The Truth About Lou. Angela Von der Lippe

       From this side, I am told that when I died—that hunched over nearly blind woman, that famous writer in the large stucco house with the vineyard garden up on the hillside road—they burst into my apartment—the ones whose heels clopped brilliantly and in unison against the sun-bleached cobblestones—their hollow insurgency coming, and they emptied all my bookshelves into a huge heap out on the street. One of the brown-suited soldiers paging through a volume of poetry here, of prose there, addressed his officer: “Who was she?” he asked. “Her name was Salomé.” “Oh, like the one who danced,” he quipped. “Yes, only this one was not young and nubile. She was a wizened old hag who danced with swine. With Jews.”

       Death has some dignity and that is to free one of life’s indignities. I am told that one of the soldiers became distracted by one volume and pocketed an inscribed edition of Rainer’s verse, dropping a match that instantly went out, as he left without so much as turning around to see if their work was completed.

       So indeed many of those inscribed words did survive. Those that did not survive the countless other burnings survived the mind. Not unlike the childhood etched in memory. Not unlike the faith etched in the heart. Or the name he had given me in life, because he could not pronounce “Louisa” in Russian, so he christened me with a nickname that sounded like the Russian root word for “love.” The name I carried throughout my lifetime and translated me in death, to be spoken in so many tongues: “Lou.”

       BUT I am getting ahead of myself as I was always wont to do. And though I left behind the things of a child—her form, her virtue, her first love, her faith, the girl in the mauve muff—I took with me something I could not squelch. It was a cry that sometimes woke me from sleep, a cry I recognized as my own but could not reach, could not calm. The cry, almost like a waking lullaby of who I was not, could never hope to be. Eventually it was muted and my pain gave way to that slow dance of the heart that beat and beat past my father and Gillot far into the future toward the dark grace of the one, with hand extended, the one true one, whose eyes would light my way . . .

       INTERLUDE

       A cold mother fearful of her only daughter, a crazy grandfather closeted away, a dashing tutor, a pastor no less abusing his influence. Familiar story. But still such a believer! A spunky girl, wanting to get out from under. A little girl who cries and cries, but doesn’t break . . . wants to keep it distant, order it all, push it away. Hide it.

       I laid my head down into my pillows, safe in my North Country cabin, lit a candle on the night table by my bed, breathing in its citrus melon scents, staring into the flicker of flame as I did nights after writing, spying the light for the next word, glimmering feeling, some odd cranny releasing me into dream.

       My God, what a shroud of secrets enveloped her. How could she, just a child, have found her way through that? All the unspoken deeds, the broken promises. What a stranglehold of secrets. “Don’t be so sanctimonious, girl. You probably have your own safely under wraps, ones you wouldn’t tell anyone, ones you’ve yet to discover.... You think writing can control them?” Quiet now, I’m the one writing this book. “You are, my dear, but not without me.” True, Lou, but I give up. Okay, so maybe it’s our story. Just not now . . . tomorrow. Those secrets—they’ll keep. Enough already. I need to sleep.

       I blew out the flame, the voice inside my head, all those knots in pine walls blinked into dark and turning with a woomf I buried myself in the down comforter, dropping into a deep snore. Dar, my beagle’s sighing snorting body like a fur hat curled into the pillow above my head. Puppy love. Gotta cure him of that. Well, maybe later ...