Hanno’s Doll (4 page)

“How she worried, my poor Puppchen! She knew, even if I had forgotten, that I am a fat fifty-seven. I forgot I was a man—a director only. And I wouldn't listen to her warnings to be moderate. With an opening? I forgot my calories.… You know what you eat when you eat in Joe's Delicatessen. When you do eat, that is, because there are days you don't. So I collapsed. A charming sight for Puppchen. She was right there. Charming!” He made himself sawdust and collapsed.

“One minute I was dunking a drugstore doughnut into drugstore coffee … wolfing it … that being one of the days I had forgotten to eat … the next I was vomiting. I had broken a blood vessel in my stomach. I begin to bleed—excuse me—from both ends.

“Puppchen sends for the doctor. She is beside herself. She asks the doctor, ‘Please, what is it? Please, please, what is it with Hanno?'

“And the doctor? ‘We don't know, Mrs. Dietrich. We will have to make tests before we can find out. We will know later, Mrs. Dietrich.'

“He will not reassure my darling. You know how some doctors need to cover themselves, to hedge—so that if the patient dies, well, it was to be expected, while if he doesn't die—they saved him. This was one of those doctors, and I don't usually blame them—but to Puppchen? How could he do this to Puppchen? How could he let her go back to that empty apartment on that happy note?

“Were they surprised when she took my razor and sliced her wrists? I wasn't!” But then he was recalled to the present danger to Puppchen and shoved himself forward in the bed. “Now you know, Mr. Starter. Please get her now and explain this to her so that it doesn't happen a second time. Tell her, Mr. Starter, just what I told you. Explain.”

The K.K.K. went immediately to call her. He left the door open.

The door was open to the memory of that hot day when Puppchen lay in the sanatorium with her bandaged wrists. From the moment he wheeled himself into her room and saw Puppchen wearing the white hospital gown, lying so smooth with her eyes stubbornly closed against what life had become once more, and her lashes mourning on her white cheeks, he had known that there would be nothing he wouldn't do to protect her. He had dismissed the attendant who was about to push his chair to the bedside, quelled him with a glance, not wanting him there, and then, alone with his darling, he had called her name. Her eyes had opened and they were the marble eyes. She had turned to stone again. He called her name again, putting all his love into the two syllables. For a long moment, those marble eyes studied him, then, as if convinced that he was indeed himself, really Hanno, she sat up and held her arms out to him. For the first time, he saw the white bandages on her thin, childish wrists, and she wept. “Take me away! Take me away, Hanno!”

He had given the wheel chair a great shove. To hell with the surgeon's warning that any effort might make him hemorrhage again. To hell with all the care which had been expended to take him from Misericordia Hospital to this sanatorium. To hell with the Ambulette in which he had been so cautiously driven, the two uniformed attendants who had lifted him from his bed into a wheel chair, trundled that down to the street, shoved the wheel chair up the special ramp of the Ambulette, where it had been securely locked into place. To hell with security when Puppchen was in such trouble. His wheel chair had lurched into that
un
hospital room with the view of the Hudson River from the casement window, a window which, even on such a hot day, couldn't open wide enough to let a cat squeeze through. (Because when you tried to commit suicide once, you might try again.) This was the kind of place they put you in when you tried to end your life … if you had a lot of money, that is. He had known instantly how Puppchen would feel in such a place and with that knowledge no amount of surgeons, doctors, nurses could stop him.

As if anyone could keep him from Puppchen when she needed him. (They could now. He stared at the door which looked open but through which he could not now go, and cursed.) It was because he would not leave Puppchen in that place that they had come to Bradley. Puppchen had to be taken out of the sanatorium, but Puppchen couldn't stay in the apartment alone except for servants, and he couldn't go home with her. He needed hospital care for another week, so, of course, he had thought of the Ernest, Anni's boy, Ernest.

