Midnight Train to Prague - Carol Windley Page 0,21

without her. At ten, the police were notified, and a search party was organized.

“I wasn’t lost,” Beatriz said. “Alfred had sent me a map, showing where I was to wait for him on a path beside a small waterfall. From then on, nothing went as I had hoped. Alfred arrived late, complained about the damp, unseasonable weather, and was silent for most of the walk to the inn where he was staying. The landlady had set a table for us. Alfred drank a glass of schnapps and then told me he could not proceed with a divorce. Klara’s health was precarious, her nerves weak, and his son Leopold and his wife were expecting a child. A first grandchild. His life was complicated, he said.

“‘For a coward like you,’ I said, ‘everything is complicated.’ I reached across the table and slapped his face, and the landlady bustled over and said, ‘We can’t have this, Frau, you must leave.’ I informed her the bread was stale, the meat pies rancid—was she trying to poison her guests? I made sure everyone in the dining room heard me. Then I ran outside and began to walk back down the mountain. Any other man, I told myself, any decent man, would have seen me at least halfway back safely, but not Alfred. The fog was closing in again, and night falls early in the mountains. I went around in circles, unsure of my direction or what path I was on. At last, I reached the waterfall and sat on a rock to rest. Out of the mist a figure emerged. A rescuer? No. Do you know that word for the light just before dawn, when the darkness is speckled and uneven? There’s a word for it: Eigengrau. The gray light of the mind. Out of this light a figure appeared. My childhood governess, Fräulein Hoffman. She walked three times around the rock I sat on. ‘Now you know,’ she said, ‘what it feels like to lose the person dearest to you in all the world. The pain makes you want to die, doesn’t it?’ Her eyes glowed; her hair hung in rat’s tails. She had been so pretty, and death had made her repulsive. I thought: I should at least feel pity for her.

“I got up and ran down the mountain path. The sky began to grow light, and I heard voices. The searchers. They carried me to the inn on a stretcher. Do you remember, Natalia?”

Yes, she remembered the landlady running a hot bath for Beatriz, and she remembered helping her mother to put on her nightgown and get into bed. Beatriz slept for a day and a night and woke the next morning seemingly unaffected by her ordeal. Then, back home in Zehlendorf, she began to say that her fingers hurt, her wrists ached, and the migraines she’d suffered all her life became more frequent, more severe. Natalia learned to prepare hot compresses—but not too hot, in case they scalded—to apply to Beatriz’s painful, swollen joints. Hildegard cooked easily digestible meals to tempt her appetite: coddled eggs; thin, dry toast; clear soup. There were liniments to rub on the skin, herbal infusions, tablets for sleeping, tablets for pain. Beatriz went back and forth from being an invalid to being well. It was, she said, the nature of the malady, whatever the malady was. Her doctors recommended a rest cure at a health spa.

Now, at the hotel in Prague, Beatriz said: Was she intrinsically unlovable? Unworthy? Alfred had loved his family in Leipzig more than he’d loved her. Her parents had scarcely acknowledged her existence. Fritz and Liesel had never forgiven her, but she hadn’t forgiven them, either. Perhaps Fräulein Hoffman had loved her. Perhaps she had.

“A ghost in the mountains, Mother? Is that what you call the truth? When you told the girls at the convent about your governess, I remember, you said she had gone home to Swabia.”

“A happy ending, I gave poor Fräulein. But no, she did not go home to Swabia. That wasn’t what happened. For two years she was my governess. We were always together. Inga Hoffman had the palest eyes, translucent eyelashes, blond hair pulled back in a governessy bun. Her pedagogical methods were unusual. Eccentric. I thrived under her tutelage. I couldn’t sit still for two minutes, and Fräulein Hoffman had only disdain for desks and books. It was true, what I told you and the other girls. We did go on the train to Montevideo and