Portrait of a Girl

by Binkert, Dörthe

  Segantini had looked at him in surprise. This was a side of the doctor he didn’t know. Usually, he got to the point immediately.

  “Don’t laugh, dear friend, if I use our superb dried meat as an example. It was this technique of drying beef in the sun long enough to turn it into our delicious Bündnerfleisch that inspired me. In the sun, the raw meat dries without rotting or spoiling. And so I started to think about something I call ‘heliotherapy.’ Wound healing through sun radiation. For instance, if you expose wounded individuals, or rather their wounds, to as much fresh air and sunshine as possible, then—according to my theory—the patients will recover more quickly and in a completely natural way. I suspect that, above all, tuberculosis would respond well to such a treatment. I’d like to show—” He’d interrupted himself. “You’re not a doctor, and I don’t want to bore you. But since you told me about your idea, I also wanted to tell you about mine.”

  Segantini had assured him that he was interested. He had a curious mind, and as a self-taught man, he was anxious to fill any gaps in his knowledge. He had always planned for his children to grow up differently than he had and receive a better education. From the beginning, he had insisted on hiring a tutor who came to the house to teach them, even when he could hardly afford it.

  “What you’re saying makes sense to me, Oscar. In your own way, you’ll be competing with the high-altitude clinics in Davos. I hope our dreams will bring us closer together. What else is there to sustain us if not our dreams, and what should we strive for if not for their realization?”

  A New, Unfamiliar World

  “Nothing will come of it, anyway,” Benedetta said, in the negative tone of voice that her daughter hated so much.

  “And why not?” Andrina said, bristling. “Will there ever be a plan or idea that you agree with or approve of? Could you ever simply say, ‘Oh, that’s nice, what a good idea!’” Angrily, she pushed her polenta away. “You always make everything so difficult that it feels as if one’s apron pockets were filled with rocks. It is a good idea, and we’ll all benefit from it.”

  Andrina looked at her father and Luca. Gian didn’t count, and neither did the girl they’d taken in.

  “Say something, Father. I’ve been slaving away for you here without anyone really noticing.”

  Old Biancotti just kept spooning up his polenta, his eyes hidden beneath the brim of his hat. He wore his hat even when he ate. It gave him a feeling of security and dignity.

  He knew his wife, who was always against everything day in and day out, and he also knew his ambitious daughter Andrina.

  “I just want to eat in peace and quiet,” was all he said. Luca took Andrina’s side.

  “She’s right. Her idea will help us all. The stranger might just as well work while she’s here and eating our bread. It doesn’t look as if she had a lot of money hidden in her clothes, unless there were some jewels in that locket.”

  Nika was frightened and instinctively held her hand over the locket hidden under her blouse. But to her relief, no one dwelt on it, and Luca went on, saying, “How is she ever going to go anywhere? In the hotel, they need laundresses. She’d earn something, could give us some of it, and save the rest until she can take the post coach back to where she came from or some other place.”

  “And I would be making a good impression on Signor Robustelli,” Andrina added, “by finding him a worker.” She raised her bowl of cold milk to Luca in a toast.

  “Who is Signor Robustelli?” Benedetta asked suspiciously.

  “He’s the assistant director of the hotel, in charge of all the employees.” And he likes me, Andrina thought, not saying it aloud, and without having the slightest proof of it so far.

  Gian looked over at Nika. “Would you like that? To work at the hotel and earn some money?”

  “Why wouldn’t she like it?” Luca joined in, but Nika looked only at Gian and nodded.

  No. There weren’t any gemstones hidden in her locket. In it was only a small, folded-up piece of paper with some writing on it, and she couldn’t read. The symbols were still strange to her, even though the postmistress had finally given in to Nika’s pleas and agreed to teach the girl the alphabet and some basic things about reading during secret visits, using the Bible she otherwise rarely took out of the drawer.

