Midnight Train to Prague - Carol Windley Page 0,33
a fragile, radiant creature of amethyst, gold, and silver.
“Natalia, I have had such a wonderful day. First, we drove to Lake Balaton, but it was windy, and we’d seen all the shops, so we came back to Hévíz. We bought peaches at a greengrocery and ate them in a park. While we were rinsing peach juice off our hands at a village pump, Zita spotted a house with a sign in the window, and when we got closer, we saw that the sign advertised handmade garments. A woman let us in and showed us her handiwork: dresses, skirts, blouses, men’s shirts, Hungarian national costume, hats. I bought Zita a skirt and a blouse, to repay her for the petrol we’d used, and we each picked out a scarf. Zita’s is like mine but rose-colored and embroidered with astrological symbols. The proprietor, Olga, invited us to her kitchen and served us dishes of raspberries with cream and cake, a surfeit after the peaches, but today everything was a surfeit. Olga has fourteen children. Her husband is a cabinetmaker. My God, such lives people have! Why do we get only one life? It isn’t fair, is it?”
“Mother, Julia is not well,” Natalia said. “Dr. Heilbronn is very concerned. He sent a nurse to be with her.”
“Dr. Heilbronn will know what’s best, I’m sure. Hand me my robe, darling. And be an angel and run me a bath, would you?”
“Isn’t it too late for a bath?”
“No. And add some bath crystals, would you, please,” she said.
Watching the tub fill, Natalia wondered if it was possible to very much dislike your own mother. She didn’t add bath crystals to the water. In her own room she lay awake and then slept and dreamed of being in the count’s car, in the back seat, behind Zita and her mother. They were traveling along a country road. Mirages appeared in the sky. Phantom villages, little wooden houses painted in bright primary colors. Masses of flowers colonized the sky. Ghost horses galloped over the plains. The image reversed itself and became like a reflection in water, a phenomenon observed, it was said, only in high summer and only in Hungary. The dream must have been trying to tell her something. In the morning, she went to her mother’s room and found the bed not slept in, the wardrobe empty, except for a satin peignoir with marabou trim. In her mother’s steamer trunk were a mohair sweater-coat and a pair of shoes with a broken strap. She checked with the hotel desk, but Beatriz had left no messages, and none arrived during the day. Should she telephone Herr Saltzman or Sophie Brecht? Ask the hotel to call the police? But wasn’t this the same as Beatriz’s disappearance in the Harz Mountains? Beatriz could take care of herself. And at least she wasn’t alone, she was with Zita Kuznetsova. In the end, Natalia did nothing.
That evening, when she was in the dining room, the count came to her table with a telegram. It read: ON PILGRIMAGE TO ANCIENT CITY OF RAGUSA NOW DUBROVNIK ON THE COAST OF DALMATIA WITH FRAU FABER YOUR MOTORCAR UNHARMED ALBEIT FUEL DEPLETED AT THIS ADDRESS IN KESZTHELY NATALIA TO RETURN HOME REGARDS ZITA.
“What does it mean?” she said.
“I suppose it means what it says.” He took the telegram back and folded it in half. As soon as he got the telegram, he’d gone to Keszthely and located the garage, paid the owner for storing the Bugatti overnight, filled the petrol tank, and driven the car back to Lake Hévíz.
“Why would my mother want me to go home to Berlin?” He ran his hand through his hair. “You can’t stay here alone,” he said. “I’m surrounded by people,” she said. “And Frau Brüning would be alone if I left. She needs me.” “It’s not good for you to be with her too much,” he said. “There is a risk of contagion, isn’t there? No, you must do as your mother says and take the train.” He would drive her to Berlin, he said, but tomorrow he intended to drive south to Dubrovnik and look for Frau Faber and Zita. If Natalia liked, he said, he could see her to the train station in Keszthely. The train for Prague left every morning at ten o’clock. From Prague, she could board a train to Berlin. “Can you be ready by half past eight?”
“Yes,” she said.
The desk clerk told her Frau Faber had settled the bill and had