Saving Gerda

By Lilian Darcy

From bestselling author and four-time RitaTM Award finalist Lilian Darcy comes a “powerful and unforgettable” new novel...

Gerda was nine years old when she first learned that she was the descendent of swans.
At almost six-thirty, Gerda still hadn’t come down from the attic. Kitty decided it was time, therefore, for her to go up. For a long time she’d had a half-unconscious prayer that God would let her live a selfish life, not a life in which she had to be courageous in order to be good. She wasn’t strong enough for that. She wanted everything to be easier. This was such a little thing, to investigate Gerda’s activities in the attic, but still it pushed her farther than she wanted to go.
The stairs were narrow and steep. There was no door at the top. The long pull cord that switched on the lights brushed past her ear as she climbed the final step and she thought of bats and starlings. “Gerda, are you here?”
There was a small silence, as if Gerda was considering whether it would be possible to withhold a reply, but then, “Yes, Mama.”
“Where, then?”
“Over by the window.”
Kitty saw movement and picked her way towards it. They met beside a horsehair-covered trunk. An overall Gerda had borrowed from the kitchen was smeared with brownish dust, and wisps of hair escaped from her Gretchen braids like a halo. She looked quite dazed, almost drunk, other worldly and newly aware in a way that made Kitty suddenly wonder if she’d found something unsuitable up here...

Out of the smoke and shattered glass of Nazi Germany’s Kristallnacht in November 1938, two families in impossibly different circumstances become linked by tangled bonds. Can Kitty draw something from this dangerous new relationship that could save her precious child?

“A magnificent story...couldn't put it down.” - Jane Porter, bestselling author of Flirting With Forty

“I adored this book.” - Trish Morey, Harlequin Presents author and 2012 Rita Finalist for Best Novella.

“A brilliant book.” - Barbara Hannay, Rita Award winner and author of Zoe’s Muster from Penguin Books.

“Stunning book... My eyes are filling up as I type this.” - Liz Fielding, multi-award-winning author of “Liz Fielding’s Little Book of Writing Romance” from Amazon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lilian Darcy
• Release date: May 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9780987094049

Lilian Darcy

Lilian Darcy has now written over eighty books for Harlequin. She has received four nominations for the Romance Writers of America's prestigious Rita Award, as well as a Reviewer's Choice Award from RT Magazine for Best Silhouette Special Edition 2008. Lilian loves to write emotional, life-affirming stories with complex and believable characters. For more about Lilian go to her website at www.liliandarcy.com or her blog at www.liliandarcy.com/blog

Book preview

Lilian Darcy’s writing is wonderful, and the characterizations are rapier sharp. - New York Times bestselling author Mary Jo Putney.

... it’s the writing that grabbed me ... reading [Cafe du Jour] is like talking with a friend. - Jayne at dearauthor.com

Saving Gerda is brilliant and utterly compelling… A sweeping story you'll never forget - Jane Porter, bestselling author of Flirting With Forty and The Good Woman

I adored this book. - Trish Morey, Harlequin Presents author and 2012 Rita Finalist for Best Novella.

A brilliant book. - Barbara Hannay, Rita Award winner and author of Zoe’s Muster from Penguin Books.

The story was dark and yet it drew me in, pulled back, made me long to get back to it... My eyes are filling up as I type this... Stunning, stunning book. I am totally in awe. - Liz Fielding, multi-award-winning author of Liz Fielding’s Little Book of Writing Romance from Amazon.

Saving Gerda

Lilian Darcy

To all my writing friends - you are the best thing about this job!

First Electronic Book Edition May 2012, Springvale Manuscript Production

SAVING GERDA Copyright 2012 by Lilian Darcy

ISBN 978-0-9870940-4-9

Smashwords Edition

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Cafe du Jour excerpt

Chapter One

Dahlem, Berlin, November 1938

They arrested him politely, with due deference to his position and to the lavish birthday party in progress. Nine hours later, Gerda, the birthday girl, still couldn’t sleep. She lay in her bed with eyes wide open and gleaming in the dark, nagging Kitty with terrible, innocent questions. What would happen to Papa? What had he done, to be taken away like that in the middle of the party?

