Midnight Train to Prague - Carol Windley Page 0,54

out to her that he was going to see his mother; would she like to go with him. When? Soon, he said, gesturing that he’d phone.

* * *

At last, late in August, Beatriz and Zita returned from Buenos Aires. Their suitcases and trunks filled the house, and Beatriz dug around in them, spilling clothes across the floor, searching for Natalia’s presents: an evening gown of green chiffon and lace, with an underdress of embossed gold silk. Zita had a gift for her, too: a tiny medallion in the shape of Argentina, on a fine gold chain, to wear around her neck. There were photographs taken by the ship’s photographer: Beatriz and Zita dining at the captain’s table; Zita on a deck chair, wrapped in blankets, recovering from a bout of seasickness. “I was never not seasick,” Zita said, and Beatriz said, “But at least you didn’t drown.”

Beatriz showed Natalia photographs she’d taken of the interior of the villa in Palermo. “This was my bedroom when I was a child. Do you see my dolls, on the bed? I hated them; I had no use for dolls. And this is my parents’ room, and here is the kitchen, where Zita and I did our own cooking. This bedroom is on the second floor. It will be yours, Natalia, when you come with me to Buenos Aires. Here, look at this photograph of the library, where my governess set up her laboratory and cut the hearts out of frogs and lizards. As soon as we walked into the house, I could sense the Fräulein’s presence in every room. It was palpable and not very nice, to be honest. I became quite ill for a time, and I think she was responsible.”

“You were ill?” Natalia said. “How do you mean, ill? You said nothing in your letters.”

“I didn’t want to worry you. The doctors said yellow fever or septicemia or consumption, then they gave up and just fed me quinine water. And laudanum, but it caused strange dreams. Strange obsessions. I was convinced a frog, a small, bright-green frog, which I believed was poisonous to the touch, had concealed itself under the bed, and I screamed at Zita to kill it. I resigned myself to dying in the house where I was born, and then Zita went to a herbalist in Palermo and bought dried herbs she made into a tisane. She added a little gin, and it was a miracle cure.” She laughed. “Also, I remembered a quotation from Émile Coué: When the will and the imagination are antagonistic, it is always the imagination that wins, without any exception. I thought, well, that’s one thing—no one can accuse me of not having an imagination.”

Anyway, she recovered, and now she felt wonderful. While in Buenos Aires she had kept an eye on the American stock market. She didn’t like what it was doing. And the political climate in Germany was getting on her nerves. This Hitler, she said. Why can’t he just do us all a favor and go back to Austria? Zita had told her that Hildegard had been to hear Hitler speak last November at the Sportpalast. She had talked to Hildegard about this. She was only curious, Hildegard had assured Beatriz, but she seemed to think Hitler had some good ideas, and she said he hypnotized everyone in the audience with his mustache and the way he flung his arms around.

Within a few weeks of being at home, Beatriz began talking of a trip to Paris with Natalia. Summer wasn’t the best season in Paris, she knew; it would be hot, and everyone would be at the seaside, but they could do some shopping, see the sights.

Another time, Natalia said, she would like to go to Paris with her mother, but she had promised the countess she would visit her. It was already arranged that she would travel to Hungary with Miklós, in his car, and at this late date she didn’t see how she could possibly change her plans.

* * *

In Prague, Miklós and Natalia stayed overnight at a hotel on Nerudova Street. The next morning they met downstairs in the hotel restaurant. Miklós wore a jacket with a belted waist, a blue shirt, a silk scarf knotted at his throat. And she had applied lipstick and powdered her nose, which was sunburned from riding in the open car. She knew, from the way the staff at the hotel welcomed Miklós, that he’d stayed there in the past. He