Garbo’s Faces

a Novel — Part 30: Harriet

Klosters Platz, or Klosters, is a small Swiss Alpine village not all that far from the Austrian border in the canton of Graubünden. It is surrounded by four- and five-thousand-foot hills — well, that’s what the locals call them, I’d call them mountains — and nestled among them lie her other villages: Klosters Dorf, Wolfgang, Davos, Flüela. She visited them all each summer.

Monstein, perhaps thirteen miles away to the southwest from Klosters Platz, was probably her favorite spot on earth, at least outside of Sweden.

This is the country where Harriet spent her summers and had spent them for the last thirty-some years. She felt at home here and used to say that it felt like a bit of Sweden to her. Even the coat of arms of Graubünden reminded her of the Swedish flag, all blues and yellows.

Here were the many footpaths and Alpine trails she had explored, often by herself, and for as long.

The beauty of the place was uncontestable. The air was as clear and still as the lake I remained within. The grass seemed as green and fresh as when it first appeared from under the melting snow in the spring. Swallows darted about, happy now that their nestlings, turned fledglings, turned swallows, had finally mastered the art of flight. Now there was time again to rollick, at least swallow-wise, which from what I could make out meant darting in and out of spaces proclaimed and respected by lasting or short-lived swallow-agreements. There seemed to be some sort of chase going on and if wings could laugh, these wings were laughing.

I almost laughed with them as my eyes pursued their jest, and for a moment even forgot my mission. Then I looked down again, and remembered: the woman on her bench, now not more than twenty yards away. She wore a brown overcoat, collar turned up against a nonexistent wind. Her head was covered by a grey and yellow scarf, tied under her chin. She wore sunglasses, which did not leave much of her face exposed.

She sat like something discarded, not moving. Looking at God knows what, if indeed looking at all.

She was used to her privacy. The locals knew who she was and — with a healthy helping of that famous Swiss respect for privacy that forms that country’s financial foundation — always left her alone. So she needn’t look up and see who was approaching, if indeed she heard me. She was safe here. Whoever it was would walk on and not bother her.

I left the swallows to their dance and covered the remaining steps to her bench, and sat down beside her.

She still did not look at me. Perhaps she did not realize I had actually stopped, actually sat down, that she was actually about to be bothered. A quiet outrage perhaps, I don’t know, but she didn’t shift her posture, didn’t move her eyes from the spot of ground she seemed to be contemplating.

I took out the necklace and said, “I believe this is yours.”

She let go of the ground then and looked at me. I almost betrayed my shock at seeing her age, its cruel mark on her, its ravaging, but from within my watery stillness I managed to keep my dismay from reaching my face.

I believe she knew me right away. Still, many heartbeats passed before she spoke or made any sign of recognition. She studied my face as if trying to recall where she might have last seen it: so oddly familiar. Then she looked down at the necklace in my hand, glinting — a shy sparkling, but unafraid. Not really happy to see her, but curious. Harriet seemed stunned at seeing it, perhaps not believing her eyes.

Her right arm, held loosely captive by her thick, brown coat, seemed suddenly too heavy for her to move. It took an attempt or two before her gloved hand finally began to make its way for the necklace, but then it faltered and fell into her lap.

She looked back up and into my face. Her hand stirred again and now reached for my cheek. Touched it, or almost touched it. The touch was so gentle as to be almost: I am not sure glove ever made contact with skin. Sufficient for her though. She withdrew her hand and looked out over the surrounding mountains, my presence confirmed to her satisfaction.

“It is beautiful, is it not?” she said.

I followed her gaze, up the slopes, through the climbing pines and onto the bald peaks, green and brown and sometimes black and gray where the rock poked through. Behind them, nothing but sky. Clear, light, and blue. Yes, there was no denying the beauty.

“Yes,” I said.

Then we sat there, looking straight ahead and up and beyond for minutes. I was a still enough lake to sense her gladness, a silent joy seeping through her many coats and rippling my water, curving it into small currents and eddies.

“I am sorry I haven’t called or written,” she said. Very clearly. Wanting to be heard, making sure she was.

I knew it took her a remarkable effort to say this, so great in fact, that I absolved her. When I didn’t answer, she asked, “How did you find me?”

“Athansor,” I answered.

She froze where she sat. Inside: she froze inside. Her posture did not change, she did not move, but she came to a near-absolute stillness within and what played on the surface of my waters now was fear. Her fear, chasing her happy little eddies away.

“There is no such thing,” she said after a long silence. “That horse does not exist.”

“Then I am not here,” I said.

She removed her sunglasses and turned to study my face. Again, I had to suppress pulling back ever so slightly at seeing her unmasked. Age, scarring even deeper in and around her eyes. But my waters remained and they helped. I held my equilibrium, I did not flinch, only looked and wondered at the subtle destruction.

