Midnight Train to Prague - Carol Windley Page 0,25
Sometimes she thought it would be better for everyone if she just wasn’t here.
“You mustn’t say that.” Natalia touched her hand.
“I can’t help thinking it, though.” She smiled. “Tell me about your family,” she said. “Did you have a grandmother who kept birds?”
“No, I never had a grandmother who kept birds, Frau Brüning,” Natalia said.
“Call me Julia, won’t you?”
“Julia.” Natalia smiled. She could see that two people had entered the conservatory and were wandering around amid the plants. The tennis players. The woman tried to entice a bird to perch on her finger. Her dark hair hung down her back in a long braid. Her companion placed a hand on the side of her face; she leaned against him and smiled up at him. This tender scene was visible to everyone in the dining room, which made Natalia blush for them.
A waiter served Natalia and Julia with iced water, tea, and croissants filled with chocolate. Julia squeezed lemon into her tea. Just when she’d felt despondent and homesick, alone at Lake Hévíz, she said, Frau Faber and her daughter had arrived. She smiled. They had done more to lift her spirits than all the doctors and nurses put together. “I’m glad,” Natalia said, and when she saw Julia’s eyes brim with tears, she said she must try the croissant. “They are deliciously chocolaty inside,” she said. “And messy.” She licked a finger and then sat up straighter. It had not occurred to her until this moment that, since she hadn’t expected to need money on the walk, she had left her purse on the bureau in her hotel room. “A calamity,” Julia said, and put her hands in her dress pockets and said she didn’t have so much as a pfennig on her. “Will we have to wash dishes until our debt is discharged?” she said, laughing, but seeing the look on Natalia’s face, she added, “I’m sorry, but it is funny, isn’t it?”
Natalia went to find their waiter, who looked at her coldly and summoned his superior, a stout man with oiled hair and a gold tooth, like a villain in the movie Dr. Mabuse the Gambler. “Oh, you young ladies,” he said. “You never think, do you?” This once, but only this once, tea was on the house, he said.
In the lobby, as they were leaving, she and Julia encountered the tennis players, who had just come out of the conservatory. Julia stopped and said, “Oh, but I do know you, don’t I? What a wonderful coincidence. You remember me, don’t you? I’m Frau Brüning. My husband owns the stationery store on Unter den Linden.” She turned to Natalia and said, “Natalia, I’d like you to meet two of my husband’s most loyal customers, Fräulein Kuznetsova and Count Andorján. This is Fräulein Faber, who is also from Berlin.”
Count Andorján smiled and bowed. Fräulein Kuznetsova said, “Miklós, did you leave the conservatory door open? Because, look, a bird has got out.”
“You were the last to leave,” Count Andorján said.
“No, it was you.” The bird flew frantically around the lobby and then perched on a picture frame before flying into the dining room. Fräulein Kuznetsova remained with Julia in the lobby, while Natalia followed the count into the dining room. He stood on a chair, trying to reach the bird. The restaurant’s manager gave Natalia a disapproving look, as if to say: “What? You again?” The bird fluttered around the blades of a ceiling fan before flinging itself at a high window and tumbling to the floor at Natalia’s feet. She bent and gently held it in her hands. Two people got up from their tables to examine the bird and give advice. Take it outside, it will recover in the warm sun, said one, and the other said it had broken bones and no doubt internal injuries, better to dispatch it mercifully. Fräulein Kuznetsova came in from the lobby, stroked the bird’s head, and said it was a sweet little thing, but was that a speck of blood on its beak? Natalia carried it in her cupped hands to the conservatory. She could feel the warmth of the bird’s body, and then the small weight became limp. She opened her hands. “If I’d caught it before it flew into the window,” Count Andorján said, coming in and shutting the door behind him, “it might have had a chance.”