Heir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia Ozick Page A

through which drifted the silent inhalations and whispery expulsions of Mrs. Mitwisser's breathing, I schemed how I would compel Anneliese to speak of money. Now she would speak of it. I would force her. I would press her with the force of an iron press. There was a thief in that house, and except for me no one who was not one of them: no one who did not belong to Professor Mitwisser.
    Mrs. Mitwisser, as usual, slept late. It was her habit to keep to her bed until the morning's tumult of ablution and tramping was over and the house had grown quiet. I dressed noiselessly and stayed where I was. I heard the front door open and close; from the window I could see Mitwisser stepping into the beginning heat of the day in his fedora and proper woolen suit. He had a rapid, concentrated stride, and the end of the street soon digested his giant's shape; it dematerialized around a corner, uninnocent of some recondite heterodoxy perhaps, but guiltless, I was certain, of theft. He never came near his wife's domain. He had never set foot on the third floor.
    A boy stood on the threshold, a yard from Mrs. Mitwisser's shut-up eyelids: they resembled pale oyster shells. I had by now learned which boy was which. This was the middle-sized one.
    "Anneliese wants you."
    "Good," I told him; it was Gert, Anneliese's most frequently employed messenger. "Tell Anneliese I want her. Tell her I want her right away."
    "You have to get papa's machine fixed. It has to be ready for when he needs it tonight."
    "Tell Anneliese I want her upstairs, quick!"
    Gert's glance went anxiously to his sleeping mother. "Is it mama? Is mama all right?"
    "It has nothing to do with mama. Now will you go? I'm telling you to go!"
    Mrs. Mitwisser's legs twitched under the blanket. Her eyes shot open. " Ach, lass mich in Ruhe, " she murmured, and lifted a shoulder for shade against the infiltrating sunlight. Her lids hopped up and down.
    There was a drumming on the stairs: Anneliese with her troops, Waltraut in her arms, three excited boys stomping behind her like a round of popping ammunition.
    "Is something the matter with mama? Gert says something's the matter—"
    " Was ist los? " Mrs. Mitwisser sat up with the mindless jump of a marionette.
    "I had money in my dresser," I said. "It's gone. Someone took it."
    " Da muss etwas los sein —"
    "See what you're doing to mama!"
    "My money's been taken. I had it right in there," and I pointed a shaking finger at the open drawer next to my bed.
    Anneliese picked out her coldest tone. "Is this what you wake up mama for?"
    "My money's gone," I said again. "I had money put away and it's gone."
    Heinz looked as interested as if a night moth had at that moment unaccountably passed through the room. "Where'd it go?" he asked.
    "Maybe into your pocket," I said.
    "Don't you dare accuse that boy!" Anneliese cried.
    "Not that boy? Then which other boy?"
    Abruptly she set Waltraut down on her feet; I watched Anneliese's fist jut into a small boulder crowned with taut knuckles; but the other hand hung open. Her temples, exposed by the tightly drawn hair, reddened, then ebbed to a bloodless translucence. A shrewdness seeped into her whitening stare. "You haven't got any money at all. It's a story, isn't it? If you had money of your own, you wouldn't stay with us, isn't that so?"
    "It was in an envelope, a present from my cousin—"
    Gert broke in with plain relish: "How much was it?"
    "Whoever took it knows how much."
    "There was nothing to take," Anneliese said grimly. "It's just a story. To make a commotion about money—because you think you won't get paid. Paid for what? You haven't begun yet. Have you begun? What have you done for papa? Nothing. Papa wants you to put his machine in order, and you haven't done even that."
    "I can't buy a new ribbon without money."
    "You think of nothing but money," Anneliese said.
    She was, I recognized, a marvel of cunning: she was reversing the charges; she was accusing the accuser. The hullabaloo was