The Star of Kazan

by Eva Ibbotson

  Though she was sorry about Lady Georgina’s kidneys and the tapeworm, Annika looked about her with pleasure, enjoying the elegant shop windows, the well-dressed people, the hanging baskets of greenery on the lamp-posts. This was a different world to Spittal.

  They were getting near the baths now and the treatment rooms. The smell of hydrogen sulphide grew stronger, more wheelchairs joined the procession. And now, coming towards them with towels round their necks, was a group of men looking very damp and clean.

  As they came closer, the Baron whispered, ‘Ah, the dentists, delightful people. They’re going home tomorrow – I shall miss them.’

  Annika too was pleased to see the dentists, who had been on the station platform when she arrived. It made her feel established, as though she belonged. Not all the dentists were there, but there were at least a dozen who had gone to the treatment rooms early and were now going into the town. They stopped by the Baron’s chair, greeted him and advised him to be careful about the water in the first of the hot pools.

  ‘The temperature’s very high in there today,’ said a tall dentist with a moustache. ‘I’d miss that one out.’

  ‘You wouldn’t believe how much I’ve learned from them,’ confided the Baron when the dentists had wandered on in search of coffee and cakes. ‘You see, when you’re in the treatment rooms there are only curtains between one cubicle and the next and you can hear everything your neighbours are saying. Apparently the Duke of Arnau bit right through the thumb of his dentist when he was doing a filling. And the new zinc treatment for gums is absolutely useless, but the patients go on begging for it.’ He shook his head. ‘Next week it’s undertakers, so I suppose I shall learn about coffins, but it won’t be the same. There’s always something so fascinating about teeth.’ He looked over his shoulder at Zed. ‘Do you remember the jewellers who came at Christmas? Three hundred, no less – and the stories they told would make your hair stand on end. You don’t have to leave Bad Haxenfeld to know everything that’s going on in the world!’

  They had reached the entrance to the bathhouse. Only patients and their attendants were allowed beyond the entrance. Uncle Conrad’s doctor came out of his office with a piece of paper listing details of the Baron’s treatment for the day, and Zed wheeled him away down the long stone corridor.

  ‘Don’t forget I’m expecting you to lunch,’ Uncle Conrad called to Annika over his shoulder, and she nodded and made her way back to the hotel.

  The office of Herr Bohn was comfortably furnished with a deep carpet, a large mahogany desk, a palm tree in a brass pot – and a clerk who led them in and begged them to be seated because Herr Bohn would be here in a minute.

  ‘I was expecting him to be here already. Our appointment is for eleven o’clock.’ Frau Edeltraut was not accustomed to being kept waiting and made this clear.

  The clerk went into the outer office and spoke to the typist, who went away to make coffee. Even when they had drunk it there was no sign of the lawyer, and Annika saw that her mother was getting upset. The papers they were here to sign must be very important, and Annika, to reassure her, said, ‘But I am a von Tannenberg already, aren’t I? I am your daughter, everyone knows it.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Frau Edeltraut absently. ‘All the same, things must be done properly.’

  They waited for another half-hour, then the phone rang in the outer office and presently the clerk came in. ‘That was Herr Bohn – he is extremely sorry, but his wife has had a fit and he has had to take her to the hospital.’

  ‘A fit? How extraordinary. Doesn’t he have servants to look after his wife?’

  ‘Yes, yes. But . . . He says he will be with you by two o’clock without fail.’

  ‘I very much hope so,’ said Annika’s mother, ‘otherwise he cannot expect to go on handling my affairs.’

  Lunch in the dining room of the Majestic was very grand. Annika was put next to Uncle Conrad and he had Edeltraut on his other side. Hermann was in a bad mood; the gun they had given him at the rifle range had thrown to the left, and though he had explained this, they had refused to give him another one.

  Zed was not present of course; servants did not eat in the hotel dining room. Everyone spoke very quietly and Uncle Conrad occasionally told them in a low voice what was wrong with the other guests. The lady on the next table had come in with an agonizing septic throat, which had turned out to be caused by a green bean wrapped round the root of her tongue.

