Midnight Train to Prague

by Carol Windley

  “Get up,” she said gently. “Get up off the cold ground and come with me.”

  And Marica did as the woman said. They came to a cottage in the woods that seemed to grow out of the trunk of a tree and had a twisting chimney with smoke curling up out of it. The woman took Marica into the cottage and bathed her hands and feet in scented water and gave her bread and honey and a fragrant tisane to drink. The woman’s name was Apolonia.

  Marica could not discern whether she was in the company of an angel or a sorceress.

  In the weeks and months that followed, Marica learned from Apolonia how to spin wool and dye it with colors made from flowers and roots and the bark of trees and weave garments with it. She learned how to prepare a rich, nourishing stew from herbs and various vegetables and how to candle eggs. Apolonia taught her to collect honeycombs from beehives without suffering a single sting and how to milk nanny goats and how to plant beans and corn in long, straight rows facing east and west. And when the fruit in the orchard ripened, Marica learned to put up preserves. She did not know how long she lived in the little cottage with Apolonia. Three years? Four? Then Apolonia said she had no more to teach her; Marica was ready to make her own way in the world. Hearing this, Marica wept and said she would rather die than leave Apolonia.

  “It is the way it must be,” Apolonia said, placing her hand on Marica’s head. She gave Marica a bag of salt, a feather, and a wand cut from a willow branch. “Whatever you do, keep these things safe,” she said, helping Marica to wrap herself in a beautiful cloak she had woven for her. “Use these gifts only when necessary, or their magic will not keep, and be sure to take care of the salt.”

  Weeks of rain and flooding in the kingdom, she said, had caused all the salt there to go black with mold or to melt away into the ground, and now there wasn’t a single grain of it to be found anywhere in the land. With the exception, that was, of the small store of salt Apolonia kept in a warm, dry corner of her cottage, and from which she had taken enough to fill the bag Marica now held.

  Marica made her way back to the palace, hid her true identity, and begged for work in the kitchen. Her diligence and skill encouraged the head cook to heap more and more responsibilities on her shoulders, so that she worked from dawn until nightfall, carrying buckets of water, scrubbing stone and marble floors, and replenishing supplies of coal and wood for the stoves and fireplaces. When those tasks were completed, she mended clothes and dyed wool and wove it into garments for the royal household.

  Every now and then, she would catch a glimpse of her father, the king, accompanied by his retinue of courtiers and physicians and alchemists. She saw her sisters, Branimira and Danjana, dancing to the music of lutes and pipes in the great hall with their dancing tutor. They didn’t see Marica; she was just a servant in an apron and cap and wooden shoes—and no one saw servants. She ran back to the kitchen, where the cooks were consulting their recipe books, attempting to prepare tasty meals without salt. They seasoned the roasted meat with rosemary and thyme, with basil and finely ground black pepper. They added thick cream to the potatoes and sprinkled dried oregano and thyme in sauces. When the butler and the footmen served these dishes at the royal table, the king scowled. “Eggs without salt! Fish without salt! Knaves! Miscreants! I will have you flayed alive! I will have your heads on pikestaffs!” he roared.

  The head cook lamented: “What are we do to? His majesty will have our heads chopped off. We must have salt, and there is no salt anywhere in the kingdom or beyond.”

  Marica thought, The truth is, the king deserves to suffer a little. He needs to learn humility and kindness. A king should not misuse his authority. But she loved him, in spite of his rages and his vanity. Moreover, it was obvious that he was growing weaker. Even Marica’s sisters began to droop. People needed salt to stay healthy. A small amount of salt every day was crucial, Apolonia had taught her.

