Hanno’s Doll (17 page)

“B-b-but …”

“Why not?” he asked. “Oh, Mr. Starter, Mr. Starter. Champagne!” He imitated the pop, plucking his cheek with his index finger, clowning to reassure the perplexed K.K.K. A Pagliacci to the last! “The bottle will be brought to you sealed. You will open it for me, if you prefer. Please, Mr. Starter.” He clasped his sweating hands and wagged them and did his fat-boy begging face, and between that and Anni's tragic face, the K.K.K. was won over.

“Okay,” he said. “Oh, h-h-hell, why n-not?”

Ernest would bring the champagne and now Anni was leaning against the wall looking at him. “
Liebchen,
” he said to her, “go home. You are so tired. Go home and rest. You're not Kitten's age, remember.”

“Who is Kitten?” she asked, as he had hoped she would.

“That is what Puppchen's lawyer called her, Kitten.” Perhaps she would remember this, Kitten, a baby cat.

She turned away then. It was a last blow for her, reminding her she was not young any more. “Wait,
liebchen
!
” Now
. “This is for you.” He waved the book at the K.K.K., explaining, “My book, my Montaigne, remember?” Because the K.K.K. had brought it to him once, it would pass now. “We are very old friends, Mrs. Leopold and I, and I believe what she needs tonight is some philosophy.” He did not want the K.K.K. to touch the book and perhaps notice the unsealed two pages. “Anni, take!”

“I feel like reading! I feel like reading!” But she came and took the book.

“It will comfort you. Take my word for it, Anni. Read the introduction at least, my old
liebchen
. Read it for Hanno.” At least this time she permitted him to kiss her hand, then gasped and bent to kiss the top of his head, and then, clumsily and heavily, clasping the Montaigne to her sagging breasts, which used to be so beautiful, she hurried out.

The K.K.K. had followed Anni out. When he was alone again he practiced his sleight of hand. It was eight years since he had been taught it by a professional for his part in
The Quicker Hand
. It was like swimming; once you learned, you didn't forget. The hand is quicker than the eye. That he could put half of the potassium cyanide in Puppchen's glass without her seeing, he had no doubt. When the audience didn't suspect, a baby could do it and Puppchen suspected nothing. To her he was still the fat, blind fool who thought she was Hanno's doll. Some doll!
She walks … she talks … she poisons!
He practiced once more. But suppose, suppose she knew that even Hanno's eyes could open. That he could work out who had given that boy poison?
(He dreams, he sleeps, he dreams.)
Suppose it occurs to her that she is not the only one who can poison?

How? he asked himself. With what? She will know that they will not leave poison here for me to give. She couldn't know about Montaigne. And then he broke into a cold sweat remembering Leo Cohen's visit. Leo was a great talker and Leo knew about Montaigne. Leo could have talked. Yes, Leo talked, Leo talked, but did Puppchen ever listen? What did Puppchen care about Hanno that she should listen? He went on practicing because he could not think of anything else to do. In Germany there had been one occasion when he believed his time had come. Then he had read his Montaigne and composed his soul, but now Anni had the Montaigne and his soul was beyond composing. Anyhow, he was too tired.

When she knocked on the door he wondered how she would look to him, the Puppchen, how he would see her now. “Come in,” he said.

First he saw her traveling suit, the coat with the rough tweed outside glinting with purple, lavender and gold in the overhead light, lined, he remembered, with sable, inimitable, downy, royal sable. He remembered, as she stood there … how capricious, how preposterous, memory … that the sable had been a coat and completely wrong for her, and that it had been he who ordered it used as a lining. The soft, deep collar which he had meant to protect that small head from the rough winds on a boat deck … “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May …” that collar would frame the dead face and pillow her head. And somewhere—he was too tired to remember—somewhere, Shakespeare had also said that sable was for mourning.

He saw the suit first and then just the top of her head, for she was looking down at the small silver tray with the two Waterford glasses she was carrying. If she knew about the Montaigne, she would not drink with him. He said, “Puppchen, we have so little time left to be together. Let's not talk about this—affair at all. We'll forget all about it for now.”

