Читать книгу Partner in Three Worlds - Dorothy Duncan - Страница 13

Table of Contents

MY eyes were still red and swollen when the train pulled into the Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin, for I had spent the six hours of the trip from Prague crying. It wasn’t until the banker who was a friend of Uncle’s had taken me by the hand in the Prague station and led me away from Mother that I realized how it would be without her. She stood there on the platform smiling and waving her hand, and the strange man jerked me along without ceremony because we were late and the train was ready to leave. Before we were settled in our compartment, it was under way.

The strange man unfolded a newspaper, raised it before his face and ignored me. Two other men in the same compartment were reading, and a pretty woman who sat across from me smiled. But the friendly overture only made me feel farther from Mother, and I began to cry. I was too proud to let anyone see it, so I hid my head in the folds of my coat which hung from a hook over my head. And there I stayed until we reached Berlin.

If Aunt and Uncle saw the traces of tears on my face as their friend led me toward them they gave no sign. Passengers from our fashionable Vienna train were tumbling out and there were happy greetings all around me. I began to feel important. Aunt was looking at me closely, but I had eyes only for Uncle. He was Mother’s brother and he belonged to me, the first man of my own family I had ever known. Suddenly I was happy and Berlin seemed a fine place, even as Mother had said it would be.

Uncle held out his hand to me and I took it, unable to raise my eyes above a heavy gold watch chain which was looped in two waves across his black waistcoat. “Küss die Hand, Uncle,” I said in the manner of my training. “I hope you are well.”

“Well enough,” he replied in German. And then again in Czech, “Well enough.” His voice was high-pitched and somewhat querulous. I could see his small gray eyes now, under a bowler hat. He was giving me his close attention. “You’re not very big,” he said. “You’re puny. Leo is twice your size already.”

“I’m six and a half,” I said.

“Yes, I know. Come along.” He took my hand and propelled me down the platform toward the rotunda of the station. “But my things,” I said, pulling back. I had nearly nothing in the way of luggage: one small suitcase that had belonged to my father, and a small package with the gifts Mother had made. The parcel was clutched tight under my arm, but the suitcase had disappeared.

“In Berlin, a man never carries things,” said Uncle, sounding cross. “The porter has your suitcase. You should have given him your package, too.”

I looked up with a wide smile. I was a man; Uncle had said so. The rest of his pronouncement was lost on my ears. I trotted along at his side, trying to see in every direction at once, while Aunt walked slightly to our rear. The bright lights and the crowds and the enormous roof of the Bahnhof were all of such a size that I was sure this must be the most colossal building in the world. Even the policemen seemed to be supermen, with their gold-plated and peaked helmets, handle-bar mustaches, gilt buttons and long clanking swords. Everything about Berlin seemed to be a compliment to my arrival.

It was raining when we reached the street. We were stowed away in a hansom cab, and we no sooner started to move along the glistening street than Uncle began to draw my attention to buildings as we passed. The rain beat down on the roof of the cab and gusts of water blew in on the driver and on his white top hat. We turned into a side street off the Kurfürstendamm in the section of Berlin known as Charlottenburg, and drew up before a block of apartment houses with lights showing in cracks around tall windows.

Uncle let us stand in the rain while he paid the driver, and then he led the way into a lighted foyer behind heavy glass doors, up two flights of carpeted stairs, and into his own apartment. It was warm and filled with the smells I had come to recognize in the boxes I received each Christmas and Easter.

A boy was standing in a far doorway, dim in the shadows, watching. “Come here, Leo,” Uncle said. “This is Jan. Show him to your room and tell him where he’s to sleep.”

I was confused with new impressions and excitements as I followed my cousin down a long hall with doors on either side. The apartment occupied an entire floor of the building, and all the rooms seemed incredibly large. I caught glimpses of a piano, thick rugs, flowers in vases, large paintings in ornate frames, tall lamps hooded in red silk shades, and a whole room lined with shelves and shelves of nothing but books. Inside the last room on the left I stood just within the door as Leo began to point out the portion of its furnishings which I might share. An immense bed in the middle of the room was his; a small cot in one corner was mine. The desk was his, but I might hang my clothes on one side of the mahogany wardrobe which towered toward the ceiling.

