Hanno’s Doll (14 page)

There was a grudging knock, and before he could give permission to come in, Miss Claremot entered, with tray.

Puppchen said, “Oh, lunch.”

He saw that she had clamped her hands between her knees, a trick he had taught her to conquer fidgeting, and was touched by it. She had known that he wanted nothing better than to lie and look at her, and had tried to give him what he wanted. And she was hungry, probably. She too had probably eaten nothing all this terrible day. For what their Scotch cook in New York described as a “bit girl,” Puppchen ate enormously. It had often amused him how much she could put away. Her eyes were on the abominable hospital lunch as the nurse set the tray on the rolling table and pushed it to where he could reach it and then raised the head part of the bed, crank, crank, crank. Her duty done then, her curiosity satisfied about what Puppchen was wearing—blue trousers and sweater with a coral scarf tied around her coronet of hair—Miss Claremot left.

“Eat your lunch, Hanno.”

“No. I will watch you. You eat it, sweetheart.”

“Really, Hanno? Don't you want any?”

He watched her begin on the chicken smothered in—it looked like—library paste. (Puppchen's palate wasn't formed yet.) She ate rather greedily today, but the energetic working of the little jaw hardly disturbed the serenity of the forehead, and her eyes, even when focused on food, seemed bent on noble mysteries.

Then Ernest returned, Anni behind him. Anni looked frightened. Well she might look frightened! He said, “Not another spoonful of that abominable pudding, Puppchen. You and Ernest go back to the house.… Finish your lunch at home, Puppchen.” She put her spoon down, climbed off the bed and stood by the Ernest, skirting Anni.

Ernest was uneasy about his mother. “Hanno …”

“Go, Ernest, please.”

Ernest held the door for Puppchen.

“Later. I'll see you later.” They left meekly; after all, children, infants.

Anni seated herself in the chair. He could see by her stiffness that she was controlling the trembling which used to overtake her and which, so long ago, he used to soothe in his embrace.

She said, “You told me to get out. I didn't think you would want to see me.”

“I don't.”

“Hanno, it isn't like you. A shock! But by now you should see that I had to.” She interpreted his gesture of thrusting that part away. “Then what have I done, Hanno? Then what have I done?”

“Do you really think I'm such a fool, Anni?”

“Fool?”

“Anni, Anni, a fool about what I did, but not necessarily a fool about everything else.” Such a face of wonder! The stage had rubbed off on Anni, hadn't it? “Never mind, never mind. I don't want to go up in smoke, Anni. I asked you to come for one reason only … for Puppchen.”

“Aha …”

“You can still do something for Puppchen, Anni.”

“You
are
a fool!”

He saw then that she was near collapse, her skin so yellow, the trembling getting out of control. The contrast between the fierce words and the soft, tired body was nothing new, was familiar, even now moving to see how weak she was behind the great show of strength. He said, “Oh, take your shoes off, Anni. It always rests you to take off your clodhoppers.”

“No.”

“But you look like death, Anni.”

“How do you think you look, like Apollo?”

He said, “Why must you be so tart? Even now. Even when you would give anything—I know you, Anni—to convince me you're right and I am wrong.”

“What do you care? You don't care.”

“Not for you. The other Anni. My sweet Anni.”

“No,” she said. “Stop it! You are trying to butter me up. You feel nothing for any Anni, old or new. What do you want of me for Puppchen?”

He banged his fist down on the mattress. “So blunt! ‘What do you want of me for Puppchen?' Very well, I want you to go to France with Ernest and look after Puppchen. The worst of this is what it is doing to her when—in my foolishness I did it for her. The worst of this is that Puppchen will be alone again, after I hid that boy only so she wouldn't be without me. You know that, don't you?”

“My dear! Of course I know that. You don't have to tell me that. You never think of yourself. You think you have become a saint in your old age, don't you?”

“Anni, you heard, I'm sure, that Puppchen married me when she was married. She is not my wife.”

“Never was your wife. A Puppchen, a Puppchen!”

“If her husband hears, and he will hear … Oh, this thing will be heard around the world. If he hears, it is bigamy. No, the lawyer is right. She must get away and it is right that I let her go. I must let her go and you and Ernest must go with her and see she doesn't do anything foolish.”

“You think you have become a saint I think you have become a fool.”