  The postmistress had tapped each letter on the page with her finger, teaching them to her until Nika slowly and doggedly learned the sound of each one. The postmistress herself read only haltingly and tried to keep the lessons short, but Nika was an eager pupil who pushed her teacher mercilessly, soon wanting to go beyond the woman’s capabilities. “That’s enough!” the postmistress said one day, annoyed, and closed the pigskin-bound Bible. Nika would have loved to have taken the book so that she could work through it from beginning to end on her own. The stories seemed very exciting and suspenseful. But the Bible had disappeared into its resting place, the postmistress pushing the drawer shut with a relieved bang. And that had been the end of it.

  At the table, after one more glance at Gian, Nika nodded again in agreement.

  “So there you are,” Andrina said to her mother. “You’ll get used to it. And then later on you’ll be quite satisfied with the arrangement.”

  In everyday matters, that might be true, Aldo thought. Yes, that’s what she was like, Benedetta. Without saying anything, he pushed his plate toward her, and with the wooden spoon she gave him more of the bramata. He liked cornmeal best when it was coarse grained. She really could cook well. This he’d never deny, although he never said thank you. He did carpentry; she cooked. After all, she never thanked him either for doing his work, year in and year out. On the contrary, again and again she would bring up the subject of wanting to go back to Stampa, to the milder climate of the Bregaglia Valley. Up here, the winters were too severe, she complained. What else Benedetta thought or felt, no one really knew. Just as she never showed any enthusiasm, she also never expressed any strong feelings of anger, sadness, or exasperation.

  “All right, then,” Aldo said and got up. “Andrina will mention the matter at the hotel. And then we’ll see what comes of it.”

  Nika had never before had such a good life. She now ate at the table with the Biancottis as if she were a member of the family. She was going to be working in the hotel laundry, and for the first time in her life, she would be paid for her work. She’d have to give part of her pay to the farmer, but the rest she could put away, and one day she would have enough to buy a ticket for the post coach or the train. Small smoke clouds would rise from the locomotive steam stack and its shrill whistle would slice through the air just as the steel rails sliced through the landscape. And the world would be divided into the world that lay behind her and the world that lay before her.

  One day, Nika thought, I’ll stand facing my mother. There is a place where I belong. Everybody belongs somewhere. The day will come when someone will recognize the rose on my locket and understand the message hidden inside.

  Nika touched her ankle and gently moved her foot back and forth. Carefully in the dim light of the kerosene lamp, she rubbed it with the tincture Benedetta had wordlessly pressed into her hand.

  In Mulegns she’d had to eat standing up. The food was passed out at the head of the table by those who were sitting down, and what was left was then passed down to the foot of the table, to her. Here, on the other hand, one could relax at mealtimes. Benedetta had even given her a brief inquiring look at dinner to see if she’d wanted some more. But she hadn’t dared to nod yes.

  The farmer in Mulegns had been unpredictable, especially during mealtimes. Sometimes he would take off his belt. That meant something was bothering him or had made him angry. And she was always the first one he struck. The others would just sit there as if turned to stone. As if rooted to their chairs. If he wasn’t content with beating her, he would have a go at his own children. Reto, who was the same age she was, would wail a
nd scream, “Why? What did I do?” and try to hide under the massive wooden table. That was stupid because then he got it even worse. Nika never asked, “Why me?” She didn’t even give the farmer the pleasure of whining, and she certainly didn’t scream or cry. When the old man beat all eleven of his children, then his hand would grow weary by the time he came to the last ones. But not with her, the foreign brat. He always started with her, while he was still full of anger and his arm wasn’t tired yet.

  Then a few days would pass before he was again in a bad mood and full of anger. The beatings were a ritual for him the way going to church was for other people. It freed him for a moment of the week’s hardships and the relentless everyday existence that engulfed him. Once the storm had broken, a smile would come to his lips, which, in that gaunt face of his, seemed almost indecent, and he would order Hans, the eldest, to fetch him a beer.

