Adela wakes late from the floor of the empty Master Bedroom, long un-troubled loosening neck and shoulders sleep after having taken the entire day previous to offload the Koenigsburg hold, hands chapped, fingers chaffed, rung in tens of rings engagement, wedding, formal and junk, mutlifacetedly huge, all Edy’s — she’d given herself the night off, had delayed looting the Israelien’s until morning — though her limbs still a trifle stiff from lifting heavy under the sun that lifts itself, and only the prospect of the same today, more work than Edy and Alan’d ever paid her to do; she sloughs through the tunnel toward the neighbor’s across the way; she shouldn’t be found outside, they’d agreed at the meeting, it took them hours to, none of them should: already the sirens dulled above the earth, whirling aid to the helplessly dead; at intersections, mirrored for safety, dodging her fellow Domestics flailing, hauling their own chests of drawers hanging gawkingly open, an extra helping of horror for Hanna had she been alive, their contents falling, rolling pearls over which to trip and fall, bluntedged baseballcards, compasses without west, leaky thermometers, golfpencils eraserless, gnawed, lipsticks, perfume; dragging to scratch the eyes of the tunneled floor smashed mirrors and glass wardrobes unhinged on screws stripped then spilled, vacation, college and summercamp luggage lugged overfull, footlockers, trunks, suitcases teething zippers, seams ripped, ripping, linnerdance jewelry, earrings for the fundraiser dunch, pesadicht silverware tarnished in disuse, souvenireal porcelain heirlooms, glassily plastic tabletop trinkets, weepy chandeliers fisted then dragged behind to tinkle loud and hollow through their grunts, the imprecations and arguments of Domestics stooping to scoop up what’s been dropped, fighting over whatever remains — Markéta noosed in nine of Mister Rosen’s ties inspired by Chagall, Mojca whipping her on with Misses Diamant’s diamond necklaces clasped to bracelets. Adela dashing through the last stretch of tunnel givingout into Wanda’s wardrobe and, on reaching its portal and instead of meeting with the holy protection of a saint once invoked, there’s darkness, nothing: Wanda’s room sealed with rocks the size of a head, and past them and their mound, weathered cedar 2 x 4s, condemning passage, nailed into a cracked cross — distressing these boards, having been redeemed from Maintenance without benefit of appropriate requisition form. Adela heaves a rock to the side, another, again, tiring, passage impossibly blocked, she stands, making out sound from above — the din of heavy moving, of snaps, pops, hernias lashing out to crack like taskmastering whips, knotted spines — turns as if struck to speed through the tunnel again, through tunnels, tripping over tchotchkes again, furnishings out of any season’s prospectus, shattering the glassware of Moser, touristy Bohemian crystal, plasticpebbled punchbowls and molds of fish for the baking of breads, fukatokugawa vases if that’s how it’s said worth more than they’d ever suspect, coinlike clatter of silver and stemware, shards of plate catalogcarded, and the thick prick of tines underfoot, trampling the greed of her fellow Domestics scrounging, scavenging scraps of lingerie and tracksuit torn, radios, stereos, teevees and unwieldy, doorless microwaves, the contented, contenting like until she emerges through her own portal, toppling her saint, the substitute Anastasia’s accusative, sharply jutting head tearing loose the hem of Edy’s housedress and into her room if it could be said to’ve ever been hers, in the Koenigsburg house where Jana and Veronika are fighting sexually liberated and fiercely over an antique now antiquated silver menorah Adela’s left behind out of the sentimental, a vaguely religious fear that kindles respect, keeps burning the candle of superstition forever — responsibly tarnished, a candelabra smuggled Over Here one branch at a time up nine tushes that once had seats reserved for them in all the synagogues of k.u.k. Austro-Hungary. Adela leaves them tumbling entwined, halfnaked, their nails (sharp, they’d manicured each the other’s) flying to scrape at mouths, at their own images in one another’s eyes, Veronika and Jana who if not twins then should be, scuffling throes on the floor to become bound in the rug rolled over the carpet as if the unifying mummy of a Pharaoh, hardheartened. Adela scrambles up the staircase from the basement amid leaned screens and the photographs of births, bar & bat mitzvahs, weddings in their order, portraits of Koenigsburgs posed as dead as them all, through the hallways and rooms kitchen, family, den, dining, living and dying, through the last hallway that’s also the first, to its door that’s the frontdoor though it faces away to the west, unlocks it from the inside, its key held tight between the winded throb of her breasts, then down the stoop into the frontyard, directly into the floe, the slushy fire — the slowed, thick, freezesearing path of the sprinklers secreted low amid the icicle grass, and on timers.
