Wanda wanted so much to believe her, but instead she had replied, “What if I’m the sorry exception? What if the Lord made a completely useless human being when he made me? You have to admit that’s how it looks.”
Marie smiled. “How impatient you are! Perhaps the dear Lord decided he didn’t want to make things quite so easy for you as he does for other women. Otherwise he’d have made Harold propose to you a while back, wouldn’t he now? Then before you knew where you were, you’d be a married woman with a baby on your lap.”
“It may not have happened yet, but there’s still time,” Wanda said stubbornly. Harold had been dropping clumsy hints lately about the changes that were about to happen in his life. Changes that would affect her too. Wanda had changed the subject every time. “And what if being a banker’s wife is my mission in life?” The very idea was unbearable!
“Some women can fill up their whole life by loving a man. You may think they’re few and far between, but your mother is one of them,” Marie answered, grinning. “Personally, I couldn’t imagine a life like that. As much as I love Franco, I don’t think I’d be going with him if he hadn’t promised me that I’d be able to carry on working. But he’s very loving and generous as well. He’s only going to Monte Verità because of me, can you imagine!”
Wanda frowned. “I thought that you were going to Switzerland because of Sherlain?” Pandora had said something about a chronic illness from which the poet had to convalesce.
Then Marie explained that the trip to Lake Maggiore was supposed to kill two—or even three—birds with one stone. First it would get Sherlain into healthier surroundings, far from the pernicious influences of the big city. Marie was also excited at the thought of meeting artists from all over Europe on Monte Verità—which had swayed Pandora into deciding to join them. Marie could hardly wait to find inspiration in Europe after all the ideas she’d come up with in America. Wanda wasn’t quite sure how that was going to happen, given that Marie’s sketchpad was already spilling over. Finally—and Marie hesitated a little here before she went on—a short stay in Ascona would put off the moment when she arrived in Genoa with Franco.
“I feel quite queasy at the thought of meeting Franco’s father and the countess for the first time,” she confessed to Wanda. “I can’t imagine being apart from Franco even for a day, but sometimes I’m frightened of what the future may bring. And I haven’t the first idea how I’m going to explain all this to Johanna . . .”
Wanda smiled. They were already in an uproar in Lauscha at the thought that Marie would be coming back home later than planned. She didn’t even want to imagine what Johanna would say when she heard that Marie had followed her handsome Italian all the way to Genoa.
Wanda heaved a heartfelt sigh. Marie had such a colorful, exciting life. She had a wonderful job, she had Pandora for a friend, she had a handsome lover, and she had many exciting plans for the future.
She, Wanda, had nothing. She didn’t even have a dance teacher anymore, let alone a passionate lover—when Harold embraced her, he did so like a big brother, and his kisses were just dry pecks on the cheek. And it looked as though she wouldn’t be going to Germany anytime soon either. She had pleaded with her parents dozens of times to be allowed to go, but to no avail so far.
Wanda shut her eyes and took a deep breath. What does the air smell like in Germany? she wondered.
She tried again and again to imagine all the scenes that Marie had described to her. She remembered what her aunt had said about the weekly market in Sonneberg, the nearest big town. Did it smell sweet, like cotton candy? Or did it smell of fish, like down at the harbor? And the people: Wanda tried to imagine a group of women like her Aunt Johanna, doing their weekly shopping at the market. How were they dressed? Did they all know one another? Did they laugh at one another’s jokes? Would Eva Heimer be there too?
Wanda opened her eyes. Come to think of it, was this Eva her aunt or her . . . grandmother? Since she had been married to Sebastian but lived with Wilhelm Heimer as his . . . She wondered what her father had had to say about it when the whole scandal took place.
What did he even look like? Wanda couldn’t conjure a picture of the man in her mind’s eye. Marie had described him in such vague terms that she could have been talking about almost any man. Wanda had looked through her mother’s photograph albums in secret, but she hadn’t found a single picture of Thomas Heimer. There wasn’t even a wedding portrait. If there had ever even been such a picture, her mother had certainly destroyed it long ago. She had covered her tracks, as they say. And now that Marie had gone it was near impossible to find out anything more about where she really came from. There would be no more German bread, no more stories.
That night Wanda lay awake for hours.
“Everybody has a mission in life”—Marie’s words hammered in her brain like mischievous goblins, set on tormenting her. Gradually Wanda’s sadness vanished, to be replaced by stubborn resentment. Ha! She wasn’t going to give up just because she hadn’t found her own mission yet! Everything had to happen right here, right now—at least that’s how she had lived her life so far. Harold always said rather condescendingly that her spontaneous ideas were just castles in the air. Empty air. Meaningless air.
Shortly before midnight she sat up abruptly in bed.
Perhaps she had just been going about things the wrong way. What was so wrong with taking some time to stop and think?
She sprang nimbly out of bed and went to the window. She leaned her forehead against the cool glass and looked out into the night.
Over in Lauscha they would probably see the stars scattered across a clear sky tonight, but she saw the lights in hundreds and hundreds of windows. And that was something, wasn’t it?
Wanda laughed softly.