  Nika stroked the cows Gian had tied up in the barn. They were brown and dainty, the fur in their ears was as white as milk; their horns, gracefully curved. All four animals stood quietly, looking at her with their dark eyes. Steamy gusts of breath came from their nostrils. The heat of their bodies warmed the stable. Feeling safe in the familiar smell, Nika put out the lamp. The darkness would bring forth a new day. More than that, in fact: it would bring a new job and an unfamiliar world.

  St. Moritz, Early June 1896

  The morning was as fresh as a clean, unworn starched-and-ironed white shirt that you’ve just taken out of a dark closet. Edward Holbroke opened a window and breathed in the cold air until he felt a chill. The façade of the Pension Veraguth, where they were staying, was still in the shade. And St. Moritz was a sleepy nest that had yet to be cleaned out for the new season. Soon it would become a brilliant backdrop for the illustrious company arriving in the coming days and weeks from England, France, Germany, and Italy—the wealthy guests who, with their servants, would fill all the nearby grand hotels and villas.

  The exotic attractions of a stay in this part of the Swiss Alps included the especially rousing effect champagne had at high altitude and the mountain tours led by native guides, during which you could look directly into the face of nature, confronting its power and its precipitous abysses without any worry of falling prey to it. And those who were too afraid to explore, even with a mountain guide, could play golf or tennis, or shoot clay pigeons. The alpine air was healthy. The sun shone more often here than elsewhere, and the St. Moritz mineral springs helped relieve nervous weakness, anemia, and—so it was whispered—even barrenness. Milk cures and goat’s milk would make you as healthy as the local peasants, who supposedly had indestructible constitutions.

  Edward yawned contentedly. He wasn’t concerned with any of that.

  “Good morning, my dear fellow!”

  His travel companion burst into the room without knocking, a sign of great familiarity, which also showed a certain lack of consideration.

  “Well, how do you like the view from your window, Eddie? Last night right after our arrival, I was too tired to think much about the place.” The young man went over to where his friend stood by the wide-open window and gestured broadly, as if he wanted to describe the entire landscape and at the same time dismiss it. “But now I see where you’ve brought me. You don’t seriously think that I’d want to spend several weeks here?”

  “The lake, the mountains, the fresh air—isn’t all that enough for you?”

  James Danby gave his friend a contemptuous glance but said nothing. Instead, he dropped into the flowered easy chair next to the window and lit a cigarette.

  “If I had told you that I wanted to study the high-altitude plants of the Engadine, you wouldn’t have come with me,” Edward said.

  “You’d have been right about that. But you’re pulling my leg! Do you really intend to set forth with your collecting box? Tell me, will our stay feel like a children’s birthday party where we’re playing blindman’s bluff?”

  “Come on, Jamie.” Edward closed the window and put on his jacket. “At least, let’s go and have breakfast before you leave. In any case, Marcel Proust liked this pension. And you might regret not staying on to play blindman’s bluff. In a couple of weeks, the most beautiful ladies of European society are going to arrive here. I heard that an English princess is coming for the opening of Badrutt’s Palace Hotel. She might enjoy meeting you. Haven’t you always been on the lookout for a good catch? ‘Too bad you couldn’t meet him,’ I’ll say then . . .”

  Edward pulled his friend up out of the easy chair, took him by the arm, and opened the door. The aroma of café au lait came up from the ground floor of the pension and coaxed an almost agreeable smile to James’s lips, even though he always drank tea in the morning.