“
Ach
—stop thinking! Feel for Puppchen! A woman is to feel, not to think without feeling. Feel for her, I beg you! No? Then I beg you to feel for me. For me, then. How can it hurt if you and Ernest accompany her to Europe? Five little weeks, Anni.”

“I think you have become a fool, a fool, a fool. Five weeks! He'll never come back, Hanno. How can Hanno have become such a blind, fat fool? Don't you recognize the way Ernie now looks at her, Hanno? You saw. It is the way you look at her. Oh, he always learned from you, Hanno, and now he has learned to see her through your eyes. Ernie is all ready to follow in your sainted footsteps. Ernie is all ready to step in and take your place.”

“Shame! Shame, Anni!”

“I'm not blind even if you are, Hanno. I can see that my son is pressing his nose against the shop window and coveting the little doll.”

“Anni!” But he saw then that this was true. He saw that he had already recognized it in Ernest's eyes on Puppchen, the way he had wiped down his hand before he touched her; no, more in the way Puppchen had turned to the Ernest. She could only have turned to him when she was safe with him. “Perhaps,” he said grudgingly, “perhaps.” He hated his cowardice. “Yes, you are right,” he said. “Well, I can't blame him. How can I blame him? Anni, if I can say, in spite of this, and I am not made of stone, Anni … If I can say, in spite of this, go.… Go, anyhow.”

“What have you to say? You are going to be tried for murder, my friend.”

“Anni, you won't do this for me?”

“No, Hanno, I will not.”

“If I can let her go, you can let Ernest go.”

“No.”

“He isn't a child, Anni; now you must step aside. If it is true—
ach
, it is true! I am a coward; it is true. Step aside, Anni. You must let him love a girl.”

“A girl, yes. A doll, no. No, no, no, no,” she said. “Ernest is a good son. He doesn't know yet that he wants her, wants to help her is what he thinks. He is still a child in some respects. If I am against this, he won't do it; you'll see. And I am against it.”

He said slowly, heavily, with the weight of it, “Then I will have to make you do it.”

“How can you make me do it, Hanno?”

He did not want to, he did not want to. It would be a terrible thing to destroy Ernest's mother forever, to take his image of a good woman,
ach
, tart, strong-minded, stubborn, sometimes irritating beyond words, but good, kind, generous, a mother to be proud of, Ernest still thought, and destroy it. He did not want to give Ernest this image of a woman who would destroy the man who had saved her life.

“How can you make me do it, Hanno?”

“You know how.”

“What will you do, then? Will you poison me, too, Hanno?” The tears were squeezing between her closed eyelids. She opened her eyes and let the tears go free. “Do you think I care? If not for Ernie? Do you think I want to live any longer? If not for Ernest I would
ask
you to poison me too.”

“What do you mean ‘poison me too'?”

“Poison me too. Poison me too. Again poison. How could you do this thing? You must be crazy. Of course you are crazy.”

“Whom have I poisoned?”

“You fool, you fool! You think when a body is found there is no autopsy? You think because you are Hanno Dietrich, because you tell them it was an accident, they will take your word for it?”

“Of course it was an accident. Anni, please! What is this now?”

“It is killing me! It is killing me! I am already dead. I told them
they
were crazy. How could you do it?”

He felt his mouth working like a fish mouth. He could not speak.

“After you threw me out … calling me a dirty Judas!
Me!
Ernest took me back to Felix's house. I thought I had had the worst then. What else could happen? I thought I knew the worst, the biggest fool in the world, yes, but a poisoner? ‘Never,' I said. ‘Never!' When I came back to Felix's house, they were in the kitchen.”

“Who? Who was in the kitchen?”

“From the police, of course, you fool! The autopsy on the body was finished this morning. When they found the poison in the body they went to the house and there it sat all ready for them in the kitchen. The poison from the photographic stuff.

“Hanno, Hanno, what good does it do to sit with the mouth open that way? Whom are you fooling now? Not me, any more. Not anybody any more.”

“Poison, Anni? You are saying the boy was poisoned?” But she was blubbering, her face dissolved. “Anni! Anni!”

“
Ach,
” she said, and with her head lowered like a shamed child, one arm up to her face, she ran sobbing out of the room, leaving the door open so that he could see the K.K.K. and the stranger in the hall. They both stared after Anni; then they turned and stared at him, the K.K.K. and a city man with a city overcoat, a dark-gray Homburg and a brief case.

