Gian had made a complete recovery from his illness, and Benedetta gave thanks to the Virgin Mary, something she hadn’t done in a long time. She wasn’t happy about letting her oldest son leave home again, but Aldo insisted. Gian, he said, would become a laughingstock if he clung to his mother’s apron strings, and Benedetta wouldn’t like it either.
Still, she was afraid her dreamy son might get lost in solitude up in the mountains and plunge to his death simply because he didn’t pay attention. Now, after his illness, he was even less alert and engaged than before. When no one was looking, she would stroke his tousled hair, and he would smile at her in his distracted, lost-in-a-daydream sort of way. He was such a good-looking boy, with his brown eyes and his gentle, boyishly mischievous face. But with a sigh, Benedetta had to admit to herself that he lacked all aggressiveness, something you needed in life.
He didn’t object when his father sent him back up to Grevasalvas. Benedetta went with him, loaded down with all sorts of good things she had canned, cooked, cured, and smoked for him. Nika wanted to go with him, but Benedetta didn’t want her to, perhaps because she had a maternal inkling that her son was secretly suffering because of this girl.
Gian loved the view of the mighty Piz Lagrev, whose sides were scarred by rockslides and avalanches. He loved the waterfall that roared between the huts and stables of Blaunca, and the smell of its mist and spray. And he loved the four little brown cows that had been entrusted to his care. Yet he felt lonely, a feeling that he had not ever had before. Now there was Nika, and because of her, he knew what loneliness was. When he was near her, he felt different than when he was alone. What he felt when he was next to her was different from anything he had ever felt. Suddenly there were several feelings within him that he could compare, and the contrast was marked enough to make him realize that there were the moments when he was lonely—and other moments when he wasn’t. Gian had learned what love is. Yet that gift had made him sad. For Nika had told him she could not return his love.
“I don’t want you to kiss my lips,” she had told him gently and turned her face away from him as they were saying good-bye. “Lovers kiss each other on the lips. I like you very much. But that is something different.”
“Why aren’t we lovers?” Gian had asked in disappointment.
“Because I love another man,” Nika said.
“So what Andrina’s been saying is true.”
Nika shook her head.
“No. It isn’t. I love Segantini. But he doesn’t love me.”
Achille Robustelli had noticed that Segantini was coming to the hotel less frequently. He was relieved. Yet in spite of that, he wasn’t particularly happy about it, because he could see that Nika had started to look like a weeping willow. One day he asked her to come to his office, even though he had no idea why he wanted to see her.
“Sit down,” he said, and once she was seated, he went on, “Signor Segantini told me that you’ve started to speak. At any rate with him. I don’t know whether you’d like to talk with me too. I would be happy about that. I have been wondering what you are going to do once the season here is over. I’m sure you know that we close for the winter.”
Nika looked at him with her blue-green eyes like the sea. Was that a flash of gratitude? he wondered.
She said nothing, seemed to be debating whether she should say something or not. Then she smiled, and he felt as if an entirely different woman were sitting before him.
“You’re very kind,” she said. “I’ve also been wondering what will happen in the winter . . .” Suddenly she even laughed. “And I thought I would ask you for help.”
Achille Robustelli, a bit confused by so much unexpected trust, touched his prematurely gray temples and leaned back in his chair.
“Really?” he mumbled.
Nika looked at him calmly.
Robustelli said nothing for a while. Then he said, “And what would you like to do?”
“I’d like to go to Italy, not this winter, but when I have saved enough money for the trip.”
“To Italy?” Robustelli repeated.
“Yes,” Nika nodded.
“And why to Italy of all places?” Achille asked.
“Because I think my mother lives there,” she said. “I don’t know my mother, but I will look for her. And eventually I will find her.”
“Bene,” Robustelli said. “Do you know where you should be looking for her?”
“No,” Nika said.
“Aha.”
“I’d like to stay here for the winter, look for a job, maybe in St. Moritz at one of the hotels that stays open for the winter. I could work in a laundry again.”
“You would probably have to, in the winter,” Achille Robustelli said, smiling.