Kitty wanted to tell her, He’s done nothing. He’s loved me too much, that’s all, and indulged me when I needed a firmer hand. I’m the one who -

Is it past midnight?

Yes, sweetheart, it’s nearly three.

So it’s my actual birthday, now? She was thirteen today.

Yes, it’s your birthday.

When will they let him come home? Gerda twisted again, tugging at the bedclothes trapped in place by Kitty, who lay uncomfortably on top of them. She weighed less than her daughter, these days. Won’t he be able to explain?

Gerda had been overwhelmed by her party. There had been too many guests, from too many different walks of life. This, too, was Kitty’s fault, a mad, stubborn impulse that she hadn’t thought through. She had encouraged Gerda to invite the whole class, encouraged their maid to go into the room filled with privileged girls to watch Gerda open the presents. As for the headstrong decision to welcome Marianne…

The bravado of such a gesture was pitiful in hindsight. Dangerous and pathetic and blind and not courageous at all. It was too late for things like that.

How can I protect Gerda now?

A car approached along the street outside, and the night shadows moved on the wall, making a short, silent play. They suggested a looming storm, or searchlights stretching the autumn-bare tree limbs to giant dimensions. The shape of a long-necked bird formed itself from Kitty’s own arm as she rubbed at the film of cold cream on her fingertips. She hadn’t taken off her make-up properly, earlier. The car went past and the shadow play ended.

Who told them to come? Gerda asked. Who gave them Papa’s name?

Go to sleep, Gerda, please try.

I can’t try. She shifted and wriggled and kicked again, and came to rest against Kitty’s side, where she pressed so heavy and warm and alive even through the barrier of the bedclothes. So heavy. So alive.

I can’t either, Kitty thought. I can’t try. I can’t bear her weight. The weight of her importance on my heart. Not now. It will kill me. And I refuse to have her watch.

Chapter Two

Potsdam, Brandenburg, July 1938

Stay a little, when the others have gone, Kitty, darling, there’s something I want you to see, just you alone. Countess Paula zu Greitz spoke close beside her ear in the sibilant, tight-mouthed German that Kitty had learned to consider beautiful. The Countess gave a smoke-laden smile, showing the gold in her back teeth, and Kitty understood that she was being offered a delicious, poisonous red apple of a treat.

The other luncheon guests hadn’t heard. They were an assortment typical of Paula’s choice, colourful in some cases but ill-fitting. The Countess zu Greitz collected unusual people, gleeful about her finds. Kitty qualified – a well-bred Englishwoman married to a German baron, an ideal blonde beauty, and a slender-figured wearer of this season’s Paris couture. She understood the need for unusual people. She could imagine the feelings of restlessness or daring in Paula that produced it. We adore each other, Kitty and I, she had once heard Paula say.

At a quarter to three the guests began to make their goodbyes. Paula had told everyone that she had another engagement at three o’clock. She signalled to Kitty. Go upstairs. Powder your nose. I’ll call you down when the coast is clear.

Obedient to her hostess, Kitty slipped away. Outside, cars rumbled into life and departed down the tree-lined street. Egeler the chauffeur would be waiting for her. She heard Paula exclaim over a guest’s intention of taking the train. The Countess offered her own car, but it was refused. The weather was fine, it was no hardship to walk. The awkward guest left on her own, on foot. A few minutes later the doorbell pealed, and a few minutes after that, the Countess crept half-way up the stairs and whispered loudly, Kitty!

She came down.

It’s my painter, Johannes Fruehauf, our third sitting for the portrait. Once again Paula’s mouth fetched up too close to Kitty’s ear. Come and see him, he’s so delicious, really delicious, so different, quite simple and shy. I do hope you’ll choose him to paint you and your darling Gerda! She positioned Kitty with a view through two doorways and they looked at the painter together, while he remained unaware.

