Kaleidoscope (15 page)

“It couldn't be my father, his name was Charles. How mysterious—and who is
K
?”

“A pity the envelopes are missing. What's that you have from the Cowper trunk?”

“Passports, old ones,” and Kate handed three of them to her. “There's also a book of Emily Dickinson's poetry, a battered old doll, a gorgeous medieval gown of brocade from one of her Shakespeare plays, and under it—” She glanced at Madame Karitska and stopped. “What has startled you?”

“This passport,” she told Kate. “In 1939 Charmian Cowper made a trip abroad, and to Poland, of all places, a dangerous place to visit in 1939 when Hitler was about to invade the country. And if you're accurate about her being born in 1921 she'd have been only eighteen years old.”

“You're kidding,” said Kate, and frowned. “I know she was ‘discovered' at fifteen, singing in a crummy New York café while going to acting school, but
1939
?” Consulting her notes she added, “She made her famous Broadway debut when she was seventeen, in
Romeo and Juliet
, and the critics went crazy over her Juliet. How could she have gone to Europe when still playing Juliet?”

Turning a page of the passport Madame Karitska said, “One might also ask how she got there in such a troubled year. According to this she was there only two weeks and returned to America two weeks later; there's a reentry stamp here.” Frowning over this, “Did she go for publicity? The offer of a role in a new play? If so, the political situation in Poland in 1939 would have quickly dissuaded her. And,” she said, startled, “she visited Poland
again
in 1945—just after the war.”

“More mystery,” sighed Kate. “Let's see if any explanations can be found here,” and delving into the trunk, “Here are playbills. She was Ophelia in
Hamlet
, Portia in
Julius Caesar
, Rosalind in
As You Like It
, Katherine in
Taming of the Shrew
. . . and after that a Noël Coward play, and there are the three films,
The
Duchess Misbehaves
,
Song of Love
—that's where she sang—and
Wild Is the Night
. What are you finding?”

“This,” said Madame Karitska, bringing from Kate's mother's box a snapshot of five children squeezing themselves into a line and obviously giggling. “A very old photograph, and somewhat faded,” she said, remembering ancient Kodak cameras, but she held it close for a moment, not sharing it yet, her glance drawn to the child second in the line: a ragged dress, a smudge of dirt on her cheek, her hair a tangle of black curls.

This could have been me as a child,
she thought,
unwashed,ragged, a beggar child.
The boy at the end of the line looked equally shabby; the two were a contrast to the others.

“There's writing on the back of that,” said Kate, pointing.

Madame Karitska turned it over to read in a childish scrawl, “Me, Kitta Sinka, Gert Brown, Betsy Palmer, Jai Kostich.”
Then Kitta was the ragged child,
and why does she look familiar,
she wondered,
becauseshe reminds me of myself, or . . . ?
To Kate she said, “There are two ‘K's here, a Kitta and a Kostich.” and she handed Kate the snapshot without comment.

“Isn't she darling!” exclaimed Kate. “That's my mother on the left, the little blond girl . . . but what company she kept! Are those two,” she said, pointing, “from Camp Town, do you suppose? I've a 1931 news clip from the
Hopetown Bugle
about Camp Town, and how they were finally trying to clear it of squatters. No doubt for a mall,” she added with humor.

“I think we should see that clipping,” Madame Karitska told her.

Kate nodded. “I'll dig it out in a minute but first I want you to see this necklace; it caught my eye right away when I opened the trunk for the first time. I even took it to a jeweler here in Trafton to evaluate, it's so unusual.”

She held it up to admire. Hanging from a long gold chain was a heart-shaped turquoise-colored stone in which five tiny gold stars had been set, the turquoise framed by a hammered-gold heart-shaped frame, from which were suspended three gold coins.

“Unusual, yes!” agreed Madame Karitska.