Nika smiled too. “I thought you might be able to give me a reference.”
Robustelli leaned forward and looked at her. She was no longer as thin as she had been when she first came. Benedetta had obviously taken good care of her. And whatever Segantini had done with her, it had been good for her too. It was as if an ugly duckling had turned into a swan—something within her had unfolded and was now visible. She is beautiful, he thought. He said, “All right, I’ll think about it.”
A Visit Is Announced
“And with whom are we attending the opening of the Palace Hotel?” James asked, sullenly.
Edward who, in contrast, was in a very good mood, looked up briefly from his newspaper. “Why, what do you mean? I thought we would go there together.” He went back to reading.
“Kate and her husband left quite suddenly, did you know?”
“No,” Edward replied. “How should I have known? Kate is, after all, your department.”
James refused to be deterred.
“It’s boring to go there just with you, my dear fellow. And Mathilde is in the hospital. It would have been a very special event for her.”
“Oh, you’re suddenly worrying about what might make her happy?” Edward let the paper fall to his lap.
“Don’t act so sanctimonious,” James said. “You don’t know anything. She sent me away when I tried to visit her in the hospital.”
“Well, and so?” Edward said. “You could have tried to find out why she did that.”
“She’s engaged. And Kate knew it. That surprises you, eh?”
Upon hearing this, Edward folded up the paper and got up from the flowered easy chair to open the window. He leaned far out. Then he turned back to James.
“And that’s why she sent you away?”
“No.”
“Well, whatever. I thought I’d ask Betsy whether she’d like to go with me to the opening,” Edward said. “She’s intelligent, entertaining, and attractive. And since she’s been in mourning, she might now feel like participating again in a big social event.”
“Good Heavens!” James, who’d stretched out on Edward’s bed with his arms crossed under his head, jumped up suddenly. “I don’t recognize you! You were already paying her compliments that evening at Segantini’s. You don’t have designs on her, do you?”
Edward said nothing.
“Eddie?” James said.
“It’s my affair.” Edward closed the window and leaned with his back against it so that he could face James directly. “If I remember correctly, Jamie, you made more advances to her that evening than I did.”
“You remember that?”
“In any case, this time I’m ahead of you. Maybe you spent a bit too much time with Kate.”
“Even at school you were a moralizing prig,” James said, his tone deprecating. “Why didn’t you become a preacher? Or a teacher?”
“Because I didn’t want to have anything to do with pupils like you,” James said.
On July 29, 1896, before the eyes of countless, elegantly dressed guests, the hotel owner, Caspar Badrutt, danced the opening
dance with a genuine English princess. And with that, the fashionable Palace Hotel opened for business, another attraction for the mountain village of St. Moritz, which had succeeded in becoming a sought-after destination for the entire world.
The hotel was extraordinary. Famous Zurich architects had constructed it to resemble an English Tudor-style castle complete with a square corner tower, crenellations, and palatial great halls. Fires crackled in open fireplaces in the wood-paneled rooms, even though the hotel, of course, also had central heating. The elevators had been shipped by sea from New York, the furniture from Berlin. Beautiful, flickering light from innumerable brass candelabras and crystal chandeliers flooded the dining room, the great halls, the parlors, the smoking room, the library, and the billiard room. And, on this ceremonial opening evening, vintage champagne was poured into Bohemian crystal goblets as buffet tables groaned under hot and cold delicacies.
“Doesn’t it seem to you that we’re a bit like onlookers among all these maharajas, princesses, princes, and steel barons?” Betsy asked. She was wearing a very elegant amethyst-colored evening dress that she had ordered by mail from Zurich. Her necklace, although more modest than many of the diamonds on show, outdid most of those creations because it had been chosen with exquisite taste.
“Not a bit,” James replied, not bothered at all. He had the least money of the three in their group, and was skillfully making his way through the crowd carrying his Rhine salmon and a glass of champagne. “Come,” he said, “I just discovered Segantini and his wife. Let’s say hello to them.”
