Portrait of a Girl

by Binkert, Dörthe

  “Not to Stahlbad! What an awful-sounding name! Never!” Her protest sounded both anguished and rebellious. And more softly but still with a firmness she probably inherited from her mother, she added, “and not with Aunt Frieda.”

  Just then, the servant girl’s head appeared at the parlor door, “Madam, you rang?”

  “Never mind, Irma, it’s all right. Not right now, in a while . . . Please close the door; we’re not finished here yet.”

  The girl disappeared, and Emma Schobinger made another attempt. Mathilde was merely being obstinate, that’s all.

  “Just take a look at the brochure,” she said. She took back the brochure she’d just pressed into Mathilde’s hand, turned it over, saying, “Look, here on the back it’s printed in French: ‘Grand Hôtel des Nouveaux Bains.’ Doesn’t that sound absolutely elegant? In addition, the hotel has mineral springs and is considered one of the most magnificent places in the town.”

  “And why can’t I stay at the Hotel Victoria? It has more charm . . .”

  “Because it doesn’t have its own therapeutic baths. And for the last time, you’re not going to St. Moritz for pleasure, but because of the springs. Because you’re anemic and are suffering from a nervous disorder.”

  “If I have to go to the Stahlbad, then I’ll only go with Aunt Betsy.”

  Mathilde was not as naïve as she seemed, Emma knew. She smoothed her rustling black taffeta skirt and tugged at her white cuffs; she knew that Mathilde would run to her father and pester him until he gave in. That had to be prevented. If that happened too often, it would weaken her own position in the family and with the servants.

  “And what about poor Aunt Frieda?”

  Mathilde sensed a sudden shift of opinion, and was instantly silent as a lamb. Her eyes really were very blue. She lowered her eyelids as her mother continued.

  “First of all, your behavior toward me is not appropriate—after all, I’m your mother—and even less so toward Frieda. Do you think she’s just there to be pushed around all the time? What happened to her could happen to you one day too. But young people just don’t want to think about such things! That still doesn’t justify such behavior on your part.”

  Mathilde sat there, gentle and peaceful. Her curly blonde hair was pinned up, but small ringlets escaped from the pins like tiny springs. They reminded Emma of her sister, Elizabeth. Betsy had looked exactly like that when she was nineteen, except that Betsy had dark hair and perhaps even bluer eyes than her niece. If Mathilde took after her—and it seemed that might be the case—then, as the girl’s mother Emma knew, she would have a lot to cope with.

  “Mama, it’s really simple,” Mathilde said, with gentle emphasis. “First, you talk with Aunt Betsy and ask her if she’d like to accompany me. After all, she’s a widow, too, like Aunt Frieda . . .”

  “But she has more money.”

  “Yes. If she agrees, then you can tell Aunt Frieda that Aunt Betsy insists on going with me. Everyone in the family knows what Aunt Betsy’s like. Nobody can change that. There isn’t anybody who can stand up to her when there’s something she wants.”

  “And Frieda?”

  “You invite Frieda to join you when you come to St. Moritz. You’ll surely want to visit me sometime. When you do, you can come up for a couple of days with Aunt Frieda.”

  Mathilde could tell from her mother’s sigh that she’d won. She looked at her mother—dressed in black as usual, even though her husband was in the best of health—and pressed a kiss on her small hand.

  “Thank you, Mama!”

  Emma glanced out the window at Lake Zurich and then back to the large pendulum clock in the parlor. At last she said, still sounding cross with her daughter, “It’s six o’clock. I certainly won’t tell your father about this. You can tell him yourself. You know how he feels—young girls with nervous disorders actually have other problems. He doesn’t understand the need for you to go for a cure anyway. Either with Frieda or without her.”

  Mathilde was Betsy’s favorite niece. She herself had never been much of a family animal. She’d always tried to avoid the kind of interference that some of the older family members—even if sometimes with good intentions—often felt called upon to exert.

