Hanno’s Doll (18 page)

The girl handed her champagne glass to Mr. Starter, and he gave her the glass of ginger ale he had poured. Then the door closed again.

There was something sly about it, something furtive. There was something, she thought, being put over on Hanno. Because of this, Anni hurried.

Her voice was harsh. She asked Mr. Starter, pointing, “What was all that for?”

“Wh-what? Oh, Mrs. L-Leopold.”

“What was all that for?” But this time she asked the question in a whisper because Mr. Starter had placed his finger on his lip. She pantomimed the exchange of glasses she had seen. Mr. Starter tiptoed across the corridor and beckoned her to follow.

“Your s-s-son,” he said, “your son …”

He was bringing Ernie in, in response to the accusation he had heard in her voice.

“Y-y-your son was here. He s-s-said Mrs. Dietrich was s-s-sick to her s-s-stomach all afternoon. He b-b-brought the ginger ale.”

“Sick? She was well when I saw her.”

“Just sick to her s-s-stomach. Th-th-threw up. Vomited.”

Something stirred in her belly then; something uncoiled. What was there about the girl being sick to her stomach which made a premonition stir in her? What was there about vomiting?

“Champagne would have made her s-s-sick again, b-b-but she h-h-hated to disappoint h-h-him.” He jerked his thumb toward Hanno's door.

It was the snake of knowledge in her belly. She was no innocent like Ernest, like Hanno.

“S-so they thought up this idea.”

They? She, she! “Idea?” Now
he
was pantomiming the furtive exchange of glasses.

“He d-d-didn't need to know it w-w-wasn't champagne. I had it all r-r-ready for her, see? S-s-so all she h-had to do …”

Again, because she was staring at him with her mouth open, he pantomimed the quick exchange of glasses behind the half-open door. But wasn't it the snake of jealousy in her, wasn't it only jealousy? The girl had only wanted to toast with Hanno, after all. But one of Hanno's superstitions was that to toast in anything not alcoholic was bad luck. So she would toast Hanno in champagne because, God knows, he needed all the good luck he could get. She said to Mr. Starter, “You don't mind if I take the glass she didn't drink?” I would like to toast Hanno. Oh, wasn't it like that girl to make a fool of him even in this?

Mr. Starter gave her the glass, then went back to his post on the bench outside the room.

She wouldn't drink the toast there with Mr. Starter. She wanted to be alone to drink the toast. She carried the glass back to the sunroom, then picked up Hanno's Montaigne (stroked it) and seated herself. If Hanno wanted his love to drink champagne with him, she should have done so whether she was sick to her stomach or not. No, it wasn't nice to be sick to your stomach, to vomit. (“Lie down,” she told the snake.)

Hanno, she remembered, had also vomited. Of course Hanno had burst a vein in his stomach when he vomited.

In Misericordia Hospital, Hanno had lain there grinning from ear to ear.

“Now can you say she doesn't love me, Anni? Come on, now, Anni … you didn't have to
say
she didn't.
Now
can you say it?”

And she couldn't say it. She had to bite her tongue. You couldn't get around it that when Hanno had vomited and broken this vein and almost died from bleeding, the girl had gone home and cut her wrists. Why else if not because she loved him and didn't want to live without him?

So she had had to bite her tongue.

And now the girl had vomited; now, not Hanno but the girl had vomited. Not broken a vein in her stomach; all that had happened to the girl was that she was too sick to her stomach to drink a real toast with Hanno, so they did that trick with the ginger ale.

Anyone could vomit. It was easy to vomit. You could put your finger down your throat and vomit. Vomiting could be good for you; sometimes doctors gave you medicine to make you vomit. And now she remembered.

Now it clicked. She remembered because of the sly way the girl's hand had reached out to Mr. Starter's, the sly way she gave him the real champagne, the sly way she took the ginger-ale glass. That was the same sly way the girl had hidden the bottle underneath her bright clothes in her beautiful morocco suitcase when she saw Anni come into her room this morning. Oh, she was just packing, the girl had said. Just packing. Just slipping something in. Just putting something over.

That was why, when the girl went to the hospital with Ernie, she had gone and felt around underneath the clothes and found the bottle. (That was why she doubted the vomiting now.) The medicine in that bottle was to make you vomit.