  ‘They had to give her chloroform to get it out,’ he whispered.

  The food was splendid: venison broth, asparagus, beef in a pastry case, lemon soufflé with whipped cream. Annika had begun to wonder if there was a famine in Norrland, but if there was it had not reached Bad Haxenfeld.

  She would have enjoyed her meal more if she had not thought of Zed perhaps going hungry. Then, as the waiter came out with coffee, she had a glimpse into the busy bustling kitchen. And there, with his sleeves rolled up, was Zed, his face flushed by the heat. He was helping to load the trays and laughing at something one of the cooks had said and he did not look hungry in the least.

  The lawyer was still not in his office when they returned after lunch.

  His clerk was grovelling, wringing his hands.

  ‘Herr Bohn sent word that he will personally come to Spittal tomorrow with the necessary documents. At his own expense.’

  ‘I should hope so,’ said Frau Edeltraut. ‘Please tell him that I am most displeased.’

  But she looked more than displeased. She looked distressed and very worried, and Annika was puzzled. Why was this document so urgent? Surely nothing was going to happen to Hermann for years, if at all?

  ‘I shall go back to the hotel and rest,’ Frau Edeltraut went on. ‘If you like you can go to the pump room. There’s usually a band there. It doesn’t cost anything to go and watch. I’ll expect you back at the hotel at four o’clock.’

  Annika heard the music coming out of the pump room before she reached it: a large domed building with a flight of steps flanked by statues. Inside there was a round hall with a fountain in the middle. People came up to it, gave some money to a lady sitting there, and were given a tin cup, which they took to the fountain to fill with spa water.

  The rest of the floor was filled by people parading up and down, nodding their heads to the music, greeting each other. The orchestra was an eight-piece band and they were playing the kind of music Annika had grown up with in the streets and parks of Vienna: waltzes, polkas, marches . . .

  She made her way closer to the orchestra and stood listening. The violins soared sweetly, the leader smiled at her and she came closer and closer still. After a while she felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to find a white-haired gentleman with a clean-shaven face and a paunch, looking down at her.

  ‘Would the fräulein care to dance?’ he asked.

  Annika was startled – no one else was dancing, and in any case one didn’t dance with strangers. She was about to refuse when an elderly lady in a wheelchair propelled herself forward.

  ‘This is my wife,’ said the old gentleman. ‘She saw your feet tapping and she thought you might like to waltz a little.’

  The old lady nodded. ‘A s you see, I can’t dance any more – but you should have seen us when we were young!’

  Annika smiled, and held up her arms. As she and the old gentleman twirled in a waltz, the spectators smiled too, then a couple joined in, and another . . . The members of the band were delighted. When the music came to an end they played another waltz, and another . . .

  Then she heard an angry voice calling her name. Zed was standing at the edge of the dancers, scowling at her.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ he hissed, coming up to her. ‘You know you don’t dance with strangers.’

  Annika flushed. ‘This is Herr Doktor Feldkirch,’ she said angrily. ‘Frau Feldkirch suggested that we might like to dance.’

  But Zed was in a temper. ‘I’m supposed to fetch you – it’s time to go home. What wil
l your mother say?’

  ‘That depends on what you tell her.’

  They walked back to the hotel in silence.

  Then Zed said, ‘It’s not even proper music that they play there.’

  Annika stopped and glared at him. ‘What do you mean? It was lovely. It was proper Viennese music.’

  Zed shrugged. ‘If you like everything to be sickly and sweet. If you want real music, you should listen to the gypsies.’

  ‘How am I supposed to do that?’ she snapped. ‘There aren’t any gypsies anywhere near here.’

  ‘There might be soon. They come through sometimes on the way to the Spring Fair at Stettin. If they do, I’ll take you.’

  It was the nearest she would get to an apology.

  In the carriage on the way back, Annika was sleepy and content, which was as well since Hermann grumbled all the way home about the men in the shooting gallery.

