The Star of Kazan (20 page)

‘Rosina,’ she said, but it was not clear if she was naming the kitten or herself.

But Zed did not forget his promise. In halting Romany, mixed with Hungarian, he explained that Annika had never heard proper gypsy music.

The men were sleepy now, some had gone back into the caravans, but Annika had left her mark: not many little
gadjo
girls had curtsied to old Izidor. He clapped his hands and demanded music – and when Izidor demanded something, he got it.

Annika had seen gypsy musicians in their colourful romantic costumes in the cafes in Vienna. They had beribboned guitars and celestas and cymbalines and exotic-looking instruments of which she did not know the names.

The men who came out of the caravans were not like that. Yawning, rubbing their eyes, they came out of their wagons carrying battered fiddles, ancient cellos, accordions with worn-looking keys.

And then they started to play.

At first Annika did not like the sound they made; it was so different from the lilting Viennese waltzes she was used to. This music attacked you; it was fierce and angry . . . at least it was at first; she listened to it with clenched hands. Then suddenly one of the fiddlers stepped forward and played a melody that soared and wreathed and fastened itself round the heart – a sad tune that sounded as if it was gathering up all the unhappiness in the world – and then the other musicians joined in again and it was as though the sadness had been set free. The music was no longer about life being sad and lonely. It was about life being difficult, but also exciting and surprising and sublime.

When the players stopped, Annika shook her head, bewildered to find herself still on solid ground. She had hardly returned to the real world when something happened that frightened her badly.

Izidor was speaking to Zed and what he said was important because the others fell silent. If she did not understand all the words, Annika understood the gestures that went with them perfectly.

Izidor was asking Zed if he would go along with them. He pointed to his caravan and to the old woman who stood on the steps, nodding, agreeing with what he said. He pointed to Rocco, grazing peacefully under the trees.

Then he repeated his offer. Zed was one of them, he said. He belonged and so did his horse.

Annika held her breath.

But Zed had shaken his head. He pointed to Annika, and back in the direction of Spittal.

‘Not yet,’ he seemed to be saying. ‘Not now.’

Izidor drove her back in a small cart to which he had hitched one of his horses, while Zed rode Rocco beside them. The little girl with the kitten came too and as they stopped at the turning to Spittal, she put the kitten firmly into Annika’s lap. It was a present.

Annika’s hand closed round the soft warm fur and she realized how badly she wanted something living of her own. But Zed leaned down and said something to the girl in her own language, and she looked troubled and bewildered. Then she gave a sad shake of her head and took the kitten back again.

‘What did you tell her?’ asked Annika after the cart had turned back.

‘I told her that Spittal was not a good house for animals.’

Zed took her to the door and she got back safely to her room, but it would be a long time before she forgot the evening. Would Zed really be able to resist what his people offered: the warmth, the firelight, the freedom – and the care they would give his horse?

He had refused to go with them. ‘Not now,’ he had said. ‘Not yet.’ But ‘Not ever’? She did not think he had said that.

T
he next day, Annika was back at work, cooking, contriving, cleaning. She had been sure that when the grown-ups returned she would have time to take off her apron and become again the girl her mother wanted her to be.

But she was working in the drawing room on the other side of the house, standing on a stepladder cleaning the windows, when the carriage returned, and the first she knew of it was hearing her mother’s voice.

‘Annika! What on earth are you doing?’

Annika started and nearly lost her balance. Then she came slowly down; there was no point in even trying to pull off her apron. She had been caught red-handed. Behind her mother, Annika saw Hermann, smirking. He had obviously led her into the drawing room on purpose, wanting to make trouble.

‘She was doing something like that all the time you were away, Mother. Scrubbing and sweeping and cooking – and she had all her meals in the kitchen. She’s just a servant through and through!’

Annika waited for her mother’s anger, but something had happened to Edeltraut. She was elegantly dressed in a new velvet coat and skirt and her hair was swept up in a different style which made her look younger and very beautiful.

‘Oh, Annika, my darling,’ she said with a rueful laugh. ‘What are we going to do with you?’

And she bent down and swept Annika into her arms and hugged her.