You didn't need to have saved the Ernest's life for him to want to help you. He was the most genuinely good young man Hanno had ever met. (But then he knew acting young men, not dedicated young doctors.) If Hanno was remembered, it wouldn't be for Hanno Dietrich, clown-actor, actor-clown, but because the Ernest would become a world-famous doctor and since the Nazis would have liquidated him if not for Hanno Dietrich, Hanno Dietrich would be immortalized by a line in the Ernest's biography. (Or would they remember him because he had accidentally killed a boy? Because of the headlines which would appear in spite of all the efforts of the college?
Ach
, God, God! Forget now. Remember then.)

The Ernest had appeared immediately, had listened, pressed his hand in sorrow, had offered help immediately. Of course no sanatorium for Puppchen. He would contact the sanatorium doctor at once. Of course, no staying in the apartment with servants and nurses for Puppchen; Anni would come today and stay with Puppchen and he would be Puppchen's doctor-friend.

Anni had been ashamed to admit to her son that she was jealous of her old friend's young wife, so she had done what Ernest asked. Anni had stayed with Puppchen in the apartment and guarded her for him.

Ernest had spoken of the five-week vacation he was to have between the hospital appointment just finishing at the end of the year and the new post he was going to take with some professor, to study his specialty. Ernest had had so few vacations in his life that this was a great thing for him; he wanted to see Wien and he wanted to see it with Anni. Anni could then decide, once and for all, whether she wanted to remain in Wien (she was becoming sentimental about the good old days before the Nazis), or whether she would become a real American.

Did Anni really want to go back to Wien?

What was there here for her, she asked. Ernest would be moving to Cincinnati in February. Ernest no longer needed her. She did not want to become a nuisance to Ernest.

And how about her young theatre people? How about her work with their voices … and their souls?

Anni said she was tired of theatre people, young and old both.

It had been because of him, of course, because of him marrying Puppchen, she had soured on the United States.

Yes, she would like to go with the Ernest to Wien.

But there had been no money for such a trip. Anni had never made much more as a voice coach than she needed to pay her way. She had made much less than she needed to pay for all the young ones she tried to help. (But he mustn't help Puppchen, she said. That was different. That was wrong.)

He couldn't offer money. Anni would spit on his money … always had, but he could offer to buy Felix's house, which was Anni's only possession of any value. (She never had allowed him to give her anything.)

But what would he do with Felix's house? (No charity.)

He would sell it.

So could Anni sell it. (No favors.)

But Anni could not sell it both advantageously and in time to take the trip with Ernest. Besides, Felix's house was charming. Was it not, Anni? It really was charming, was it not, Anni?
Sans blague
! Anni, dressed to go out and market for them in a limp cotton suit, the pattern smudged where the September heat had perspired it, was proof for Hanno how uncomfortable it was in New York City once you left air conditioning. The whole of September could be hot in New York City. He began to describe September in Bradley for Puppchen, the benign temperature, the cool pace, the trees and tree-shaded roads, the beautiful college with the old pink-brick Georgian buildings and all the new young men spilling out of them. He described the little theatre Felix had done so much with. He told Puppchen how often he had envied Felix his life in Bradley. He said to Puppchen that Felix's house would be the perfect spot for his convalescence now and, in the future, the perfect place whenever he and Puppchen wanted to get away from Broadway. The perfect busman's holiday place, because he wouldn't be restless for theatre there since the college would be more than happy to let him play around in Felix's theatre as much or as little as he wished. He could pick up and leave off in Bradley whenever he chose. He wouldn't be staff, he would be a visitor; he wouldn't be bread, he would be cake.

Puppchen (of course) agreed with him. She reminded Anni that Hanno had had his hemorrhage because of becoming so embroiled in Broadway. She stared down at the wide gold cuff bracelets which had arrived that day. “It would be so good for Hanno to have a place like that,” Puppchen said.

He had imagined her sitting just like that on the low bench in front of Felix's fireplace, while he, in the big chair, read Montaigne. He had imagined them resting in Bradley's merciful sun on the stone terrace in front of Felix's house. (Aie! That stone terrace and what had rested there.) That had led to this: that innocent happiness had led to this. Of course, it had first led to the happiest two months in Puppchen's young life. “I'm so happy here, Hanno,” she had said. She had been happy. She had wanted to stay there and have their own baby there. And now this.

