He couldn’t carve a magic key into Nastaran’s secret garden. He couldn’t open any golden walnut that might harbor such a key. But perhaps Dirk could make a figure that could open some ordinary walnut. It was the possibility of hope that mattered, he knew.
He took his hand from her lap and put it in his pocket. He felt the knife with the carved figure squatting on the blunt knoll of its handle. He imagined that it could speak, but the language it talked in—some obscure tongue, a lingua hellenica, or maybe a lingua magicis—how could he know that argot?
54.
Then Nastaran took him to the small office with the dusty drapes and Pfeiffer’s bookkeeping ledgers. She opened a locked drawer and withdrew from a sack of pounded grey leather a healthy fistful of coins. She sorted out a few gulden and a scraping of florins. She wrapped them in a cloth and handed the parcel to Dirk. He wondered if he was being asked to find other employment.
“You need to take the boys to visit their uncle in Oberteuringen,” she told him.
“I haven’t heard about that from Herr Pfeiffer,” he replied.
“At this time of year, their father usually does it, but”—she looked about with a studied theatricality he hadn’t seen before in her, as if to suggest she was just noticing—“he isn’t here.” She shrugged. “If we wait till he bothers to recover and then to return, the snow may come and the chance disappear. Their uncle is expecting his nephews, and I have written to say you will arrive with them within the week.”
Dirk hadn’t been made head of household in absentia. He had no authority to protest. Nonetheless, he raised what few objections he could come up with.
“Herr Pfeiffer wanted me to stay and keep watch on—” But he wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence respectfully.
“On the household,” she answered for him. “But with the boys out of the house, no harm can come to them.”
“You pace in your sleep,” he said forthrightly. “You could come to harm.”
“Their father can make the trip there and back in one day if he starts early. It isn’t far. Though usually he spends the night with his brother. In any case, I shall ask the laundry maid to stay the night here.”
“But—” He was sputtery. “I was told you never wanted another female overnight in the house—”
“Not while Gerwig is home, of course not. Unseemly. But if the house is empty of men, that caution is lifted. You weren’t hired to defy me, Dirk.”
One more try. “I couldn’t find that place on my own. You forget I’m not from around here.”
She stood and closed the drawer with her hip. It was a violent gesture. “I already asked your friend, that fellow who took us to see the dream doctor, if he had time to accompany you. It seems he is taking a term off from his studies. He has told me he is more than willing to make the trip with you.”
“When did you see him?” Dirk found himself feeling outraged.
“I sent a note to that Doktor, who must have sent it on to the Gasthof zum B?ren, where the young scholar is staying. Right in the Marktplatz. He came to visit me at my request yesterday when you were out with the boys.”
Dirk could hardly think of what to say. She hadn’t spoken to Dirk for the first ten days of his residency in her home, and now she was inviting Felix Stahlbaum to call on her when her husband was away and her family otherwise engaged? This was novelty indeed, this was alarming.
“We met in the garden,” she said, as if she were reading his thoughts. “For only a few moments. He was not hard persuaded. Between the two of you, there must be enough language to ask for directions. It isn’t very far.”
Dirk didn’t know how to think about that. “I have never had children of my own. You’d entrust me with them?”
“Has my husband been wrong to entrust them with you so far?”
“Well—luck has been in attendance.”
“They adore you,” she said. “Haven’t you noticed?”
“I amuse them,” he said.
“When they are playing their games, as in the garden the other day—I would want to be there with them. Back in childhood, or so the doctor says. But even if I could get there, somehow, could I shrink in age and stature, I still wouldn’t find them in their childhoods. For when they play, they aren’t even in their own childhoods—they are some other where. Someplace else. In the game you set for them to play. The bridge, the stream, the other place you invented for them. If I wanted to join them, I’d have to go to the size of a mouse, and become one of their toys—for they live at the scale of their toys. They are twice removed from us, you see. Contact is impossible. But you have their confidence.”
One last try. “I really don’t think that Felix would take time away from his studies to accompany me on a trip like this. We hardly know each other, and he is committed to learning . . .”
“You’d be surprised, Herr Drosselmeier.” Her use of his surname was an assault. “Your university friend is compliant and generous. And up for adventure. He said for you to call for him at the Gasthof zum B?ren. He’ll be expecting you.”
He was angry, shut out. She turned away from him. What could he add about dislocation—he’d never belonged in the first place, really. He knew that.
55.
The chatelaine of the gasthof directed Dirk to a coffeehouse in a nearby lane. Felix looked up from the table in the corner as Dirk entered. He had commandeered the one spot in the room that daylight could reach at this hour; he sat in a scatter of dust-motes. A much-read journal was folded under his elbow. It was as if he had been expecting Dirk that very moment. A Viennese-style pastry lay half-uneaten on a plate. Felix pushed a fork toward Dirk as he claimed the chair opposite.
“We’re to have a lark, I understand,” said Felix.
“Your studies will suffer.”
“I had already written my professors and advocates not to expect me back for the rest of the term. Family matters, I told them.”
“But is your family in need of your attentions?”
“I’d have no earthly idea. Generally, we aren’t in communication.” He waved an attendant for another coffee. “The truth is, I’ve become uncertain about the direction of my vitalities. Music and scholarship are rewarding but somehow, I fear, unsatisfactory. I’d rather discover what hasn’t yet been charted on the ruled lines of music manuscript pages or in the venerable bleatings of sages. Something of my own.”
“And you intend to learn something original by chaperoning two young boys to visit their uncle in the mountains?”
“It’s over the next mountain, isn’t it, where adventure always seems to begin? It’s always off a little way. Rather than, say, starting with two fellows sitting in a coffeehouse waiting for the pretty maiden to arrive—ah, there you are, Fr?ulein. What’s your name, then, when you’re off duty.”
“My name is spoken for,” she replied pertly enough.
“Well, Miss Spokenfor, may I call you Engelbertine, which is a name nearly as pretty as you, you bright angel?”
“Would there be anything else I might supply.” She put her hands on her apron, flat against the curve of her belly. It was a protective stance of decorum that had the effect, unintended or perhaps not, of straining the fabric of the upper apron against her bosom.