Betsy, who remembered her rash remarks at Segantini’s house, didn’t think this was such a good idea. On the whole, having been infected with mistrust by Kate, she was keeping her distance from James who, quite unsuspecting, was surprised at her coolness. He tried to push his way through the crush of people to Segantini. Betsy, on the other hand, took Edward’s arm and pulled him in another direction.
But before James reached Segantini, he ran into Fabrizio Bonin, who introduced his new acquaintance to Count Primoli. They were soon deeply involved in conversation. Although they had started by talking about Segantini, the subject quickly turned to a discussion of the new art of photography. Both of them knew something about it, although Primoli was much the better informed.
“Tilda,” Betsy said, “there’s nothing further we can do. Your mother is coming, and she isn’t bringing your Aunt Frieda but rather your fiancé, Adrian. I couldn’t stop her. After all, she is your mother.” Her tone of voice always became harsher than usual whenever she felt helpless.
Mathilde made a face.
“Really, Tilda! Your mother is worried about you and about your engagement. That’s easy to understand. So just prepare yourself. They’re arriving tomorrow.”
From the start, Betsy had thwarted every evasive maneuver on the part of her niece, and she was exhausted from the effort. She reached for Mathilde’s wine glass. They had been having lunch together, and a glass of the local wine was part of Mathilde’s diet, for they said it had special healing powers. “It’s not too strong, not very acidic, and even tolerated in cases of gastroenteritis,” Dr. Bernhard had said. “Red wine stimulates the heart and promotes the coughing up of sputum, and for that reason, my dear Miss Schobinger, you not only may but you should have a couple of little glasses every day.”
Now Betsy hoped for a supportive effect from the highly praised wine and that it would stave off any despair on Mathilde’s part. For the time had come for Betsy to confess to her niece that she had withheld the telegram Adrian had sent her. It had arrived right after Mathilde had been diagnosed, and Betsy had wanted to protect Mathilde, since she was still shocked by her diagnosis and also still in a state of agitation about James.
“But Edward is coming to see me tomorrow!” Mathilde said, her voice almost despairing.
Betsy looked at her nonplussed. “And? If James were coming, I could understand your excitement, but Edward . . . Oh well, so you’ll have two visitors tomorrow. I can send a message to Edward asking that he come to see you in the morning. Your mother and Adrian won’t arrive till evening. By the way, how are things with James?”
Mathilde made an indefinable sound, something between anger, disappointment, and sadness. “I won’t be seeing him anymore.”
“Oh. Maybe that will make it easier for me to tell you,” Betsy said. “There was a telegram from Adrian that I kept from you. It arrived shortly after you were admitted to the clinic.”
“What?” Mathilde cried indignantly. “You simply didn’t give it to me? I’m not a little girl anymore!”
“No, but you were all mixed up because of the diagnosis and also because of James. Remember, you told me you loved him?”
Mathilde smoothed the tablecloth to the right and to the left of her plate and fanned her face with her napkin for air.
“But since Adrian is coming tomorrow, you should know what he wrote you, and how he feels about you.” Betsy paused and sat down, “Even though you may not yet know how you feel about him.”
Betsy’s gentian-blue eyes looked questioningly into Mathilde’s forget-me-not-blue ones. If she was to believe what Kate had told her, then Mathilde had kept something much more important from her aunt than the aunt had kept from her niece.
Mathilde lowered her eyes and reached for the telegram without further explanations.
DEAR MATHILDE, YOUR ILLNESS SHOULD NOT AND WILL NOT BE A REASON FOR DISSOLVING OUR RELATIONSHIP STOP EVEN IF MY PARENTS THINK SO STOP I LOVE YOU AND AM AT YOUR SIDE STOP ADRIAN.
Mathilde bit her lip. Thanks to all the fresh air, and the plentiful food and wine, her cheeks were usually a rosy pink, but now angry red spots spread over her neck and face.
“That’s why I didn’t give you the telegram right away.”
Mathilde only nodded.
When Betsy could no longer bear the silence, she said cautiously, “His parents own a bank. He is their only son and heir. They want to be certain . . .”
