. “And can Lulu come?”

  Luisa managed a smile. “Sure. Of course.”

  Luisa dreaded this, a neighbor on the street saying, “Oh, Luisa, I heard the sad news!” but they encountered no one Luisa knew, even in the house. Luisa unlocked, and there was the long hall, the sitting room door and Renate’s bedroom door a little open as she had left them. Beside Renate’s bed lay the embroidered slippers that Renate had not taken time to put on last night, and which would not have saved her if she had. Everything looked familiar, yet this morning everything was different, eerie and frozen.

  Rickie calmly took charge, with support from Dorrie.

  Luisa knew where the brown leather business address book lay in the workroom, and she telephoned Vera first.

  “I can’t believe it!” said Vera.

  Luisa explained. “She was angry with a friend of mine—scolding, you know—not watching where she was going.” If she didn’t say it, the neighbors would.

  Elsie reacted in the same manner, shocked nearly speechless.

  “We’ll have to finish all the work that’s been ordered,” Luisa said. “So come in tomorrow, of course. Please.”

  Stefanie was not in, and Luisa did not want to leave the message with her parents.

  “Luisa,” Rickie said, “Renate’s lawyer. Do you want to look for his name?”

  It began with an R, and Luisa finally recognized it in the business address book. She copied his name and number on a piece of paper, as Rickie suggested, and did the same for Renate’s bank and the man she dealt with there.

  “If Renate had a will, the lawyer probably has a copy, and maybe the bank too,” Rickie said. “We may find the sister’s address there.”

  Lulu was going from room to room with lively curiosity. In contrast, Luisa felt unsure of what to do next. She made her own bed, started to make Renate’s, then began taking the sheets off. Dorrie helped her. All went into the laundry basket. Luisa checked the fridge, thinking of the girls tomorrow and their coffee breaks, threw out a couple of items and put a pot in the sink to soak. Would she ever have a real meal here again?

  “Can I do something?” Rickie asked. “Is the workroom ready for tomorrow morning?”

  “I’m sure it’s OK, I checked it.”

  Luisa looked into Renate’s room with its clutter of nail-polish bottles, mascara boxes, eau-de-cologne, hairbrushes, combs, a silver tray of hairpins. Behind two closed cupboard doors hung racks of long dresses, skirts, blouses, Luisa knew.

  “Don’t think about all this today, Luisa,” said Dorrie. “Do it with one of the girls. Or they might want some of the things.”

  “That’s true.” The idea made Luisa feel less depressed.

  “Pack a small suitcase—for tonight,” Rickie said. “You’ll be in my studio, you know.” He had already reminded Luisa that neither he nor Mathilde ever got to the studio before nin
e-thirty.

  Luisa did. Her pajamas, slippers, something different to wear tomorrow, a book, then another book, toothbrush.

  Out into the sunlight again, Rickie carrying her case, and Luisa in charge of Lulu. They met a neighbor whose face Luisa remembered from last night.

  “Oh, I’ll be back tomorrow,” Luisa replied to her question. “Eight o’clock or before.”

  “You know we’re here, if we can help,” the woman said.

  “Thank you!”

  A few moments later, Dorrie said to Luisa, “Just think, we can reach you now! I can, Teddie can—Rickie. We can telephone you!” Dorrie burst out in a happy laugh.

  The telephone was ringing when they entered Rickie’s studio.

  “Who could that be on a Sunday?” Rickie murmured, thinking it might be his sister with an idea for a drink or dinner.

  “Hello, Rickie!” said Teddie Stevenson. “I was just about to give up. Listen, it’s all fixed for tomorrow night. My birthday bash, you know? Seven-thirty at the Kronenhalle, reservation in my name. For at least twelve people, I said, in case I think of a couple of others at the last minute. Can you make it, Rickie? Please.”

  “Yes—I’m pretty sure I can. Thank you, Teddie.”

  “And Luisa’s got to be there. You can bring her, can’t you? I could, of course, but if the atmosphere’s so ugly there, even down on the street—”

  “I’m sure Luisa can be there,” Rickie said, watching Luisa set her small case now in the room off the kitchenette. Dorrie was absorbed in his cartoons tacked to the wall. “There’s been a change here, Teddie. The old witch is no more—she is dead.”

  “Dead? You’re kidding.”

  “I am not.”

  “What do you mean, Rickie?”

  “Luisa will sleep in my studio tonight. She’s here—if you don’t believe me. Luisa!”