Calm! Calm! He must not lose his head.

This was what he believed he had not done that evening, not lost his head.

When he knew the boy was dead, he had gone up to tell Puppchen what had happened. He had awakened her to tell her … and then he hadn't been able to do it. Couldn't do it. So he had sat with her, waiting for her to go to sleep again (with the help of a sleeping pill), and he had told himself, Calm. Calm. Don't lose your head.

He had gone downstairs again. Look, he had said to himself, the same room, Felix's good room; your emotion lights it differently, that is all. He said to himself, I am the same Hanno. Calm.

I told myself that if I remained calm, I would see that there was no fatal moment, no moment, that is, where the murderer chooses one course or the other. I told myself such an idea was from books. In real life, I told myself, with one hand on the telephone, it wasn't like that. If I decided not to dial the police then, I was not casting the die for a life of cops and robbers. All I would be doing, I told myself, was compounding the—whatever the crime was. (Manslaughter, according to the K.K.K.) I would be compounding an additional something or other. I would only be breaking the law which said that the police must be informed immediately about such an accident. I would not be changing an accident into a murder.

If I decided, I told myself, in one hour, in two hours, the next morning, to tell the police, all I would have done was break that law about not informing them at once. And all I would need to do would be to explain the delay to the police.

I told myself that I was no poor, frightened peasant. I was no criminal tongue-tied before the police. Supposing, I decided, supposing I calmly made up my mind to hide the body in Felix's funk hole? If it was ever found, and why should it be since nobody knew the boy was coming to the house—there was no connection between the boy and myself. The boy wouldn't be traced there; why should he be? But if it was found, I could then make as good a case for myself as I could make if I called the police then. It would be the same case, I told myself, the identical case.

If the body was found, I would tell the police the truth, that it had seemed too good to pass up. Too good! I would make the police feel what I felt that evening. (Police are human beings.) I would make them weigh the alternatives as I was weighing them. I would tell them that being an actor, my job being to make people feel what I felt, it seemed easy. I could make anyone see that, in my boots, they would have done what I did.

I was Hanno Dietrich, I told myself. If anybody could, I could do it.

I told myself I would tell the police that it had seemed to me (and it had seemed to me) that the fact of there being a secret place ready to receive the body was a manifestation of fate's apology for having slipped up when that boy slipped. (It had certainly seemed that way.) Because how many small houses have a secret burial ground handy? Only Felix's house, and it had been there handy to make up for what had happened. Bomb shelters there were in houses, alas! There must be many houses now with bomb shelters, but Felix's funk hole was not a bomb shelter.

When you build a bomb shelter, you get plans from the government. You call in a contractor. You take it off your taxes. Felix's funk hole was not like that at all.

He had remembered, he remembered now, Felix showing it to him on his first visit to Bradley. He remembered Felix taking the spade from the gardening shed and with its edge lifting up the wooden tray with the plantings in it, the wooden tray which was also the door of the funk hole.

“A what?” he had asked Felix.

“English expression, Hanno. It means a place you can hide when you are frightened. I know that this is Bradley, Connecticut, and not Wien, Austria, Hanno. You don't have to tell me this is 1954 and not 1939, but,” Felix had said, “even if you got me away from them, Hanno … even if they didn't tattoo their mark on my right arm, it is tattooed inside. I am still not at ease all the way down, Hanno. To be comfortable all the way down, I still need to make certain that if these good kind people here turn into beasts as so many of our good kind people did in Wien, that, until they recover themselves, I will have somewhere to hide. An old man's foolishness, my dear,” Felix had said, “but for me this is the most important room in my house; this one I am rationally sure I will never have to use.”

Because Felix's funk hole had been against the enemy at home, the potential neighbor-enemy, Felix had kept it secret. Do-it-yourself, it had been. Felix had done-it-himself, and in the whole world only he and Anni knew about the funk hole, and therefore it had been irresistible to hide the body in it.