  They drove in twilight, then darkness. As the carriage went over the first bridge, Zed suddenly drew up. In the same moment he extinguished the carriage lamp.

  ‘I think we should go back,’ he said in a low voice to Frau Edeltraut. ‘There are people there. Look!’

  They stared up at the courtyard of the house and saw lamps being carried round the building – then heard hammering at the door.

  ‘Come on, open up – we know you’re there,’ somebody shouted, and the hammering started again.

  Not burglars then, as Annika had feared.

  ‘They’re from the Land Bureau, I think,’ whispered Zed. ‘They’ve come in two automobiles.’

  ‘Turn round at once,’ ordered Frau Edeltraut, but Zed had already begun to turn the carriage in the only passing place behind the bridge. ‘Where can we go?’

  ‘Felsen Woods,’ said Zed over his shoulder. ‘No one will find us there.’

  They drove back the way they had come, past the turning to the farm, then down a narrow forest road which led away from Spittal into a dark thicket of spruce.

  ‘I’ll kill them for this,’ muttered Hermann. ‘When my father comes back, I’ll kill them.’

  ‘They won’t stay long,’ said Zed. He had jumped down and gone to the horses’ heads.

  But they waited in the cold and silent woods for nearly two hours. To Annika the hotel, the music at the spa, now seemed a distant dream. Who were those men who had tried to storm her mother’s house? What was it that ailed Spittal? Would no one tell her the truth?

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A SMELL OF BURNING

  After Annika went away with her mother, odd things happened in the professors’ house.

  For example, the professors would come downstairs to the smell of burning. It might be the breakfast rolls singeing in the oven, or the soup boiling dry on the stove, but it was such an unusual thing to happen that they found it hard to believe their noses. Ellie had not burned anything since she had first gone to work as a kitchen maid twenty years ago, but she burned them now.

  Then Sigrid broke a plate. It was not a particularly valuable plate but it was a nice one, with a pattern of golden stars and blue flowers. It lived on the dresser, and when Sigrid picked it up to dust it, it slipped from her hand to the floor.

  Just as Ellie had not burned anything since she was fourteen years old, so Sigrid did not let things fall from her hand. The professors trusted her with their mother’s precious crystal glasses and they were right to do so. Her large, square-tipped hands picked up objects as if they were eggshells.

  All the same, after Annika went she broke a plate. Sometimes if you don’t let your feelings out, you do odd things instead. Ellie and Sigrid did not think it was right to cry and wail and moan because they had lost what they thought of as their daughter, but their unhappiness came out in other ways.

  The professors too were not in the best of spirits. By the time she left them, they realized that Annika had done a lot of work in the house and they decided to take over some of her jobs.

  This was not a success.

  Professor Julius decided to buy his own flowers from the lady in the square, and to arrange them himself in a vase beneath the portrait of Adele Fischl, his beloved – but when he did so she seemed to be looking at him in a very gloomy way. Arranging flowers is not as easy as it looks, and the lilies of the valley, jammed together like a bundle of leeks, seemed to upset Adele, who had always felt things keenly.

  Professor Gertrude had decided to help by choosing her own hansom cabs to take her to her concerts and this too did not end well. Cab horses were just a blur to Professor Gertrude, who was short-sighted and did not care for animals very much, and she and her harp had some very bumpy and unpleasant rides.

  As for Professor Emil, he missed Annika for different reasons. Just after she went, the museum had shown him a new painting of three bare-footed ladies dancing in a meadow and asked him if he thought it was a genuine Titian. He had known at once that it was not because of the way the feet were painted – Titian never used models who were pigeon-toed. This was the kind of thing that Annika would have understood at once, and he was getting ready to hurry home and tell her before he remembered that she was gone.

  The people in the square did not make things any easier. The lady in the paper shop said she was not at all sure that the climate of north Germany would suit Annika; Josef from the cafe said he did not like the way the Emperor Wilhelm was carrying on, and Frau Bodek said they could say what they liked but the baby missed her.

  Then the first letters came from Spittal. Pauline and Stefan carried theirs to the hut so as to compare notes and both agreed that Annika’s letters were strange.

