Portrait of a Girl (26 page)

“The doctors and nurses don’t see it that way,” she said vehemently. “It’s good for me, and stimulating; I can feel that myself. And red wine tastes better with company. Drinking alone makes me sad sometimes an
d . . .
”

“What kind of red wine?” Adrian interrupted, horrified. “You drink wine here with this person, here in your room?”

“No.” Mathilde laughed. “No, there’s a lovely room downstairs in the clinic. After all, I don’t lie in bed all the time. I even take fairly long walks, even up the mountain. And once I’m not such a slowpoke anymore, I can even ask Edward to go with m
e . . .
”

“Edward?” Adrian asked. “Edward?”

“Yes,” Mathilde nodded. “He knows where the tiger lilies grow.” She was silent for a moment, then she added, “Oh my, by the time I can go that far, they’ll have finished blooming.” She stopped, seemingly absorbed in thought.

Adrian was shaken. What had happened to Mathilde? He didn’t recognize her. “Tilda,” he said, “maybe you should take a little rest. I’ll come back very soon. We’re staying a few days, your mother and I, and we’ll have lots of time to get used to each other again.”

“But not tomorrow around ten. That’s when Edward is coming. Come in the afternoon, all right? In the morning you can explore St. Moritz with Mama.”

“I’m leaving,” James said.

“But Jamie, why now when it’s so beautiful here?”

“I don’t see that it’s all that beautiful here,” James said, looking at his friend as if he were suffering from hallucinations.

But Edward continued, “I like it better here every day. The air is so very good for me. And I’m no longer brooding about Emily and the past. I haven’t felt this lighthearted in a long time, so alive and so much a part of things. Didn’t you want to go with Segantini to see his paintings and take photographs? Your readers, after all, want to see Segantini—the way he looks, the way he lives, and the way he paints!”

“All right. All right,” James interrupted. “But I think it’s really Mathilde who’s making you feel so good. Please, you don’t have to say any more about it.”

The two were sitting in the
Stüva
of the Pension Veraguth and had already drunk generously of their bottle of wine.

“But why are you suddenly so negative?” Edward asked.

“I’m not. It’s just that I miss the city. Besides, at the moment, everything here is too emotionally charged. That’s not good for me. You understand?”

“No,” Edward said, looking at him blankly.

The First Snow

The days were getting shorter, the evenings cooler. On August 28, 1896, it snowed in Maloja, and a strong wind was blowing. In the evening, Baba lit the stove, and Segantini declared that they would soon move back to their winter quarters in Soglio in the Bregaglia Valley, where the climate was milder and he could paint out of doors longer than up here in Maloja. Mounting debts that were less and less easy to ignore also contributed to the decision.

Nika was freezing in the barn. The room in which Luca and Gian had slept was available for the time being, but Benedetta was hoping that Luca would come home. And if winter were to come early, then Gian would soon be coming down from the mountains with the cows. And so there wouldn’t be any room for Nika in the house. When it got really cold, she’d have to move on.

With stiff fingers, Nika took the locket out from under her straw pallet. She opened it and unfolded the piece of paper, staring at the writing, the meaning of which she still could not decipher even though she could now read fluently. She could effortlessly read the words of the hymns in the hymnbook on Sundays in church. She breathed on the golden locket and polished it with her skirt till it shone. Where would the locket lead her?

But right now, there were other things to think about. It was cold, and she had to find a warmer place to spend the nights. She intended to go to see Signor Robustelli again and ask him to help her out now. If it didn’t work out with a winter job soon enough, he might think of another possibility of where he could put her up.

Standing outside Signor Robustelli’s office, she wondered why she hadn’t asked Segantini for help. He knew a lot of people. But the thought hadn’t occurred to her before this moment. And now she was standing in front of a different door.

Achille Robustelli wasn’t in the best of moods. He had received a letter from his mother telling him she was coming to Maloja for a visit. She finally wanted to see the place where her son had been working all these years. Carefully he folded the letter up again into the same creases his mother had made in the paper. He wasn’t pleased to hear a knock on his door.

