Midnight Train to Prague - Carol Windley Page 0,81

came for a reading. They giggled and said they’d had too much wine with lunch. She lit the candle and shuffled the tarot cards. They said she did not look like a fortune-teller. What was her name? Frau Faber, Natalia said.

The women were both named Frau Ursler; their husbands were brothers, officers of such distinction within the Schutzstaffel that even though they were close relatives, they were posted to the same unit in the same city. A rare privilege, the younger Frau Ursler said, giggling behind her hand.

“And where is your husband, Frau?” the younger Frau Ursler asked. She had the bright, inquisitive eyes of a sparrow. Natalia said her husband was in the Wehrmacht, on the Eastern Front.

“My father and brother, too,” said the older Frau Ursler. “It is nerve-racking, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” Natalia said.

The sparrow wore a tailored two-piece dress, and her hands were beautifully manicured, while the other Frau Ursler had a raw-looking scratch on the back of her hand, perhaps made by a pet cat, or by a brooch pin as she rushed to attend to her children or husband. Her pale eyes swam behind the lenses of her glasses. Natalia touched a card and said, You must take care of your health. Yes, she hadn’t been sleeping well, the woman confided.

A constellation of favorable cards on either side of the Ace of Wands suggested an addition to the sparrow’s family, to her delight. Commendations for the SS husbands, travel, new acquaintances, an increase in wealth. The sparrow wanted something more specific. Natalia turned up three cards in succession: the Emperor, Ezekiel’s Chariot, and the Devil. Der Teufel. A violent death. Catastrophe, ruination. Quickly she reshuffled the cards and said the reading was finished. Her clients, unaware that the final spread of cards did not predict anything good, rose, laughing at their unsteadiness, and opened their handbags and added a generous tip to her fee.

She could not go through an ordeal like that again. A repulsive thing to do, invading someone’s thoughts, pretending lies were real. Mr. Nagy crept out of the bedroom, his face ashen, damp with sweat, and sat at the table, across from her. He had a fit of coughing. She gave him a glass of water and said she was sorry he’d had to stay for such a long time in that little room.

He said, “They were German, weren’t they, those women? Their husbands were SS men?”

“Yes,” she said.

It was untenable, he said, this situation. He thought she was mad to invite them in and also mad to believe in tarot cards. He thought she would know better than that, he said sternly. He could never thank her enough for all she had done, but he had to prepare himself to leave. Quite soon, he expected, he would be fit enough to continue his journey to Budapest.

Chapter Fourteen

Anna’s father had known Dr. Cornelius Shapiro since coming to Prague in 1919. Dr. Shapiro was a professor at the Charles University, a patron of the arts; he had been an enthusiastic supporter of Julius’s career. When Dr. Shapiro came to the house one day in April, however, he said it was merely to say goodbye and to ask a small favor of Julius. That morning he had received an order to report to the train station at seven a.m. tomorrow, to be transported to the ghetto at Theresienstadt. His wife was not coping well with this, Dr. Shapiro said. She was Lutheran, Danish, and would have to continue alone in the effort to gain exemptions for their sons, who, having one Jewish and one Christian parent, were classified as Mischlinge and might be left with their mother in relative safety or might be sent to a camp. He had a favor to ask: Would Julius keep the manuscript of a story he had written? He had hoped to commission Julius to do the illustrations, but now, of course, that was impossible. Anna’s father sent her to put the kettle on. She made tea and brought teacups and the teapot on a tray to the living room. Her father poured a cup for Dr. Shapiro, who sat smoking a cigarette and drinking his tea, with one hand on the envelope that held his manuscript. He had ideas in mind for his book’s illustrations, he said, and talked about the merits of linocuts or woodcuts as opposed to pen-and-ink drawings with watercolor washes, in the style of Arthur Rackham, whose illustrations for Alice in Wonderland