  It had been difficult to stop Annika from talking when she was excited about something, but she wrote about her new life in a careful sort of way, rather as if she was writing an essay for school.

  What she made clear to both of them was that she was very happy. In Pauline’s letter she had underlined the word ‘very’ and in Stefan’s letter she said she was very happy indeed. She wrote about her marvellous and amazing mother, who looked after Spittal all by herself, and she wrote about Hermann, who was going into the army and did press-ups and bayonet practice in his room. She wrote about how big Spittal was and how brave the aristocracy were, not minding about being cold and never having pudding and she described the bear pit in the hunting lodge into which a drunken labourer had fallen.

  Hermann showed me the family crest and the motto. It says, ‘Stand Aside, Ye Vermin Who Oppose Us!’ Vermin is anybody who gets in the way of the von Tannenbergs, he said.

  There were some crossings-out in both letters. Something about Jesus having been a carpenter, which they couldn’t read or make out properly, and a few lines about the farm, and the stable boy who looked after Hermann’s horse.

  After that came the questions. These flowed on in quite a different way, as though she had written them quickly without thinking. Had the baby’s teeth come through? What was Pauline reading? How were the goldfish in the fountain? Had Loremarie got a new governess?

  ‘Do you think she’s all right?’ asked Stefan.

  ‘Of course she’s all right,’ said Pauline, sounding cross. ‘Why shouldn’t she be?’

  Ellie and Sigrid had hoped to read their letter quietly by themselves, but the postman had spread the news that Annika had written and presently the kitchen filled with people who demanded to know what she had said. Mitzi from the Eggharts’ house, Josef from the cafe, the lady from the paper shop . . .

  ‘Well?’ they asked. ‘Is she happy?’

  ‘She is very happy,’ said Ellie firmly.

  She knew that this was so because Annika had said so in her first paragraph, but she found the letter puzzling and wasn’t quite sure what to tell them.

  For Annika had found it difficult to explain certain things to Ellie: the dead birds with pellets . . . the leaking roof . . . She asked if Ellie could send her some chilblain ointment; she described the lake, which was large, the frogs, which were hatching, and a beautiful bay hors
e, which belonged to Hermann but was looked after by the stable boy. Her mother had said she might soon have a pony of her own.

  After that, she exploded with questions. Her questions to Pauline and Stefan took a whole page; her questions to Ellie sprawled over three. Was the geranium cutting growing? Did Uncle Emil manage his cravats? What was the flower lady selling? Had Cornelia Otter started to sing again at the opera? How many letters had Uncle Julius written to the newspaper? Was Ellie going to bake a poppy-seed strudel for the end of Lent? Had the asparagus seller come to the market yet . . . ?

  And right at the end she told them once again how very much she was enjoying her new life.

  A week after Annika’s letters came, a serious-looking man in a dark suit, carrying a briefcase, rang the bell of the professors’ house.

  ‘I’m looking for the guardians of Annika Winter,’ he said. ‘I believe this is the right address?’

  Sigrid, who had answered the door, turned white.

  ‘Is she . . . has something happened? An accident?’

  ‘No, not at all. I represent the firm of Gerhart and Funkel in the Karntner Strasse and we have some business with her. Perhaps I could come in?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course, I’m sorry.’

  She showed him into the drawing room and fetched the professors, and after a short time both Sigrid and Ellie were sent for.

  ‘I have explained to Herr Gerhart that Annika was adopted by you as a baby, and given Ellie’s surname, and that I agreed to act as her guardian,’ said Professor Julius. ‘Also that she is no longer in our care because her real mother – her birth mother – has come forward and that Annika is now living with her. It seems that the old lady she used to visit – Fräulein Egghart – has left Annika something in her will.’

  ‘It’s nothing at all valuable,’ said Herr Gerhart. ‘Just a trunk with some keepsakes from the theatre – old clothes and suchlike. All the same, we shall want to check the new adoption papers. You see, the child is definitely described as living at this address.’