  Marica gave Apolonia’s pouch of salt to the cook, warning him to use it sparingly, so that it would last. Then she wrapped herself in the cloak Apolonia had woven for her and, taking with her the feather and the willow wand, walked away from the castle for the second time in her life. Many days later she reached the mountains and began the ascent, climbing up a narrow path. On her right were sheer cliffs and on her left jagged, cloud-covered peaks. She came to a place where the path divided. Which route was she to follow? She threw Apolonia’s feather into the air. The wind caught it and sent it whirling higher and higher toward the heavens, and it was transformed into a magnificent hawk with a speckled breast and golden talons. The hawk flew ahead of her, showing her the way. When it settled on the branch of a tall tree, she stopped and touched the willow wand to the ground. At once the earth opened, revealing steps that led down to a salt mine. The air in the mine smelled of the salt sea and burned her lips with its astringency. Statues carved of salt stood in niches in the walls: kings and queens, saints and angels. She came to a lake rippling with light from a thousand blazing torches. All around, miners wearing hats with candles were chipping away at walls of salt. The vaulted roof of the salt mine rang with the sound of their industry. Salt was shoveled into carts and the carts were drawn up to the surface by teams of sturdy little horses with shaggy manes. Marica promised the miners they would be richly rewarded if they delivered a cartload of salt to her father’s castle, which they agreed to do.

  The cooks ran out to greet the miners. The bags of salt were carried into the kitchen, and the miners were paid with gold coins.

  The king’s physicians helped him up from his sickbed and wrapped him in a cloak of ermine and velvet, and, supporting him on either side, they assisted him to the kitchens, where the bags of salt were opened for his inspection. The cook told him that, to be perfectly honest, one of the servant girls, the most junior girl, in fact, was responsible for this miracle. The king demanded to see this servant. He wished to thank her, he said. When the servant was brought before him, he stared at her. In an unsteady voice he said, “Is it you? Is this you, Marica?”

  The king got down on his knees and begged her forgiveness, which she at once joyfully gave. She helped him to his feet. She said his majesty should never again kneel to her or to anyone. Her sisters embraced her. With the king’s blessing, Marica ordered the table set for a banquet. She invited the miners who had delivered the bags of salt to join the festivities, which lasted long into the night. The king proclaimed Marica his heir. She, wisest and most practical of daughters, would inherit his kingdom and his throne, he said. He understood now: she loved him more than salt, and salt was indeed more precious than gold.

  And when the king had grown old and had passed into eternal rest, Marica ascended the throne. She governed with compassion and wisdom, and her loyal subjects knew her as the most generous and practical monarch in all the world. It was said she often worked in the kitchens with the cooks and every spring she planted rows of beans and, in winter, she wove garments at her loom for her husband and children. Her husband ruled at her side as her consort, and they and their children and their children’s children lived very happily for a very long time. And so it was. So it was.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Natalia wrote to Miklós. She dated the letter May 22, 1942, Prague, and began by describing her circumstances and the house where she was staying, in the same street where Franz Kafka had lived.

  Maybe, she wrote, this is the same house.

  I have with me your mother’s tarot cards. I am pretending to be a tarot card reader. It is not that suddenly I believe in the occult. It is just that I need the money. One evening two young women came to my door. They are cousins, Anna and Reina. They entered my house, those two girls, like beams of light, unstoppable. A journey by water, I said. A fortuitous meeting. Anna, the younger girl, gave me a look. “Well,” I told her, “That’s what I see. That’s what the cards see. You have a special fondness for animals,” I said. “You like knowing why things are as they are.” She conceded that this was true. Reina wanted to pay me. I said, No, I haven�
�t told you anything, the cards were not cooperative today.

  A day later they were back, and this time they brought food. And what food! Bread baked fresh, with white flour. Strawberries that glowed like cabochon rubies. Cheese made at a farm near Zürau, where Reina’s parents live. Kafka again. The Zürau Aphorisms.

  Reina asked for a reading, I said, No, I’m not very good at it. No, you are crap at it, she said, and we laughed. I set out the cards. I moved them here and there. I said, “The Twins are a positive sign. And here’s Temperance. Do you see how she has one foot in water and one on land? This suggests accord, balance, compromise. And happiness.”

  Three times lately, Miklós, I have set out the cards and turned up the Emperor, Ezekiel’s Chariot, and the Devil. This is a sign of loss, misfortune, violence.