“Put your suitcase under your bed when you’ve emptied it,” Leo said. And then, pointing to one wall covered with shelves on which were ranged more toys than I had dreamed existed anywhere in the world, “If you do as you’re told, I may let you play with my soldiers once in awhile. The ones I don’t really much like.”

Tall windows extended from the floor to the high white ceiling. They were half covered with rich blue damask, looped back to show heavy lace curtains which fell to the floor. A carpet splattered with roses covered the floor right to the walls, and on Leo’s bed a satin-covered eiderdown carried the same color of magenta red. Newly sharpened pencils and a pad of paper were on the desk. Over the desk hung the first electric light I had ever seen inside a house. I looked at the unshaded bulb steadily until it began to blur my vision. I wanted only to turn it on and off myself, to see how it worked. Nothing else in the room seemed as beautiful as that light bulb.

Leo left me while I washed my hands and combed my hair, and then I went out into the hall, not sure what was expected of me next. I wanted to find the lavatory, but Uncle came toward me, beckoning the way to the dining room. So I followed him obediently.

The dining room was a place of shadows and massive oak furniture. After the first spoonfuls of warm soup had reached my stomach, I looked around. I had never been in a room that was so full of furniture. Leo was sitting opposite me at the table, with Uncle on my left and Aunt on my right. Two maids moved silently about, bringing food on large silver platters. At home, we had soup often, but when we did it was the entire meal. Here, with so many different kinds of things to eat, and so many implements beside my plate, I became confused.

Mother had taught me how to behave at the table and she was proud of the way I handled my fork and knife and never spilled a single crumb on my clothes. In our circumstances, it was a terrible thing to be careless with what we had. We always used her wedding china, because she wanted to accustom me to fine things. And so she was sure I would know how to behave in her brother’s house in Berlin. If I found myself in an unfamiliar situation, she had said, and wasn’t sure how to behave, I must delay my actions and watch until I could see what others did, then follow their lead.

I remembered the advice now. Every moment brought new things to eat which were unfamiliar to me. I was too short to see much above the table and no cushion had been put on my chair, so I was the slowest eater and by the end of each course the others were waiting for me to finish.

“What’s the matter, Jan?” Uncle said, breaking a silence in which my knife and fork were the only sounds in the room. “You don’t seem to like what’s put before you.”

I looked up, wanting to tell him that I had never before known so many new and pleasant taste sensations and I was sorry if I couldn’t eat as quickly as the others. Before I found the words, Aunt said, “He’s only trying to show us he’s sophisticated about what’s given him to eat.” She didn’t look at me as she spoke. “Leo thinks our food is all right. So you’ll have to put up with it while you’re here, too.”

I was mortified and much too proud to explain that I was confused by the complicated service. I tried to hurry, but that only made me forget to be careful. Uncle sat very still watching me while Leo and his mother exchanged small smiles.

“Use the proper knife, Jan,” Uncle said crossly.

I looked at the others to see what they were using, but they had finished the course and Aunt’s fingers were drumming on the table beside her plate.

“I don’t want any more,” I said, though I had never wanted anything so much before. I put my knife and fork together across my plate and then something slipped and the fork hit my glass of milk. The glass overturned, spilling the white liquid across the table cloth and onto my only suit. I tried desperately to mop it up with my handkerchief while Leo’s derisive laughter rang in my ears, Uncle’s eyes cut me in pieces, and Aunt sighed with indignation.

My handkerchief was inadequate for the job. Uncle’s voice, smooth now and with what I took to be a friendly tone, said, “That’s right. Don’t waste any of the milk. Why don’t you wring your handkerchief out in your glass, and then you can drink it after all?”