You could just intend to make Hanno throw up and then tell him he threw up because he was overworking. (When didn't he when a play got him?) You could say he must stop overworking and stay with you. (The girl wanted Hanno with her—that he should be her slave. She would be his Puppchen if he would be her slave; what else?)

You could get that sirup of ipecac at any drugstore. For instance you could get it at a drugstore near the Center Theatre where Hanno had been. You could put it into a container with the disgustingly sweetened coffee Hanno always drank. (She, Anni, had told him sugar makes fat. He said it made energy. Fat energy then, he said, and went right on putting four spoonfuls in every cup.)

You could easily put the stuff in Hanno's container of coffee and make him vomit.

But then when he vomited—the big, fat slob—he breaks the vein and starts to bleed. A doctor is called in. The doctor is going to try to find out what made Hanno vomit like that. And, if you become afraid that he will find out, that you would have to admit you did it, then wouldn't it prove your love if you went home and carefully—when you were sure to be found in time—cut your two wrists? You only put the ipecac in the coffee to make Hanno stop overworking. When it almost killed him, you wanted to die. If they didn't find out why Hanno had vomited, then you were even better off … for the rest of his life, Hanno would believe that you didn't want to live without him.

Break in on the two of them? Tell Hanno now? Tell him that the girl had played with his life? Tell him that the cutting wrists did not show how much she loved him after all? “Now I
can
say, Hanno! And more! I can say more.”

Tell Hanno that, the whole time, all through what had happened since he went to the hospital, the letter typing, finding the wool in the desk, throwing such a fit because Miss Metal was hysterical, throwing fits until Ernie said to call in a detective and settle the matter; the whole time she, Anni, had felt the girl pushing? Tell Hanno? Because it would show him the girl didn't love him?

Would she do it? Could she do it now? Wasn't it too late? Would it be kindness now or would it only be what Hanno always said about her that there was nothing she wouldn't do to prove she knew best? (She bubbled like champagne with the desire to tell him.)

She went to the door of the sunroom, undecided, and as she reached it, the door to Hanno's room opened and the girl came out.

The girl said to Mr. Starter. “He fell asleep. He must be so tired, poor Hanno.”

“I'll b-b-bet.”

“I thought I'd just let him sleep while I went and got Dr. Leopold. Dr. Leopold wants to say good-by to Hanno, and we don't have too much time.”

“S-s-sure.”

“Where's the glass of champagne, Mr. Starter? Where's my glass?”

“Mrs. L-Leopold …”

“Mrs. Leopold took it?”

“S-sh-she said she w-w-wanted to drink a toast.”

“Oh, I see. That was sweet.”

“Mrs. Leopold's in the s-sunroom.”

“I'll see her later. I'll get Dr. Leopold first. He's with Hanno's doctor.”

“Ask at the d-desk. They'll know.”

She tittuped down the hall. Go in now that Hanno was alone? Wake him for this? No. Because Hanno would probably feel that to give him something to make him vomit so he would stop working in the theatre and stay with her was love. Anything that girl did was love. She could do no wrong. So she just stood there, holding the champagne glass, feeling (this she hated) helpless and miserable until she heard the girl come back again. And Ernie behind her. Now, and for as long as she would let him, the girl first and Ernie following after. Oh, she knew, she knew! (
Again
you know? Who are you, God?)

The door to Hanno's room opened and closed behind Ernie and the girl. She bit her lip because—from meanness, from jealousy, that was what from—she wanted to run down the long hall and follow them in and break up the scene that would be going on inside there.

Ernie would say, “We've got to go now, Hanno.”

Hanno would say, “Yes, you've got to go now. Puppchen can't stay because Puppchen must be protected from everything, no matter what.” Hanno would say, “Take care of her, Ernest. Look after her with your life. Be her slave the way I was, Ernest. Forget your mother, forget your plans in medicine, forget everything you worked so hard for, forget what a wonderful doctor you can be and think only of her the way I did.”

Ernest, would say, “Yes, Hanno, I promise. Don't worry your head, Hanno.”

