Kaleidoscope Read Free

Verlag, and with haste, since her two o’clock appointment loomed.
    With a pen she scribbled a few lines on paper, crossed them out, and then clarified them until she had reached a message too oblique to enlighten anyone but Georges—if, of course, he read the newspaper personals:
G,
she wrote, and in block letters,
IN
MEMORY OF ANTWERP TRY KARITSKA, NOT
M. VON D.
” She then phoned the classified section of the newspaper and asked that it be inserted in tomorrow’s edition, and for three more days, and after writing out a check she mailed this at the corner postbox. When this had been done she cleared the coffee table of cups and carried them into her tiny kitchen, where a
tajine
was simmering on the stove. She had time only to stir it when her two o’clock appointment knocked at the door. She opened it to a young woman with an anxious face, who simply stared at her, apparently not expecting a tall, distinguished-looking woman with oddly hooded eyes and a kind smile.
    The girl promptly burst into tears.
    â€œOh my dear, you are much too young to cry,” said Madame Karitska gently. “Do come inside.” For her, she decided, a cup of rich cocoa with a fillip of whipped cream. “You shall have some hot chocolate, which will make you feel better,” and drawing her inside she returned to her kitchen. When she entered the living room again, tray in hand, the girl was seated on the couch, staring at the wall of books, at the intricately carved Chinese coffee table, and at the sun streaming through the window.
    She blurted out, “My name’s Betsy Oliver,” and then—again startled—she added, “I didn’t expect you to look so . . . so . . . I thought you’d look more like a gypsy fortune-teller.”
    â€œLife is full of disappointments, is it not,” said Madame Karitska humorously, and leaning across the table handed her the cup of steaming cocoa. “You are feeling better now?”
    The girl nodded, and Madame Karitska gave her a brief but thorough glance, noting the anxiety in her eyes and the air of helplessness she projected. But although the helplessness might be real to her, thought Madame Karitska, it was either self-imposed or imposed by others, for she was
not
the little brown wren that she believed herself, dressed as she was in colorless clothes. Her face was too strong, and her jaw too firm.
    â€œIt’s my husband,” Betsy Oliver said, and reaching into her purse she brought out a large signet ring. “Mona told me you hold things—”
    â€œPsychometry, yes,” said Madame Karitska.
    â€œMona’s the friend who recommended you. So I brought Alpha’s ring. My husband’s. He thinks he mislaid it, but . . .” She flushed. “I’ll tell him tonight I found it behind the sofa cushions or somewhere.”
    â€œAn interesting name, Alpha,” said Madame Karitska.
    â€œWell, actually it’s Arthur,” the girl said with a vague motion of her hand. “We’ve been married seven years, but lately—well, he’s joined this group a year ago and they gave him that name, you see. I guess he likes it, so he’s kept it.”
    â€œAlpha,” mused Madame Karitska. “A religious group?”
    She looked uncertain. “It must be; he brings home all these pamphlets about righteousness and not wearing jewelry, and the meek inheriting the earth, and the evils of— And I have to braid my hair, not let it hang loose.”
    â€œPerhaps a cult?” suggested Madame Karitska.
    Tears came again to the girl’s eyes. “Whatever it is I can’t understand how it changed him. We can’t go to the movies anymore, or play card games, and he used to love playing cards and movies.”
    â€œDoes the group have a name?”
    She nodded. “Guardians of Eden. They have a big place out in the Edgerton section—an estate, he says— and
now
. . . now he