Everything had changed, Annika saw that at once. Her mother was no longer stiff and anxious. Mathilde had stopped looking like an unhappy camel. Uncle Oswald had trimmed his beard. Whatever the business was that had taken them to Switzerland, it must have gone well.

It was decided that the family from the hunting lodge would stay the night. Uncle Oswald had bought a hamper full of good things in Zurich: tins of pâté, truffles, hothouse grapes, a smoked leg of lamb, a bottle of champagne.

‘We’ll have a party,’ said Edeltraut. ‘But first I must tell you what has happened, because we shall need to pay our respects and say a prayer.’

So the children gathered round her and Edeltraut told them why they had gone away.

‘I told you there might be news which would help us here at Spittal,’ she said. ‘And there has been such news. Our money troubles are over. Everything won’t be settled at once, but I was able to raise enough money on my expectations to start on the things that need to be done.’

‘What are expectations, Aunt Edeltraut?’ asked Gudrun.

‘Well, in this case they are money, which has been left to me in a will. Quite a lot of money. And this, my dears, is where the sad part comes in, because my godfather, Herr von Grotius, has died. He was a widower and we went to Zurich to make sure he had a fitting funeral. I can’t tell you what a wonderful man he was and I was his favourite goddaughter.’

Edeltraut’s handkerchief came out and she dabbed her eyes. It was a new one, edged with finest lace; there had been no time yet to embroider it with the von Tannenberg initials.

‘Death is always sad,’ she went on, ‘but he was very, very old. Often in the last years he told me how tired he was; how he longed to be at rest.’

‘And now he is, God bless him,’ put in Mathilde.

Edeltraut raised her eyebrows at her sister. She never liked being interrupted and both the godfather and his legacy belonged to
her
. ‘You can be certain,’ she told the children, ‘that we gave him a wonderful funeral. A dozen black horses bedecked with plumes, three carriages packed with important mourners . . . a service in the cathedral presided over by the archbishop . . . Everybody who mattered in the city was there. The Prince of Essen sent his equerry.’ She dabbed her eyes once more, then put the handkerchief away. ‘So tonight when you go to bed I want you to promise to kneel and say a prayer for Herr von Grotius. I know you never met him, but he was a good man.’

‘A very good man,’ said Mathilde, who felt that she was not being allowed a fair share of the story.

‘Because he begged us not to go into mourning we shall wear our ordinary clothes,’ Edeltraut went on, ‘except when we go out, when we shall have black armbands. There will be armbands for you also so that people know we care and I shall wear a black ribbon on my petticoat, as my mother would have done, because he was
my
godfather.’

But to Annika it seemed that the clothes the grown-ups were wearing were not very ordinary. The muff Edeltraut had thrown down was made of sable, Mathilde wore a jacket embroidered in gold thread and Uncle Oswald’s shining new boots were made of finest kid.

Hermann had done his best to listen patiently, but now he got to his feet and moved to his mother’s side.

‘Does that mean I can go to St Xavier’s?’ he asked excitedly. ‘Does it?
Does
it?’

Edeltraut smiled at him.

‘Yes, my dear, it does. That will be our first task – to get you ready for the Easter term. The time for you to serve your Fatherland has come!’

Hermann’s face flushed with joy. He pulled back his shoulders and gave a perfect military salute.

‘I am ready,’ he said.

For a moment no one could think of anything except the noble way that Hermann was behaving. Then Edeltraut broke the silence.

‘And now you will want to see your presents.’

The boxes were piled up on the low table. Gudrun opened hers to find, in nests of tissue paper, a blue velvet cloak and hood with a matching muff – and a pair of white lace gloves.

‘Oh, Mama,’ she said – and her long pale face lit up. She slipped on the cloak and the hood, and wouldn’t take them off the whole evening.

Hermann’s present took a long time to unwrap; inside the embossed paper was a leather box with the monogram Zwingli and Hammerman, goldsmiths to the president of Switzerland, stamped on the side. Inside the box were several layers of green felt, and inside that was a statuette, in pure silver, of General von Moltke on his horse.

‘Be careful of it, Hermann,’ said his mother. ‘It’s really valuable.’

‘Thank you, Mother.’ Hermann was delighted. ‘I’ll be able to take it to St Xavier’s and show the others.’

