Midnight Train to Prague - Carol Windley Page 0,20

my knowledge of finance and trade. After a few weeks, we went to his apartment, because, he said, he wanted to avoid chance encounters with my aunt and uncle. I told him I didn’t give a damn who saw us together. Alfred promised we would announce our engagement on my eighteenth birthday. When that day arrived, he poured a glass of brandy, told me to drink it down, and then bluntly informed me he had a wife and three sons, one of whom was an invalid. How could he leave his wife, Klara, who had dedicated her life to caring for this boy?

“I told him I had news for him, too: I was going to have a child. I was angry, frightened, and he kept saying he would divorce Klara—he would petition the church for an annulment; he would take whatever measures were necessary. Don’t cry, he said, like an idiot, because I wasn’t crying, I never cry. When, inevitably, my aunt noticed my condition, she was furious, and Onkel Fritz had a sort of seizure that affected his speech, and Tante Liesel blamed me and ordered me out of her house. I stayed at Alfred’s apartment until you were a year old. You were the most beautiful baby, Natalia. Alfred adored you. As you got older, he chose to keep his distance; I think it hurt him too much to part from you. Whenever I met him, he would ask, ‘Is the child in good health? Is she doing well at school?’ Every year I had your portrait taken for him, and he gave me gifts for you: Byzantine icons, Russian nesting dolls, books, a fur muff. Sometimes I let you have these gifts, sometimes not. How could I say: Here is a little something from the father you don’t have? The situation was unfeasible—you can see that, I think—and yet it went on. Then, this year, in March, I met Alfred at the Café Kranzler. We were sitting outside. It started to rain lightly, and the air smelled of violets. I said you had left the convent. He was annoyed and said your education was important. I was lonely, I told him, and needed to have my daughter near me. He placed his hand on mine and said, Things cannot go on like this any longer. He intended to begin divorce proceedings. And what about Klara? I said. His wife would be well taken care of, the boys were devoted to their mother. He was under no illusions; it would be difficult for all of them at first. Perhaps, he said, with a sideways glance, we could start again in Buenos Aires, as a family, with our daughter. With you, Natalia. I thought this such a reasonable proposal, such a courageous and obvious solution to our problems, that I agreed at once.”

She sat up against her pillows and gazed out the window.

“What are their names?” Natalia said.

“Who?”

“His sons. What are their names?”

“They are grown men now. Leopold, the eldest, is an optician. Roland is a dentist, I believe. The youngest, Richard, lives at home, and Klara still looks after him by herself, and I know she must be a lovely person. I’ve never wished her ill.” After a moment she said, “I suppose the nuns taught you to despise people like me?”

The nuns had taught her to be virtuous, Natalia said.

Beatriz laughed. “You are a funny little thing, Natalia. God help you, you have his nose and his eyes and his temperament.” She sat up, holding the compress to her head. “The last time I saw him, before today, was in June, in the Harz Mountains. Does that surprise you?”

“I’m afraid it does not,” Natalia said in a sharp tone she almost didn’t recognize as her own. At the time, she remembered, she’d thought her mother’s sudden passion for hiking in the Harz Mountains had been motivated only by a desire to outfit herself and Natalia in feathered Alpine hats and snug braided jackets and hiking shoes of gleaming leather. Natalia’s shoes had rubbed her heels raw the first time she wore them. A woman in the Wanderverein gave her sticking plasters, which helped, but still she couldn’t keep up with Beatriz, who seemed indefatigable. On the third morning, a cold, wet fog descended on the mountain, and all but the most determined and hardy walkers turned back. By six o’clock everyone had returned to the Gasthaus except for Beatriz. At eight, the guests sat down to eat