Free Heir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia Ozick Page A

all at once ruptured. Three weeks after our arrival, Anneliese announced that her father was waiting for me in his study. "Never mind that," she told me (I was helping Mrs. Mitwisser into her nightdress; she had stopped to stare at the crossed threads of one of its buttons), "just go. Papa wants you right now."
    It was ten o'clock at night. I had never before stepped inside Professor Mitwisser's study, even in daylight. Only Anneliese had permission to go in and out, and for the most domestic of tasks: she was to change the bedsheets and clear out the wastebaskets. The place was sacrosanct. Its very walls, with those scores of esoteric volumes arrayed on the newly carpentered shelves, declared their untouchability. I had been invited into a shrine. In its absolute center—presumably so that the books might be unobstructed and accessible—stood a small wooden desk, on which an old-fashioned typewriter rested. I had not known that such a machine was in the house; I had never heard it in use, and it seemed to defy everything around it.
    Professor Mitwisser placed his large rough hand on the keys. "You will assist me here," he said, "immediately." He did not ask about my competence. He merely assumed it, which was logical enough in those years, when most young women without a university degree (and many with one) went to work as typists in offices. This, in fact, had been Ninel's advice when she drove me out of Bertram's life; she herself was a secretary for the AFL. She admitted that she admired my typing; she admired little else. She was familiar with the fierce and rapid rattle of Bertram's old Remington, on which I would sometimes copy out a paragraph from whatever novel was currently claiming me, partly for the bliss of seeing the words fly out of my fingers as if I were inventing them myself, and partly (or mainly) to drown out Ninel's voice, murmuring and murmuring into Bertram's ear. At other times—and then the keys would crack their little whips far more reluctantly, with long slow silences in between—I would be typing a letter to my father at Croft Hall: a letter he never answered.
    "Please to duplicate what I have written," Mitwisser ordered.
    I sat down at the typewriter and took a paper from him. I saw with relief that its language was English: a clear foreign hand. But when I struck the keys only the ghosts of letters appeared.
    "The ribbon's worn out. This one must be ten years old, it's useless," and I stood up again.
    I noticed now the color of his eyes—startlingly different from the brown intelligence of the rest of that family. Professor Mitwisser's eyes were acutely blue, as blue as the intensest blue of Dutch porcelain; they looked dyed: dipped once, dipped twice. I was shocked by their waver of bewilderment—like heat vibrating across a field—and it occurred to me that he scarcely knew what I meant by a ribbon, that the machine was as alien to him as the map of any mythical island. He was a man who had been much served. He was accustomed to privilege: at home in Berlin, at the University, he had been surrounded by a haze of attentive acolytes; his students bowed to him, waiters in restaurants recognized him from newspaper photographs and bowed to him, he was Herr Doktor Professor, esteemed lecturer before the Religionswissenschaftliche Vereinigung, honored by his colleagues all over Germany. And then—overnight—they threw him out. His poor wife, a respected senior fellow of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, her too they threw out—it unsettled her spirit, her spirit was unsettled, she felt herself emptied out, a pariah. The good Quakers had somewhat restored them, true enough, and they were grateful for their lives, but Inner Light could not comprehend Outer Darkness, and besides it was impossible to continue genuine scholarship at an insignificant provincial American college, however good-hearted their hosts were; nor were their hosts to be blamed for mistaking Karaites for Charismites, after all