Midnight Train to Prague - Carol Windley Page 0,24

taller, they tell me, although I’m as tall as I want to be. Too much height in a woman can be a detriment. Tomorrow afternoon I’m booked for a mud bath. They slather mud from the lake on you from head to toe and wrap you in wet cloths and you sit, immobilized and sweating like a pig, for forty minutes. There are also . . . ,” Beatriz said, leaning closer to Frau Brüning, “there are also internal mud treatments. They put the mud you-know-where. For gynecological purposes.”

“Oh my goodness,” Frau Brüning said.

“So far I, myself, haven’t had this . . . application—but it might be interesting to try.”

Frau Brüning stared at her uneaten breakfast for a moment. She asked whether Frau Faber and Fräulein Faber would like to walk with her one day. It would have to be in the morning, before it got hot, though, she added, and Beatriz said she also found the heat debilitating and suggested Frau Brüning might enjoy swimming. “The water would do you good, even if you just splashed around. Although I seem to spend all my time in water, and it’s very hard on the hands.”

“I’ve been told swimming would be too strenuous,” Frau Brüning said. “And my husband, Herr Brüning, made me promise not to exert myself.”

“Natalia goes for a walk every day while I’m having my treatments. Why don’t you two go together?”

“I would like that,” Frau Brüning said. “Perhaps tomorrow?”

Several days passed before Frau Brüning felt well enough to join Natalia on a stroll along a flower-lined path, past the rear of the Hotel Meunier, where they saw a man unloading wooden crates from a horse-drawn van, while a cook in an apron stood with his hands on his hips and shouted at him to watch what he was doing, four dozen cracked eggs were of no use to him. Natalia looked at Frau Brüning, and they laughed. Frau Brüning linked her arm with Natalia’s as they crossed the road to a footpath that led to a tennis court, where a fast, competitive game was going on between a man and a woman. The woman was a better player than the man, Frau Brüning said. He kept having to retrieve the ball when he missed a serve, and the woman stood with one hand on her hip, waiting for him to throw the ball back to her side of the court. Frau Brüning said he reminded her of someone, but she couldn’t think whom. When they resumed their walk, she suddenly began to run. She stopped and bent over, pressing a hand to her ribs, and said she had a pain that came and went and meant nothing but was a nuisance while it lasted. “You would never believe it,” she said, “but I used to be good at sports, especially tennis. I loved tennis.”

“You will play tennis again, Frau Brüning,” Natalia said. “I’m sure of it. But for now, let’s get out of the sun.” She could see the Hotel Meunier through the trees and suggested they have tea at the restaurant.

They were given a table beside the glass wall of a conservatory filled with lush green plants and darting, brightly colored birds. Frau Brüning shivered and said she did not like to see birds in captivity. Her grandmother had kept cats and caged birds in the same household, and as a child she had lived in terror of seeing a murder take place. This had never occurred, or if it had, she had not witnessed it, but she still couldn’t bear to be in an enclosed space with a bird. Even a little bird, a budgerigar. Her father was a Lutheran pastor, her mother taught piano, and she had an older brother, a schoolteacher in Charlottenburg. She and Heinrich lived near her family. When she was seven, she said, her parents had given her a puppy that had a bad habit of chewing on the furniture. Her father had said, let the little rascal eat the table, if it makes him happy; of what importance is a table, in the scheme of things? Her husband, Heinrich, was a good man, but as far as he was concerned, if a dog chewed the furniture, the dog would have to go. She and Heinrich had been married for two years. They wanted a family. Heinrich had borrowed money to finance her stay at Lake Hévíz; the loan would have to be repaid, whether her health improved or not.