Midnight Train to Prague - Carol Windley Page 0,41

Zita and Beatriz were guests at a former leprosarium overlooking the Neretva Valley, a hundred kilometers from Dubrovnik. The leprosarium, constructed in 1905, at a time when the dread disease appeared in Croatia before disappearing back to wherever it came from, now offered hospitality to wayfarers like her and Beatriz. So Zita wrote, in very small handwriting. A Franciscan priest cooked for them, and they dined on a terrace overlooking the valley. Miklós, do you remember the sunflowers? Beatriz and I are like that, clinging to the good earth, the seasons. We are like moss on a stone in the shadow of a sheltering tree.

A leprosarium, Natalia thought. How like Beatriz to choose for herself the rarest, most unusual experience available. “At least they’re alive,” she said, and put the postcard on the table, beside a dollop of honey in which a satiated housefly crawled. The count swatted the fly with a rolled-up newspaper. Natalia asked him if Zita had given a telephone number or address where she and Beatriz could be reached. “No, that would be much too considerate,” he said.

This was how it was: She would be in the kitchen with Magdolna and Katya, and she would hear the Bugatti on the gravel drive and act as if she hadn’t heard it, or had but without any particular interest. “Ah, Natalia, there you are,” he would say, coming in with an armload of books and newspapers. She would be stirring soup, sweeping the floor, or petting the cat, as she was on this occasion. She sneezed. “Look at the fur flying around,” the count said. “That cat is making you allergic.”

“I’m not allergic to cats,” she said.

“Perhaps it’s dust on the floor,” he said.

“It’s certainly not dust,” Magdolna said.

One day, and this was in September, Natalia walked with the count on the path beside the river. Leaves like gold coins littered the path; the air smelled of woodsmoke. Geese flew in a long, straggling V overhead. An egret stood sunning itself at the edge of the marsh. How beautiful everything is, she said. Even as a boy, he said, after a moment, he’d wondered why his family possessed acres of arable land, forests full of roe deer and quail, a river teeming with carp and trout, while so many lived in sometimes quite desperate poverty. It had to change, he said. It couldn’t go on.

Even his guilt felt selfish to him, he said.

She wanted to tell him about her mother, whose parents had emigrated to Argentina, built up an exporting business, instilled in their only child respect for work and money, or at least for money. Would the poor benefit if Beatriz gave up her wealth? Would anyone benefit if the count did not own this land?

Vladimír’s dogs bounded through the trees toward them. Mokány—or was this Dani?—jumped up with its muddy paws on her skirt. Miklós threw a stick into the woods and Dani retrieved it and trotted back with it in his mouth. “Good dog,” she said, laughing, and held her hand flat, to indicate he was to sit, and he obeyed, surprising her and the dog equally, she thought.

Miklós—she was to call him Miklós, he said—told her to make use of his study while he was away. The books, the typewriter were hers. She would have a few moments to herself up there, he said.

After several false starts, in which she got halfway up the tower stairs and then turned back, afraid that, no matter what Miklós had said, she would be trespassing on his privacy, she made it all the way to his study. She stood in the center of the room, taking a moment to acclimate herself to the altitude and the sensation of being airborne. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do here. She went to the bookshelves and selected a copy of The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It was the German edition published in 1892. “A Communist Confession of Faith” took the form of the Catholic catechism, which disconcerted her at the start. She read a phrase here and there. Private property ought to be eliminated. Individuals had the right to strive for happiness. The proletariat owned no asset other than their capacity for work, but this was everything, since it was by their labor that wealth was created. The proletariat must join forces in revolution to bring about a classless society. She couldn’t disagree, although at the same time she found it difficult to