Midnight Train to Prague - Carol Windley Page 0,45
was silent and then said, “When he was still a young man, my husband broke his back in a riding accident. All his life he had been an active man, he’d done everything: he’d hunted, worked in the fields, swum in the river, climbed mountains; never was he still for a minute. Then, after the accident, he was confined to a bed or a chair. He did some painting in oils, he listened to music, he read books, but what made life possible for him were his friends, who came here and played tarocchi with him. With this deck of cards. I would sometimes go and stand outside the library doors, just to hear them cursing and laughing, arguing politics, grumbling about a downturn in grain prices. In the end, not even these diversions helped my husband. I have faith that I will see him again; death won’t separate us forever. The tarot assures me of this, and the church holds it as dogma; it must be true. Goethe believed electrical and magnetic impulses reside within each of us. He said the soul puts out feelers and receives signals, like a radio set. And for lovers, Goethe said, these forces are especially acute. One day, Natalia, you’ll know it yourself.”
* * *
In July, Miklós came home, intending to remain while repairs were carried out on the castle. He hired a carpenter, a man named Guido, who came originally from Milan. The countess approved of him. He had given her letters of recommendation, one from an Esterhazy, which impressed her. Guido was of small stature, thin, with long, graying hair he tied back with a shoelace. He didn’t look strong, yet with one hammer blow he smashed a hole in the second-floor wall and after a brief examination told the countess he could see signs of dry rot, mold, rodent infestation. These maladies would not be confined to this one place, he said. By now, they would certainly have infiltrated almost the entire structure. He looked at the countess’s stricken face and said perhaps he was mistaken. In his experience, these Hungarian palaces were built to the exacting standards of gifted Viennese and Italian architects and would be habitable long after their occupants were dust. Rozalia blanched. Miklós took Guido up to the attics, and the carpenter climbed out a window onto the roof and came back to report cracked and missing slate tiles and crumbling mortar in the chimneys, which allowed rain and melting snow to seep down through the walls. They were fortunate the damage was not worse. Still, the work of restoration would be more than one person could handle. He would need to hire plasterers, plumbers, brick masons.
The countess said to her son, “This should have been attended to years ago. You and your newspapers. Do you think you are Joseph Pulitzer, for God’s sake?” She turned to Guido. “Give me your estimates and when you get to work, bring me the receipts,” she said. “I will handle this.”
The sounds of sawing and hammering filled the castle, and the air became gray with plaster dust. Katya and Natalia had to keep wiping the kitchen table with water and white vinegar. Rozalia had taken it upon herself to provide Guido and his crew with a midday meal. Dishes of noodles with caraway seeds and sour cream, roasted chicken, squash mashed with butter, thin pancakes filled with spiced beef, poppy-seed rolls. Viennese pastries, chocolate tarts, and glazed strawberry torte from the bakery in the village. These meals were served in the kitchen. Whatever was left over, Magdolna set aside for the evening meal. Natalia and Miklós and Rozalia ate in the kitchen, and then Rozalia liked to retire to the library for wine or brandy. One evening, she poured out three glasses of herbal liqueur the color of moss. “Drink it,” she said to Miklós. “It will help you sleep.” To Natalia she said, “You too, Natalia. It will make your blood strong.”
The liqueur tasted of angelica, fennel, mint, aniseed, something chocolaty, something bitter. At first it was vile, but Natalia found the taste improved with each sip. Miklós went to the liquor cabinet and poured whiskey into a tumbler. He stood at the window, his back to the room.
“The work is proceeding smoothly, wouldn’t you say, Miklós?” Rozalia said. “Are you listening to me? I think László would be pleased. The castle meant everything to him, as it did to his father. László was the image of his