How did the saying go? If Mohammed would not go to the mountain, then the mountain would have to come to Mohammed!
That was it!
Perhaps she couldn’t go to Germany—not yet. But there was something else that she could do.
It wasn’t quite eight o’clock in the morning when Wanda put her hand, trembling slightly, on the doorknob of a small bakery in a side street off Tenth Avenue. That was where Marie had bought the bread for their picnic, and she had been full of praise. “I’ve never had such good rye bread, not even back home! I can’t understand why your mother doesn’t have them send her bread every day.”
A sturdy-looking woman, busy heaving loaves as big as cart wheels up onto the shelves, turned to look at Wanda as she came in.
“What can I do for you, Miss?”
Wanda cleared her throat. It was now or never. She made an effort to speak in her best German.
“Is there somewhere nearby where the Germans meet, where I can learn more about Germany and its customs?”
2
Marie screamed and sat bolt upright.
“Marie, mia cara, what’s the matter?” Franco asked, sitting up in bed a moment later. He was wide awake in an instant, his eyes roaming the cabin, but nothing appeared to be wrong. He relaxed again.
“What happened?” He shook Marie’s arm gently. “Did you have a bad dream?”
Marie nodded, her eyes still wide with shock, one hand to her mouth as though she had seen something dreadful.
“I don’t feel well. I have such a knot in my stomach . . .”
There was sweat on her brow.
When Franco moved to put an arm around her shoulder, he felt her nightgown clinging to her back. “You’re soaked through!”
He picked up a cardigan from the wooden chair that served as their bedside table and draped it around Marie’s shoulders.
“Thank you.” She took a deep breath. “I’m all right now . . . Good heavens, though, it was such a nasty dream! I was in the clearing over behind the sanatorium. It was flooded with light, like you get when the sun’s shining down onto a white surface. There
was a man . . . He had a great flowing beard and was dressed in a long robe. But it wasn’t anybody from here, from the mountain,” she added hastily when she saw the look on Franco’s face. She pulled the cardigan closer around her.
Franco reached over to the chair and pulled out a cigarette, and Marie kept talking as he lit it.
“The man asked me to dance, but I didn’t want to. His hand was ice-cold, and I tried to pull my hand away, but he wouldn’t let go and kept on as though he hadn’t heard me. We spun around in a circle and I felt quite sick. I didn’t hear any music, though perhaps I just can’t remember that part. There were other couples dancing there as well, some of them were women dancing with women and men dancing with men.”
“And I—where was I?” Why is she dreaming of other men?
She shrugged. “ ‘I have to go to Franco,’ I kept telling the man, but he didn’t look at me and acted as though he hadn’t heard. ‘Franco doesn’t like it when I dance with other men,’ I told him, but again he ignored me. He held me tight in his arms and we went round and round and round and didn’t stop.” She swallowed. “We danced right on past the other couples. ‘We have to turn around; we’re getting too close to the edge!’ I shouted at him. I pulled at his arm and writhed like an eel, but he held me in a grip of iron. Suddenly the lake was coming closer and closer, not blue any longer; it had turned inky black like some vast chasm waiting to swallow us up. As we took the last step, he looked at me and laughed. Laughed like a madman. And his face was so horrible . . .” Marie began to tremble so violently that she couldn’t go on.
“Marie, calm down! Everything’s fine.” Franco rocked her in his arms. “I know what it’s like to have dreams like that: you fall and fall and fall . . .”
“Then there’s nothing more below you, it’s so awful! And then there’s the fact that it was somebody else dragging me down!”
For a moment neither of them said a word. Then Marie sighed.
“Alois Sawatzky, the bookseller I told you about, would love to hear about a dream like that. He would interpret it and then speculate about its deeper meaning.”
“I don’t need any specialists to tell me what it’s about,” Franco said irritably. “It’s because of this miserable wood cabin we’re lodged in. So much for fresh air and nature’s light! My father’s hunting hounds have better accommodations. This is the last night we spend in this shack. We’re moving to the Casa Semiramis tomorrow.”
He looked around the room, still fuming. He had wanted to stay in the hotel from the very beginning, since it promised at least a little comfort. But during their first tour of the grounds he had let Marie talk him into staying in one of the wooden cabins that were scattered through the forest.
“How romantic!” she had exclaimed. How charming to wash on the front deck in the morning with just a bucket of water! Sherlain had been equally taken with the idea. Pandora, however, had been quite horrified at the idea of getting so close to Mother Nature.
“If it’s so darn comfortable living in a chicken coop like that, why have Henri Oedenkoven and Ida Hoffmann built themselves a villa with electricity and running water?” she had asked. It was one of the curious features of the place that the owners of the commune lived in far greater luxury than the other members. In the end the two women had taken a room in the little hotel that stood at the edge of the estate, with its spectacular view of the lake. Pandora had read out loud from the hotel brochure. “Peace and quiet and freedom for those who are tired, who can gather new strength here.” She decided that it was just the place for them.
Franco drew on his cigarette, furious. Why had he agreed to live in the forest like a savage?