Both my hands were over the glass, obedient to Uncle’s suggestion, when Leo spoiled his father’s joke by laughing aloud. I was too ashamed to leave the table, but I could eat no more. My chin stayed on my chest while the others finished, and as soon as I was allowed to go to my cot I crawled into it, desolate. There I lay all night crying spasmodically and longing for my mother.

I suppose they meant to be kind to me, but their natures were incapable of comprehending the fullness of such a word. In the bosom of his family, Uncle was autocratic and sharp, and inclined to make poisonous jokes at the expense of everyone else. In the presence of guests or business acquaintances, he was ill at ease and to hide the fact his eyes shifted and he made blustering statements which no one else was inclined to deny. He had imitated German bankers as a type so slavishly that he was now indistinguishable from them, both in manner and appearance. The stiff brush of his hair thrust up from his forehead and the way he directed his gaze in the vicinity of other peoples’ chins was even more Prussian than the Prussians. Yet I found it difficult not to admire him, because he was Mother’s brother, and she had taught me to revere him as the male head of our family in the absence of Grandfather.

Aunt was a dry, routine sort of German woman of Berlin society, with no softness traceable anywhere in her face or in her manner. Her conversation was made up exclusively of worthy small talk when it was not concerned with sarcasm, more often than not directed at me. Her eyes were so pale they had no depth whatever, and her features were well placed and matter-of-fact. Her hair was the color of butter and she wore it pulled back from her forehead and temples, gathered into a knot at the nape of her neck. Except when she spoke to Leo, I never saw her smile.

My cousin was two years my senior. At the ages of six and eight, this difference was vast. Like his father, he too had a double personality. In the presence of his parents or their friends, he was a wisecracking smart aleck. Whenever he broke into a conversation, which he did frequently, everyone stopped to listen. The Czech accent with which my German was flavored—I had learned German as a second language when Mother used the two alternately in teaching me to speak—gave him endless amusement. He listened to me attentively in order to mock my pronunciation.

And yet when we were alone in his room, Leo was always kind to me. He was tall, very strong for his age, and his mind was truly clever and overdeveloped. He let me understand that he joined in the chorus of criticism and amusement at my expense because he felt it would make his mother pleased enough to repay him with special privileges. I began to like him. He had dark brown hair, large intelligent brown eyes that missed very little of what went on around him, and his whole body was tanned by the sun. I also admired the extent and the quality of his wardrobe, as well as his conscious sense of the proper things to wear.

Every evening when we were undressed and in our beds ready to go to sleep, Aunt came to sit for awhile beside Leo, kissing him and giving him his daily ration of a large piece of chocolate. When Leo was tired of her caresses and grumbled that he wanted to be left alone, she passed my cot and gave me a small piece of candy, quite briskly murmuring good night. I was sorry for Leo then, because he didn’t know how really nice a mother could be.

When guests came to the house I was carefully kept in the nursery, as Leo’s room was called, and only once or twice my uncle came to get me in order to show me off. Then I found that I was allowed to enter Berlin society for the purpose of saying almost anything, in order to amuse the German guests with my accent. Back in the nursery, I could still hear their laughter and Leo’s attempts to imitate me, as he tried to make his audience laugh again.

Each morning at precisely ten o’clock the telephone rang. Everything in the house was as punctual as that. It was Uncle calling from the bank. After speaking to Aunt or Leo, he insisted that I come to the phone. I had never spoken on a telephone before and it frightened me so much I never understood a single word he said. This went on the whole time I was there. When he came home for dinner each day he told me how stupid I was and said I should use Leo as an example; he spoke with ease to anyone on the telephone.

Every Sunday whether the weather was fine or not, Uncle took me for a walk through the Tiergarten. These were the pleasantest hours of my stay in Berlin. Uncle always used the Czech language then, and I had the feeling that he was softer away from Aunt’s critical eyes and Leo’s acute observation. But even when he spoke warmly of Mother and I tried to express my understanding by pressing his hand, he paid no attention to me, and I saw that he was merely talking to himself in a one-sided conversation for his own release.