  And Betsy knew that Mathilde liked her, perhaps just because they were so much alike. She would accompany her niece to the Engadine. However, she had no intention of staying at the Stahlbad. She preferred to stay in a place as far away from the usual St. Moritz bustle as possible. She didn’t have the slightest desire to stay among the ailing, hysterical, anemic, or barren people who went to the mineral springs to be “saved.” Emma, her older sister, refused to understand this, and so Betsy decided to discuss the question of lodgings with her brother-in-law Franz, who enjoyed life, loved his daughter, and in the end could always put his foot down.

  For quite a while already Betsy had wanted to spend some time at the Spa Hotel Maloja, which was supposed to be quite sensational. So that was where she felt determined to go. After all, Mathilde wasn’t going to be confined to bed. And they would be only a half hour away by horse-drawn carriage from the healing mineral springs of St. Moritz. And while Mathilde was taking therapeutic baths, she could explore the surroundings. She was fit and loved the mountains, and there were guides who could take one safely to any of the various peaks. Betsy had a soft spot for strong men.

  She had married young, at the age of twenty, and had experienced both good and bad times during her ten-year marriage. Several of her illusions had fallen by the wayside, but on the whole, she couldn’t complain. Walter, her husband, had died three years earlier of a heart attack, quite unexpectedly, for he was not overweight and there were no signs that he’d found life especially burdensome. And so suddenly, even before she turned thirty-two, she was a widow.

  Her family hoped she would remarry. There was no shortage of candidates, for Betsy was young, attractive, and had money. Once remarried, everything would be back in order, and they wouldn’t have to worry about Betsy stepping out of line every now and then.

  But Elizabeth Huber, “née Wohlwend,” as she liked to add because the name Huber sounded too ordinary to her, was busy exploiting the new role suddenly thrust upon her.

  She had been married. Now she was a widow, and in her view, remaining one had some advantages. The freedom it gave her—especially because she was well off—was quite exhilarating.

  Her sister Emma saw this desire for independence with some misgivings. The topic came up when Betsy came by the house to discuss possible plans for traveling to the mountains with Mathilde. “Oh, Betsy,” Emma said, “there are already enough lonely widows whom nobody wants anymore . . .”

  “. . . and who,” Besty continued, “not only have no place in society but also have become miserably poor. These women have no protection whatsoever, yet they must try to bring up and feed their children by hiring themselves out as laundresses or factory workers. Provided, of course, their children aren’t taken away from them and put into orphanages or state homes by officials who say that mothers like them can’t take care of their children properly at home or bring them up to be good members of society.”

  Betsy’s temper had a tendency to flare up, and Emma found it particularly uncomfortable when her sister, as she had recently been doing, voiced her social, even socialist, ideas.

  But Betsy was not about to cede her point.

  “Emmy, dear, being a widow has a very big advantage. I am the one in charge of handling my money. Walter and I had a decent marriage. He died young, and I mourned. But things are what they are. And this will probably surprise you—I am absolutely not going to marry again and give up control of my money. On the contrary! I will use my money to fight for the financial and social betterment of widows here in Zurich and in the rest of our country. They have the right to get insurance coverage and receive a widow’s and orphans’ pension. Because then their children won�
��t be taken from them after they’ve already lost their husbands and they are forced to take over his role totally unprepared. The role—would you believe it?—of breadwinner, caretaker, and head of the family.”

  Betsy had talked herself into a passionate rage. Her eyes flashed at her poor sister, who, lips pressed together, sat with her hands meekly folded on top of her black skirt.

  “And you know what? Nobody objects when—after the death of their husbands—these women who’ve been considered incapable of doing almost everything, not only raise their children and manage the household as they’re supposed to, but also run the farm, the vegetable store, the coal company, the carpentry shop, or the textile factory with its umpteen workers. Then, suddenly, they can do it, these women. And everybody considers it a matter of course. Yes, after all, who else is supposed to do it if the son is still too young to take over?”

  Betsy, fired up by her own ideas and full of energy, rose from the sofa and stretched. She bent down to sniff the slightly dusty dried blossoms in the potpourri bowl on Emma’s coffee table, and concluded her monologue. “I’m going with Mathilde to St. Moritz, Emma. But your daughter is going to be exposed to somewhat different viewpoints in my company than she’s used to from her home and girls’ boarding school. I hope you’re aware of that.”

