The Pearlkillers Page 10

  ‘Go back to my job, I guess. I don’t want to. I don’t want to be in the same town with him. I’d like to make a complete break with everything, just go away somewhere. I really would.’

  ‘You could come stay with us,’ he told her. She was touched.

  ‘In a year, maybe,’ she said. ‘I’d love to. I’ll have to get things organized, think about money.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure we could get you the ticket. And Marsha would love it.’

  Marsha wouldn’t love it; she’d hate every minute, but she’d have to lump it. For a moment Carla thought she might take up the offer. She liked the idea, she said, but she wanted to wait a while.

  Her grandmother had left her some money and a few stocks and shares, which she could either save or use immediately. If she dropped everything and just went wandering around the world, she could probably last for three years. And in the meantime, the business she’d built up over the past five years would fall apart.

  She was a designer. She’d started out with the idea that she’d go into textiles and end up with her own range of fabrics and clothes. But she hadn’t been able to fight her way into the profession. She’d done a few magazine ads and cartoons for the newspapers, and got her first good assignment through a friend: illustrating birthday cards. That had led to the Kassels, who ran a toyshop that stocked the cards. From her first week with them she was designing the toys and overseeing their manufacture, and getting the coffee and sandwiches ready in the back room while first Mrs Kassel and then Mr Kassel came to her for advice: crying, telling her that the family was breaking up and their lives were over and why hadn’t they had a daughter like her. The business was booming, thanks to Carla – or, rather, thanks to her work and the Kassels’ ability to push it towards customers with all the enthusiasm they felt for it; she could never have done that by herself. The business continued to prosper while the family did in fact split and Carla had to take sides. And her husband began to feel that she wasn’t paying enough attention to him. It was still doing all right when she set up on her own and it was her turn to cry all over both the Kassels about her husband.

  And now her own business was a success, expanding all the time. She could send in work while someone else held the fort for her. But not for three years. Three months, maybe. She thought hard about where she could go for three months only. And suddenly she remembered the other side of the family: her mother’s side. There was a little gang of great-aunts still living up in what had been her mother’s home town. They’d all be pretty old now. She thought she ought to see them.

  She told her father the next morning, the day of his flight out, that she’d decided to use the next couple of months looking up her mother’s relatives. ‘I’ve forgotten the name of the town they live in, though.’

  He told her the name and wrote it down. He even remembered the right street. ‘They’re rather strange people,’ he warned her. ‘I thought so when I met them. Half of them can’t even speak English.’

  ‘That’s all right. And maybe we won’t like each other, but I just feel that we should try; that I ought to get to know them before it’s too late.’ She didn’t say that – beginning with the break-up of her parents’ marriage – she had started to fear the weakening of any family ties. Her fear might even have contributed to the ending of her own marriage. Families should stick together, she believed.

  When she left her grandmother’s house, the others were already busy with their own affairs and hardly noticed her departure. Two of her aunts had stopped speaking to each other because of what her father referred to as a ‘misunderstanding’. But there had been no failure to understand. The two women both wanted the same thing, that was all: they were fighting over who was to get the Chinese jade buffalo. Carla was glad that her grandmother had given her the special pieces of jewellery outright, with her own hands, on that day of presentations. Twice during the plane flight up north she stopped reading her book, held her hand up and turned it to the side so that the light from the small airplane window shone over the bracelet and ring. She could remember them both from all the way back to the beginning of her childhood.

  *

  The part of town where her great-aunts lived was a place of broad avenues, green lawns and big trees. The houses too were very large and decorated with bannistered porches, balconies and verandahs. The district definitely didn’t look like one where you’d find people who, as her father had told her, could barely speak English. Nor had the letter she’d received read like the work of an illiterate. On the contrary, the language had been precise – in fact, almost stilted, although grammatically faultless.

