CHARADE has arrived. I found it folded in my napkin at my place in the dining room. The only person to precede me to breakfast was Isabella Krauskopf y Guzman, who sat over her porridge. It is inconceivable that Sefiora Krauskopf y Guzman, long our oldest resident, could have secreted the missive or had anything to do with it. The sefiora has been off the list of solo-ambulants for more than twenty years. The tenacity with which she holds on to life is the wonder of the Emma Lazarus. The direct descendent of revolutionaries who fled from Bohemia to Chile in 1848, "Dona Isabella," as the domestic staff fondly call her, might have been a Spanish grandee of the purest blood. Frail though she is, she still holds
her back proudly erect; her eyes, sunk deep in a face wizened like a bleached prune, still flash disdain and hauteur. What blue-black hair she has retained is drawn back into a severe bun.
The aristocratic effect was somewhat marred this morning by blobs of porridge that stuck to her cheeks and dribbled down her chin, for the senora sometimes has trouble locating her mouth. Although obviously not guilty herself, she might nevertheless have seen someone placing the charade in my napkin. Accordingly, and as neutrally as I could, I pointed to the note and asked whether she knew how it came to be there.
One difficulty in talking to the senora is that she all too often responds with a remark culled from another conversation going on at the same time in her own head. Her eyes flashed beneath hooded lids. "In Patagonia," she said, "there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go north in the winter."
The staff of the residents' dining room, of course, knew nothing and wanted to know less.
The text of the charade follows:
To give my first is sure to give offence, But may create a smile (in other sense). Who does my second doubtless finds his ease, But even if a czar must bend his knees. Together, I have proved to be quite deft At usurpation and at simple theft.
Well, I have not solved this one, either. But at last I have a way into the labyrinth, a modus operandi for finding the minotaur. The charade makes it plain that the name of the thief is composed of two elements, each of which has an independent meaning. Thus, for example, the name Krauskopf is composed of kraus ("curly") and A2»/>/("head"). So a charade based on the senora's name might divide its clues accordingly.
As for my modus operandi, I shall wheedle out of Selma in Personnel a complete list of all residents and staff at the Emma Lazarus. To attempt to assemble such a list myself is to run the risk of omissions. From Selma's list I shall produce one of my own, containing all those names that have two meaningful elements. And these names I shall test against the clues in the second charade, confirming what I shall surely discover against the unsolved riddle of the first. "The game's afoot!"
own feet, particularly in America. And so he found a small apartment for me on West Eighty-second Street, between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue, and he furnished it from his own home, with the old, well-preserved pieces from Nuremberg, now for him too painfully evocative. A poker-playing friend of his was on the board of trustees at the library. For the next nine years I worked in the Searching Section of the Preparation Division, where I was in charge of a mountainous backlog of materials published in Germany between 1939 and 1945—yes, I am also aware of the irony! Meanwhile, with exquisite tact, Kenneth had settled a small annuity on me, my sister's private funds, he pretended, the income from which, he assured me, would in a few years provide the means for a modestly comfortable retirement. In this last, he told the truth. In 1949 I received a card from him postmarked Saint-Tropez. He was on his honeymoon. He hoped, he wrote, that I would continue to think well of him. (I did. I do.) And with that he disappeared from my life.
The Contessa was born
her back proudly erect; her eyes, sunk deep in a face wizened like a bleached prune, still flash disdain and hauteur. What blue-black hair she has retained is drawn back into a severe bun.
The aristocratic effect was somewhat marred this morning by blobs of porridge that stuck to her cheeks and dribbled down her chin, for the senora sometimes has trouble locating her mouth. Although obviously not guilty herself, she might nevertheless have seen someone placing the charade in my napkin. Accordingly, and as neutrally as I could, I pointed to the note and asked whether she knew how it came to be there.
One difficulty in talking to the senora is that she all too often responds with a remark culled from another conversation going on at the same time in her own head. Her eyes flashed beneath hooded lids. "In Patagonia," she said, "there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go north in the winter."
The staff of the residents' dining room, of course, knew nothing and wanted to know less.
The text of the charade follows:
To give my first is sure to give offence, But may create a smile (in other sense). Who does my second doubtless finds his ease, But even if a czar must bend his knees. Together, I have proved to be quite deft At usurpation and at simple theft.
Well, I have not solved this one, either. But at last I have a way into the labyrinth, a modus operandi for finding the minotaur. The charade makes it plain that the name of the thief is composed of two elements, each of which has an independent meaning. Thus, for example, the name Krauskopf is composed of kraus ("curly") and A2»/>/("head"). So a charade based on the senora's name might divide its clues accordingly.
As for my modus operandi, I shall wheedle out of Selma in Personnel a complete list of all residents and staff at the Emma Lazarus. To attempt to assemble such a list myself is to run the risk of omissions. From Selma's list I shall produce one of my own, containing all those names that have two meaningful elements. And these names I shall test against the clues in the second charade, confirming what I shall surely discover against the unsolved riddle of the first. "The game's afoot!"
own feet, particularly in America. And so he found a small apartment for me on West Eighty-second Street, between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue, and he furnished it from his own home, with the old, well-preserved pieces from Nuremberg, now for him too painfully evocative. A poker-playing friend of his was on the board of trustees at the library. For the next nine years I worked in the Searching Section of the Preparation Division, where I was in charge of a mountainous backlog of materials published in Germany between 1939 and 1945—yes, I am also aware of the irony! Meanwhile, with exquisite tact, Kenneth had settled a small annuity on me, my sister's private funds, he pretended, the income from which, he assured me, would in a few years provide the means for a modestly comfortable retirement. In this last, he told the truth. In 1949 I received a card from him postmarked Saint-Tropez. He was on his honeymoon. He hoped, he wrote, that I would continue to think well of him. (I did. I do.) And with that he disappeared from my life.
The Contessa was born
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