  Oh yes, Emma was fully aware of it. That was why Frieda had been her first choice as Mathilde’s companion rather than her youngest sister. But it was too late now. Franz liked his vivacious sister-in-law and had already approved the plan.

  So she simply said, “Yes, Betsy, I’m fully aware of it. I only hope you won’t inadvertently sow any anxiety in Mathilde’s mind. We don’t need that at this point in time, as you well know. Not at all.”

  “And, Emma,” Betsy said, ending the discussion without reacting to Emma’s last remark or mentioning her plan to discuss the choice of a hotel with Franz, “I think, quite apart from all this, you could really dress more colorfully. I think Franz would really like that. After all, I’m the widow, not you.”

  The Season Can Begin

  The women ironing in the Spa Hotel Maloja’s overly warm laundry room looked up only briefly from their work when Nika was brought in. They were busy slamming heavy irons, filled with glowing charcoal, down onto wrinkled napkins and tablecloths with a dull bang. The orders were that Signor Battaglia’s culinary creations were to be served only on the most perfectly ironed, flowered white damask to delight the fussiest eyes and palates.

  After the table linens could come the bed linens, which had been in storage over the winter and smelled of mildew and needed to be washed again—and ironed—before being used. In the first week of the season, 150 guests were expected; two or three weeks after that, all 400 guest beds would be occupied. So far, due to the enormous cost of heating the hotel, the Maloja had not been open for the winter season.

  “She can hear but she doesn’t speak,” said the head housekeeper, Signora Capadrutt, as she pushed Nika toward a plump, older woman. “Giuseppina, can you show her what to do? She’s living with the Biancottis in the village. They call her ‘la straniera,’ because she’s an outsider and no one knows where she’s from. She can help with the ironing too, if you’re in urgent need there.” The head housekeeper pressed a large pinafore into Nika’s hands and hurried off.

  Steam hung in the laundry, condensing on the high windows and the walls.

  “Come,” Giuseppina said pleasantly. “Let’s see where you’re needed most.” Nika nodded and followed Giuseppina, who seemed to be in charge of the laundry staff and assigning people to jobs.

  “The tablecloths and bed linens are handled separately, but thank God, they’re all white. That simplifies things. Look here, the laundry is first soaked in this tin-lined tub. The rule of thumb is for every hundred quarts of water, use one pound of soft soap, half a pound of soda, four to six tablespoons of ammonia, and four spoonfuls of turpentine. Then you put the dirty laundry into the tub. Lake water would be the best water to soak it in, but we use tap water because it’s simpler. The soaking water should be lukewarm, and the laundry stays in it ten to twelve hours. Mina,” she interrupted her lecture, waving to a young girl, “put the cover on the tub! Who forgot to do that again? If the cover’s not on, the laundry will get cold, and then you’ll have problems rinsing it out!”

  She turned back to Nika. “It’s much nicer to handle the laundry if it hasn’t gotten completely cold in the soaking water, because after that it has to be rubbed on the washboard and wrung out. If some spots remain, soap them again. So now,” Giuseppina continued, leading the new girl onward, “here is the laundry stove, and on top of it are the steaming kettles. The white laundry is boiled here for at least one hour in a new soaking solution of brown soap and soda, but you know all that. Look over there. Giovanna, Ursina, and Selma are just about to take the boiled laundry out with wooden tongs. Then it’s rinsed, wrung out, and put back into the emptied soaking kettle. And over there is Maria,” she said, pointing to an older woman. “She’s the one who prepares the weak soap solution which is then poured over it. Maria, please use the borax sparingly. You don’t need to use that much of it!”

  Giuseppina’s sharp eyes saw everything, and Nika swallowed nervously, wondering if she’d do the job right, even though she knew all about laundry days from working on the farm.

  “And that’s it. After a few hours more of soaking, the laundry is rinsed in cold water, and then it goes into the bluing water to make it look whiter. Do you know how laundry bluing is prepared?”

  Nika shook her head.