  James Danby did not leave, although it wasn’t quite clear whether the thing that prevented it was the pleasures Edward promised or a sense of duty that, although not strongly developed, did make itself felt from time to time. Besides, he had to earn some money, and he’d promised the English newspaper he worked for that he’d write a story about Giovanni Segantini. The artist was famous all over Europe, with the exception of France, where they chose to ignore him. Since 1893, his painting The Punishment of Lust had been hanging in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

  James had been impressed when he saw the painting. Except that he couldn’t forgive the title, for he definitely did not think that women should be punished for their lust. Most of Segantini’s paintings, however, featured simple peasant women or mothers holding children in their arms—much like Madonnas, James thought. Those he was less intrigued by, since he saw them as having little use in his life or in art. Yet the painting Ave Maria Crossing the Lake, which James viewed as yet another of Segantini’s Madonna pictures, had been awarded a gold medal at the world’s fair in Amsterdam. It was the foundation for Segantini’s international reputation.

  Who was this man? James had heard the man’s childhood had been difficult. Supposedly, he had even been put into a reform school in Milan after the police picked him up off the streets several times. One thing James knew: he and Segantini didn’t have much in common, not only because of their views on women but also because the painter had left a large, exciting city like Milan and withdrawn to the Alps. These mountains which James found so incredibly dreary were obviously Segantini’s favorite subject.

  Edward was delighted at the idea of meeting Segantini. True, he had recently been occupied primarily with garden architecture and plants, but his field was actually art history. He was interested in divisionism, a new direction being explored in Italian painting, and Segantini was definitely its most important exponent and practitioner. Edward was less concerned with how Segantini painted women than with the painter’s exciting modern techniques—methods of painting that Segantini had developed all on his own. He admired Segantini’s ability to catch the clear and almost painfully strong mountain light with his paintbrush. But he wasn’t surprised that James was less excited to meet the painter because of his attitude toward the opposite sex. James was always moved by women, even if they were just in paintings.

  “Let’s first go and explore the village,” Edward suggested. “Have you already unpacked your photography equipment? The weather is marvelous. You could take a picture of the pension . . .”

  “Absolutely not,” James replied.

  Making Plans in Zurich to Go for a Health Cure

  “Betsy? Why Betsy of all people?”

  “Because I like her. Because I can talk to her. Because she understands me! Because we enjoy each other’s company . . .”

  “That’s exactly why I’m against it. You’re ill, child, remember that. And you must get well again as quickly as possible, not ‘amuse’ yourself.”

  “But I’ll get well again faster if I can have fun, Mama!” Mathilde looked at her mother defiantly.

  “You went to the wrong boarding school. Or rather, you went around with the wrong sort of girls
there. I told your father a thousand times that your girlfriends weren’t the right sort for you. But your father is interested only in his work.”

  Emma Schobinger shook her head disapprovingly, but more at Mathilde’s inappropriate desires than at her husband’s indifference. In all honesty, Franz wasn’t the worst husband, and he acquiesced to her in most things. Every now and then, however, he felt he had to set an example and would insist on having his way in domestic matters as well. Those moments didn’t happen predictably, so one couldn’t prevent them, not even with the most careful planning. Sometimes it helped to point out that she had contributed a considerable sum of money to their marriage. But that argument came to weigh less with time, for—with his wife’s family’s startup help—Franz had become quite a successful building contractor and developer. And once men have their own money, Emma thought not for the first time, they become unpredictable.

  “All right then,” she continued, handing Mathilde a brochure, “you’re going to the New Stahlbad Surpunt in St. Moritz, together with my cousin Frieda. That way the poor dear will get out a bit too. She can’t afford to go anywhere or do anything. Remember, Mathilde, marriage is a good thing, but being widowed is terrible. Sure, Frieda doesn’t have to work in a factory to earn a living like other widows, and because her children are big boys already, the authorities haven’t taken them away from her. But she doesn’t take anything for granted. Frieda will take her assignment seriously. Besides, Betsy is already having enough fun on her own.”

  After this long lecture, she rang vigorously for the servant girl to keep Mathilde from having her say. But Mathilde threw herself into her mother’s arms. She had been educated at a girls’ secondary school in Lugano, with the primary purpose of learning to run her own household and staff in the near future; that is to say, right after her wedding.