Midnight Train to Prague

by Carol Windley

  “She is continuing to work, then, while she’s away?” Miklós said.

  “Yes, she is. I think that was her intention from the beginning. And there’s good news. At last my mother has hired a new caretaker for the villa, but he can’t take up his duties until the end of August, which means another delay in their return home.”

  “You must miss your mother.”

  “Yes,” Natalia said. “Yes and no.”

  He smiled. As he was leaving, he glanced at the photograph in the front hall. “So this is the famous residence in Buenos Aires. This is where your mother and Zita are staying?”

  “Yes,” she said. “In Palermo. Near a golf club and a riding stable and a cemetery.”

  Two weeks later Miklós rang to say he was taking a day off and would she like to go with him to the Zoologischer Garten.

  The zoo? A surprising invitation. She said she’d meet him at the Elephant Gate on Budapester Strasse. She was early and saw him before he saw her. He had his back to her. She should have gone over to him, but instead she stood watching him, thinking how handsome he looked. He was wearing a jersey, tan flannel slacks, and golf shoes, although he didn’t play golf, as far as she knew. He turned and saw her and they walked together to the zoo entrance. She bought a bag of peanuts to feed the monkeys at the Affenpalmenhaus, where they made friends with a forlorn outcast cowering in a corner. Miklós knelt and put his fingers through the wire and said, “We understand each other, don’t we, little fellow?” He disliked seeing animals in captivity, he said, but always ended up being entertained in spite of himself.

  As they walked around the zoo, he told her that last year he’d been in Moscow, at the invitation of the commissar of education, for the centenary, on September 9, of Leo Tolstoy’s birth. The Soviet government had earlier distributed leaflets explaining, or apologizing for, Tolstoy’s religious philosophy, in many ways starkly inimical to Communist dogma. The opening ceremony, he told her, had been simultaneously overdone and restrained to the point of being incomprehensible. And it had lasted hours, until dawn the next day, when, without sleep, he and other visiting press people had boarded a train south to Tolstoy’s estate, Yasnaya Polyana, where Miklós ran into his friend, the Austrian author Stefan Zweig, and they had proceeded to depress each other by talking about the political situation in Germany. Zweig believed the National Socialist Workers’ Party, with one percent of the vote in the May election, had been nullified as an electoral force. The fundamental decency of Germans would never allow Hitler to take power, he’d said. Miklós wanted to believe him. Earlier that month, however, he had seen Hitler’s Storm Troopers marching in columns through Munich. Sixty-thousand strong. They inspired more terror in him than had Mussolini’s Blackshirts.

  Then, to Natalia, he said, “The penguins. We can’t leave this zoo without seeing the penguins.”

  She did an imitation penguin walk, her arms held out stiffly, taking little shuffling steps. He laughed. The real penguins, dispirited in the heat, staggered wearily one after another around their pool. Poor things, she said. Miklós suggested lunch at the Wilhelmshallen, but the zoo’s restaurant was full, and instead they went to a café on Kurfürstendamm. They parted at the train station, where Miklós said what people tend to say, out of politeness, thanking her for a lovely day. As she was boarding the train, he called 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 had been with Zita, she supposed, but she was the one here now. She drank coffee from a translucent china cup and spread sweet, golden butter on a warm, floury scone. They walked up Nerudova Street toward the castle and then turned around and walked across the Charles Bridge. In the Old Town, Miklós photographed her in front of the cubist House of the Black Madonna, in Celetná Street. He kept looking at his watch and saying they should be on their way, and then he remembered another little street he wanted to walk up, another building he had to see, and then there was a bookshop he had to visit. At the Café Montmartre they drank cold lemonade and then walked on the Charles Bridge, where a little boy nearly ran into Natalia. She put a hand on his shoulder to steady him. He looked up at her, startled. Blue eyes beneath a fringe of blond hair. For a m
oment, she thought he was Franz, Dr. Schaefferová’s son. He wasn’t; his mother took his hand and said, “Jan, you must not run away from me like that.”

