The coach stopped so suddenly that Strobel lost his balance and tumbled to the floor. “Can’t you pay a little attention! Bumpkin! Putain!” he swore at the coachman.
He looked down at the dust on his knee as the coachman unloaded his luggage. Then he paid precisely what he owed for the journey, without so much as a penny more as tip. Why would that clod deserve a tip? he asked himself as he heaved his bag up the steps to the shop door. For bringing him back down to earth with a bump?
Irritated, he turned the handle of the shop door and moved to push it open.
Locked.
Strobel looked at his watch incredulously: ten past nine. On a Monday morning.
What was going on?
He opened his traveling bag and rummaged around for the key.
Where was Johanna?
5
“Get ready, mesdames, don’t be startled! There will be a bright flash!” The photographer twiddled the ends of his moustache, rubbed his hands together, and disappeared under the black cloth that hung behind the bulky box.
“Isn’t she good? Just look at how pretty she is!” Ruth was almost bursting with pride.
Johanna looked around restlessly as though planning her escape.
“I really must go now!” she said. The grandfather clock in the photographer’s salon already showed quarter past nine. Drat it all! Why had she ever allowed Ruth to persuade her to come along?
“I’m sure it’ll be over soon,” Ruth whispered soothingly.
Monsieur looked at her reproachfully.
“I cannot work like this, mesdames! I need quiet. And the bébé must also be quiet. Lie still!” He nodded toward Wanda, who was whimpering insistently.
Ruth hurried over to her daughter, put her back in the middle of the blanket—the photographer had not been able to find them a bearskin, much as he may have liked to—and was back at Johanna’s side a moment later.
“What a self-important fellow! Are all Frenchmen like that? I think I would hardly have dared come in here without you.”
You’ve certainly changed your tune, Johanna thought. “You and your ideas—you’re going to get me in trouble! If Strobel comes back before me and the shop’s not open . . .”
“Oh, he shouldn’t be such a fusspot. What difference does half an hour make? The customers won’t be standing in line at this hour of the morning.”
While Johanna grew more restless with each passing minute, the photographer took another photograph, this time of mother and daughter together, with a great deal of hocus-pocus. When at last they were done, Ruth paid the man, and it was agreed that Johanna would pick up the photographs on Friday.
Twenty past nine.
Strobel looked for the umpteenth time from his pocket watch back to the window.
Where was she? Was she ill? He simply couldn’t imagine anything else that would keep her from work. After all, dependability was one of her greatest virtues. It had to be something serious, he told himself. If she had come down with something harmless, she would have sent him a message. He put down his pencil and the list he was holding and went to the kitchen, where he found a message in Sybille Stein’s spidery handwriting on the table: she was ill, she wrote, and couldn’t come in. He threw the notepaper onto the floor in disgust. Had everybody in the house gone mad? Things couldn’t go on like this; he would have to find himself a new housekeeper right away.
He stood at the kitchen window like a spy. Without the clatter of pots and other kitchen sounds in the background, he felt the strain mounting.
Nine twenty-five.
No sign of Johanna.
Nine thirty.
Perhaps it wasn’t Johanna who was sick but one of her sisters. Or that brat that one of them had. Strobel gnawed angrily at a hangnail on his right thumb. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? All anyone in Lauscha needed to do was whistle and Johanna would come running. Though he had gone to great lengths to show her how insignificant all those country bumpkins were, when it came to her family, she was stubborn as a mule.
Come to think of it, Johanna was stubbornness personified.
Nine thirty-five.
Too much stubbornness wasn’t good for a person. A stubborn person failed to see the essentials.
Nine forty-one.
Perhaps it was time to teach her a lesson. Yes, perhaps that was just what she needed. He found himself growing excited by the thought and shifted forward impatiently on his chair.
Where was she, damn it all?
It was a quarter to ten when he saw Johanna coming around the corner, arm in arm with Ruth.
6
When the door handle gave way under her hand, Johanna’s heart sank. Strobel’s train must have arrived early, today of all days! Hastily Johanna took off her coat and hung it up in the hall. All was quiet. He did not seem to waiting for her with his accusations. And a good thing too, since she still hadn’t thought up a suitable excuse for her delay. She was still hoping something would come to her as she ran her hand over her hair and tucked back a strand that Wanda had mussed. She took a deep breath and was just about to go into the shop when a hand grabbed her arm roughly from behind.