“. . . that I won’t die,” Mathilde said. “I might of course die.”
She was silent again.
“But look, Tilda, Adrian will stand by you. And that’s what he wanted to tell you in the telegram. It wasn’t very clever of him to let you know right off what his parents were thinking, but he wanted, above all, to tell you that he loves you and will stand by you. That you are more important to him than his parents and the bank.” Betsy took a deep breath. It would be good, she thought, if Mathilde turned to Adrian again after all that had, presumably, happened. At least that would be the easiest way out. “You can count on him,” she therefore said encouragingly. “And that is really something wonderful. Look at him with fresh eyes after this business with James. Take the time to think it through. Maybe you’ll see then that he is the right man for you.”
Mathilde looked at her aunt thoughtfully.
“I think I have to lie down,” she said. “I’m not feeling well.”
Betsy took her upstairs to her room.
“Aunt Betsy?”
Betsy, already at the door, turned around to look at her niece.
“I’d like to see James,” Mathilde said.
Edward and James had each received a letter from Betsy. Holding the envelopes in wonderment, they waited for the messenger who had brought them their missives to leave.
“And what did she write you?” Edward was the first to ask. He had been disappointed to find she was merely asking him to visit Mathilde in the morning tomorrow because she was expecting company from Zurich in the evening.
James looked up from the note he had received. “I don’t quite understand what Betsy is saying here,” he said and frowned. “On the one hand, she says Mathilde would like to see me, but then Betsy has also asked me to meet with her separately. Odd. It all seems quite rushed, and I really don’t know whether she wants me to visit her first or first go to
the hospital.” He looked puzzled.
“In any event, she’s expecting company from Zurich tomorrow,” Edward said.
“Who? Betsy or Mathilde?”
“Mathilde, of course.”
“Why of course?”
“Because, Jamie, this is all about Mathilde. After all she’s the one who is ill and needs to be visited,” Edward said, slowly losing patience.
“And does it say in your note who is coming to visit?” James asked with a note of irritability in his voice, for he realized that it could all get very complicated.
“No, it says nothing about that here. Her parents, I assume.”
“It might also be her fiancé. What do you think?”
Edward paced back and forth. It was what he did whenever he felt something he didn’t want to express. “Yes. Naturally. She’s engaged, you said.” He kept pacing back and forth.
“I think I’ll go see Betsy first,” James said.
“I think I’ll go see Mathilde first,” Edward said at the same instant.
“Edward understands Mathilde much better than I do,” James was saying as he and Betsy were drinking tea in the lobby of the Spa Hotel Maloja. There was waltz music in the background.
“The trio that usually entertains here in the afternoons plays abominably,” Betsy remarked. “Don’t be so sad,” she said to him. “It doesn’t become you.”
“Besides, Betsy, Edward talks about her so enthusiastically that I’m gradually beginning to wonder . . .”
“I feel comfortable with him,” Betsy said curtly.
“You realize, don’t you, Betsy, that my friend Eddie and I are competitors for your attentions?” James gave her an appealingly boyish smile.
“But I asked you to meet me because of Mathilde,” Betsy said. “I’d like to save her any more confusion and unnecessary pain. I don’t know what happened between you and her; I know only that it has bothered and tormented her. And guessing from what Kate Simpson told me, whatever happened is not a trifling matter, but something compromising for my niece. I have to assume that you exploited Mathilde’s naïveté in a not very nice way. I wanted to see you for two reasons. First, I want to ask you how seriously I should take whatever happened between you and Mathilde, and second, Mathilde wants to see you, and she wants to see you now, right now, before her fiancé arrives. He has assured her of his love, and that he will stand by her even against the objections of his parents, and he knows nothing about your affair. Perhaps that will explain why it was so urgent that I see you. I can’t keep Tilda from seeing you, or from loving you. But I appeal to your decency, if you have any. I expect you to support Tilda, and to encourage her to return to her fiancé. I also expect you to tell her that you don’t want anything from her, and that she cannot expect anything from you, in spite of all that has happened.”
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