  My hands tremble. I am always cold. I suffer tristezza. Beloved, are you well? Do you have a safe place to lay your head at night, are you taking care of yourself? Where are you? I remember ordinary things, everyday life. Driving to Budapest in the open Bugatti, driving to Berlin, attending the Press Ball at the Hotel Adlon. Our apartment in Mitte, where we were so happy. The warmth of your smile, the touch of your hand on mine. The way you impatiently searched your pockets and briefcase for your reading glasses. That ever-growing stack of newspapers on your desk. The clatter of your typewriter keys when you were working.

  * * *

  She missed Rozalia. That was one thing. Then there was the other: she was so hungry her stomach felt as if rats were gnawing it. She wanted a real bath, with hot water up to her chin. Another thing: Mr. Nagy had not left Prague for Budapest. His health was deteriorating. He was short of breath; he described a sensation as if a weight was sitting on his chest, and this woke him in the night and he could not get a good breath. Natalia stood up. She paced one way and then another in the confined space. She said they were going to the hospital. He would see a doctor in Budapest, he said. Yes, in Budapest, of course, she said. But here too, right now, he had to see a doctor.

  “No, please leave me alone,” he said.

  “You are like a child,” she told him.

  She went to Mr. Aslan’s shop and used his telephone, asking the operator for the number and address of Dr. Schaefferová. As soon as she had that information, she located the doctor’s house. It was a fine, tall edifice with plaster walls and an iron balcony and a white front door. Crossing the street, she was nearly struck by a black limousine flying the SS standard. The driver stopped and shouted at her. A man got out of the back seat and asked if she was hurt. No, she was fine, she said. He asked if she was on her way to see Dr. Schaefferová. This man, the passenger, was, she realized, Dr. Schaefferová’s husband. He was carrying a sort of portmanteau splotched with paint and a collapsible artist’s easel. He walked beside her to the door. He put down the portmanteau and opened the door for her. On the wall beside the door, she noticed there was a small brass plaque inscribed with the doctor’s name.

  * * *

  After leaving Magdalena’s patient at the door to the surgery, Julius went upstairs and poured himself a glass of wine and stood at the door to the balcony. Every day he was driven to Schloss Jungfern, the acting Reich protector’s residence, to paint a portrait of the man. It was not a commission he had sought or wanted. Today Frau Heydrich had told him the acting Reich protector would be late arriving for the sitting. He was at Wallenstein Palace, finalizing preparations for a concert in honor of his late father, the composer Richard Bruno Heydrich, whose Concerto in C-minor was to be the program’s centerpiece. She said someone would bring him coffee. They were near a window, and Julius could see prisoners working in the garden. They were guarded by Gestapo with dogs. One of those men so cruelly stripped of individuality, clad in ill-fitting prison garb, subjected to constant surveillance and mistreatment, could be his friend Dr. Shapiro. The thought caused him to flinch. He turned back to a scene that seemed almost as improbable as the one outside the window. Coffee was being served to him in fine china on a silver tray by a pretty young Czech girl in a maid’s black dress and white apron, with a fluted white cap on her blond hair. The men who had driven him to the Schloss stood outside on the terrace smoking. He set out his brushes and tubes of paint. Madder Rose, Venetian Red, Manganese Blue, Lapis Lazuli. Malachite. He squeezed Cobalt Blue onto his palette. It was made from minerals mined in Bohemia and—this was an odd story, odd enough to have some basis in fact, he supposed—the mines were said to be inhabited by ghosts. He believed it. He thought the ghosts were in the tubes of Cobalt Blue as well. He used the paint sparingly to give the Reich Protector’s ice-cold gray eyes a touch of blue, so that, as requested, they conformed more closely to the Germanic ideal.

  He worked for an hour, and then Heydrich came into the room, accompanied by his secretary, a plump young man in an SS uniform clutching a sheaf of telegrams and correspondence. They raised their arms in a Nazi salute and snapped out, Heil Hitler. He was occupied with tubes of paints and brushes and did not return the salute. Heydrich went to stand beside a lacquered occasional table. On the table there was a glass bowl filled with white rhododendron flowers. It was a terrible thing, to paint the portrait of a man you detested. Julius was forty-two. Heydrich was thirty-eight. He wore a Totenkopf ring on his right hand. The death’s-head ring; the SS sword; the Iron Cross, first class; the silver oak leaves on the collar. Flemish White to highlight the high cheekbones, the bridge of the thin nose. A tincture of blackness had seeped into the palette, something he, the artist, had no power to control. Inspired by Hans Holbein’s painting The Ambassadors, in which, depending on the angle from which it was viewed, a skull appeared, Julius painted a tiny skeleton in the folds of the window draperies. It grinned at him as he worked. Unless you knew where to look, you’d never see it.

