Читать книгу Lisa and Lottie - Erich Kastner - Страница 9

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New worlds are discovered • Mystery piled on mystery • The bisected first name • A serious photograph and a funny letter • Can children be cut in half?

Time passed.

The two girls collected their photographs from Mr. Appeldauer. The inquisitive Miss Ursula inquired whether they had sent the pictures home. Lisa and Lottie nodded their heads and said yes.

But the pictures, torn into little pieces, are at the bottom of Lake Bohren. The two girls told Miss Ursula a lie. They wanted to keep their secret to themselves. They lied shamelessly to anyone who tried to pry too closely into their affairs. Their consciences did not prick them—not even Lottie’s.

The two girls stuck together like burrs. Trudie, Steffie, Monica, Christine, and the rest were sometimes angry at Lisa and jealous of Lottie. What good did it do? None at all!

They had slipped off to the locker room. Lottie looked through her locker, took out two identical sweaters, gave one to her sister, and put on the other herself.

“Mommy bought these,” she said, “at Pollinger’s.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Lisa. “That’s the store in Neuhauser Street, near—what is the name of that gate?”

“Carl’s Gate.”

“That’s right—near Carl’s Gate.”

By now they were well informed about each other’s way of life, school friends, neighbors, teachers, and apartments. For Lisa, everything connected with her mother was terribly important. And Lottie longed to know everything—any little thing—that her sister could tell her about her father. For days on end they talked of nothing else. And in bed at night they whispered together for hours. It was as though they were each discovering a new and strange continent. They had found out that what they had known up to now was only half a world.

And at moments when they were not fitting together these two halves in order to get a glimpse of the whole, another subject excited them, another mystery tormented them: why were their parents no longer together?

“First, of course, they got married,” said Lisa for the hundredth time. “Then they had us. And they named me Lisa and you Lottie because Mommy’s name is Lisalottie. That’s pretty, isn’t it? They must have been fond of each other in those days, mustn’t they?”

“I’m sure of it,” said Lottie. “And then they must have quarreled and parted. And they separated us just the same as they separated Mommy’s first name.”

“They really ought to have asked us first.”

“But when that happened we probably hadn’t even learned to talk.”

The two sisters smiled. Then they linked arms and went into the garden.

The mail had come. Everywhere—in the grass, on the wall, and on the garden benches—campers were sitting, studying letters.

Lottie held in her hands the photograph of a man of about thirty-five. She was looking with loving eyes at her father. So that was how he looked! And this was the sort of feeling you had around your heart when you had a real live father!

Lisa read aloud what he had written to her. “‘My dearest, only child’—what a liar!” she said, looking up. “He knows perfectly well he has twins!” She went on reading:

I think you must have completely forgotten what your old father looks like. Otherwise you wouldn’t be so anxious for a photograph of him just before the end of your vacation. At first I thought I would send you a picture of me as a baby—one that shows me lying on a polar-bear skin. But you wrote that it must be an absolutely brand-new one. So I rushed off to the photographer’s, though I really couldn’t spare the time, and explained to him just why I needed it in such a hurry. I told him that unless he took my picture my Lisa wouldn’t recognize me when I went to the station to meet her. Fortunately he saw how important it was. And so you’re getting it in good time. I’m sorry for the counselors there. I hope you don’t lead them such a dance as you do your father—who sends you a thousand kisses and is longing to have you home again.

“Lovely!” said Lottie. “And funny! And yet in the picture he looks quite serious.”

“He was probably too shy to laugh in front of the photographer,” Lisa speculated. “He always looks serious in front of other people. But when we’re alone we have lots of fun.” Lottie hugged the picture. “May I really keep it?”

“Of course,” said Lisa. “That’s why I got him to send it.”

Steffie was sitting on a bench with a letter in her hands, crying. She wasn’t making a sound, but the tears streamed steadily down her round little cheeks.

Trudie sauntered by, stopped curiously, went and sat down by Steffie, and looked at her expectantly.

Christine came up and sat down on the other side of Steffie. Lisa and Lottie approached and stopped. “What’s wrong, Steffie?” asked Lisa.

Steffie continued to cry silently. Suddenly she looked down and said in a flat voice, “My Mommy and Daddy are going to be divorced.”

“What a mean thing!” cried Trudie. “They send you off to camp, and then do a thing like that—behind your back!”

“I think Daddy wants to marry somebody else,” sobbed Steffie.

Lisa and Lottie walked away quickly. What they had just heard had stirred them to the depths.

“Our father,” said Lottie, “hasn’t got a new wife, has he?”

“No,” returned Lisa. “I’d know if he had.”

“Maybe there’s someone he’s planning to marry?” asked Lottie hesitantly.

Lisa shook her curly head. “Of course he has a lot of friends. Women friends, too. But I know he’s not planning to marry. But what about Mommy? Has she a—a man friend?”

“No,” said Lottie confidently. “Mommy has me and her work, and that’s all she asks of life, she says.”

Lisa gave her sister a puzzled look. “Why do you suppose they got divorced?”

Lottie thought for a while. “I wonder if they ever really went to court. I mean, like Steffie’s father and mother.”

“If they didn’t, why is Daddy in Vienna and Mommy in Munich?” asked Lisa. “Why did they separate us?”

“Why,” went on Lottie broodingly, “didn’t they ever tell us that we were really twins? And why has Daddy never told you that Mommy’s still living?”

“Mommy’s never told you that Daddy’s still living, either.” Lisa put her hands on her hips and stuck out her elbows. “Fine parents we’ve got, haven’t we? Just wait till we tell them a few things! That’ll make them sit upl”

“We couldn’t do that,” said Lottie timidly. “We’re only children.”

“Only!” laughed Lisa and tossed her head.