She felt her fingers which were holding the stem of the champagne glass tighten so hard she was afraid it would break in her hand. (Break it? Cut her wrists with the broken glass? Could she live without Hanno now that she wouldn't have a son?)

And then, not quietly this time, the door was thrown open.

Ernie yelled, “Mr. Starter!”

Ernie was handing the girl out to Mr. Starter, and Mr. Starter was holding on to her, was putting her down on the bench. Why?

Ernie said, “He's dead!”

“Wh-wh-what?”

“He's dead. Cyanide, I think, from the look.… He must have put it in the champagne.”

“B-but the room was s-s-searched.… F-fine-tooth c-comb.”

Mr. Starter ran into Hanno's room. Ernie sat down on the bench beside the girl. He put his arm around the girl. She leaned against Ernie.

“Don't cry, Puppchen.”

“He shouldn't have! He shouldn't have!”

“Puppchen …”

“He shouldn't have! He shouldn't have!”

Ernie looked at her. He made up his mind. He laid her head against his shoulder. He said, “Puppchen, maybe it's best that he committed suicide. Hanno dead—it's terrible, but maybe it's best this way. All round.”

She made a face of wonder at Ernie. She said, “How, Ernie? What do you mean?”

“Suppose he knew there was no chance? At the trial, Puppchen? Wouldn't that be worse than suicide?”

She said, “Oh, Ernie! Oh, Ernie!”

“He died when he wanted to, before you left him and the awful part began. Let's try to think of it that way, Puppchen: that it was best.”

She couldn't stand to watch it. She couldn't stand to watch Ernie telling the girl that it was better Hanno was dead. She went back into the sunroom. No more Hanno. She saw his book, his Montaigne. Hanno's Bible, God forgive him! She picked it up tenderly because he had given it to her. “Take, Anni!” He had called her “
liebchen.
” She opened it at random, the way Hanno used to, and tried to do what he did, to read where her eyes fell and then to find guidance there, but she could make no sense of the words; and then she remembered Hanno asking her to read it tonight.

“I feel like reading! I feel like reading!”

“The introduction,” he had said. “Read the introduction. For Hanno.”

She turned to the introduction, flipped over its pages because they meant no more to her than the rest of the black marks on old paper, and then she came on some lines he had marked and saw his tiny A in the margin. A was Anni. “Read it for Hanno.”

The lines he had marked were “When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is amusing herself with me, or I with her?”

“When I play with my cat …” My cat.
Kitten. That is what Puppchen's lawyer calls her, Anni
.

A “kitten” is a little cat. “When I play with my cat (Puppchen) who knows whether she is amusing herself with me, or I with her?” She read, “
Que scais-je?
was Montaigne's motto.”
Que Scais-je?
What do I know? But he knew, Hanno knew! This was to tell her that he had known.

Known what? About the vomiting? That the almost-suicide had not meant that the girl loved him, was that what he knew?

Her nervous fingers, moving on the book, felt something, bits of something. She knew instantly, before she set down the champagne glass and examined the pages, that what her fingers had felt was dried glue. She knew instantly why there was glue on the book, why two pages had been glued together. Why, she had been there with Hanno in Wien when Leo Cohen told him how he had put poison between two pages of his Old Testament because then if the Nazis caught him there was a way out.

Hanno had used his way out, and Hanno knew something about the girl, the Kitten, the cat who had played with him while he had believed he was playing with a doll.

Then, shivering, she lifted the champagne glass and held it to her nose. Wasn't there a slight odor? Was there? She dipped a fingertip into the glass and touched it to the tip of her tongue, then spat. It did taste of something. There was poison in it. In the glass Hanno meant for the girl was poison. What did Hanno know about the girl that was so bad Hanno would want to kill her for it?

And that was why the girl made herself vomit today, because she was scared Hanno did know about her. She didn't dare drink what Hanno gave her because she had somehow found out about the poison in the book, because she was scared Hanno would kill her for the terrible thing he knew. The girl had been forced to come and drink a farewell toast with Hanno because Ernie had insisted on it. She couldn't get out of that without Ernie thinking badly about her, suspecting something, but she had managed to get out of drinking what Hanno thought she was drinking with the trick of the ginger ale.