one: nesting dolls
Upon Nathan’s return to the rooming house, standing on the front stoop and craning his neck, he squinted at the bright, thick haze above him in awe and disbelief. Within it, a sign slowly materialized, its shadows peeling away. Lopsided, creaking on its chain in the cold, dusty wind.
The Fox and Weasel, the sign’s gothic letters proclaimed above a double-pointed arrow, one arrow pointing at the front door and the other at a second flight of stairs leading toward a cellar tavern.
Which, Nathan wondered, was the Fox and which the Weasel? Or did both establishments share the same name and proprietor? When he arrived earlier, there’d been only one arrow and no cellar tavern, the rooming house’s windows dark as if swathed in blackout curtains.
Now inside, a single, mobile light flickered, resembling a lamp being carried from one room to another, while in the cellar tavern neon lights glimmered. Nathan also heard music, a jukebox playing a scratchy record, the needle stuck in a groove. The few repeated notes sounded familiar, a childhood echo perhaps. A nursery rhyme? (In a cellar tavern?) Or did the name Fox and Weasel remind Nathan of a fairy tale his mother used to recite to him?
He trembled inside his great coat and, straining, gathered his two pieces of luggage, a suitcase and a briefcase. The second item, rather, a portmanteau. That was what on the train the other salesman, Robert Halzer, had called it, who’d taken Nathan’s briefcase by mistake, despite their looking nothing alike, the portmanteau far fancier, though without Nathan’s sales leads, samples, and scripts, testimonials and credentials, his bona fides.
Nathan’s letters from his wife Molly, her news regarding their children, Gina, six, and Alexander, three.
The suitcase and especially the portmanteau heavy, cramping his fingers and wrenching his back. He’d been walking all morning looking for a place to stay. He climbed to the top step. After leaving the train station, he’d gone to the Fox and Weasel first, but finding it dark sought other rooming houses nearby. Now he’d gone full circle, the train station always within sight, glowering atop the hill, cloaked in smoke and shadow. The cold air reeked of diesel fumes, and it had begun to rain again, the raindrops coagulant of cinder, ash, and water: thick, viscous, and gray.
Before he set down his luggage to ring the bell, the door swung open, revealing a wizened woman wielding a lantern, the house’s interior otherwise dark.
“You must be Nathan Grombach.”
Her voice barely a whisper. Nathan had to lean forward to catch her words.
“We’ve been expecting you. Please come with me.”
He followed her along the vestibule. Shedding pools of light, candles glowed throughout the house. The furniture bulky, antique, often covered with drop-cloth. Despite the doors being ajar, the rooms appeared little used with other doors shut and perhaps locked.
The house appeared much larger inside than outside, though the only rooms available were upstairs, Mary said, the woman he was following. She limped, one leg shorter than the other, Nathaniel mused, or perhaps she was otherwise lame, a wooden leg, though her gait so quickened he couldn’t keep up.
Of course, his luggage weighed him down. Also, his hand spasmed and his back ached, making him fear he’d become permanently maimed.
They entered a parlor. Candles flickered along the shelves and mantlepiece. The room cold, gloomy. A fire would have helped, but only dust and ash stirred in the fireplace.
On a narrow chaise longue draped with macacassars, two women perched. They looked identical to Mary and introduced themselves as sisters—triplets—each a head taller than the other and, unlike Mary, showing no apparent disability. Their names were Edna and Louisa.
He leaned forward, the portmanteau in his lap. (Why he’d set it there, he wasn’t sure; suddenly he’d felt very protective toward it or momentarily forgotten he no longer had his smaller briefcase.)
The wallpaper faded and flaking: primrose, foxglove, iris.
The kitchen must have been close by; he heard voices, pots and pans clanging, then crockery shattering. Two people arguing loudly. Then a slap, a scream.
The three siblings paid no attention, sitting like Russian nesting dolls next to each other, rouged, plump, interchangeable, Mary soon joining them at the end of the chaise longue.
“How did you hear about us?” said Louisa, the tallest and perhaps most comely. Though how he could judge her so, he wasn’t sure, unless her added height, in Nathan’s eyes, made her more beautiful, or because he now noticed that Edna, the middle sister, had a mildly pockmarked face, as if as a child she’d been afflicted by chicken pox or smallpox. It was as if, he thought further, this set of nesting dolls, once identical and pristine, endured the fate of all persons, whether toy or human, to age, wither, and ultimately perish.
“A colleague of mine recommended your establishment.”
Though he no longer recalled how he’d heard about the Fox and Weasel. Fidgeting in his chair, the portmanteau sliding in his lap, Nathan set it down on the floor. Still, the sisters didn’t notice his discomfort nor even flinch when a young woman (the kitchen maid?) hurried, red-faced and tearful, past the parlor and up the stairwell.
“Yes, yes,” said Edna, the middle sister. “Mr. Halzer, I believe.”
“You believe,” Louisa mocked. “It’s why we’ve consented to interview Mr. Bachmann. Really, Edna, you’ve grown so forgetful.”
Mary silent, scribbling in a notepad as if taking minutes.
Another woman, older, rotund—cook? housekeeper?—clambered by in pursuit presumably of the kitchen maid. Stopping momentarily at the parlor entryway, shaking her head at the sisters, who ignored her too.
Mr. Halzer, he thought, brow furrowed. But they’d just met on the train, though technically he was a colleague. Might he soon join Nathan at the Fox and Weasel? Swap out briefcases? Perhaps he’d accuse him of stealing his. He couldn’t quite recall the tenor of their conversation other than Nathan’s profound and obvious admiration for the portmanteau, thrice as large as his own briefcase: black monogram leather, polished magnetic clasp and lock, triple gusset design. The kind of object offered as a prize or token of another promotion, Halzer a prosperous, much admired salesman judging also by his clothes: cashmere suit, gold cufflinks and watch, diamond tie clasp. But what possible connection might he have with a rundown, cheap boarding house?
The other “Fox and Weasel,” its mysterious, fluctuating appearance: the cellar tavern and the portmanteau were the connection.