  Chapter Ten

  Magdolna put down a long-handled spoon she was using to stir a galvanized pot of black dye in which floated one of the countess’s gowns. Katya ran to summon the countess, who then appeared, leaning on Katya’s arm. She looked at Natalia and said, “My God, you are here at last. Sit down, why don’t you, and we can have a good talk.” Magdolna left the dress to soak, and they sat at the kitchen table, the three of them, and Katya poured coffee into translucent white cups, and after a while Rozalia said it was a shame to be indoors, and she and Natalia moved to the garden. Rozalia walked without a cane or any assistance and sat very upright in the garden chair, bringing Natalia up to date on the life of the estate. She talked about the excellent crops of wheat and corn, the warm weather—God willing it would stay fine and not turn wet before the harvest was finished. She had hired Guido to make repairs to the school. A new stove had been put in, and the windows sealed to keep out drafts, a shelf’s length of new books ordered from a bookshop in Budapest. Miklós had helped her select the books. He had hung the picture of the blessed King Karl of Hungary back up on the wall after he’d finished painting. Rozalia said she would take Natalia to see it after she had unpacked and settled in.

  A few days later, Miklós drove to Budapest for a meeting with a German-language newspaper publisher. At about eight in the evening Natalia was reading in the library when she heard the Bugatti on the gravel drive. Time went by, then Miklós appeared at the door. “Come with me,” he said. “There’s someone in the kitchen I want you to meet.”

  This someone was a puppy, a puli, three months old, with a coat of corkscrew curls, white in color, coal-black eyes, a fat black nose. She knelt, and the puppy licked her face. “He knows you already,” Miklós said. “He obeys you.”

  “He obeys no one,” she said, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. The puppy wiggled around ecstatically on the floor.

  “Think of a name for him,” Miklós said. “He’s your dog.”

  “Mine?” she said. “How can he be mine? I will be leaving soon, and I can’t take him with me, can I? Benno would never forgive me.” But she gave him a name: Bashan, in honor of the dog in the story “A Man and His Dog,” by Thomas Mann. “Hmm. A literary name, for such a small dog,” Miklós said.

  Bashan followed her everywhere and slept at the foot of her bed. Rozalia said she would catch a disease from him. He has no germs, Natalia insisted, although he had his fair share of fleas, which she had to comb out of his ringlets and drown one at a time in a bowl of soapy water. She hand-fed him bits of cooked meat from the dinner platter.

  “For God’s sake, he’s only a dog,” the countess said, but she too succumbed and praised Bashan immoderately and gave him bowls of warm milk.

  On his walks, Bashan frolicked, barking his excited, high-pitched bark. Natalia took off his leash, and he immediately jumped into the river and refused to come out when she called.

  “Does he know how to swim?” she said to Miklós.

  “He’s a dog,” Miklós said.

  She stepped on stones in the river, trying to reach Bashan, and slipped, soaking her shoes. Miklós put his hands on her waist and lifted her out of the water and set her down on the ground. There she was, in his arms, and he kissed her, they kissed. She picked up a stick and threw it into the trees. Bashan bounded to her side, shaking himself, showering her and Miklós with water.

  The next day, she and Miklós went to Budapest, leaving Bashan in the care of Magdolna and Katya. They lunched at the Café Gerbeaud with friends of Miklós, newspaper people, writers, who wanted to know about her, how long she was staying in Hungary, what she did, and she felt intimidated by these brilliant people and answered their questions in a subdued voice. Miklós said she helped his mother with running the estate, did the accounting, taught at the school, where she was adored by the children.

  On the drive home, they passed through a brief, although spectacular, thunderstorm—the opposite climatic conditions from that hot, starry night when the Bugatti had broken down, but still that night was in her mind when Miklós stopped to put up the top. And then, outside the castle, the sky clearing, the stars reappearing as the clouds dispersed, they sat in the Bugatti and talked and went from talking to kissing, and she thought: What is this mad behavior on your part, Natalia Faber? What are you setting yourself up for? They got out of the car, she linked her fingers with his, and he put his arms around her. It was opium, strong drink, this infatuation.

  * * *

  The agricultural accountant was due, and Natalia was going over the accounts for Rozalia. She sat on a stool at the long pine table in the room where Rozalia had read the tarot. As far as Natalia knew, the cards were still in the sandalwood box in the escritoire. “Ah, here you are,” Miklós said. He bent and kissed her on the forehead. He had been looking for her. He had a question, a rather important question. “I’m interrupting you, aren’t I,” he said, gesturing at the ledger, the pen in her hand. “Ich liebe dich, Natalia. Ich liebe dich. Marry me.”

