Читать книгу Partner in Three Worlds - Dorothy Duncan - Страница 14

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THE trip home to Prague with Mother was a different story from the ride three months earlier with the stranger. Now it was an exciting adventure, and every strange sight and sound was colored for me by her presence and the light she threw on everything by her comments and her answers to my excited questions. I was deliriously happy. Even the fact that we were forced to ride in a third-class carriage on a very slow train, because Uncle saw no reason to send us back on a first-class express, had no power to dull our joy in being together again.

The train crawled in a leisurely fashion away from the industries which ringed Berlin, away from the sandy flatlands of Prussia and eventually into the wooded country of Saxony, stopping to puff and catch its breath at every little station and watering post. Beyond Dresden we began to cut through the Sandstone Mountains as we followed carefully the shore of the Elbe. Then wooded hills gave way to wider carpets of cultivated valley, and Mother said it was growing more like our own country. She could not understand why I remembered nothing of the scenery from my trip to Berlin. I stood with my nose pressed against the windows, balancing myself to compensate the train’s motions, and did not tell her why.

Black forests of evergreen mixed with hardwood rose steeply into the sky when the hills shot up sheer from the river’s edge, and we crawled along between a wall and a path of water, with identical green hills on the other side. I wanted to see more farms and the people at work on them, but Mother said there would be few until we reached Bohemia.

I left the window to sit beside her on the wooden bench, and began to look around at the other people who were riding with us in the third-class carriage. There was a woman with a crumpled baby on her lap and a small, soiled child clutching at her skirts. The man hidden behind a newspaper who sat next to them might be a husband and father, or he might be a stranger. The young soldier beside Mother was snoring. Two girls farther down the aisle chattered together, half watching the soldier and giggling whenever his snoring grew loud. Farmers with bundles and workers smoking pipes with porcelain bowls were scattered through the coach, and far down at the end a family was spread out in the midst of baskets and boxes. A small boy and his older brother were concerned with a large hamper and the cat sounds that issued from it now and then.

The train continued to measure the path of the Elbe on its way to Bohemia under the afternoon sun. I touched Mother’s elbow. “I think I’d like to talk to those boys at the end of the coach, if you don’t mind,” I said. “Is this our country yet?”

“No, dear,” she replied. “You’ll know when we cross into Austria because the customs men will come through the train.”

“What for?”

“To see if we’re trying to take anything across the border that is forbidden.”

“I see. Are we?”

“No, dear.”

“Then I think I’ll go talk to those boys.”

She watched me as I made my way through the bundles of babies and small children that had spilled into the dirty aisle. When I looked back she smiled. And then presently I was at her side again, tugging at her sleeve to distract her attention from the window. “Look,” I said, in the manner of one carrying a great secret, “there’s a kitten down at the end of the car. A very little kitten, all furry. The boys have him in a box. He’s not very happy because he’s been sick from the train, and their mother is mad and she says I can have him. He’s all gray and white.”

“A cat, Jan?” My face must have been filled with pity and intense desire for a small animal that needed love. “What would you do with a cat in Prague? And what would the boys do without him? Are they Czechs?”

“No, they’re German. I’d love the kitten. That’s more than they do. It needs someone to look after it.”

She studied my face carefully. “Are you sure that’s what they said? That you were to take the kitten?”

“Yes. They kept pushing him at me.”

She thought a minute, while I leaned my elbows on her lap. “Your grandmother probably wouldn’t like you to bring a cat home. Or the landlady, either. And the kitten would have to be fed regularly, you know.”

“Yes, I know. He can have part of my milk each day. And I’m sure they’d like a nice little gray and white kitten like this one, aren’t you?”

Mother straightened my collar. “Well, there are lots of things your grandmother doesn’t like. Perhaps if you explained to her yourself how much this kitten needs you ...”

I was already on my way to the other end of the coach.

When the train slowed down to meet the next station I made my way back to Mother. She was peering from the windows again. Outside was a row of houses, cowsheds and livery stables, cross views of narrow streets, and then the concrete platform of a station. The boys had told me it was Bodenbach, the frontier. I slid onto the bench beside her, leaning against her back and holding my jacket over my middle with stiff arms and an air of mystery.

“Don’t look at me,” I whispered as she turned around. “The boys said the customs men would take it away. I don’t think they’ll notice, do you?”

“Well, you look a trifle fat, even for a boy who’s been visiting his uncle in Berlin. Here....” She reached to the rack above our heads and pulled down a brown paper parcel. “Put that on your knees and open some sandwiches. We’ll have our supper while we’re waiting.”

I gave her an arch smile of conspiracy and followed her bidding. But the food was only munched as I watched the door at the end of the coach. Suddenly a voice behind us said, “ZOLL ... REVISION! Customs! Show your luggage! What have you to declare?”

Everyone in the carriage began to lay bare their small belongings, embarrassed to show forth their personal effects before strange eyes. “Where are you going? What have you got there?” the officer with a thick neck said to Mother. She answered quietly and I said not a word, chewing on my sandwich and holding my belly with my left arm. The officer thrust his hand inside our bags, turned over Mother’s box of embroideries and moved on to the next bench. I stopped chewing, but I remained motionless until the officers had left the coach.

Then I said, “Look!” in a voice of rising excitement. “Oh, Mother, isn’t he a beautiful kitten?” The paper parcel was deposited on her lap, my jacket was unbuttoned with care, and a small gray cat face with a snub nose and frightened eyes peered out. “He likes me already,” I said, rubbing the animal’s nose. “Isn’t he going to be the most wonderful cat?” The kitten thrust its nose into the gentle stroking of my finger, and Mother watched us both.

Two boys scrambled down the aisle, shoving each other aside. When they reached me the older boy jerked the kitten out of its nest in my lap without ceremony. I tried to hold it, but the boy jerked it away and held it at arm’s length and the kitten began to cry.

“Nein ... nein. Das ist mein. Du hast es gesagt!” I cried. The boys made a face at me and ran back to their mother, taking the kitten with them.

I began to cry. I dug a fist into each eye and pretended otherwise. “They only let me have their cat because they wanted me to get it through the customs for them,” I said. “They never meant me to keep it at all. I hate them ... I hate them both!”

“Never mind, dear,” Mother said quietly, patting my knee. “Some day I’ll buy you a dog. You’ll like that better.”

I shook my head and continued to rub my eyes.

“You’ll meet lots of people in the world like those boys,” Mother went on. “If you allow yourself to hate them, you’ll be giving them importance they don’t deserve. Despise the bad qualities in them, but not the individual people. Then they can’t hurt you, really, down inside.”

I looked up at her. “Did they do that because they were German?”

“No. Of course not. But Germans are a peculiar kind of people. They have their own ideas of right and wrong. Many things that seem bad to us seem all right to them. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said. I noticed that the train was running through a different kind of country now and I went back to the window.

There were lush meadows filled with cattle, clusters of farmhouses and tile-roofed barns that were sweating in the sun, and patches and patches of oats, rye, wheat, hops, turnips and beets measured off like the squares of a quilt. Sometimes the small villages we passed were close beside the train, sometimes they hugged far hills. All the houses had flowers in the dooryard and pots of flowers on the window sills. Men at work behind horse-drawn rakes and women and children picking hops or stacking purple beets seemed another race of people in their full skirts and embroidered bandannas. They were different from any city folk I knew.

We began to eat again, sharing the parcel of food between us. Nothing could keep me from feeling close to Mother and on my way home again.