from a trip to New Orleans—Brigit, I call her. She still lies on my pillow and protects me, in her old threadbare dress, from harm, or so I imagine.
“Do you believe in magic, Doctor? Do you think all these old statues will protect you?” she asks, pushes her hair back from her face, and wonders if some of the little statues are fakes. It would be easy to fake things of that kind, surely. She wonders if the doctor paid a lot of money for them.
But he doesn’t talk about magic or even money, just tells her to go on with her story, the move to Meran.
“I was sucking my thumb—I was a thumb sucker and must have been seven or eight—but I can still see myself standing at the door of the nursery in a red smocked dress and pigtails, breathless, and hear Mother’s voice calling me to hurry up and come along—when the breeze lifted the curtain and I spotted my lucky doll, Brigit, on the windowsill of the big bay window. I ran across the room to pick her up, wiping away tears. My poor brother was even sadder than I was to have to leave the house and particularly the two big dogs. He wept so bitterly.
“Then I had to go and say good-bye to my cousins and my dearest Aunt Malvine, who was so often ill. I remember kissing my three cousins, three girls, who lived nearby, embracing them standing there so solemnly in their pinafores and plaits in the dark hallway of their house, as though I were the one who was dying. I remember the umbrella stand with the canes with funny handles, and the portrait of some old man looking down at me disapprovingly, and the narrow stairs that I ran up to find my aunt who lay on her daybed, looking so pale, with such dark rings under her eyes, lying there on her soft white pillows.”
“This is your father’s sister?” the doctor asks.
“Yes. You see I have always felt so much closer to my father’s side of the family. I take after them in every way. I look much more like them physically than I do like Mother and her family, who are small and plump and have fine fair hair. We are all tall and have thick dark hair, though father has red in his hair, and none of us are good eaters. We are slender, and if I say so myself, handsome, and much more intelligent than Mother’s family—or anyway Father certainly is, and I’m afraid many of us are ill—my uncle, too, Father’s brother is often ill—perhaps it runs in the family—but I was particularly fond of my Aunt Malvine, Father’s sister.
“That day I remember how she stretched her arms out to me and said, ‘Come and kiss me, darling child,’ and I ran to her. When she reached across and picked me up and held me tightly in her thin arms, I could feel her ribs and smell the odor of sickness on her breath. I so hated to leave her and to know I would never be able to go down the road with my nursemaid to visit her in the afternoons. Unlike Mother, and though she was so ill, she would always find time to read to me or answer my questions, or play imaginary games. She let me play with her jewelry and her cosmetics: her creams and lotions—I would put them all over my face, and heap her jewelry around my neck and wrists, sitting at her dressing table.
“I was so afraid that if I left her she would die, which was what happened, of course. I was right. She was such an unhappy lady—her marriage was not a happy one, so she was often alone, and she died very young.
“There has been so much illness in my family, in my life,” she tells the doctor. “Death always seems so close to us, hovering, right here,” and she puts her hands to her chest and coughs, “with my dearest aunt, my father, with his bad lungs, his tuberculosis, his blind eyes, even Mother often, too, and then Frau Z., but I don’t want to talk about
her
.”
She remembers arriving in Meran and being carried half-asleep into the carriage from the station, dark clouds passing across the sky, and the mountains seeming to loom over her, dark and frightening, and the wild
“Do you believe in magic, Doctor? Do you think all these old statues will protect you?” she asks, pushes her hair back from her face, and wonders if some of the little statues are fakes. It would be easy to fake things of that kind, surely. She wonders if the doctor paid a lot of money for them.
But he doesn’t talk about magic or even money, just tells her to go on with her story, the move to Meran.
“I was sucking my thumb—I was a thumb sucker and must have been seven or eight—but I can still see myself standing at the door of the nursery in a red smocked dress and pigtails, breathless, and hear Mother’s voice calling me to hurry up and come along—when the breeze lifted the curtain and I spotted my lucky doll, Brigit, on the windowsill of the big bay window. I ran across the room to pick her up, wiping away tears. My poor brother was even sadder than I was to have to leave the house and particularly the two big dogs. He wept so bitterly.
“Then I had to go and say good-bye to my cousins and my dearest Aunt Malvine, who was so often ill. I remember kissing my three cousins, three girls, who lived nearby, embracing them standing there so solemnly in their pinafores and plaits in the dark hallway of their house, as though I were the one who was dying. I remember the umbrella stand with the canes with funny handles, and the portrait of some old man looking down at me disapprovingly, and the narrow stairs that I ran up to find my aunt who lay on her daybed, looking so pale, with such dark rings under her eyes, lying there on her soft white pillows.”
“This is your father’s sister?” the doctor asks.
“Yes. You see I have always felt so much closer to my father’s side of the family. I take after them in every way. I look much more like them physically than I do like Mother and her family, who are small and plump and have fine fair hair. We are all tall and have thick dark hair, though father has red in his hair, and none of us are good eaters. We are slender, and if I say so myself, handsome, and much more intelligent than Mother’s family—or anyway Father certainly is, and I’m afraid many of us are ill—my uncle, too, Father’s brother is often ill—perhaps it runs in the family—but I was particularly fond of my Aunt Malvine, Father’s sister.
“That day I remember how she stretched her arms out to me and said, ‘Come and kiss me, darling child,’ and I ran to her. When she reached across and picked me up and held me tightly in her thin arms, I could feel her ribs and smell the odor of sickness on her breath. I so hated to leave her and to know I would never be able to go down the road with my nursemaid to visit her in the afternoons. Unlike Mother, and though she was so ill, she would always find time to read to me or answer my questions, or play imaginary games. She let me play with her jewelry and her cosmetics: her creams and lotions—I would put them all over my face, and heap her jewelry around my neck and wrists, sitting at her dressing table.
“I was so afraid that if I left her she would die, which was what happened, of course. I was right. She was such an unhappy lady—her marriage was not a happy one, so she was often alone, and she died very young.
“There has been so much illness in my family, in my life,” she tells the doctor. “Death always seems so close to us, hovering, right here,” and she puts her hands to her chest and coughs, “with my dearest aunt, my father, with his bad lungs, his tuberculosis, his blind eyes, even Mother often, too, and then Frau Z., but I don’t want to talk about
her
.”
She remembers arriving in Meran and being carried half-asleep into the carriage from the station, dark clouds passing across the sky, and the mountains seeming to loom over her, dark and frightening, and the wild
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