‘And now you, Annika. This is what you wanted, isn’t it?’

She handed her a box wrapped in brown paper. Annika took the first present from her mother with eager hands. Inside was a pair of rubber galoshes. Annika thanked her warmly, but she had seen at once that they were a size too small.

The next two weeks were spent in getting Hermann ready for St Xavier’s. This was not a simple matter. Hermann had a list of the things he had to have and they were many.

‘I shall need two dress uniforms and a new pair of riding boots and a hard hat with a badge and my own pistol . . . and a double-breasted greatcoat with wide lapels . . . and six pairs of white kid gloves . . .’

It was now that a new figure entered the lives of the family at Spittal: Hermann’s friend Karl-Gottlieb von Dammerfeld. Karl-Gottlieb had gone to St Xavier’s at the beginning of the year and now he sent little notes to Hermann telling him about the things that were not on the official list but everybody had to have if they were not to become a laughing stock, like slippers made of deerskin and silver tooth-mugs inscribed with the family crest.

Because the roof of the hunting lodge was being treated for woodworm, Gudrun and her parents were staying at Spittal until the repairs were done. But even Gudrun, who worshipped Hermann, sighed when the post brought another letter from Karl-Gottlieb.

Annika had not been allowed to help the servants, but she was definitely allowed to help Hermann. She was allowed to polish his badges and clean his buttons and iron his shirts because she did it so much better than old Bertha, who had returned from the funeral, and better even than the new maid who had been engaged.

‘I don’t want you to think you’ve been forgotten, Annika,’ said her mother. ‘I have a lovely surprise planned for you later, but just at the moment I know you will like to see Hermann off safely. He’s waited for this so long.’

Annika didn’t mind helping Hermann, but she was amazed at how much he longed to go to a place which sounded to her like a kind of prison. The boys slept forty to a dormitory on iron beds, they marched everywhere to military commands and the punishments were awesome.

‘Sometimes they handcuff a boy’s hand to his foot or give him ten lashes.’

‘But wouldn’t you be terrified?’

‘No, because I won’t be disobedient. I’m going to win the Sword of Honour, you’ll see. And when I come out I’ll be an officer in a cavalry regiment with two horses of my own, and if there’s a war I’ll defend the Fatherland and win the Iron Cross.’

Because Hermann had to be measured for new clothes and boots, they had to drive to Bad Haxenfeld, and since Annika had a good eye and Hermann liked having people to show off to, both she and Gudrun went with him on these shopping trips.

And it was there that Annika met the last person in the world she expected to see.

With the weather growing warmer, more and more visitors had come to the spa. There was a Lithuanian nobleman who was mad, but nicely so, and who stood on the steps of the casino handing out red roses to anybody he liked the look of, and a famous actress with an inflamed liver and a tiger cub on a lead. A band played in the park now as well as in the pump room. Men in white flannels brayed on the tennis courts, and brightly painted boats, ready for hire, appeared on the lake.

Zed had driven them in. He’d been offhand and grumpy since he took Annika to hear the gypsies, and didn’t seem interested in the good fortune that had come to Spittal.

‘I’ve never heard of any godfather in Switzerland,’ he said. ‘And why hasn’t Bertha been paid?’

‘She will be, I’m sure,’ said Annika. ‘Only there’s so much to do. Once Hermann goes away . . .’

In Bad Haxenfeld, Zed went as usual to help the Baron and wheel him to the baths. The old man was starting on a new course of thalassotherapy, which meant that seaweed had to be brought from the Baltic and mixed with the spa water because it was rich in iodine. Seaweed is slippery stuff and the Baron liked to have Zed to lift him in and out of the squelchy fronds.

Meanwhile, Annika, with Gudrun and Frau Edeltraut, accompanied Hermann to the tailor, where his dress tunics were taking shape.

The fitting took a long time because Karl-Gottlieb had told him that in spite of what it said on the prospectus for the college, the cadets were now wearing their collars at least two centimetres higher than in the diagram. This annoyed the tailor, who said that such a collar would scratch the young gentleman’s chin, but Karl-Gottlieb had already written that a sore chin was regarded at St Xavier’s as a sign of manhood, and the tailor was overruled.