He wore the dark trousers of a well-worn suit and a white shirt with elastic garters on his upper arms to keep the sleeves in check. He was a handsome man with dark hair, smooth cheeks, a straight nose and a very good mouth. His body was well-made and he had a haunting profile composed of sober, sensitive planes.

As they watched - he still hadn’t seen them; they were practically hiding behind the opened door - he took a frayed and shrunken woollen pullover and dived into it, dragging its ragged sleeves to his wrists. The garment had once been grey or brown, or had perhaps become grey-brown from laundering, and it was smeared with paint. On top of it he added a heavy work apron, equally paint-stained, made of suede leather worn to a shine, with a pair of gaping pockets in the front where the stitching was coming undone. They were very serious, these garments. Like armour, or a uniform.

He dresses like a blacksmith when he paints, isn’t it wonderful? Paula said. He could be a blacksmith, couldn’t he? He's strong enough, with those arms. Can you imagine? She almost seemed to shiver.

But he’d heard the sound of her voice. He glanced up and the appearance of good looks and serious professional purpose was overtaken by a sudden crippling shyness, leaving him tense-faced, angular and clumsy. He stood awkwardly, suffering, while Paula muttered, Oh, too bad, we’ll have to go in now. You can see what happens to him. Shy as a bear! He’s like an animal frozen by the light. Well, you have to meet him properly, anyway.

The Countess was planning an affair with him, Kitty understood. She gave the game away with the girlish movements of her hands, the half-secret smiles and her talk of blacksmiths and animals. You could almost see her intention shimmering in the air, the motivation borne of mixed restlessness, sexual need and charity. It was disturbing.

Mr Fruehauf, you must meet the Baroness von Kolhausen. She, too, is interested in commissioning a portrait, of herself and her delightful little daughter Gerda… Paula turned to Kitty. Darling, help me, how old - ? I know her birthday is in November...

Twelve, Kitty said. In November she’ll turn thirteen.

I’ve mentioned you, Mr Fruehauf, recommended you very highly, of course. Paula laughed. She’d placed too much emphasis on very highly.

Oh, th-that’s very kind. He seemed studiously or perhaps even innocently oblivious to the flirtation. He’d already uncovered the large unfinished painting on the easel in the Count zu Greitz’s study and he busied himself with repositioning it more carefully while the smooth colour in his face blotched with red. The painted Paula lay there on the canvas, a sketched form on an incomplete crimson chaise longue, in the nude. The real Paula peeped beneath her lashes at Kitty and smirked, wanting her response.

It’s lovely. It’s beautiful. She liked its lushness and colour and sense of magical light. She did not like the fact that the nude figure belonged to Paula, and that Paula’s intent seemed more naked than the picture.

She didn’t quite know what to do next. The artist, Mr Fruehauf, was suffering more than she was. He wasn’t oblivious. He knew. She felt for him terribly, so poor and shy and beholden to his patroness. How would he manage such a situation? His strong wrists had a prominent knob of bone at the outer edge, emphasising the frayed and shrunken nature of his sleeves. He began to unpack his paints and brushes, filling the air with the smells of turpentine and oil. On the suede apron, Kitty could pick out faint, printed letters, Appelf then a shiny, paint-smeared gap, then ohn. He rubbed his nose and a white streak appeared on its straight-boned bridge. Seeing it at the edge of his vision, he found a rag and wiped, which thinned the mark and spread it out but did not clean it away entirely.

You’ll be the first to see it when it’s finished, Kitty, I promise, Paula said. Now, of course, you must leave so that I can change and we can get down to work. She pushed playfully at Kitty’s shoulder. How much Riesling had she drunk over lunch, to accompany the mountain trout? You can just imagine how exhausting it is. She gave another laugh, too giddy and excited, and Mr Fruehauf glanced quickly up from his palette, ill at ease.

Thank you for letting me see it, Mr Fruehauf, Kitty said, not knowing how to help him, although she very much wanted to. Their eyes met for a moment, but it was too awkward. If she let him know how much she understood his embarrassment, she would only embarrass him further.