  She lost her way among the peculiar numbering systems of the neighbourhood. As she was beginning to feel tired enough to risk the embarrassment of ringing a doorbell and asking for directions, she saw a mailman turn the corner and come towards her. He was a grey-haired man who looked as if he’d had the job for many years and knew all about the city. When she asked him, indicating her useless map, he said, ‘Oh, the Countess. Sure.’

  ‘Countess?’

  ‘That’s what she calls herself.’

  There was no way of telling if the man thought her great-aunt was pretentious, silly, or actually out of her mind. He told Carla that she’d missed one of the turns and was in exactly the right spot on a parallel street.

  ‘Just one block away‚’ he said, pointing. Then it was easy. She was held up only a few more minutes, and that was because she couldn’t believe that the house with the number was the one she was looking for; it was about the size of a nice old country hotel.

  She walked down the path, up the stairs to the porch, and rang the bell. The front door stood open, only the screen door was shut. Through it she could see a hallway, a table with flowers, the foot of a magnificent stairway; and an old woman tottering towards her, a uniformed maid at her elbow. The maid reached the screen door first and opened it. Carla stepped forward.

  The old woman held out her arms. ‘At last‚’ she crooned. ‘My dear little Carla. Oh, what a joy – oh, if only your mother were alive at this moment.’

  Carla allowed herself to be embraced, and she kissed the great-aunt on both cheeks. She also realized that she’d been led astray by what could genuinely have been described as a misunderstanding: there was nothing wrong with her aunt’s education or upbringing – it was just that she spoke a different language. She was speaking German.

  ‘Well‚’ the aunt said. ‘Yes, lovely. Did your mother bring you up to understand German?’

  Carla said, ‘No, she wasn’t – I was with my grandparents most of the time.’

  ‘Of course‚’ the old woman said, switching to English. ‘We tried to make them allow you to stay up here with us. But they wouldn’t.’

  ‘I learned French and German in high school.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And I kept it up in college when I was bumming around Europe in the summer—’

  The old woman lapsed into German again, asking questions.

  ‘But I’ve forgotten a lot‚’ Carla went on. ‘And I’m pretty slow. I was always stumbling around, even at my best. My accent was OK, but I never got the genders right. And that stuff about matching up the adjectives in the dative – well, I sort of skipped that side of it.’

  ‘We’ll have to do something about that. But not today – no, there’s no need to be nervous. Now, where is your suitcase?’

  ‘At the motel.’

  ‘We’ll have it brought. You’ll stay here, naturally. I’m your Aunt Gisela, by the way.’

  ‘You wrote the letter.’

  ‘I wrote it. The others didn’t want to answer. Ridiculous. Come in here and we’ll have some coffee and I’ll tell you about it.’ She led Carla through a wide hallway, across oriental rugs, past furniture polished until it shimmered. In a far corner of the room where they sat down a grand piano gleamed as if made of patent leather.

  The maid reappeared without having been summoned.

  ‘Bring
us some coffee, Agnes‚’ Aunt Gisela said. ‘And the usual … sandwiches and cakes.’

  ‘Crackers?’

  ‘Cupcakes. Kuchen.’ When Agnes had gone, she said, ‘That’s the one I still mix up. And she gets so angry if I want to send them back to the kitchen.’

  ‘This is a wonderful house‚’ Carla said.

  ‘Quite nice, yes. We had better in Germany. We had palaces.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Didn’t your mother tell you anything?’

  ‘I was only ten when she died. I can’t remember that she ever talked about her family at all, not once.’

  Aunt Gisela sat forward in her chair. She told Carla that she had come from an ancient, important and persecuted aristocratic family and that quite aside from the significance of being heir to a rich cultural heritage, there was the question of the actual property. Some of the buildings and estates were unavailable at the moment: they lay in Poland, East Germany and Lithuania. But there were others.

  ‘One doesn’t want things to go out of the family‚’ she said. ‘Of course, it’s important to have museums, but it’s better that all those objects should be in daily use.’