His words, he saw, unlocked, unfroze her. She could raise her head and could even smile at him and move toward him in the way he had taught her. She said nothing. How little she had ever spoken.… The curve of her cheek spoke for her, the set of her eyes, the way her forehead was and the way her hair grew on her head. “Puppchen …”

She smiled at him. How little she spoke and how many lines he had spoken for her, and then,
fool, fool
, loved her for them.

She came to the bed composedly, set the tray down on his bed table, then waited.

He told himself to get on with it, no speeches. Not Hamlet—Hanno! An actor of action, Hanno. But first he searched her smooth face and her candid eyes, could not help doing this. Suppose he said, “It was you who poisoned that boy, Puppchen?”

“Me, Hanno? Me? I did not,” she would say. (And her face would be as smooth, and her eyes as limpid.) Because she did not think she had poisoned the boy, felt innocent of murder.

How could he say she had poisoned her husband? She had told the boy to leave, that she did not want him there. She wanted to be with Hanno in Bradley and she had explained this to her husband.

Yes, she knew the hydroquinone was poisonous, she would say. Yes, she knew that, but
she
hadn't put it into the boy's drink and given it to him. (How her mind worked!) She had gone to the kitchen after she sent the boy away and put some of the hydroquinone in the gin bottle. Yes, she knew the boy, her husband, drank gin only. Yes, she knew Hanno never drank gin, but all she had done was put the stuff into the gin bottle. She had left the bottle in the kitchen and had then gone up to bed.

If the boy came back, it was his doing and none of hers. His own doing. His own fault. (To disobey her was
lèse-majesté
. “Off with his head,” the lawyer had said.)

Did this innocence surprise him when he had seen more than half a nation go “innocently” to their beds not protesting what was happening all around, and by doing so connive at six million murders, and yet believe themselves as pure as Puppchen?

Suppose he said to her, “You betrayed me, Puppchen. You took Miss Mildred's wool and knitted a shroud for me, Puppchen.”

But that was Anni, she would say. That was Miss Metal. Why it was Ernest who called in the detectives, Hanno. Truly. Puppchen would believe exactly the opposite, that it was he who had betrayed her. Hanno had begrudged her the boys who kept her gay. Hanno had taken Philip away from her and had given him first to Miss Mildred and then to death. Above all, Hanno had insisted on remaining in Bradley when she wanted to leave it. Hanno had said, “No, we will not give the house to Anni. No.
Schluss
! Finished!” (Finished indeed, he thought.)

If Hanno insisted on standing in the way of what she wanted, then Hanno must be removed. That only was betrayal.
L'état c'est moi
. (And was he naïve enough to believe that every Hitler had to wear a comic mustache and be a house painter?) How simple morality was for Puppchen. No wonder her face was smooth; what could there be to ruffle the calm depths of her eyes?

And why should she not be smiling so angelically at him when he had now helped connive at his removal, when he had made it possible for her to have the Ernest? (He smiled back at her, as innocently, if not as prettily, but he said to her silently, “No, not the Ernest, Puppchen; you will not destroy the good little Ernest.”)

It was remarkable how little desire he had to tell her that he had found her out. Only the Anni, only Anni! Then he held one glass up to the light to see its sparkle.

“That man outside has to open the champagne for us, Hanno. He said he had to open it himself. Shall I ask him to open it now, Hanno?”

“
Bitte
, Puppchen.” A baby could have managed it. His elegant sleight of hand was wasted. He got out of bed and, as she went to the door, put the potassium cyanide into both the glasses, then, standing there, hiding the glasses with his body, he listened to her asking for the champagne to be opened and to the K.K.K.'s, “G-gee, I h-hope I—c-can d-d-do it r-right.”

Then the pop, and then Puppchen, limber, free, and loose-moving, gracefully carrying the opened bottle to him.

He took it from her, still between Puppchen and the champagne glasses. He poured ceremoniously, giving the crystals time to dissolve, making patter, as he had been taught, to distract her. “… spill it on the suit, Puppchen. Sit there, my dear.” He kept between her and the glasses. “That lawyer calls you ‘Kitten.' He said, ‘Kitten.'” (She did not show the slightest trace of fear that the lawyer might have opened his eyes. She either believed him hopelessly blinded, or believed that Mr. Clinton's eyes were too much opened to the danger of losing the management of her money to give her away.)

“I know. ‘Kitten.' Isn't it silly?”

