Sleeping in Flame (23 page)

I had to ring the bell twice before anything happened.

I thought she would at least be startled by my resemblance to her husband, but the 60ish woman who opened the door merely looked at me with her head cocked to one side and an amused smile. She had high Slavic cheekbones

and green eyes set beneath a tightly curled bonnet of white hair. She was fat and barely contained by a cheap yellow and orange house dress.

"Mrs. Benedikt?"

"Yes. Wait a minute. Lillis, turn the music down! The man is here!" The music remained up. She put up her hand for me to wait, disappeared down the hall, and came back after the music was lowered.

Was Lillis her son?

"Yes, you do look like him. Come in."

The front hall was a mess of snow boots and coats and, strangely, toys: plastic dump trucks, "Masters of the Universe" dolls, one of those large Japanese robots that "transform" into something racy and sleek after ten twists and turns of their silver arms and legs.

"Everything was clean in here an hour ago, but Lillis likes to play everywhere. This way."

If she was pregnant in 1955, then the child would have been born in 1956, making it over thirty years old. The toys, colorful and by the look of them well used, took on a foreboding quality.

The living room was nothing special. A travel poster for Greece was framed on one wall, a Van Gogh reproduction on another. I looked around for photographs but didn't see any.

"You like baklava? I bought some fresh."

Before I could say anything, she gestured for me to sit and left the room. I chose a big padded chair, and without thinking, sat in it and leaned back slightly. It turned out to be one of those reclining jobs, and before I

knew it, I was almost flat on my back. The surprise shook me. Struggling to right myself again, I heard a high-pitched laugh that sounded almost animal in its ferocity. Looking for its source, I saw nothing but a fast-moving shadow in the doorway disappear before I was straight up again.

Mrs. Benedikt returned a little while later with a tray loaded with coffee things and a plate of
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shining baklava.

"You're an American? That's funny. I once had an American boyfriend before the war. He was a student at the university and used to come in after classes."

She had beautiful hands: long and white, and tipped by well-cared-for red nails. I watched them while she poured the coffee. A slight frisson of fear walked up my back. Somewhere inside I knew those hands, knew how important they were to her, knew what they did when she made love, knew how she sometimes secretly held them up to the light to admire, as if they were her only small work of art.

"Be careful in that chair. It's a recliner."

I took the cup she offered. "I know. I almost killed myself a minute ago."

Her face brightened, and she laughed deeply. It was completely different from the laugh I'd heard before.

"Yes, I've done that too! Sometimes I forget and go right back in it.

Lillis loves it, though. He'd sit there all day if I let him.

"He'll be in, in a minute, so you'd better know. He looks like a normal man, but he's autistic. Do you know what that is?"

I was hesitant to say the word but did anyway. "Schizophrenic?"

"More or less. Lillis lives in his own head. He looks like a man but is really a little boy who doesn't know how to talk yet. He's very strange. Don't be surprised if he comes in and acts crazy. He _is_ crazy, but he's my son.

You will see."

The tone of her voice was everyday and unembarrassed. She had lived with the problem so long that it was only another part of her life, however difficult. I've always had the greatest admiration for people who appear, at least outwardly, to handle such crushing setbacks with both calm and unnoticed strength. Their burdens would be unthinkable to most of us, and the thanks they get for bearing them is minimal.

"Has he always been like that?"

She put a piece of baklava in her mouth and nodded. "A gift from his grandfather. After he killed Moritz, he called before the police came and told me what he'd done. Said that it was all my fault and the child's. It took me years to remember the whole conversation because you can imagine the shock it gave me. The last thing that little monster ever said to me was I'd better have an abortion or I'd be sorry."

"Do you believe he had that kind of power?"

"Yes, he had powers. I was stupid enough to think I could beat him, but I was wrong. I've been wrong for thirty years." She continued eating. "On the island where I grew up, Formori, there was an old woman who told fortunes by looking at lamb bones. She was never wrong. Do you know what she told me when

I was ten years old? That I would marry a man who was too right for me and that I would lose him because of that.