Oh, she already had. Oh, it was no good.

They both looked away. His brushes clattered in his paint-box. She said formally to him, The Countess will tell us how to contact you, at a later date, if the Baron and I decide to go ahead with our commission.

Darling, do it before Gerda gets to that gawky age, Paula interposed, not caring that she had made it impossible for the painter to reply. It’ll happen any day, then it'll be three years or more before she blooms into a rose.

At the front door, the two women kissed with a tiny touch of lip to cheek, then Kitty went out to where Egeler and the car waited in the shade, while Paula hurried upstairs to undress and put on a robe, easy to discard again for the task of posing when she reached the crimson chaise. From the leafy street, the house gave away nothing about what might be going on inside.

Chapter Three

Wilmersdorf, Berlin, July 1938

What happened with the inkwell button was Gerda’s own fault.

She was showing off, trying to flip the button between her fingers while Mr Weber had his back to the class writing on the blackboard, but she lost control of it. It flicked out of her grasp and skittered across the classroom’s polished wooden floor in a spinning flash, coming to rest at the back of the room in front of Marianne Stern’s shabby shoe, like a hopscotch stone waiting to be kicked.

Mr Weber’s chalk tapped and squeaked on the board. He was writing out the roster of classroom monitors for the coming week, which he always did on a Wednesday morning. He didn’t turn around. He might not have heard the skittering sound. All of the girls near Gerda had. They looked at her, looked at where the ornate old button lay, and she knew they were wondering what she would do about it.

Or what Marianne Stern would do.

Would Gerda hold out her hand? Would Marianne pick it up? Would Gerda leave her seat to retrieve it herself?

Leave it, whispered Sylvia.

Gerda gave a tiny nod. But then her head turned of its own accord to follow once again the button’s disastrous trajectory across the floor. Right by Marianne’s scuffed toe. Marianne hadn’t moved. Her hands were frozen in hook shapes on the desk and her feet might have been nailed to the floor. She looked down at her work. The class was supposed to be checking its spelling. Gerda couldn’t see her eyes.

Mr Weber was strict about the need to keep inkwells covered with the button each girl had brought from home, to stop evaporation. You must save ink for Germany. Should Gerda hold out her hand for Marianne to pick it up and bring it to her? That would risk the touch of unclean fingers on her own precious skin as the button changed hands. Could she duck back along the aisle between the desks and abase herself in front of Marianne’s motionless shoe in order to pick up the button herself?

This was not the first time that sewing notions had led to awkwardness with Marianne. Three or four years ago, while shopping for satin ribbon with Mama, Gerda had found the other girl and her mother in the same shop buying thread, both of them wearing their dark winter coats against the cold. Marianne’s mother had been talking with the woman behind the counter when Gerda and Mama came in.

Seeing them, the woman shook her head at Marianne’s mother and closed her eyes for a moment. They each took in a big breath as if there was more to say, but then they didn't say it. They stopped the conversation, as if it was secret or shameful. They did not speak one more word. Marianne and Gerda pretended not to know each other, and turned away. It was easy to nudge up beside Mama and feign an interest in the matching of ribbon colours to the piece of sample fabric Mama had brought. Marianne and her mother left.

Afterwards, when Mama had paid for the chosen ribbon and they were ready to leave, also, she asked Gerda quietly, Did you know that little girl?

A bit. She’s in my class.

You didn’t say hello to each other.

We just didn’t want to...

Remember your manners next time, Gerda, please. Mama’s hand touched her cheek to soften the reprimand, and Gerda smelled her French perfume.

Leave it, Sylvia repeated now, about the button.

But Ursula mouthed from across the aisle, Are you just going to let it stay on the floor, in front of her filthy shoe? If Mr Weber sees, he’ll -

Mr Weber turned from the blackboard. He had finished the roster of monitors. Next, with cruel precision, he read out the class’s daily mental arithmetic problems. Under his sharp eye, Gerda did not dare to look back at the button again. She worked on her mental arithmetic, while tarnished metal and scuffed black leather burned accusingly in her imagination. Why had she tried to show off? The button had rolled to the worst possible place in the whole room.