“It reminds me of something Montaigne said.” One could no longer see the crystals, but then the champagne bubbles would obscure them. “Montaigne said, ‘When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is amusing herself with me, or I with her?'”

“Did he, Hanno?”

Keeping his bulk between the filled glass and the light, he now approached her and gave her the glass carefully, and she took it from him carefully. Tidy little Puppchen.

“Hanno, Ernest's out there. Don't you want him to have some champagne with us?”

“No!”

His “no” was too emphatic; it frightened her out of the chair. She was walking to the door, holding her glass. He corrected his voice. “
Na
, Puppchen, just you and I, just the two of us.”

She did not stop but said over her shoulder, “I'll tell Ernest, Hanno.”

She opened the door and shook her head “no,” he saw. The Ernest must be waiting right there. He was happy that he couldn't see the Ernest from where he stood. He wanted to die knowing how—later, later—the Ernest would wear gratitude's face for an old friend who had saved his life twice. (Count it, twice!) Then Puppchen came back to the chair.

“I had to tell him. I promised Ernest I'd ask you, Hanno.” In seating herself, she balanced the glass carefully.

“Of course.” He took his glass from the bed table and shoved up the pillows Anni had tried to fix for him. Now. No last words. He extended his glass to her. “
Prosit
, Puppchen!”

Sweetly, shyly, she held her glass toward his, then took a sip.

She tasted something; she tasted something, made a wry mouth, looked, with her head bent sidewise, at the glass. “Down the hatch!” he had to say quickly and with all the authority possible to him. And he tilted his head waiting to swallow his until he saw that she, looking surprised because champagne was to be sipped, gulped the poison to the end. “Come, sweet death.…”

“Are you asleep, Hanno?” Puppchen asked. “Hanno, are you …?” She reached out her little hand, but drew it back before it touched his limp one.

Anni had been in the sunroom, unable to stop crying, from time to time glancing down at Hanno's book in her lap, set on her seamy purse, and then crying afresh, remembering Hanno. And then, in the corridor, she heard Ernest's step, unmistakable, but she stayed where she was because the girl must be walking beside him, her heels tittuping. She could not go out and let the girl see her. What she must look like! She thought of the way the girl would be looking in whatever perfect thing Hanno had got up for her, and how she Anni never would let Hanno tell her what to wear. She used to say to Hanno that she didn't care that he knew better, that she only wanted to look like herself. (Now I look like me, she thought, and sobbed)

Anni took her handkerchief from her purse and wiped her face, waiting to see her son alone. (Hanno hadn't wanted Ernie in the room either. Two glasses, he had told her to ask them to bring.)

Mopping at her face, she went to the entrance to the sun-room in time to see the girl carrying a silver tray with the two glasses into Hanno's room. But Ernie wasn't in the hall, only Mr. Starter staring at a bottle of champagne he was holding as if it were the first he had ever seen. Had Ernie left immediately because it hurt him (as it killed her, killed her) that even now Hanno only wanted to be with the girl? Ernie should sympathize with Hanno; what right did Ernie have to be hurt?

Ernie must have said he had something to do elsewhere, busied himself somewhere in the hospital because he couldn't go far away from that girl, but couldn't stay there being jealous of even Hanno's last minutes alone with her.

She saw the door open again and the girl come out. She was asking that he open the champagne bottle now. Mr. Starter struggled with the cork and then, pop, it was out. (She sobbed. How terrible that Hanno was not permitted the ceremony with which he would have opened the bottle. Oh, his face as it used to be! The way he used to smile at her before bending to attend to the cork. Even this they couldn't let Hanno have because they were afraid of suicide. Better suicide, she thought, than seeing Hanno in a courtroom accused of poisoning, seeing people staring at him and whispering about him, seeing the newspapers. Thank God, Felix wasn't here to see, she thought.)

The girl took the pop-opened bottle into Hanno's room.

When the door closed after her, Anni put down the Montaigne, made herself presentable and started down the long corridor. As she approached Hanno's door, she saw Mr. Starter opening another bottle. Another bottle? Not champagne. She blinked. Why ginger ale? Why was Mr. Starter (that nice young man) pouring ginger ale into a third Waterford champagne glass? She moved to the side of the corridor, into the shadows, as the door to Hanno's room opened partway and the girl appeared again, half in the room, half out.