  Carla shifted her attention as Agnes brought the coffee. Her aunt said, ‘Would you mind pouring? My hand is still steady, but sometimes I pour a perfect cup just half an inch beyond where it should be. All over the table, over the floor.’

  Carla poured out the coffee and busied herself with the plates. She said, ‘My other great-aunts—’

  ‘Gerda and Ursula. You’ll have to discount everything they say. They’re old-fashioned and absurd. There are so few young ones in the great families nowadays. We have to forgive and forget.’

  ‘That’s what I think‚’ Carla said. ‘Especially now. I wrote you: my grandmother just died. I think we should get together and be friends while we can. When people die, it’s too late. But I wouldn’t want to stay here in the house if they don’t want me.’

  ‘You are my guest‚’ Gisela said. In four bites she made a neat meal of one of the small iced cupcakes. She lifted her hand to the plate again. Her movements were exceptionally light and quick for a woman of her age. And she was extraordinarily thin for someone who was in the habit of gobbling cakes. Carla herself stopped at one and refused a second sandwich. She gave her attention to the family history: where they had all lived, how many houses and castles they’d owned, how many wars they’d been through.

  ‘There aren’t many of us left,’ Aunt Gisela said. She raised her coffee cup and added, ‘As you say: we can’t afford to keep up family quarrels.’

  Carla smiled, but she suddenly felt less welcome. She was glad that for the first night at least she’d be in the motel.

  After their coffee, she was shown around the gardens at the other side of the house. They were bordered by four noble trees and were full of flowerbeds. The beds were laid out in an orderly way that made the whole of the back yard appear clean and regimented.

  ‘This must take a lot of work,’ Carla commented.

  Her aunt nodded and said complacently, yes.

  A little later, as the afternoon light was beginning to soften, she met the other two aunts: Gerda and Ursula. Ursula was tall, thin, dignified and not very talkative. Gerda was bunchily plump, had scanty brown hair, and stared at Carla, leaning close; in both of her eyes the iris was ringed in white. Carla wasn’t sure what that meant, other than that it was something you often noticed in old people’s eyes. It might just be a sign of age, not of disease or partial blindness.

  ‘I see you’re wearing the lizard pin,’ Gerda said. Her eyesight was good enough for that, at least.

  ‘My grandmother’s.’

  ‘I know. I remember. I have a photographic memory for jewels. If we’d been the right age, or from the kind of family that went into trade, I should have been connected with a jewellery business. Yes, definitely – I have a feeling for it, despite the unfortunate family failing. You too? You find yourself drawn to shiny objects and colour?’

  ‘Not specially. I just have this strong sentimental attachment for the things I saw my grandmother wearing when I was a little girl.’

  They sat down on the side of the room near the piano. Ursula began to play. She took every piece very slowly. Carla was invited to replace her at the keyboard; she had to explain that she’d never learned more than a few short works, had been bored by her music teacher, still couldn’t read the bottom clef, and had begged to give up after a year.

  ‘How you must regret it now‚’ Gisela said.

  ‘Not at all. It was completely wasted time. I never had any talent for playing. I like listening.’

  ‘One wouldn’t expect you to be a Paderewski, dear. It’s simply a necessary accomplishment.’

  ‘I don’t’, Carla said, ‘find it necessary.’

  ‘Ah,’ Gisela murmured.

  Disapproval seemed to radiate towards her from all three women. She wanted to get up and go back to her motel and rest for a couple of hours. She’d almost reached the end of her time-limit for chat with strangers. Having to do part of it in German was an added strain. ‘What’s the family failing?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re pearlkillers,’ Gerda said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Did you know that there were such people?’

  ‘No.’ She still had no idea what the phrase meant, either in English or in German.

  ‘That’s right,’ Gisela said. ‘It’s true. Something to do with the chemicals in the skin.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘But I don’t think little Carla is interested in hearing about that kind of thing.’