The K.K.K. said, “H-h-here's your l-lawyer, M-m-m-mlster D-Dietrich.”

The city man said to the K.K.K., “Thank you. Very kind. I won't be long.”

“I'll b-b-be r-r-right h-h-here.”

“Mr. Dietrich, I'm Justin Clinton. I am sorry to meet you in such unhappy circumstances. I've been a fan of yours for a long time.”

Mr. Clinton was looking around the room for a place to put the Homburg. It was not a hat to perch on a knee or fling on a bed.

The boy had been poisoned. They had found poison in the boy's body. The city man finally put the Homburg on the dresser.

He said to the city lawyer, “What is this about poison? Do you know what this is about poison?”

“Yes, I know. The body was autopsied, Mr. Dietrich, and twenty-five grains of hydroquinone were found in it. But, if you don't mind—for legal reasons—Mr. Dietrich, we won't discuss it.”

“Do they say I poisoned him? Do … they … say …
I
… poisoned him?”

“Mr. Dietrich …”

“Mr. Justin Clinton, Mr. Justice Clinton, do they say I poisoned him? I
pushed
that boy. He hit his head. I gave him a drink; I didn't give him poison. Do they say I poisoned him in the drink?”

“Mr. Dietrich—”

He opened the flap of the brief case against his thigh, considered asking permission to sit, decided against asking and sat. All this he could see, he, “Mr. Dietrich,” could see, therefore he was awake. “They will say that I murdered this boy by poison? That I was the father of Miss Mildred's bastard and she told this boy and he came to blackmail me, show me up to Puppchen and therefore I poisoned him?”

“The formal charge against you …”

“Yes, Anni is right, I am crazy. I must be crazy. Mr. Justin Clinton, Mr. Justice Clinton, it was an accident, an accident. I am not the father of Miss Mildred's bastard, an accident. You think I poisoned him? Then why are you looking at me that way?”

“I'm not looking at you any way, Mr. Dietrich.” He became very brisk. “I am offering you my best advice. Don't say anything more until you have spoken to your attorney. You understand that I am not going to represent you. Clinton, Clinton and Prufrock are not the proper people for you. I have been authorized to procure the best possible representation for you and I've done so. Jim McCormick is the man for you and he will be here tomorrow morning, first thing. He's in court today. You talk to Jim, Mr. Dietrich, talk it all over with him, not me. I am here to discuss only what directly concerns my client.”

“You are Puppchen's lawyer. Why didn't you tell me about this, Puppchen's lawyer? Why didn't you inform me that Puppchen was already married? What kind of shyster are you?”

“An ordinary attorney, Mr. Dietrich, merely following my client's instructions.”

“Client! You are talking about a Puppchen, a little doll, not a client.”

“As a matter of fact, Mr. Dietrich, we didn't know she had gone through a ceremony with you until I arrived here this morning. We assumed … I am afraid that we assumed that yours was an—er—irregular relationship.”

“An—er—irregular relationship. So!”

“Until it could be regularized, of course.
Temporarily
an irregular relationship.” Under the barrage of mockery, he permitted himself to become human. “You certainly kept it quiet enough, Mr. Dietrich.”

“Because Puppchen was pregnant.”

“Oh. I see.”

“She was going to bear a child. My real name is Hans Dietrich Freundlich, as H. D. Freundlich it was quite simple to be private.”

Mr. Clinton sighed. “She shouldn't have done it, of course.”

“A little dolly—what did she know? But you knew she hadn't been divorced.”

“I told you, Mr. Dietrich, we didn't understand that there had been a ceremony; in other words, that there could be any question of bigamy. Kitten expected the divorce to go through immediately, I'm sure; that is, she probably never envisioned any delay. It isn't only that she is ignorant of the law. No, it's that she is her law, a law unto herself. Always has been. You know French?
L'état c'est moi
. She's been furious with us for the delay in her divorce. You have no idea how impossible it has been to explain that in the eyes of the law—other people's law—” he pursed his mouth—“the common law, if you take my meaning, Mr. Dietrich, that it isn't desertion if the husband wants the wife to accompany him on what is his legitimate business. To Kitten, of course, desertion is going where she doesn't want to go.”