Sometimes we visited the animals in the zoo, Uncle explaining about their native habits and how rare some of the specimens were. I hated the zoo because I was overcome with pity for these beautiful and strange creatures behind bars. Sometimes we went to the aquarium, where the German love of classification and order spoiled my fun in looking at the fish. I grew tired of these side excursions on the Sunday walks, but Uncle never did. While he instructed me in the habits of the animals, I watched the big-footed German men and hard-faced women and their well-behaved children, and the beautiful horses cantering through the Tiergarten, carrying Uhlans and Cuirassiers.

Once in awhile we walked through the Brandenburger Tor and down Unter den Linden, Uncle pointing to the buildings which he wanted me to admire. Another Sunday it would be the proper time to stop at the Sieges Allee. Here Uncle explained to me not only the name of each statue, but the years and exploits connected with the fame of the men they commemorated. There they stood in even ranks, a king flanked on each side by his chancellor and his greatest statesman, and they never deviated from the pattern, in lines as rigid as a parade ground. Uncle’s explanations made an indelible impression on me. Out of them grew an extreme dislike for Prussian fame in stone.

Once I saw the Kaiser riding through the Tiergarten in an open brougham. As he came into sight Uncle quickly snatched off my navy cap with its ribbons hanging down my neck, and he motioned me to imitate the rigid attention at which he stood. I was deeply impressed by this view of the Kaiser, surrounded by handsome guardsmen. Afterward I found I could remember only one thing about this symbol of the German Empire—a pair of sharply waxed mustaches, upturned at the ends.

And then came the end of the summer, and there was talk of my going home. Unfortunately for the peace of mind of Uncle and Aunt, the friend who had brought me to Berlin changed his plans about returning to Prague, and they could find no one to take me back. I knew they were more than annoyed, but I could think of nothing to say whenever they began to talk about it because I was so afraid it meant I couldn’t go home at all.

One evening when dinner was announced by the usual bell and I had followed Leo to the dining room, there was Mother, waiting to take me into her arms. When she finally released me I just stood looking at her as though she were an apparition. In turn, she stared at me, for I had changed almost out of recognition in the three months of my visit in Berlin. The food and the comfort had given me weight and a healthy appearance, in spite of my loneliness, and my face was now round and rosy where before it had been pinched and thin.

During the meal Uncle told Mother in detail about my bad manners, and explained how grateful she should be to Aunt for the sacrifices his wife had made in taking care of a second child in the midst of her busy life. Mother was sitting across the table from me, next to Leo. I looked at her from under my lashes and I saw tears in her eyes. But she smiled at me as though she hadn’t heard what Uncle was saying.

That night, after I had undressed myself as usual and crawled into bed, I waited for Aunt’s last visit to Leo before I should be gone. When she came, Mother was behind her, and I began to tremble with joy. Mother sat on the edge of my cot and smoothed the hair back from my forehead while Aunt was kissing Leo. As they started out of the room, Mother turned back and reached to a shelf where blankets and comforters were kept. She pulled an eiderdown off the shelf and laid it over me, patting me gently as she did so.

Aunt’s face was full of astonishment as she said crisply, “What are you doing that for?”

Mother looked from my bed to Leo’s, where he lay under the mate to the eiderdown she had given me. “The maid forgot,” she said. “She hasn’t put as many blankets on Jan’s bed as on Leo’s. He’ll be cold if he doesn’t have this.”

Aunt came straight to my cot and jerked the eiderdown off, folding it and putting it back on the shelf as she said, “It makes no difference what Leo has on his bed. A child who must live as you do should be hardened and not petted. Let Jan learn to get along by himself in this world.”

I still don’t know why I remember that last night more clearly than any of the rest of my stay in Berlin.