The American Lady(148)

“Oh . . . I see, I see. Yes, that was very careless of them . . .”

Thank you, God. Thank you a thousand times.



Once the border official had gone, the trembling started. First her right hand began to tremble. Then her left. When she looked down, she saw that her knees were jiggling up and down as well. She glanced around the compartment. Had anybody noticed? But nobody was looking at her, just as nobody had sat down next to her.

Suddenly it was all too much for Wanda. The last few days by Marie’s sickbed with hardly any sleep, the burial service at the dusty, rocky cemetery, the struggle to save Sylvie . . . Tears flowed uncontrollably down her cheeks, and she sobbed loudly. Her nose swelled up and she could barely breathe.

Marie was dead. Shut away where no gleam of light could reach her, no shine of silver or glitter of glass.

It was so unfair! Marie had never done anything to harm anyone. All her life she had never done anything but work; she had never even wanted to do anything else. And then, the first and only time she wanted to escape from that life, fate had not allowed it.

Why?

Try as she might, Wanda could see no sense in Marie’s death. She buried her face in her coat.

How could somebody with such an appetite for life just die? How could that happen?

Old people died—or not, like Wilhelm Heimer, clinging to life with every fiber of his withered old body. Why had Marie not been strong enough?

Fever . . . that damned fever. Why hadn’t it broken? If it had just ebbed a little, day by day, Marie would be healthy again. But to just shut her eyes like that and say, “The fever won’t leave. I shall.” She couldn’t understand it.

Wanda blew her nose, her fingers trembling, and then she spotted a movement out of the corner of her eye. Sylvie was waving her little hands in the air as though beckoning to her. Her blue eyes under their long lashes were looking aimlessly around.

“Come here, you little thing!” Wanda lifted the baby carefully out of her bassinet. Luckily the trembling had stopped, and she could put her arms around the warm little body.

Wanda held Sylvie so her head was nestled against her shoulder. The baby would have to grow up without a mother.

“We’ll all of us miss your mama. We’ll miss her terribly.”





32

Wanda arrived in Bozen early that evening, and the train to Munich did not depart until the next day. Over the course of the day a mountain of clouds had appeared and hidden the sun, and the heat was almost unbearable. The birds had stopped singing—an unmistakable sign that bad weather was brewing.

Wanda looked up at the sky, concerned. A storm was the last thing she needed. Her fingers were damp as she shifted the bassinet from her right arm to her left, then shouldered her bag and picked up her suitcase again. After just a few paces she felt her strength failing once more. She couldn’t go on like this; she had to rest. She spotted a little patch of grass across the street in the shade of two huge chestnut trees. Wanda staggered to the lawn, where a marble monument and a bench stood. She put down the suitcase and her bag, then put the bassinet on the bench and sat next to it. She stared ahead, her eyes blank.

Only a week ago she had strolled through these streets with Richard as though they had all the time in the world, happy beyond measure. They had gone to dinner nearby and they had kissed in front of that fountain with the chubby cherubs. And then later that night . . .

Wanda’s feet burned as though she had been walking over hot coals. Her mouth and her lips were dry, and her stomach was so empty that she was dizzy with hunger. It was just a matter of time before Sylvie started to protest at being carried around town in this heat. But none of these challenges were her biggest problem.

She had trudged around town for more than two hours looking for a place to spend the night. She had been to three hotels and two smaller boarding houses, and every one of them had turned her away. Was it because she was so young, or because she looked rather bedraggled after the long train journey? Was it because she didn’t have a husband or her parents with her, or was it all because of the baby in her bassinet? She didn’t know. All she knew was that she’d had the same answer everywhere: they had no free rooms.

She had never missed her mother so much in her life. And Aunt Johanna too. Both of them were always so sure of themselves! Their problems seemed to solve themselves on their own. They wouldn’t end up sitting here like a sniveling heap of misery. No, they would . . . What would they do? Wanda had no idea. She would so much have liked to follow some example.

Her arms were tired as she lifted Sylvie from the bassinet and gave her the last bottle of milk that she had. The baby began to suckle at the rubber nipple. Her red cheeks pumped in and out and a little furrow of concentration appeared on her brow. Wanda smiled. Was she imagining things or had Marie’s daughter really grown in the last two days? The sight of the hungry little girl filled her with new strength.