The American Lady(80)

When it was finally their turn to get off the train, Wanda had to cling tightly to the iron railing so as not to tumble down the steps. Her legs were trembling wildly all of a sudden. She was in Lauscha. She had followed her dreams all the way here.

A man waiting with a horse cart drove them home from the station.

“Mind your head!” Johanna called from outside the house—just as Wanda’s forehead hit the door frame. She stood quite still for a moment, dazed, while Johanna told the driver where he should put Wanda’s luggage. Two of the cases were placed next to her on the stairs, and the rest could spend the night in the storeroom. Then Wanda could decide in the morning what she needed most, as Johanna said there was no way they would be able to fit everything into the wardrobe they had cleared out for her.

Wanda’s eyes gradually adjusted to the dim gaslight in the hallway, whose faded wine-red carpet showed dirty footprints by the door.

So this was the house where Mother was born!

There was a smell of onions frying, and suddenly her nose began to run. Could it be that it was even colder inside the house than out?



“And this is your cousin, Anna.”

Wanda had only just broken free of her uncle’s bear hug, and now she held out her hand to her cousin. Anna’s hand was rather cold, and she had a very firm handshake. For a moment Wanda thought that Anna might give her a clumsy hug as her brother Johannes had done, but she didn’t.

“So you’re the famous glassblower who spends all night long at the lamp! I’ve heard a lot about you. Marie is full of praise for your work, you know.” Wanda spoke in glowing tones, or at least tried to. There was a persistent tickle in her nose, and she found it hard to breathe. Was she coming down with a cold, or was it just the smell of the workshop getting to her? Marie had warned her about the chemicals used to apply the decorations to the glass, but she hadn’t expected everything to smell of rotten eggs this way . . .

Anna looked at her mother for a moment as though seeking permission to respond.

“I just do my job; that’s all there is to it,” she answered earnestly. “You are most welcome to Lauscha, cousin.”

Oh my goodness, I’ll have a hard time seeing eye to eye with this one, Wanda thought, and she was relieved when Magnus put out his hand to greet her a moment later.





7

Every morning when Marie woke up, the first thing she saw was the patch of sunshine across her bed. How can the sun still be so warm this late in the year? she wondered sleepily. Back in Lauscha it would be snowing in early November. She shifted out from under Franco’s arm, which was lying heavily across her belly, until the sun was shining directly on her face. Just one more minute . . .

“Mia cara, come back here,” Franco muttered, then scooted over to her side of the bed. “How is my princess?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“And how is our baby?”

“Hmm.” She kissed his mouth. Don’t say a word. Keep quiet and let the day come.

Marie loved this moment between sleep and wakefulness more than any other time of day. In bed with Franco, with a thin curtain between them and Genoa—close to the bustle of the city where the fishwives, housewives, tradesmen, and schoolchildren were all going about their business on the streets, but just out of earshot—she sometimes imagined she was back on Monte Verità, and she felt that same lightness and freedom that had flooded her there. At such moments, she was sure she must be in paradise.

She found daily life in the palazzo rather less heavenly. There was no freedom then—quite the opposite, in fact. There was a great long list of unwritten rules specifying what she could and could not do. It would have been quite impossible, for instance, for her to go and fetch a glass of water from the kitchen. First she had to ring for a maid, tell her what she wanted, and then wait for the order to be carried out. And nobody seemed to care if Marie was dying of thirst in the meantime! She had told Franco right at the start that she could air the bed linen herself. In fact she felt quite awkward when the maids came and did it for her. It was also most irritating to have the maids burst into the room when she was working and didn’t want to be disturbed. Franco couldn’t understand her concerns. “Just let them take care of everything while you enjoy life!” he had said. And that was that. When Marie suggested that she could prepare breakfast for herself and Franco, his mother, Countess Patrizia, couldn’t have been more shocked if Marie had volunteered to scrub the toilets.

“Dolce far niente!” Franco stretched like a cat. “It wouldn’t be such a bad thing just to lie in bed for a while, now would it?” He kissed Marie’s nose.