Midnight Train to Prague - Carol Windley Page 0,38
to the village and stand outside the bank all day, if necessary, waiting for the potentate-manager. There was, Katya said, a telegraph operator in the post office who kept more reliable hours than the bank official.
Katya gave her bread and honey and strawberries for lunch. The bread was fresh, the butter sweet, and the tea flavored with cardamom. She finished everything and rinsed the plate and teacup at the sink. Katya told her the countess always ate lunch in her room and then slept for an hour. In the Green Room, Natalia combed her hair and put on the jacket she’d worn on the train from Berlin. If she left the house now, no one would see her going. She walked down the hall to the grand staircase and descended to the central hall, where only a day ago she had met the countess. Time passed very slowly in this place, it seemed. Instead of going outside, she turned left and walked along a wide corridor. Only a houseguest with terrible manners and no sense of decorum would do what she was about to do, but she thought she had a right to know something of this place where she had been abandoned. She turned away from the hall that led to the kitchen and went down a wide corridor to the left. At random she opened doors and looked in at rooms with high paneled walls and gilded plaster trim. The rooms were furnished in what she thought a rococo style, with ornate trim and heavy carved chests against the walls and desks and tables and chairs upholstered in white satin and pink velvet. In the bedrooms the beds had satin coverlets and lots of pillows with fancy covers. A shame, she thought, that no one occupied these rooms. She turned and walked back toward the central hall. On the way, she stopped to open tall double doors painted glossy white, the kind of doors that were hinged in the middle and could be folded out of the way against the walls to accommodate large gatherings. This room, she realized, was the library. It was both very grand and very inviting. She went in and sat on a tufted oxblood leather chair and then tried a red velvet sofa, where she sat facing an immense stone fireplace with a black wrought-iron grill and brass fireplace tools on a stand beside it. Kindling had been set on the hearth, ready for a fire. She got up and opened the glass doors of a tall bookcase and ran her fingers over the gilt lettering on the spines of leather-bound volumes in German, Hungarian, and Latin. Then she went to the windows, which were symmetrically placed along one wall. She looked out at the gravel drive, hoping she would see the count driving up in his car, having decided that Natalia could travel with him to Dubrovnik. But he would not come back; she would go home alone to Berlin as soon as she got her hands on some money and could purchase a train ticket.
She could see sunlight glinting on the surface of the river. Across the river was the village, where, Katya had told her, her uncle owned a restaurant. Her father worked on the count’s estate. Magdolna’s family raised cattle, as they had for generations.
She picked up a framed photograph of two small boys in blouses and short pants, shoes with buckles. They stood on either side of a man in a hunting cap, with a rifle under his arm and a spaniel at his side. The younger boy had a fringe of dark hair, a mischievous smile. His older brother was taller and fairer. The boys looked like their father, not their mother, but then it was impossible for Natalia to picture the countess as a young mother and wife.
That evening at dinner, however, she found herself gazing at a portrait on the wall of a young woman with small white flowers scattered like stars in her upswept hair. The young woman’s skin was luminous. She wore a gown with a filmy, gossamer overlay that pooled around her feet, mimicking the rosy hints of color in low clouds in an otherwise blue sky. The woman’s dark eyes shone with candor, happiness, intelligence. She was beautiful, formidable, intelligent, Natalia thought, and then realized with a small start that the young woman was the countess.
“You look surprised,” the countess said. “I was a beauty, wasn’t I? My husband commissioned the