“But you are,” she said.

“Then he does,” I said.

Many buildings crumbled inside her. Many defenses, piled upon older ramparts and shored by years of refusal to see or acknowledge. I could tell, for as they came down other ripples played my water, engendered other currents, terrified and naked.

“Here,” I said, and handed the necklace to her. She hesitated, then took it. For a moment she held it in both hands, weighing slowly, up and down, making sure it had substance. Then she closed her right hand around it and brought it to her pocket. She looked back up at the mountains, or the sky beyond, and remained quiet, fighting the demolition within.

But my mother was nothing if not strong, and suddenly she took charge as if demanding that the universe cease and desist all this nonsense, at least her own universe, for she sat up straight, put her sunglasses back on, and looked at me again.

“Time for lunch,” she said. “Are you hungry?”

“Yes,” I said quite truthfully, for I was starving, my recent breakfast seemingly days past.

“Come, then. Give me your arm.”

I did, and we began walking towards the village.

“And the necklace…,” she said, but did not continue. Maybe she didn’t realize that she had said it aloud.

:

She stayed at the Hotel Pardenn, and when we arrived she asked the front desk if she could speak to the owner, a Ms. Graessli. In just a few moments a cheerful, plump, gray-haired lady appeared from behind the front desk. “Ma’am?”

“My friend needs a room,” said Harriet.

This, I could clearly see, was not good news to Ms. Graessli. The hotel was a popular one, and this was high season for those who could afford to shed the world for a while.

Kudos to her, though. It took her only a second or two to respond, quite cheerfully, “I shall see what we can do,” in that way that means: of course, consider it done. A brief conference with the front desk clerk over the register ensued, then she said, “I have room 411 available.”

“Wonderful,” said Harriet. Then turned to me, “It’s next to mine. Hemingway used to stay there,” she added under her breath.

To this day I don’t know how much shuffling took place behind the scenes at the Hotel Pardenn that afternoon to make this room available to me, and on what amounts to absolutely no notice; but I put it down to the amazing efficiency of the Swiss, and to Harriet’s long-term patronage of the hotel.

“Your luggage, sir?” It was the bellboy, suddenly materialized beside us.

“None,” I said.

The bell boy frowned at my making no sense whatsoever, but his face quickly assumed Swiss neutrality, “Of course,” he said and dematerialized.

“Sir.” It was the front desk.

“Sir.” A little louder, and then I realized she was addressing me. I turned and walked over to the smiling woman, girl, young woman, it was hard to tell her age.

“If you would sign here,” she said. “And, your passport please.”

I patted my coat pocket and was pleased to feel both my wallet and passport inside. I signed, and handed her my blue English passport. “And if you have a credit card,” she added. “For any incidentals.”

“Nonsense,” said Ms. Graessli, who oversaw the proceedings. “Not needed,” she said, looking at me.

“No, no, that’s fine,” I said.

Harriet arrived. “Not needed,” she said too, and I felt quite outnumbered.

The elevator looked old but was new, or very well maintained. Where, by the looks of it, it should have squeaked and rattled its way up to the fourth floor, it silently levitated us floor by silent floor in a strange, almost anachronistic sweep. Harriet led me out of the elevator and down the hall. “This is mine,” she said and pointed to room 410. “I always get this room. Yours is here.” We walked past her door and down to the next, also white, also numbered with finely wrought gold-plated digits: 411. “All yours,” she said and produced the key — which I had forgotten to ask for.

It was a large, bright room, and if anyone had just been evacuated to make room for me — which I am positive must have been the case — there was no trace of him or her or of any flurry of activity to ready the room in what could have been no more than ten minutes. As I said, to this day I don’t know what took place, or how they did it. An amazing mixture that, Harriet and the Swiss.

“You freshen up,” she said. “I’ll come for you in a few minutes.”

I found a toothbrush and paste in the bathroom, then washed my face and combed my hair. A tired face looked back at me from the bathroom mirror, hair definitely graying, thinning, eyebrows bushing up a bit, going slightly wild, taking on identities of their own. But still, all in all, unmistakably me. Then I thought of Madhuri. Gone by now, I was sure of it. I was glad that Attra had accompanied her. I wondered what she would do next.

A soft knock on the door: perfunctory, for she then opened it right away and stepped inside. She wore the necklace. Sparkling against the black of her blouse. Quite happily.

:

“Nachiketa,” she began halfway through lunch — we shared a large, delicious salad. Then she said nothing for so long I thought perhaps I had heard my name in error.

Then she placed her knife and fork by the side of her plate, almost ceremoniously, swallowed, then cleared her throat, and looked at me again. “Nachiketa.”

“Yes?”

She shook her head. “I don’t even know where to start,” she said. “It’s been such a long time. So much time. So many things.”

“I know,” I said.