“The jeweler said the coins are Austrian, and twenty-four-carat gold, but he hadn't the slightest idea what the turquoise heart was made of; he'd never seen anything like it and offered to send it to Sotheby's in Manhattan, hoping they could identify it, because it isn't a turquoise at all. Here,” she said, and handed it to Madame Karitska.

Grasping it, at once Madame Karitska felt a shock. “Oh!” she said, and then, “Oh dear.”

“What?” asked Kate. “You look weird, what is it?”

Catching her breath she told her shakily, “There's no need to concentrate on this, it's all here, and all at once . . . that passion you looked for, Kate. And grief. And the love of soul mates. Dear God, yes, the love.”

An awed Kate stared at her. “She did love, then, and was loved?”

“By whomever gave this to her, yes.”

Kate said in a whisper, “The lawyer—he wrote later that she was wearing this when she died.”

“I think it was always with her, and
years
before her death.”

“I'm so glad,” Kate said simply. “I don't mean that she died, but she gave so much, affected so many, I'm so glad she had . . . except that's why . . .” She reached for the book of Emily Dickinson poems. “She underlined one of these poems,” she said, handing it to her. “I so wonder what happened to them, and I did wonder why this particular poem. I'll find the news clipping about Camp Town that you want,” and she crossed the room to her folder of sorted papers.

But Madame Karitska, with a glance at her watch, said, “Kate, I really must leave now, you've not noticed the time.”

“But, oh how sad!” she complained.

“Do you mind if I take the book of poems with me? If you come at four o'clock I'll brew Turkish coffee and we can continue this.” And with a wave of her hand she hurried down the stairs and crossed the street to find her three o'clock client waiting impatiently for her at the door, a plain little round-faced woman clutching her tweed jacket. With apologies she unlocked her door, and if she had feared that any impressions might be overshadowed by her thoughts of a glamorous Charmian Cowper the tears in this woman's eyes at once captured her full attention. “Do come in, give me a minute to reheat some coffee for you, you look as if you could use it. You're Madeline, aren't you?”

“Yes. And thank you,” and while Madame Karitska headed for the kitchen Madeline seated herself on the couch.

“You do know how I work,” she called from the kitchen. “I need something of yours that you've worn a long time.”

“My wristwatch,” Madeline told her, and once she reappeared she handed it to Madame Karitska and accepted the cup of coffee with eagerness.

Holding the wristwatch, concentrating with closed eyes, she said, “I feel that you're under much tension and it's reflected in your lower back, which is causing you much pain.”

“That's for sure,” Madeline said, sipping her coffee.

“And,” continued Madame Karitska, “you've a very important decision to make, and I will be frank with you; I cannot say whether it was in the past or ahead of you—past and future can often blur—but it has something to do with your husband . . . his first initial is
M
?”

“Yes,” she said, startled.

“. . . and he is in some sort of legal situation that has separated you—by your choice. So much tension! You are in doubt whether to join him or not; you are each living alone?”

The woman nodded miserably. “I don't know
what
to do.”

“You have recently spent much time in a courtroom,” continued Madame Karitska. “That's very clear. And now he is far away. Do you love him?”

Madeline nodded. “Oh yes . . . it's just—you see, I've always lived in Trafton, I grew up here, all my friends are here, even my mother. I don't like change but suddenly everything's changed, even his name.”

Ah,
thought Madame Karitska, sensing the meaning of the courtroom. “He was testifying, am I right?”

Madeline nodded.

Witness protection,
thought Madame Karitska, but to query this might frighten her, and she was already in a state of terror at leaving Trafton. She said gently, “You have to choose, don't you.”

“Yes. Can't you tell me? It's why I came to you, I hoped you'd help me choose.”

Madame Karitska felt a stab of pity. “No one can help you with such a choice,” she told her. “It's up to you . . . two very clearly defined paths lie before you.”