  “Well, I always say the best thing for bluing is a good pulverized ultramarine. You put it into a little flannel bag, tie the bag closed, and draw it through the water until the water gets to the right color. And after the bluing, you wring out the laundry and hang it up to dry, right over there,” she pointed toward the place where the clotheslines were strung.

  “And so, that’s all there is to it.” She saw Nika’s skeptical look and added kindly, “In a couple of days you’ll be as familiar with it all as I am. Oh, there’s one thing I forgot to tell you. The kitchen things are soaked in a special basin, with a stronger bleach solution. Before they’re boiled, they have to be well rinsed and soaped. And look here. We have a wringer machine. It squeezes out twice as much water as all of us can manage together by hand.” She smiled. “The laundry dries faster and it’s easier on the linens.” She laughed. “Just think how much we pull and tear at these linens when we wring them out by hand! My husband always says men have to be respectful of washerwomen’s arms, or they’ll be the losers.”

  Nika gazed at her, taken aback.

  “Don’t look at me like that, child. We don’t beat each other up at home. I’m much too tired for that in the evening. Even with strong arms, after eleven hours working, you’re bushed in the evening.”

  Giuseppina looked around to find the best place for Nika to start.

  “Still and all, an eleven-hour day is progress. After all, my Fausto wants me to have something left over for him too. Do you have a sweetheart?” But Giuseppina shook her head and put her hand up to her forehead. “What a stupid question! If you had one, you wouldn’t have left the place you came from. And you don’t answer questions anyway.”

  It would feel good to work with Giuseppina. Nika knew that after only a few minutes.

  Giuseppina signaled her to follow.

  “By the way, Saturdays we work only nine hours. Did the head housekeeper tell you that? You have to watch the clock like a hawk, my Fausto always says.” Nika nodded repeatedly.

  “Then come along, I think they could use you at the soaking tubs. Once the season is fully under way and the table and kitchen linens really pile up, I’ll explain how to remove wine, fruit, and fat stains. But for now just get started; you won’t remember everything, even if you’re very smart.”

  As she was leaving the hotel that first day, Ni
ka felt proud. She would be earning fifteen francs a month, she would keep five and give the Biancottis ten, as Andrina had suggested, and for that she could eat with the family.

  Just as she was wearily turning into the street that led from the hotel to the village, a man came toward her. She was startled because he was walking directly toward her, as if he had been looking for her. But the next moment she recognized him. He was the one who had stuck his head out of the carriage that afternoon as she was looking at her reflection in the lake. The same dark, curly hair. Nika stepped aside to let him pass. The man was no longer young; he must have been close to forty. He had almost reached her when he slowed down. He wouldn’t just stop in front of her, she thought. But that’s exactly what he seemed to be doing. He was wearing a vest and a suit of coarse wool. His full black beard left only his lower lip visible. She dropped her eyes as his dark gaze fell on her. The man gave her a penetrating look as if he knew her and was trying to remember where he had seen her before. When she looked up again, he was still looking at her inquiringly. She was confused and looked aside. He was so different from the other men she knew. He carried himself with a kind of self-assurance she had never before seen. He wasn’t like the Mulegns farmers or the village people here in Maloja. He was from another world. He was a stranger, like her. The man nodded at her. It wasn’t until after he had passed her with a brief greeting that her heart started to pound.

  In confusion, Nika patted down her unruly hair, tucking in a strand that had come loose from her bun, but nothing could soothe her bewilderment. The man’s dark eyes had made her dizzy; the pounding in her ears was almost enough to make her feel ill. She wasn’t used to having people look at her like that. In fact, she wasn’t used to having people look at her at all.

  Contract children were nobodies. And she’d grown up as a contract child living with a foster family—the farmer’s family. Children like her didn’t even have names. They were referred to as “the boy” or “the girl,” no matter what their real name had been. People didn’t look at them—especially not in the penetrating way the dark-eyed man had looked at her. Contract children weren’t allowed to play with others, and except inside their yard, they weren’t allowed to speak with anyone unless it was absolutely necessary. They never became part of the village community where they lived. That’s what it had been like for her, growing up; that’s how it was for all of them. That was why she’d trained her heart from the time she was little to be as obedient as a dog on a chain.