“I never wrote.”

“I know,” I said again.

“And I never called you. Although you asked me to.”

I didn’t answer.

“I didn’t want to,” she said.

She never was one for mincing her words, but this bluntness did take me by surprise. Still, I managed, “I gathered that.”

“No, I didn’t mean it that way,” she said. Then, “Or maybe I did, but there’s to that.”

I looked at her, waiting.

“Doctor Franzen,” she began anew. Then stopped, her thread lost, it seemed. She picked up her fork and took another bite of salad. I did the same, still waiting.

“I told George about you.”

“Schlee,” I said.

It must have sounded like a question, for she looked at me: could there possibly be another George? “Yes,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “You told me in a letter.”

I could tell by her face that she didn’t remember. “He didn’t believe me.”

“You mentioned that, too.”

“I told him everything,” she said. “Everything.”

I saw where this was going.

“Trolls,” I said, mostly to myself.

“And Esh,” she added.

I nodded.

“He wouldn’t have any of it.”

“But he did believe that you had a son.” It was a statement. I remembered the letter quite clearly.

“Yes, he believed that. It’s hard for a woman to make up a pregnancy from whole cloth, you can verify such things, but not trolls, or talking snakes.”

“Or dead organists,” I added.

She nodded, absently. By her eyes she was still in the past talking to George Schlee, trying to make him believe her.

“What did he say?” I wondered.

“He said, well, he said…,” she said. Then fell silent again. She looked at my face as if searching for clues there. Her eyes looked slightly filmed in the clear light of the dining room. She looked her age, and still, so young, vulnerable almost. “The long and the short of what he said was that he insisted that I see Doctor Franzen.”

“And he was a shrink, I take it,” I said, or asked rather.

She recoiled a little at the word. “A doctor,” she said.

“A regular doctor?”

“No, one for the head,” she admitted.

“And you did?”

“Yes.”

“You mentioned in your letter that he, your friend George, had suggested that you seek professional help, but you said you’d have nothing to do with that.”

“I said that?”

“Yes.”

“George insisted. In the end, George insisted.”

“So you saw him, the doctor.”

She picked at her salad a little more, as if not knowing exactly how to continue. Then she seemed to catch the eluding thought.

“Yes, I saw him. His name was Doctor Franzen. A nice man, but he was not very good at listening. I had to tell him to stop interrupting several times. But in the end I got everything said.”

“When was this?” I asked.

“Oh, Nachiketa, I don’t remember. Probably the autumn of ’sixty-two.”

“And what did he say?”

“Oh, he was dying to say it, I could tell, but I wouldn’t let him until I was quite finished, all the way to Attra leaving.”

“And?”

“And, then he congratulated me on the most active and vivid fantasy he had ever observed in an adult. Those were his words.”

“Oh, dear,” I said.

“And like George, he said that he believed that you existed. He even said he could understand why I wanted to keep you a secret. But as for the rest. Pearly Soames and your beheading. Snakes talking. Trolls. And our hike to Esh. He shook his head a little sadly and patted my hand. ‘Dear Ms. Brown,’ he said. ‘This is going to take a while.’ What is, I wanted to know. ‘You,’ he said. ‘Getting you back to reality.’” She fell silent again.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“What could I say? He was the expert.”

“But you knew.”

“Yes, I knew. And I didn’t.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t?”

“I mean, he was right. It is true that I have always had a very vivid fantasy, or imagination, ever since I was a child. I have always been able to see anything I made up, anything I dreamed, almost as clearly as the room where I was. Sometimes even more clearly.”

“But you knew,” I said again. It sounded a little like an accusation to my ears, but apparently not to hers, for she didn’t take any offense.

“I knew,” she said. “Yes, on one level I knew. But on another level, just next door, and a much bigger door, it was all a fantasy.”

“But I was there with you. All the time.”

“I could have dreamed you too,” she said.

“But you didn’t,” I said.

“And that is what I told him,” she answered. “But he didn’t believe me.”

“You could have called me. I could have corroborated everything.”

“I even suggested that, but he said that you would probably say anything to help me.”

“There is some truth to that,” I said.

“Besides,” she said. “This was something I had to sort out for myself, without involving other people.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “If other people could verify what you said.”

“I know,” she said. “But by this time he sounded so convinced, and so damned reasonable, that I began to doubt myself. What if, yes, what if it had all been a dream?”

“Claire,” I said as the thought occurred to me. “She could have told him about Attra and Madhuri and what was her name, the monkey?”

“Manini,” she answered without hesitation.

“Yes, Manini.”

“I was a strange enough woman already in her eyes. Besides, Claire never saw me speak to Attra, or heard Manini talk. As far as she was concerned, your mother was visiting, and she had brought a snake and a monkey. Well, you and I brought Attra,” she corrected herself.