“Yes, but—”

Very gently Madame Karitska said, “Try to picture those two paths, neither of them easy. Which do you feel is the greater sacrifice? Your husband, or your friends and family here? Try.” And thinking with some humor that this was a day for poetry, she closed her eyes again and recited from memory two verses of a favorite poem. “ ‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth,' ” and skipping to the last verse, “ ‘I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence; two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.' ”

There was a long silence and then Madeline said, “So I'm not the only one to— that was beautiful, was it a poem?”

“Yes, by Robert Frost.”

“I'd like a copy of that,” she said eagerly. “Maybe if I read it again and again I might dare—not be so frightened.”

Madame Karitska rose and walked to her bookcase and drew out a paperback volume of poems. “If it moved you, as I think it did, take this with you, you'll find the poem there.” She opened the book to “The Road Not Taken.” “As a gift. In fact,” she said with a smile, “he may be of more help to you than I. For there's always choice, you know. Limited by character and your history and personality, but always there's choice.”

Madeline suddenly smiled at her, astonishingly pretty when she smiled, and opening her purse she counted out Madame Karitska's fee. “Thank you— ever so much,” she told her, and walked to the door, opened it, and was gone.

And I will never know,
thought Madame Karitska, amused,
but I think—I dare to think she'll open herselfup to adventure, and a move.

But it was nearly time for Kate to join her, and at last she could return to the poetry book found in Charmian Cowper's trunk. Opening it she was not surprised at what she found: she was already beginning to guess, very slowly, where they were heading, and what they would find; she had outlined the exquisite and heartrending poem:

I measure every grief I meet
With analytic eyes;
I wonder if it weighs like mine,
Or has an easier size.

 

I wonder if they bore it long,
Or did it just begin?
I could not tell the date of mine,
It feels so old a pain.

 

I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try,
And whether, could they choose between,
They would not rather die.

 

She sat quietly, allowing the pain of the words to flow through her, and then she noted that further along in the book a page had been marked by a book-mark, and turning to it she discovered a snapshot, faded and familiar. She had just turned it over when Kate knocked on the door.

“Kate?” she called. “Come in . . . Kate . . .”

Opening the door Kate said, “What is it?”

“I've a surprise for you; come and see what I've found, and
not
from your mother's box, but from Charmian Cowper's trunk.”

It was the same snapshot of five children in a row; turning it over a different hand had written, “Ellen, me, Gert Brown, Betsy Palmer, Jai,” all with a child's flourish of decorations: musical notes, figures of angels and of tiny faces.

“The two match,” breathed Kate in astonishment.

“Yes, and the ‘me' in this one is Kitta Sinka.”

Kate scowling over this, said, “What can it mean? My mother knew this Kitta Sinka, she also knew Charmian Cowper, but these two photographs—”

“I think,” said Madame Karitska, “that I'd like to see the news clipping now that you brought me.”

“Why? You're sensing something important, aren't you.”

Madame Karitska nodded. “Gypsies.” And scanning the news clipping she read aloud, “ ‘Too many of the squatters are gypsies and they have to
go
. There have been complaints from local residents of nefarious fortune-telling schemes, and Police Chief Higgins strongly suspects they may be behind the recent robberies on Mountain Avenue, and it is the considered opinion—' ” She stopped. “And so they were forced to go. In 1931.”

“How cruel,” said Kate. “In the movies gypsies are so
glamorous
.”

“A typical Hollywood misconception,” said Madame Karitska. “They're still being run out of towns in Europe.”

“But what is the connection?” cried Kate. “What is the
secret
? The one my mother kept all those years.”

Madame Karitska smiled forgivingly. “You're clinging to preconceived notions, Kate. Charmian Cowper is—was—Kitta Sinka—a gypsy, as was the boy Jai, I'm sure—which means that at the age of eleven she left Hopetown, her family scattered, and at fifteen she was singing in that ‘crummy' café that publicists have described, but singing as Charmian Cowper, and only your mother knew the truth and concealed it. And for this Kitta was eternally grateful.”