"When Moritz came back from the war, he told me our relationship was the only thing that mattered in his life. He also told his father that, and the old man hated both of us for it. It had been just the two of them for so many years. Kaspar thought it would stay that way. He wanted to be everything to his son, which is sick. That's all, _sick_. Then when I came along, he saw he couldn't have it that way. That maybe a normal man wants more out of life than a pat on the head from his father. He did everything he could to break us up.

But I fought him, Mr. . . ."

"Easterling."

"Mr. Easterling. I fought and won Moritz away from his father because I had more to give than that ugly midget, and he knew it. That way I won." Her voice was full of
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cancerous disappointment, memories, and acid. It would be that way until the day she died.

I had no chance to react or say anything because Lillis appeared in the doorway.

There are women whose beauty makes you forget where you are, or even who you are. It doesn't happen often, but when you do encounter one of them, it is almost cruel the way they affect you.

I have never understood how any man could live with one of these creatures without going mad with either paranoia or desire.

More disturbing still are the men who have the kind of physical beauty that transcends sexual gender. There were a number of them in Fellini's film

_Satyricon_, and I remember, even as a young man, being made hotly uncomfortable (as well as captivated) by their unearthly looks. What did God have in mind with them? Are they here to remind us of the possibility of heaven and angels, or to taunt us mortals who are limited to one flesh, one physical way?

Lillis Benedikt was inconceivably beautiful. Long hair, shiny and surfer blond, that swept in a frozen curve over a high ivory forehead. His eyes were large and blue, as deeply set as his mother's, only slightly more curved and

Oriental. The rest of the face was long and perfectly proportioned, down to the full crimson lips and teeth white as paper.

He was smiling shyly when he came in -- the smile of a small boy who has been called into the living room to be introduced to company. I was so taken by his looks that I didn't realize at first the fly of his pants was wide open.

Looking straight at me, the smile stayed frozen on his face. Normally, a stare like that would have made me uneasy, especially knowing the man was disturbed, but his damned face was so hypnotic I couldn't look away.

"Lillis, pull up your zipper!" She got up to go to him but he ran across the room. Falling to his knees beside me, he grabbed my arm tightly.

"Do you mind? He won't hurt you. If I try to touch him now he'll only fight and make a scene.

He'll be okay in a while and I can fix it then."

"It's fine. Don't worry. Hello, Lillis."

"You don't have to pay attention to him. He'll sit there and just look.

That's his way of saying he likes you. He's not dangerous." She reached over and picking up a piece of the dessert, handed it to him. He took it and let it drop to the floor, his eyes never leaving my face.

I picked it up and handed it to him again. Taking it, he squashed it between his fingers.

"I think he's the most beautiful man I've ever seen."

"I know. If he were normal he'd have a hard time keeping the women away.

As it is, when we walk down the street they look at him as if they were dreaming. Excuse me a minute, I'll be right back." She got up and left the room.

He pulled my hand to his face and pushed it against his cheek. Rubbing it up and down with his eyes closed, the gesture reminded me of the way

Orlando moved when he was being petted.

"Can you speak?"

Like a fish, he opened and closed his mouth several times before speaking. His words came with the slow, high precision of a little girl's voice.

"_Today I'll brew, tomorrow I'll bake._

_Soon I'll have the queen's namesake._

_Oh, how hard it is to play my game_

_For Rumpelstiltskin is my name._"

Mrs. Benedikt dropped something in the hall as she was returning. Lillis looked fearfully at the door. He had shown me one of his secrets and it seemed he was afraid she would discover it.

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Only after she was back in the room did I

remember I'd heard one of his lines before, in one of my dreams -- "How hard it is to play my game."

"Is everything all right? Look how he looks at you! He's not usually that friendly with strangers."

"Does he ever speak, Mrs. Benedikt?"