“Athansor brought us all,” I suggested.

“Claire never saw that.”

“That is true,” I had to agree.

“That’s when I thought about the necklace,” she said.

I looked at the shimmering stone, sparkling in the sunlight. Content to rest on her chest.

“Which you could no longer find,” I said, suddenly certain.

“But I couldn’t find it,” she said as if I had not spoken.

“It was back in India with Madhuri,” I said.

“I looked everywhere. Claire and I tore that apartment apart. Every nook and cranny. Every cupboard and closet. Every shoe, every pocket, every box, bag, even behind all my books. We did that twice.”

“It was back in India with Madhuri,” I said again.

She nodded as her hand reached for and touched the stone. “And that proved it,” she said. “That’s what the doctor said, it proved it. It was all my overactive imagination. He had some long word for it that I still to this day do not remember.”

“They’re good at that,” I said.

Which she didn’t understand, so I added, “These doctors are good at putting labels on things they don’t understand. Long words to mask every kind of condition.”

“Yes, it was long all right. And I was suffering from it. Acutely.”

I shook my head slowly, and looked at the remains of my salad. I noticed I still had the fork in my hand. “What did he do?”

“First I did something that I probably should not have done.”

“What?”

“It occurred to me that I did know snake talk by then, and that would prove it. That I hadn’t made it all up.”

I shuddered a little, knowing what snake talk would sound like to someone who does not know it. “So you spoke it?”

“Yes.”

“And I take it that did not convince him.” Another statement.

“Not a bit. He just made some more notes in the black stenographer’s book that he was so very fond of, and smiled and nodded to himself, ah, interesting, interesting, and suddenly I knew that, God, I should have shut up.”

I had to smile, despite myself. “I agree, that was probably not an inspired move. Especially with no snakes around to listen and understand you and perhaps do what you told them.”

“I thought about that later,” she said. “I actually did. Then again, I don’t think it would have done much good with a man like that.”

“Probably not. So, what did he do?”

“If I wasn’t a complete lunatic in his eyes before that,” she said. “I was now.”

I nodded. “I can see that.”

“I had apparently confirmed his theory or diagnosis perfectly.”

“But you did know snake talk,” I said. “That was something you could cling to.”

“Did I?” She said. “Who was there to know they meant anything, those little grunts and hisses?”

Grunts and hisses, yes, well put. I nodded again, that I understood and agreed. “Then what happened?”

“He prescribed me a medicine.”

“Which you took?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. George insisted. And we had weekly sessions for the next few years.”

“Few years?” I said, unable to mask my surprise.

“It was a serious condition,” she said. “It took a lot to sort it out.”

“And did you sort it out?”

“Yes,” she said. “With the help of the medicine.”

“But you knew,” I said again. “Surely, in your heart you knew?”

“Did I?” she said. “Did I really? And there was no necklace. It was gone.”

“How long did you take the medicine?”

“Years. I don’t remember. Five or six.”

I shook my head again. “You wrote me in November of sixty-three,” I said. “Your last letter. It was very empty. Didn’t really say anything.”

“It was doctor’s orders,” she said.

When she saw that I didn’t follow, she added, “He told me to leave my adventures alone, as he put it. To just write about who I’ve seen and what I’ve been doing. Not to mention that other thing.”

“That other thing,” I echoed.

“My condition.”

“Your condition?”

“Yes, I was still undergoing treatment. Again, those were his words.”

When I didn’t answer, she fell silent too. The waiter, observing our mutual silence, appeared by the table and asked if we wanted more coffee. We both looked up at him from our respective musings, both a little surprised I imagine, and we said, almost in unison, “Yes, please.” Then we looked at each other and smiled.

We said nothing until he had poured the coffee, which smelled very, very good.

“Then George died,” she said, as if thinking out loud while stirring her coffee. “And I believe Doctor Franzen understood that I really loved George. Losing him was a tragedy for me,” she added and looked up at me. “He listened to me, my stories about George, and I really felt that he understood. He helped me a lot that winter, the doog doctor, he helped me get over it. He also wrote me out some other pills that cheered me up a little but gave me constipation.”

“Why didn’t you call me?” I asked. “Or write at least.”

“I wanted to forget,” she said.

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“But why?”

“It was so much easier that way. The puzzle was so much easier without you, the pieces were all of the same kind. I remember you talking about the puzzle, about different puzzles. And at that time, you and our adventures, were pieces that didn’t fit my puzzle anymore. The pieces that made it impossible to complete. So it was much easier to forget. Or try to.”

“You were the one who saw things as two different puzzles,” I pointed out.

“Was it?”

“Yes it was.”

“My memory is on its way out,” she said.

“And did you?” I asked. “Forget me?”

“The pills helped,” she said, a little defensively. Then, all Harriet again, “Let’s go,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

© Wolfstuff