Her head turned again, to find Marianne looking down at her sums, ticking the answers. Correct, correct, correct…

What - Snap! The teacher’s wooden ruler hit Gerda’s desk-top a fraction of an inch beyond the tips of her fingers. - is the attraction at the back of the room, Miss von Kolhausen? Should the whole class follow your example and turn around?

No, Mr Weber.

I didn’t think so. Will it be necessary for me to repeat this little dialogue?

No, Mr Weber.

He remained motionless for a second or two, and just when Gerda had made up her mind that the humiliation was over, and that the class would soon have no more reason to look at her and hide sniggers of relief that this wasn’t happening to them, snap came the ruler again. This time it clipped the tip of her middle finger, right on the nail, giving a burst of sharp, concentrated pain which seemed to embody her sense of shame that of all people, she, Gerda von Kolhausen should have earned such harsh attention.

She had been nine years old when she first learned that she was the descendent of swans. She was delighted about it. Yes, children, the most beautiful swans, with snow-white feathers, long, graceful necks and sapphire-blue eyes. Then, Gerda’s teacher had been pretty Miss Klempner, whom the class adored. Miss Klempner was engaged to be married, had sapphire-blue eyes of her own and read fairy tales aloud to the class every Wednesday afternoon. This wasn’t a fairy tale, though, this was racial science. As she spoke of the swans, Miss Klempner looked around the classroom, her eyes alighting with approval on the girls like Gerda, the swan girls, with blonde or light brown hair, jewel eyes and healthy, well-proportioned bodies.

Gerda loved Miss Klempner perhaps even more than the rest of the class, loved to bathe in the warm light of her approval, believed everything she said. And she loved swans. In England, where her mother came from, they belonged to the king. Here, Germany, they swam on the lake at Sommerwald, her grandparents’ house in the country.

They mate for life, Gerda-pet, said her grandmother. They do not stray. Her grandmother loved swans, too. See, sweetheart, how gentle are their beaks and how clean their feathers? They are grooming each other. But if you could see how fiercely the cob will fight to protect his young!

It was good to be the descendent of swans.

The three girls in the class who were not, the monkey girls Ingrid Abraham, Frieda Seligman and Marianne Stern, sat at the back of the room, crowded into a single desk meant for two children not three. They barely said a word. At lunch they ate their packed sandwiches seated side by side on a bench no one else wanted.

Gerda hadn’t known at nine quite what Marianne and the other two had done, nor how they came to descend from monkeys. For that matter, her own swan ancestry was clouded as to detail. Miss Klempner’s fairy tales spoke of shirts woven from stinging nettles, first rays of moonlight, enchantments and wishes, courage and quests. But how long ago had all of this happened? Had the swans spoken and worn clothes?

These questions aside, Gerda eventually concluded that Ingrid, Frieda and Marianne deserved everything they got. They must deserve it, or it wouldn’t happen. Her universe was clear on this point. There was an implacable correlation between goodness and beauty, transgression and punishment, merit and reward.

The class had Miss Klempner as their teacher for two years, but then she celebrated her marriage and went away. Gerda quickly learned that the classroom would be a different place under the rule of Mr Weber. There was no more talk of anyone being descended from swans. Gerda went on believing it, at first easily and then with greater effort. Surely the most beautiful things in life had to be the truest. Surely a story that placed her where she’d been made to feel she belonged, at the centre of this beautiful world, had to be true, too.

Mr Weber never made her feel as if she was at the centre, however. She was maddeningly and incomprehensibly just to the side. She wanted to wave at him and make him look at her properly, place her at the correct focal length, the way she had once wanted to wave at a war veteran colleague of her father’s who had a crooked glass eye. Here. I’m here. In this direction.

