Garbo’s Faces

a Novel — Part 35 (Final): Denouement

I have come to terms with my Harriet-less world. And with Frau Graessli’s passing last year, I am the last to know.

I went to see the good landlady that summer of 1990, and she, bless her heart, insisted I stay in room 411. Ms. Brown would have wanted that, she said and smiled a sad, Swiss smile.

I told her that Harriet left peacefully and had asked me to say goodbye to her. Not really true, but when a lie can give such happiness, why not? The old proprietor cried a little and patted my dark, thin hand with her pale, tubby one, about as intimate a gesture as I could imagine her ever make.

For the next few summers I returned to Klosters for a week or two. Always room 411, with a little wink and that sad smile. We exchanged memories over long dinners, Frau Graessli enjoying her retirement, she said — she had turned over the day-to-day running of her hotel to one of her many nieces (“I have no children of my own, alas”), and could finally relax, she said. Which was not quite true, for I would often catch her eye following waiters and customers and maids around to make sure that their dance was properly performed and according to sacred and inviolable Swiss instructions.

I think retirement hastened her decline, however, because the last time I saw her, this was in 1996, she was quite suddenly an old woman, her hair, just a year before only speckled, now all gray, nearly white, and her stoutness had turned into obesity. She moved with difficulty, and was sad about most everything.

The following spring, when I called to reserve my room, her niece informed me that Frau Graessli had been admitted to hospital, and would probably stay there for some time. As it happened, she never left. I have not been to Klosters since.

Of course I miss Harriet. Terribly, at times. I have not heard from her in any way, but I believe her still, that she is looking out for me and is waiting for me, somewhere.

My tiger’s-eye has never left my pocket and still winks at me when I bring it out for air. I have flirted with the idea of going back to Sweden to see if I can find the trolls again, but without Athansor — and I have a feeling that he won’t show up even if I drive back to the shieling — I would never find the place. And the tiger’s-eye is enough for me: I will never forget.

The firm is mine now. Mr. Hawkes, a few months before he passed away in the late ’80s, took me aside and told me he would will his by now majority ownership in the firm to me (“I have no children, alas”). I put up less than token resistance against his plans, for I knew he loved me and saw me as a son. I just asked him to be sure there were no other relatives that he should consider. He was disowned by his family in his teens, he said. No contact since. He did not elaborate.

Well, that settled it, and when the will was made official some months later, no one appeared out of the woodwork (as so often happens nowadays) to challenge it. So the firm is mine now.

I have nevertheless insisted that it remain “Hawkes and Rand,” and will so remain even when I’m gone, which may or may not be all that far off now.

It has grown. We’re forty-odd people now, and we could be a lot larger had I had any aspirations in that direction. But I never did. I never really wanted to own or grow a business, I wanted to make buildings. To dream them and to see those dreams come true. What better way can you spend a life?

I don’t actively design them anymore, though. Only in my head, only as dreamscapes with impossibly high structures reaching miles into the still sky, like steel and glass fingers reaching for God. Impossible to build, since gravity demurs.

I think of the Arenshi caves from time to time, and wonder whether Esh still lives there. And about the Arenshi themselves. How did they drill a universe of stars up through that vast stone ceiling? The rock from ceiling to mountain surface must have measured four or five hundred feet in places. And dead straight, each little channel of light. Even by today’s engineering standards that is a nearly impossible feat. And they drilled them over two thousand years ago. Thousands and thousands of them.

Inept soldiers, is what Esh had called them. Bad fighters. That is why they had to hide in the mountain. But where did they come from? And what tools and engineering technology did they use? These are thoughts that occupy an old architect nowadays on his slow strolls though Hyde Park when the weather is not too hot and not too cold (I don’t mind a drizzle, as long as it doesn’t pour).

Another thought that occupies him on his strolls is whether or not he should in fact publish these memories. What good would it do? Perhaps the world should know, he thinks. But then, as often, he thinks, what business is it of the world’s? And so it goes, back and forth amidst impossibly skilled drillers of holes in mountains.

And if you read this, well then you know he decided to let the world know after all, and if you don’t, well then, of course, no one’s the wiser.

© Wolfstuff