  She looked down at the ledger and at the ink on her fingers. Why had she thought life was possible for her? Why had she let things get to this point? If she did not speak, this silence would go on, and it would cause irreparable hurt, she knew that. She raised her eyes and began to say what she had to say, because she could not go on keeping secret from Miklós the truth about herself. But at that moment she heard the familiar, irregular tapping of Rozalia’s walking stick at the door. She came into the room and said, “What’s wrong with you two?” Natalia stared at her. Miklós turned on his heel and walked away. “What has he done?” Rozalia demanded. “What has he said to upset you?”

  “He did nothing,” Natalia said.

  “A strange nothing, to make you look like that.”

  In the kitchen, Rozalia made tea and buttered a slice of bread; her sovereign remedy: drink and food. “I will have a word with my son,” she stated.

  “No, don’t,” Natalia said. “Everything is fine.” Bashan kept touching her leg with his cold nose. She ran her fingers through his curls and stood up from the table and kissed him and fed him her buttered bread.

  * * *

  She and Miklós went horseback riding. On a forest path they dismounted and sat, one on either end, on a fallen log in a small clearing in the trees. The light, filtered through clouds of pollen and infinitesimal winged insects, was heavy, languid. At her request they had come here, to talk, where no one would overhear, and now he was waiting for her to say something, but the habit of years was to refrain from letting anything of the truth pass her lips. She drew in her breath. She felt light-headed, scared. “You will not like what I have to say,” she began. Then, quickly, she told him that her parents had not been married. “Do you see now? My birth was never legitimate. It was kept secret from me until two years ago. The only person I’ve ever told was my friend Margot, and that was in a letter. I never said the words aloud. If you are angry, I understand. I know you can’t marry me.”

  “If you think that, then you don’t know me very well. It was your father’s tragedy,” he said, “not to know you.”

  Later, when they had taken the horses to the stables, he told her it was customary in Hungary for a formal marriage proposal to be made no fewer than five times. He had used up one, although it wasn’t as formal as it should have been. Four proposals remained. He would keep asking until he got the answer he wanted.

  * * *

  After their marriage, Miklós and Natalia spent a week in Trieste. It was foggy, and it rained, and the streets shone with a gray light. Miklós was writing an article on James Joyce’s years in Trieste. In the morning they went out, and he conjured James Joyce from the stones, looking just as he did in his photographs, tall and spare and literary, nearsighted and bespectacled. Miklós photographed the exterior of apartment buildings where Joyce h
ad lived and street corners where, perhaps—who could say?—he might have stood. Miklós photographed the hospital where Nora Barnacle had given birth to a son in a charity ward. Miklós had Natalia stand in front of the hospital, in her black skirt and black stockings, pretending to be Nora Barnacle and smiling, which Natalia said Nora wouldn’t do, not if she’d just given birth in a charity ward. But Miklós said the average newspaper reader liked to be reassured that life had its moments.

  He read Ulysses to her from the first volume of the three-volume German translation he’d purchased at the bookshop in Pest. She loved listening, especially to the descriptions of food, everything fried in butter, seasoned with pepper. Greasy fingers, belches. Life was sensual. It was meant to be sensual and rich and verging on excess at all times. Miklós told her that James Joyce had said of Trieste, “It is the city that sheltered us.” Trieste, little more than a day’s drive from Hungary, had always seemed apart from the rest of the world’s turmoil, he said. But that was Habsburg Trieste, whereas now Trieste was ruled by the Italian Fascists.

  In 1930, Miklós rented an apartment in Berlin Mitte, the city’s central district, convenient to everything. A pattern was established, in which six months of the year were spent in Hungary and six months in Berlin. The contrast between one life and the other was marked, and yet Natalia could not say which she liked better. The first winter in Berlin, she contacted Martin Becker. Days before her marriage, she had written to him and had received in reply a letter in which his congratulations were muted, but he had been explicit in describing his hurt that she had, as he put it, “unilaterally ended their relationship.” When they met at the Café Kranzler one morning, he told her she had broken his heart. But he smiled as he spoke and eagerly imparted the news that he was soon to marry a young woman called Sophia, who lived in his hometown of Blankenburg.