SHORT STORY - THE DRAWER

THE DRAWER

author : lisa salje

The cloud moves away from the luminous crescent and a diffuse beam of light darts through the half-opened curtains. It falls onto the chest of drawers against the wall and plays with the smooth metallic curves of the key that locks the bottom drawer.

The drawer... Quietly Gretl pushes back the blanket and unfurls her body, naked and warm inside her crumpled, pearl-grey linen nightshirt. It gleams as it crosses the path of the beam. She steadies herself onto the floor, her head melts with the shadows of the room but her long braided plait drops heavily onto the resplendent gown. At each step her tendons tense up against the skin of her slender feet. She pauses a while in front of the chest of drawers, then turns towards the door. She advances along the corridor, the soles of her feet impervious to the cold that has settled on the black and white marble tiles. From the end of the corridor, the chime of the big pendulum clock invades the silence of the sleeping house. Two gongs. Its fading echo just covers the sharp, split-second clank of a bolt being pushed back. In the bedrooms, inside the freshly starched sheets, the sleep-warm bodies move a little, turn over, then freeze again.

Gretl’s shirt billows in the soft night breeze, and for a brief instant its folds catch the shine of the stars, of a particular brilliance that night. The rhythmical crunch of the sharp gravel under her feet hardly scratches the stillness of the garden. As she brushes along the branches, they catch the sleeves of her outstretched arms, gently, as if to retain her, keep her from harm, then they let her go again as she continues on her erring journey through the garden.

“Tasso, hush!” A brusque man’s voice. The porter pulls the dog by the collar and Tasso dissolves back into the angular shadows of the gate. The porter knows. As delicately as he can he lays his brawny hand onto her sleeve. Gretl lets it happen, as if this act was part of the dream. Her eyes are fixed onto him but her gaze reaches the space between the stars. Not a word is said. Docile, she lets him guide her gently along the path, back towards the house.

The house is in alarm. One by one the rooms light up. Hurried steps down the staircase, hushed, worried voices, fluttering white night dresses and lace bonnets move into the narrowing circle of Gretl’s consciousness. She gradually wakes up to reality. An indistinct whirl of words reach her ears, of which she only catches snippets “sleepwalking again”, “Tasso”, “give a drink”... Her soles are burning, and her body is shivering real shivers of cold and shock. Her mother, her sisters are all around her bed, wrapping her in soft, caring comfort.

Between the agitated, bobbing silhouettes of her sisters’ heads her eyes focus on the chest by the wall on which someone has placed a gas lamp. Her heart constricts to a clenched fist. The bottom drawer is half open, revealing a pile of large sheets of art paper. Drawings. Her drawings from Weimar, the secret drawings she had never shown to anyone! On the uppermost drawing, lit up by the dull shine of the lamp, slender feet strung with fine tendons, sinuous muscles running along the legs ... a woman’s body. Naked. Annabel. Oh dear, dear Annabel...