"Yes, once in a while. He likes it when I read to him. The strange thing is, he has a very good memory sometimes. Especially for fairy tales. His favorite is 'Rumpelstiltskin.' When he's in the mood, he can repeat almost the whole story from beginning to end. Now that I think of it, that's the only one he ever says."

Whether he understood her or not, something in what his mother said seemed to anger him. He got up quickly and repeated what he'd said before.

Only this time, the lines were spoken so fast and with such force that they ran together in a kind of high-speed gibberish.

"'TodayI'llbrewtomorrowI'llbake . . .'"

I hadn't realized how small the room really was until he started running around it. He climbed over furniture, hit walls, kept falling down and getting up again. What was he doing? The expression on the woman's face said she didn't know any more than I.

"Lillis, stop!"

"'TodayI'llbrew . . .'"

"Please, stop him!"

I tackled him around the knees and we went down together. He kept kicking his legs and repeating the same lines. On the floor he brought his face up long enough to kiss me on the lips.

When I pushed him away he laughed.

"'Is your name Rippenbiest, or Hammelwade, or Schnurbein?'"

"Lillis, stop!"

"'Is your name Kunz? Is your name Hinz? Can your name be Rumpelstiltskin?'"

"Lillis!"

When I got back to the apartment, I saw Maris had done a lot of shifting around to accommodate her growing stash of things there. Although she'd slowly begun bringing her stuff over, she refused to move into my place until after we were married.

Nonetheless, I loved seeing her clothes in the closet, her books on the table.

She was working at her computer. Orlando lay asleep on the monitor, his new favorite hangout when it was on and warm.

"Jesus, wait till I tell you what just happened to me."

"Hold it a sec, Walker. Let me finish this. Don't look, either. I'm working on your birthday present." On the screen over her shoulder I saw some brightly colored intersecting lines, but nothing more.

I walked into the kitchen for a glass of water. At the sink I happened to look out the window down into the courtyard below. What I saw made me run out of the room for the front door.

"Where are you going?"

"I'll be right back!"

Taking the stairs two at a time, I was at the bottom fast. A few seconds more and I was in the courtyard, looking at the bicycle.

You see them all the time in big American cities: crazy-looking things, with every inch of their surface covered with pennants and flags, streamers and mirrors, that make the bikes shimmer and wave as they fly erratically down

La Brea or Madison Avenue, piloted by riders as outlandish as the machines.

Vienna has its share of eccentrics, but not this kind. That was another reason why seeing the
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thing again was such a shock.

Leaning up against the wall, unmoving, it looked pathetically sad and desperate -- a real quack's dream of style and speed. But what kind of style?

Flags advertising milk, a Vienna soccer team, and an old OVP presidential candidate stuck out from beneath the yellow banana seat. Two cracked rearview mirrors on either side of the handlebars, with stickers of the cartoon characters Asterix and Obelix stuck in their centers, impeded any rear vision they might have offered. The bike itself was painted like a piece of furniture from the Italian design group Memphis. One fender was orange, one blue, the different crossing bars each another vivid, clashing color. The tires had been sprayed silver, even on the bottom.

I had seen it before. So many weeks before, on the night I brought Maris back to Elisabeth's apartment. The night we first slept together. Standing there with my hand resting on the seat, I tried to remember exactly what the man looked like who rode it. All that came to mind were his broken teeth, scraggly beard, and the fact that he'd greeted me as Rednaxela. And his smell!

The smell of a man on fire with madness.

"Walker!"

I looked up and saw Maris's distant face hanging out the window of our apartment.

"What are you doing down there?"

"Come down and look at this."

"What's up?"

"Just come."

I turned back to the bike to see if there was a way of deciphering anything important from the hieroglyphics scrawled and glued and stuck on to it. Still looking when Maris arrived, I briefly explained who it belonged to and what that meant. With no further questions, she got down on the other side of the bike and began looking, too.

"Where's the guy who owns it?"

"I wish I knew. That'd make things a lot simpler."