  There were days when he got home from Schloss Jungfern so depressed, he considered ending it all. The relief of giving up! Diogenes had killed himself by simply refusing to breathe. If it was that easy, would he do it? Probably not. How could he leave Magdalena alone?

  He went out onto the balcony and looked down at the street. The woman the Nazi driver had nearly struck was walking in one direction just as Sora and Anna appeared from another. He waved to them. Then, in the kitchen, he rinsed his wineglass and put it on the counter.

  Magdalena came upstairs and said, “Do you remember, Julius, the girl I told you about, who looked after Franz on the train? The most extraordinary thing: she was my last patient of the day. Can you imagine? ‘Natalia?’ I said. ‘Dr. Schaefferová,’ she said, ‘I knew I would see you again one day.’ She is now Frau Natalia Faber; her husband is somewhere on the Eastern Front. At least, that is what she told me, but from the expression in her eyes, I think perhaps it was not quite the truth. She consulted me about an elderly friend of hers. I told her I could do nothing without examining him in person.”

  * * *

  Why did people always believe in the wrong things? Anna wondered. They looked past the truth and went straight for what was not real and would never be real. Imagine someone like Albert Einstein or Louis Pasteur or Marie Curie believing in tarot cards. But then she remembered that Madame Curie had attended séances in the hope of contacting her husband, Pierre, after his death in a road accident. Anna remembered also that her mother, a medical doctor and scientist, believed spilled salt meant bad luck and a broken mirror foretold disaster. Franz sometimes teased Magdalena for being superstitious. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy, her mother quoted to him. That was Shakespeare, and Shakespeare was full of ghosts. Even if you did not believe in ghosts, they were there, in the dark, sometimes just visible in the corner of your eye. All the houses in the Golden Lane were said to be haunted. When she and Reina had walked into the fortune-teller’s house, Reina had tripped over a pair of shoes by the door. The fortune-teller had put them away under a couch. Later, when she and Reina were leaving, Reina said, “Did you see the pillow and blanket on the couch? And
that scrap of bread on a plate on the dresser? Someone else is there, in hiding. Perhaps a lover? I’m sure of it. And yet she is an enigma, isn’t she, and so thin and pale, like one of Aunt Magdalena’s patients. We should take her some food, don’t you think, Anna?”

  * * *

  On May 27, 1942, the acting Reich protector’s car was hit by a grenade in an assassination attempt. The assassins had been trained in England and parachuted into a village outside Prague and were concealed in the homes of partisans in the countryside and in Prague. The assassination attempt went wrong. A gun jammed and failed to fire. The grenade missed Heydrich and damaged the car. But debris from the explosion, splinters of metal, fragments of the car’s upholstery, had penetrated Heydrich’s side. Emergency surgery was performed that day and his spleen was removed. Hitler sent doctors from Berlin to take over Heydrich’s care, and it was expected Heydrich would recover. But he developed septicemia, which his doctors tried to treat with blood transfusions and high doses of Prontosil, a drug Anna’s mother said had limited efficacy treating bacterial infections. The antibiotic drug penicillin could perhaps have cured Heydrich, but while a small quantity was available in England, Germany of course had no access to it. The acting Reich protector fell into a coma and died on June 4, 1942.

  From Berlin, Hitler ordered severe reprisals. Prague was sealed off; no one could get in or out. Prime Minister Emil Hácha was arrested and imprisoned. The former prime minister, General Alois Eliáš, was executed.

  The parachutists who carried out the assassination took refuge in the church of Saints Cyril and Methodius. One of their comrades turned informant and gave the Gestapo information that led to the storming of the church. The two parachutists, from the Czech army-in-exile, escaped, in the end, by shooting themselves.