Marie had had trouble sleeping even on their first night there—there were too many strange noises, rustlings in the undergrowth, small twigs cracking as though underfoot. She admitted to him the next morning that she had strained her ears at every sound, while he himself had slept like a log, since he’d taken a quick tour of the taverns down in Ascona that evening. She also told him that she always felt as though she were being watched. No wonder, given that there were no curtains in the cabin, or even shutters for the windows. “Now who on earth is going to watch us sleep in the middle of the night?” he had reassured her, then suggested that they move to the hotel. But she wouldn’t hear of it. Then she should come down to Ascona with him in the evenings, he said; some wine would certainly help her sleep. But she hadn’t agreed to that either. He asked whether she had converted to Monte Verità’s creed of abstinence. At that Marie just laughed, unbuttoned her blouse and invited him to find out just how abstinent she had become. After that there had been no more talk of moving to the hotel.
He felt his desire reawaken now. He reached out and stroked her breast gently. Maybe he could get her to take her mind off things for a while.
But Marie wriggled out of his arms a moment later.
“That’s enough feeling sorry for myself. I won’t let one silly dream spoil my whole day. What I need right now is a cold shower,” she declared with conviction in her voice. She pulled her nightgown over her head and walked outside, stark-naked, blowing him a teasing kiss first.
Franco watched her go. What was it about this woman that she could twist him around her little finger? Ever since he had met Marie he had been a different man—sometimes he barely recognized himself. He did things for her sake that he would never have dreamt of doing before. Such as this detour to Ascona. It had taken quite a lot of persuasion to talk his father into giving him these three weeks of leisure, and he had to promise to make up for lost work once he got back home. When the old count had grumbled that other men never let their love affairs get in the way of business, Franco had answered heatedly that this was more than just a love affair, that Marie was the woman he’d been waiting for all his life. His father had replied that he could hardly believe that some chance acquaintance he’d met on his travels in America was so much better than the many blue-blooded marchionesses and countesses his mother had presented to him over the years—any one of whom would have made a good match. Whereupon Franco had announced that he loved Marie. The old man spluttered with laughter and said that he loved his dogs.
After the heated exchange over the telephone in the Ascona post office, Franco decided it was probably best not to mention for now that he would be bringing Marie back with him. Clearly his parents needed time to get used to the idea that they would soon have to share their only son with a woman. But the time was drawing near when they would have to set out for Genoa.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to call his father today and fill him in on the details—after all, there were preparations to be made at the palazzo. A glassblower’s studio? Have you finally lost your mind? He could just imagine what the old count would have to say about that. Franco took a deep breath, as though gathering strength for the coming duel of words. This time, he swore, he wouldn’t let the old man’s barbs get to him. There would be no repetition of the whole drama with Serena. He was no longer a boy whose father could break his will. He and Marie were strong together, and together, they could face down the count. He would follow her example and dedicate himself to his work in the vineyards, just as she let nothing distract her from her glass. And he would no longer serve as his father’s errand boy. He was looking forward to the day when he would have nothing more to do with the smuggling. He had never let it show how revolting he found that part of their export trade, but it always hung over him like a dark cloud. Admittedly the cloud had thinned somewhat since Marie had come into his life; at least, it had become easier to bear. But everything would be so much better when it had vanished entirely. Oh yes, the old man would have to get used to the idea that from now on, his son had his own plans. And who knows, maybe at last his father would come to appreciate his efforts to renew the vine stock and breed new grape varieties?
Through the open door he could see Marie washing her breasts with a sponge. She
dipped the sponge back into the bucket, careful not to lose a drop of water, then squeezed it out before rubbing it up and down her right leg. Wearing her nakedness like a simple, costly garment, she moved without a trace of self-consciousness. How beautiful she was, his princess!
He drew on his cigarette one last time and then stubbed it out.
From now on she would live in the lap of luxury; he would take care of that. As for his father . . . he didn’t want to think about him right now.
3
After Franco had set off for the village, Marie walked over to one of the sunbathing areas, wearing nothing but a half slip. She met Pandora and Sherlain here every morning to lie in the sun. Sometimes Ida Hoffmann or Susanna, the partner of Pandora’s New York friend Lukas Grauberg, joined them. Marie loved the hours they spent there. Ruth, who was always meeting her friends for lunch or afternoon tea, would probably have seen nothing special in such an arrangement, but for Marie it was the first time she had ever had a group of female friends. When she sat at the lamp back home, Peter, Johannes, and Magnus were always in the workshop; and as a woman doing a man’s job she felt she had to play like a man to keep up with them.
When Marie turned the corner and saw Lake Maggiore and her friends all waiting for her, she forgot her nightmare. The naked female bodies were as white as the finest china against that azure background. She was almost overwhelmed by the wish to hold the moment forever. A wave of happiness washed over her.
“So, Franco finally let you get out of bed!” Pandora said, standing up. Grunting and groaning in a most unladylike manner, she walked past Marie and spread her sheet out on the mossy grass.
“Oh no, it was quite the other way around: I let him go, albeit reluctantly!” Marie replied, grinning. She squinted and watched Pandora head toward one of the big wooden bathtubs that stood at the end of the meadow.
The American Lady (The Glassblower Trilogy Book 2) Page 18