The Children's Book

dead trophies on the wall of the gamekeeper’s hut, which Tom had found. Chins sagged, hands and feet dangled. Griselda thought of gibbets. There was a glass case along one wall, full of faces, faces in wood, faces in clay, faces in painted porcelain, some with wigs, some without, grotesque and elegant, sweet and evil, all with that peculiar quality of great marionettes, which is to have one unchanging expression, one character, which can, in motion, mysteriously express many moods and passions, simultaneously fixed and serene, and purely expressive. There were neat piles of the black lacquer boxes in which the marionettes had travelled to Todefright. There were workbenches, with tools—chisels, screws and nails, files and knives—with jars of glue and boxes of silk, satin, felt, floss, illusion, sackcloth.

It was a dark room, but lit by a skylight. Under the skylight, on a kind of throne, padded with red leather, sat Anselm Stern, clothed in black—a velvet jacket, narrow trousers. He was sewing. He had a female marionette bent over one hand, her skirts flung forward over her face, and he was stitching somewhere between her waist and the fork of her dangling legs, which were made of stuffed cloth, but ended in pointed china toes. He seemed to stitch as a marionette would stitch, each push of the needle, each long pull of the thread, exquisitely performed. He said, without looking up

“Wer sind Sie? Warum sind Sie hier? Das Kammer ist geschlossen.”

“We—I—need to speak to you,” said Dorothy. “It is important.”

Griselda translated this into German. They stood together in front of his chair, like two schoolgirls before a master. Griselda’s dress was duck-egg-blue and shining. Dorothy was in severe dark green. She clutched her purse. Anselm Stern spoke again, briefly.

“He says, if it is important, then tell him what it is.”

“My father told me,” said Dorothy, and stopped, confused. “That is, I have been told that—who I thought was my father is not my father. He told me that you are my father.”

Griselda translated. The hand with the needle paused, and then pierced again.

“So I came to see you,” said Dorothy, calmly desperate.

She had not known what she expected this father to do, on hearing this announcement. For a moment, he did not look up, but tightened his mouth and drove in another stitch. Then he laid aside the doll, carefully, and looked straight at Dorothy. It was a studying look, neither friendly nor unfriendly, but searching. “Who are you?” he said.

“My name is Dorothy. Olive Wellwood is my mother. My—her husband—is Humphry. He seems to be sure of what he says.”

“And you are how old?”

“Seventeen. Nearly eighteen.”

“And why have you come here? What do you want?”

Dorothy found it hard to breathe. “I want to know who I am.”

It was wildly absurd to be saying all this through Griselda’s deliberately expressionless, gentle voice.

“And do you expect me to tell you?” asked Anselm Stern.

“I thought,” said Dorothy with spirit, “that if I knew who you were, I should know more about who I really am.”

“Indeed,” said Anselm Stern. The sharp mouth smiled a wry smile. “And in your place, Fraulein Dorothy, I should have had the same thought, I think—so maybe, vielleicht, that tells us a little of who we both are.”

He was silent, for some time, thinking. He said “When were you born?”

“On November 23rd, 1884.”

He counted months on his precise fingers. He smiled. He said

“What does your mother think about the fact that you are here?”

Dorothy looked to Griselda for help. Griselda looked blank. Dorothy began to speak fast, in her normal voice, not the unnaturally formal one she had been using.

“She doesn’t exactly know, that is, it hasn’t been openly discussed. But I think my father—I think that he—has told her what he said to me, because she seems—perhaps angry, with him or with me—she didn’t try to stop me coming here, but we didn’t talk about why—I think there was an unspoken— understanding. I don’t think she meant me to know. I don’t think she knew what to say to me.” She paused. “It was a great shock to me. And difficult for her.”

She listened to Griselda’s soft German, following the rhythms of her English, half a sentence behind.

“So,” said Anselm Stern. “Ich verstehe.”

“I understand,” said Griselda.

“You are an unusually determined and outspoken young woman,” said the two voices, the German one both amused and judging, the English one hesitant.

“I like to understand things. To know,” said Dorothy.

“So I see. Had you thought what this—this knowledge—would mean to me? I have a wife and two sons. What did you expect me to do, when you had told me?”

“I didn’t know what you would do. That is up to you. You can tell me to go away. I think you believe what I say.”

“I think I do believe you. You were born nine months after Fasching. There are many Fasching cuckoos in Munich.”

“Fasching cuckoos?”