“Enter,” he said in a voice that didn’t sound very inviting. Nika was the last person he expected to see standing in his doorway.

“Well, what now?” he asked brusquely.

Nika was perplexed because he was usually so pleasant. Awkwardly she said, “It’s snowing.”

“I saw that,” Robustelli said, not at all graciously.

“Signor Robustelli, please excuse me, but I have a request. I’m staying with the Biancottis in their barn. It’s getting too cold there. They have no room in the house, otherwise they would let me sleep there. I need some place to stay until I can find work for the winter.”

Robustelli looked at her in surprise. “Come sit down, Nika,” he said. After all, she couldn’t help it that he was upset.

“All right, tell me slowly. It’s too cold in the barn. There’s no room in the house at the Biancottis. But the season isn’t over yet.” He thought it over. “That means,” he said, turning his ring, as if it would help him solve this problem, “you’ll have to stay in the hotel for the next few weeks. I’ll have to work that out first, but I’ll let you know when I’ve found a place for you.”

He was a little surprised that she’d come to him. Obviously, she trusted him. He wondered why she didn’t ask Segantini for help with such everyday yet essential things. “Why don’t you want to go back to Mulegns? You told me that you want to look for your mother. That’s all very well, but you don’t even know where to start the search. Is there no one in Mulegns who could help you? The minister? Maybe even the farm family with whom you grew up?”

Nika looked at him, taken aback. Amazed at his ideas. “I can’t go back. I secretly took a locket out of their chest—it was mine. It was left with me when I was abandoned as a baby. But if they’d discovered it was gon
e . . .
well, I ran away when the farmer’s wife was about to discover it missing. I don’t ever want to go back there.”

“But the locket is yours. You weren’t stealing it. You don’t have to be afraid of anything.”

She was silent. He didn’t know anything. Segantini had known without asking.

“So,” Robustelli asked again, “there’s no one who was good to you there?”

“Yes, there was.” Nika nodded and smiled at the memory. “The woman at the post coach inn. She was always kind. She even taught me to read. Sometimes I ran away from the farm to visit her and she never betrayed me.”

“And would she help you?”

“I don’t want to go back,” Nika said, emphatically.

“Listen, Andrina,” Robustelli said. “Nika can’t go on sleeping in the barn. It’s getting too cold. There’s no room for her in your parents’ house, and I’m going to have to put her up somewhere in the hotel for the rest of the season. I thought that since you know each other, you might be willing to share your room with her, and I’ll put the girl with whom you’re sharing now somewhere else. If I can’t find another solution, all three of you might have to sleep together in the same room for a short time.”

“Definitely not,” Andrina protested. “I get along very well with Clara. I don’t want you to put her somewhere else. And there’s not enough space for three people. Not in our room. Impossible. I really don’t see why the
straniera
has to sleep in the hotel, and on top of that, in the attic.” Andrina still considered it a privilege to live so high up.

Achille Robustelli had suspected that he’d encounter additional difficulties. He longed for his weekly bridge game, but it was still several hours away.

“
Tesoro
, please be reasonable. Where else can she sleep?”

“Maybe in Signor Segantini’s bed?” Andrina’s tone was quite snippy.

“That’s enough!” said Achille, his gentleness exhausted. “What nonsense. So you don’t want to have her in your room. Too bad. She hasn’t hurt anybody. Just because she’s a stranger doesn’t mean you have to treat her badly. If you want to stay in the hotel business, then remember this: Each guest is a stranger, a foreigner. And the hotel has to extend a warm welcome and offer him a temporary home away from home.”

Andrina looked hurt. But it was smarter not to say anymore and leave the solution of the problem in Achille’s hands.

“Then I’ll leave now,” she said.

“Yes, do,” he said, still upset.

“Don’t you want a kiss?” She couldn’t quite read his mood.

“All right then, come here,” he smiled a conciliatory smile. “Of course I want a kiss. But don’t think that I’ll forget what you said.”

