The Children's Book

“Eine kleine Frau die ist auch ein Igel,” said Griselda. “Ein Igel,” said Anselm Stern. “An eagle?” asked Dorothy.

“No, no. Igel is the German word for a hedgehog.”

“‘Hans mein Igel.’ That’s a story from the Grimms. He says he played it for her.” She turned to Anselm.

“Fur die Mutter?”

“Genau.”

“So. Mrs. Higgle is Hans mein Igel. I have not played it for many years. The Hedgehog-human puppet is one of my finest, I think. We will find him out, and tomorrow I shall perform the story. I think she must have named you Mistress Higgle for Hans mein Igel. The story is strange. It is the tale of a woman who so desired a child that she said she would give birth to anything, even a hedgehog. And in tales, you get what you ask for. Her child was a hedgehog above, and a pretty boy below, and he revolted her.”

Griselda had trouble with “revolted.”

“So he slept in straw by the stove, and rode out into the woods on a fine cockerel, playing the—I can’t translate Dudelsack.” Anselm Stern mimed.

“Ah, bagpipes. He sat in a tree, and played the bagpipes and looked after herds of swine, and prospered. By and by he came to the attention of a king lost and bewildered, to whom he showed the way, and the king promised him whatever first met him on his way, which was of course, as it always must be, his daughter. And the daughter must marry the half-hedgehog swineherd, for promises in tales must be kept. And she was greatly afraid of his spines, and did not respond to bagpipe music. So we move to the bridal chamber and there in secret the hedgehog takes off his hedgehog-skin, and servants of the king rush in and burn it in a fire. This is a fine scene for puppets to play. And then he is wholly human, but black as coal. So they wash him, and dress him as a prince, and the princess runs into his arms and loves him—very much—mightily—and all is well. I think, Dorothy, your mother was thinking of the half-alien child, and the hedgehog—who is a trickster, a clever Hans, a German character—when she named your Mistress Higgle. You are the much-desired child who is half from somewhere else, a different child.

“In this story she sent, someone has stolen the hedgehog-skin. In this story, she needs it, it is magic, it makes her smaller, or invisible.”

Anselm Stern found out the old puppets from “Hans mein Igel,” the spiny-coated changeling, the prancing red cockerel with his golden comb, the mother with her face that perpetually wept, two painted tears on her wooden cheek—first, because she had no child, and then, because her child was uncanny. A few days later he put on the old play, with Wolfgang as his assistant. This play was not silent—the two men spoke all the parts, and Wolfgang played a tripping tune on a primitive bagpipe. They all came—Joachim and Karl, Toby and Griselda, Leon and Dorothy. Dorothy had noticed that the artist was quietly disappointed if she was not at every performance in the Spiegelgarten. Light glistened on the half-hedgehog’s lively spines. She thought, I shall never pass my matriculation, if I spend all my time in here, watching dolls dance. And yet, as the hedgehog came blackly out of the thorns, like a butterfly out of a chrysalis, and was washed white so he could bed his princess, she was moved to tears, she felt liquid inside, she was pulled about like tides by the moon. She had not bargained for all this.

Wolfgang, a few days later, caught at Griselda’s sleeve as she was leaving the lunch table in the Pension Susskind.

“A word with you—” he said, in English. “Some quiet place,” he said.

Griselda felt his fingers electric. She had been aware that he watched her—her skin was warmer in his searching stare. He was both a mocking and a serious young man. He made wry jokes about Bavarians and beer, about the Kaiser and his wardrobes full of uniforms, about King Edward in England, his harem of ladies, and the Boers suffering stolidly in South Africa. He was at home in this strange new world of satire, skits, innuendo and sudden plangent sentiment. He watched her, Griselda. When he saw she saw him watching, he curled his wide mouth in a deprecatory grin, and looked away.

She followed him out into the garden, and they sat at a table, under a vine sprawling over an arbour.

“I want you to see this,” he said.

He handed her a large sketch-book. It was filled with drawings of female heads, very occasionally with bodies attached to them, seen from every angle, with every possible expression. They were done in charcoal, in pencil, in chalk, in ink.

They were herself and Dorothy. They studied their bones, their hair, their attitudes, their habits of mind.

For a moment, Griselda thought Wolfgang had done them. Then he said

“What have you done to my father? He is verzaubert—bewitched. Is he in love with you? People have been speaking—to me and my mother. He has never been like this, never. Have you made him mad?”

Griselda stared at him in horror.

“It isn’t that, at all. Not at all.” She thought furiously. “I think you must ask him.”

“How can I? He is my father. He has always been—rather serious, a little distant. How can I ask him if he is in love with one or two English girls? People have said—spiteful—things to my mother.”

He looked gloomily at the table.

“We want you to let him go,” he said, slowly.

“I only translate—”

“So it is the other, the Dorothy—”

Furies flapped in Griselda’s head. The secret was not hers. She said “There is a secret. It is not mine to tell you.”

“What have you done?”

“Listen,” said Griselda. “It is their secret. If I tell you, it will only be so as to stop you—thinking wrong things. It is a secret.”

“So?”