The light of Mr Weber’s approval was much harsher around the edges and harder for his students to earn than Miss Klempner’s had been. It came only in the form of curt nods and the brisk thump of a merit stamp, first onto the indigo-inked pad and then the worthy student’s paper. His colourlessness and slight build belied his effectiveness with the wooden ruler. Gerda had once before felt it snap hard and without warning onto the desk just beyond the tips of her fingers, and the sound of its near-miss had sent a jolt of fright through her. It was the sound of narrowly-escaped pain, and it left her more eager than ever to stay on the side of beautiful swan-like righteousness and duty. Mr Weber had all along made it clear, much clearer than Miss Klempner had, that this involved a certain attitude toward the three monkey girls who sat at the back of the class.

Gerda took it that when she affirmed the position of these girls as outcasts she enhanced her own golden, blue-eyed place in the class. It became part of her all-round scholastic achievement. Since she excelled in Mathematics, Art, Track and Field, and German Composition, she wanted to excel at the practical application of race-science and racial hygiene, too. She couldn’t understand why one or two of the other girls in the class, not monkeys, but girls who were somehow not entirely successful as swans, either, girls like Clementina Schramm, kept up a tentative friendship with Ingrid, Frieda and Marianne.

It was so wet on Sunday, Ingrid, wasn’t it? those girls might say. I couldn’t go outside at all, could you? Or another time, Is that a new cardigan you have, Marianne?

Didn’t they know? Didn’t they care?

Some of the other girls went the opposite way and diverted farther from their usual path in order to be unkind to Ingrid, Frieda and Marianne. One of them had chewing gum sent by relatives from America and when she had finished illicitly chewing it at morning recess she would park it right on the seat of the Judenschwein desk. Another girl dropped her soggy brown apple cores there. It was pointless, because they always noticed them, these days, before they sat down.

Gerda didn’t do things like that. All she ever did was turn and look at Ingrid, Frieda and Marianne when certain subjects were mentioned, out of an uneasy curiosity as to what they could possibly think and feel, what it must be like to be them. How terrible it must be to deserve such a clouded existence! They should hang their heads in shame!

She had never stood still for long enough to wonder too deeply what it must be like being someone else. Being herself took up her complete attention, and a fair amount of the attention of several other people, as well.

The thought of being anybody else was so appalling and impossible that in the rare moments when it did flicker at the edges of her mind it only made her write more neatly, speak more sweetly, say more fervently to her mother, I love you, Mama! Anything to prove that she deserved to be Gerda von Kolhausen in every possible way, and that all those other unimaginable little girls who weren’t Gerda von Kolhausen had better just stay where they belonged.

And now her inkwell button had rolled right in front of Marianne Stern’s disgusting shoe, and Mr Weber had caught her looking…

The class corrected the last of their ten questions, closed their mental arithmetic books, heard a brief harangue on the stupidity of all those who had incorrectly calculated the answer to question seven, and opened their dictation books. Under cover of the obedient movements of thirty-five girls and seventy exercise books, Gerda managed another quick glance behind her, promising herself that this would be the last. There was Marianne’s foot, in exactly the same place. But... she could scarcely believe this... the button had gone.

She met Marianne’s brown jeweyes, and the eyes narrowed a little bit, looked a little uncertain, then dropped. Marianne had taken the button away. Whom was she trying to protect? Whom was she trying to punish? And how could she have managed it? Wouldn’t someone have alerted Gerda, one of the unfortunate girls nearer to the back of the room, if Marianne had bent low enough in her seat to pick it up? It seemed like a piece of nasty, impossible Jew magic that the button had disappeared.

Chapter Four

Potsdam, July 1938

Paula zu Greitz’s body in the nude was not sensual, Johannes had quickly realised. Her torso was boxy and too short, and her shoulders were like the shaped corners of a suitcase. Even her breasts seemed boxy, made square by the pectoral muscles beneath. Her hip at least rose in a nice shape and he made the most of that, playing with the curve, running his paintbrush across the canvas in a lush arc of exaggerated pink to mound it higher and rounder, echoing the line of the chaise longue’s rounded back.

