Secret Dreams by Keith Korman

It was the
others
who were condemning them to ruin. Frau Direktor obviously had not been in touch with the proper authorities. A series of waxy faces drifted across his mind, colleagues at the Hermitage Hospital, surgeons, administrators, research scientists: they’d vouch for him all right — they’d know the proper steps to take, they’d know the real official in charge!
    Then all at once this silliness collapsed with the flat slap of despair. There was no help for it, no mysterious official with the proper levers of influence. Max’s silver ball clattered around the roulette wheel, hopping back and forth over the green double zero. As the croupier with the pencil-thin mustache called out, Messieurs
et mesdames, les jeux sont faits! Les jeux sont faits!
What rubbish, him thinking he wasn’t part of it. So how the hell were they going to get out?
    A hot cinder burned in young Petras head. Ex-chambermaid! Ex-housekeeper! No more beds, no more laundry, She preened inside….
Intern
Petra. She’d flee the country with Marie. Then a sharp twinge. Alone? With who, then? That old badger, Madame? Ugh. Or the other? The man. Why did his Houdini eyes seem so terribly a part of everything now? She imagined her fingers touching his dark hair while he slept upright on a steamer trunk in the baggage coach of a train. She saw herself brush the locks from his forehead, touching the faded purple scar, whispering, Don’t leave me, stay and sleep, darling, stay with your Petra and sleep, … Then a bitter swallow as she suppressed the whole thing. What the devil was the man to her? She could get on without him. As well as anybody. And with the children too …
    Madame Le Boyau’s mind was the smoky glow of a wick after the candle had been blown out. She had long ago dismissed the idea of fleeing as absurd. She felt too old to go begging at the doors of famous strangers. She would wait with Frau Direktor until the end. Let them take her brittle bones. Better to die dignified, sitting in an old dining room chair, than tremble in a cold, muddy ditch with ice at the bottom, while the whole countryside was out searching high and low, … Better to sit it out and wait.
    And yet part of her wondered how in heaven she would manage cigarettes in the days and weeks following her arrest. She quickly began to scheme this way and that — which merchant she might pay for an extended period of credit, which jailer she might corrupt to smuggle in her Balkan brand. How to achieve it — seduction or bribery? Ah, you flatter yourself,
ma chère
, Inevitably she’d lose a percentage off the top. From the merchant to the guards, they would all cheat ruthlessly. And what if they sent her to a camp? There must be all kinds of contraband floating about, plenty of thieves and racketeers. What had she to offer any rascal in exchange for the simple creature comforts? Therapy?
    The three of them had become transparent. Had Frau Direktor become transparent too … ? And they to each other? When the policemen came to take their bodies away, would their minds return to the dilapidated living room, the familiar hallways of the clinic? Where was Herr Kinderweise right this very moment? And what of her remote Herr Doktor in Zurich? Was either of them alone? Reading in his study? Listening to a patient? Or with his wife? No, she sensed Herr Kinderweise’s thoughts turned elsewhere. And her precious Herr Doktor had long ago managed to banish her out of mind.
    There came a sinking, the air barely reaching down her trachea. The asthma very bad. She heard the labor of her breathing.
    Maximilian, she thought, said, “What’s the matter? Can we get you something? Look out!”
    The room turned on its side. Max’s face peered at her, upside down. He was saying, “Someone, quick! Get me a pillow for her head!”

Chapter 5
The Enduring
    The slowness of everything made her think of dandelion puffs