  ‘Well, she should be,’ Gerda said. ‘It’s a family characteristic. Did your grandmother ever wear pearls, Carla?’

  ‘Yes, she had a long rope with knots between the pearls in case the string broke. She wore them all the time. One of my aunts has them now.’

  ‘She wore them all the time because you have to. Pearls need to be kept in touch with the oils of the skin in order to retain their lustre. They can dry out if you keep them in a box.’

  ‘There are some people’, Gisela said, ‘who have a theory that you should also wear them when you swim in the ocean – to return them to their home – but I can’t believe the salt would be good for them.’

  ‘Most of the ladies we used to know’, Gerda continued, ‘had pearls. And when they weren’t wearing them, they made the maids wear them, to keep the pearls healthy. The younger the skin, the better it was supposed to be. But there are some people whose skin produces a chemical harmful to pearls – if they wear a ring for a while, suddenly they’ll notice that the pearls have shrunk and almost withered back into the setting.’

  ‘Pearlkillers’ Gisela said. ‘Our whole family. You may be one, too. We had an aunt who didn’t develop the symptoms till late in life; then she let one of the maids wear her pearls while she tried to find a buyer for them, and – guess what? The maid turned out to be a pearlkiller, too. We thought that was extremely funny.’

  ‘And very suspicious‚’ Gerda added. ‘Sometimes servants acquire the family traits out of affectation or a desire to emulate. But to be a pearlkiller presupposes an inherited tendency. Doesn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Carla said. ‘She might have had a family with the same kind of thing.’

  ‘Servants don’t have families. They’re parasitic in that respect. They want the family they’re working for. They love them and they hate and envy them. It’s like biographers and the famous. What I could tell you about servants.’

  ‘Has Agnes been with you long?’

  ‘Agnes. That slut. A real camel.’

  Gisela said quietly, ‘We’ve had a certain amount of trouble with Agnes.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She’s been going out with some much younger man,’ Gerda said. ‘A fortune-hunter. He thinks we’d leave her our money. As if we would.’

  ‘He must be half her age,’ Gisela said. ‘There can’t be anything in
it.’

  ‘Don’t deceive yourself. Agnes does it with anyone. She drinks like a fish, and then she doesn’t care who it is. Yes, it’s true. She goes to bars and picks up men and they go somewhere together. Some hotel that specializes in that kind of thing, I suppose.’

  ‘We have no way of knowing that,’ Gisela told her.

  ‘Some of these old families, you know,’ Gerda muttered; ‘the servants even look a lot like the masters.’

  ‘That could be psychological,’ Carla said. ‘Or psychosomatic.’

  ‘Yes. There’s also a word for family relationships that become substitutional.’

  ‘What?’ Gisela said.

  ‘Subst—’

  ‘Yes, I heard it. I just don’t know what it means.’

  ‘Ah. Let’s say: the brother in a family commits a crime. He’d be punished, but then so would the other members – his parents and sister, and so on. They wouldn’t be precisely what you could call guilty, but they’d be associated by virtue of their kinship. There would be a group liability. In German that would be called Sippenhaft. You understand?’

  Carla said, ‘Sure – it’s so they won’t be able to take revenge for the brother being punished.’

  ‘I assume that’s what’s behind it.’

  ‘Primitive.’

  ‘And effective,’ Gerda said. ‘The cruel methods primitive peoples have of dealing with disease – they prevent it from spreading. There are other plagues, too, and epidemics. There are evil ideas, for instance.’

  Carla sighed. The muscles in her neck and shoulders ached from having to sit at attention. She thought of saying that the methods of primitive peoples hadn’t saved them from being wiped out by measles and the common cold; but that would simply lead Aunt Gerda to some new topic. Did they always talk like that – jumping all over the place and never letting up? Or was it just because she was a new face? She said, ‘You know, I think I’d like to go back to the motel to rest for a little. I’m kind of tired out from the trip.’

  ‘Oh, you can’t go till after supper,’ Gisela pleaded.