He couldn’t have explained why he did it. When he spoke to the director of the hotel about taking two days off, he used the vague excuse of needing to arrange a personal matter. He knew the director wouldn’t argue. Achille was conscientiousness personified, and in all the years he had worked at the Spa Hotel Maloja, he had never taken a day of sick leave.

“Take all the time you need,” the director said and shook his hand. “The hotel won’t collapse if you’re not here for two days.”

Achille did not confide his plan to Andrina. He didn’t even try to justify it to himself. He was a man who liked to get a situation clear in his mind, and that was that. In the army, he’d often said that the successful solution to a problem depended on having a thorough knowledge of how the problem got started. Wanting to learn more about where Nika had come from was the issue. He would be better able to help her if he could find out more about her past. But he was afraid of admitting to himself that something in his own life was off kilter; nor could he admit that this lack of inner balance had something to do with Nika.

He took the post coach in Silvaplana, crossing over the Julier. In Mulegns he took a room at the Lowen Inn; the woman proprietor herself served him supper. Once the inn began to empty out, he asked her to sit down with him at his table.

“You may be surprised when I tell you why I’ve come here,” he said, finally getting down to the personal part of the conversation. “I came here because of Nika, the infant you found abandoned many years ago.”

The innkeeper was surprised. She looked closely at him. How was it that this well-dressed man—she judged him to be in his midthirties—knew Nika? With a certain degree of suspicion she said, “What do you have to do with Nika?”

Achille smiled. “Don’t worry. I’m not with the police. And I’m not bringing you bad news. Nika is doing well.”

The innkeeper wiped her hands on her apron. She again looked at the stranger searchingly. The gentleman was an imposing man, good-looking, and he seemed trustworthy.

“Where is she?” she asked. “I’ve worried about her. She simply left a few months ago.”

“She wanted to go to Italy,” Robustelli nodded.

“The stupid child!” the innkeeper cried. “She’s had that idea in her head for years!”

Robustelli laid a hand on her arm to calm her.

“You needn’t worry. She is in Maloja. A family there took her in. Nika is working in a hotel, the same hotel where I work.”

The woman looked at him, flabbergasted. “She’s working in a hotel? Ah well, she was always curious, eager to learn; she asked the most impossible questions and insisted that I teach her to read.” The woman smiled as she remembered, but then went on immediately, “Still, she could have sent me a sign of life! After all, one worries.”

Achille nodded. “She doesn’t know that I came here, Signora. Otherwise she would certainly have asked me to send you her regards. But I have the impression that the family she grew up with did not treat her too well.”

The innkeeper gave Robustelli a sharp look. “Why should you care?” she asked, suddenly suspicious again.

“Nika has confided in me a little. I would really like to help her in her search for her real parents.”

“Well,” the woman said hesitantly. “The farmer’s family didn’t exactly treat her like a princess. But what do you expect? Nika was a contract child, they’re all treated the same. Nobody cares a lot about them, how they’re doing. Here nobody can afford to give things away.” But then she saw how carefully he was following her words, and she confided in him. “The farmer did beat her a lot. And she didn’t get enough to eat. I gave her something to eat now and then, whenever she secretly came here.” She leaned closer to Robustelli and lowered her voice. “To be frank, I tried to make things better for her. First, I went to see the minister. But those religious types! The man didn’t lift a finger for the girl. Avoid trouble, that was his motto. He wasn’t there to defend the weak, this man of God.” She made a hasty sign of the cross. “God save his soul. He’s dead.”

Achille nodded again.

“Then the girl got thinner and thinner and stopped talking. At that point, I reported the matter to the authorities in Chur. They have inspectors who can check on the living conditions of the contract children. And I was amazed—they actually intended to send someone here. But on the very day they were going to come to check on the conditions under which Nika was housed, she ran away.”

The innkeeper shook her head. “She would have come of age soon anyway, and would have been free then to go wherever she wanted t
o . . .
”

“But was there no information with the locket about Nika’s parents?” Robustelli interrupted.