He was very thankful for the chaise longue. It could lend some of its sensuality to Paula, and with any luck she and her husband the Count, for whose birthday gift this Bohemian portrait was intended, would not notice what he had done, and that so little of the life and beauty in the painting came from Paula herself. He could bounce reflected light from the crimson velvet upholstery onto the skin that she powdered too pale. He could paint the carved wood like the thick waves of glossy brown hair she might have had in her youth.

Johannes had his own theories about this youth of hers. She was only seven or eight years older than himself, he thought. Perhaps not yet forty. But something about her suggested the excesses of Berlin ten years earlier and made her seem older. The heavy Oriental scent she chose, the way her dyed hair had thinned, the glimpse of scars running lengthwise along her wrists, their once-garish evidence of her destructive intent now faded to three or four thin, silvery lines. He had an idea that her fifteen-year-old daughter Liesl had been born well before her advantageous marriage.

As soon as the thin, blue-eyed English beauty had left, the Countess offered a toxic variety of cocktail. Johannes declined it, trying to save them both. He could tell that the Countess had drunk too much wine at lunch. For a moment or two he’d thought that Baroness von Kolhausen might find a way to save him from Paula’s intent. She’d looked as if she wanted to, as if she understood to an embarrassing extent what was going on, but then she had let Paula hurry her away, leaving Johannes with an instant, chivalrous, ardent and unrequited infatuation, borne of her beauty and his thwarted gratitude, her perception and the twinkling, and at the same time startled, look of commiseration in her blue eyes.

He’d once felt this same way in Paris, plunged into an immediate and hopeless passion for a woman of similar appearance and manners. Fine-boned and pretty and pale, effortlessly well-bred. He’d made dozens of drawings of Daphne, in Paris, little studies of her hands or her face half-hidden by the edge of her seductive hat. He’d barely been able to utter a word in her presence, knew nothing about what she was really like, had never forgotten her, would never see her again, had had a weakness for her type ever since.

The Countess showed a moment of sheepish regret about the offered cocktail, having taken his awkwardness for disapproval. He was quite right, of course, she quickly said. Coffee would be much better. But then she was sheepish about that, too. She liked the Turkish style, thick and fragrant and strong. It’s no wonder I don’t sleep!

She made Johannes uneasy, but then most of the people he met had that effect on him, as soon as he was forced to engage with them. He did not know what they would think of him. He did not know with which of them he belonged. He was far better as an observer, at a distance, because then he could forget himself.

Paula's husband had cancelled their last sitting at short notice, via a curt telephone call made to the shop, Appelfeld and Sons, Fine Repairs, Watches and Clocks. Johannes only worked there intermittently and it was purely by luck that he’d received the message about the cancellation in time.

Today, having rescheduled as if nothing was wrong and introduced him as a talented artist to her beautiful English friend, the Countess then questioned him with a little too much carelessness and innocence about his employer. What kind of a business was it, just by the way? Had he worked there for long? Was he on close terms with the proprietors? Were they relatives, perhaps?

No, he told her truthfully. Appelfeld and Sons were not relatives.

Good to know, she drawled.

While talking, she unconsciously moved her position and he had to say to her, Please, the left arm a little lower. And the shoulder more relaxed.

The rounded hip looked good, now. He borrowed a little more sensuality from the chaise longue beneath her and went on painting, while the smell of boot polish, resolute and somehow military, reached his nostrils via the mild late afternoon air drifting through the open window. A servant must be out on the back steps attending to the Count’s shoes. He could hear the brisk strokes of the horse-hair brush back and forth across the leather. The sound stopped, started again, went on for a very shiny and thorough length of time, punctuated by the occasional clopping sound of a boot sole on the brick.

He forgot about the boots eventually, and became lost in the paint, the swim and stipple, the…the… you could almost call it surgery, or music, of his movements with the brush. Heaven must be like this, he sometimes