The American Lady (36 page)

“What do you want me to do?” With every word Marie spoke, Wanda felt more sick at heart. This was a nightmare. She was trapped in a nightmare.
This water is too deep for me!
screamed a voice inside her.
I can’t swim!

“You have to take Sylvie with you. Back to Lauscha. She mustn’t stay here, not for anything. Do you hear me? Not for anything! Don’t let anyone stop you from taking her!”

Had she heard right? “But ho
w . . .
” Wanda began.

Just then, the door flew open. When Patrizia saw Marie so agitated, she became furious and began hurling reproaches at Wanda. But Wanda paid no attention to the dragon, not any more than Marie did. They looked into one another’s eyes, each trying to read what they saw there.

“Do you promise me?” Marie asked again, urgently.

Wanda nodded. How could she have refused?

The next time Marie fell asleep and Patrizia left the room, Wanda teased the notebook out from her bodice. Her body heat had warmed it right through, and for a moment she was worried that the ink may have blurred. But when she opened the first page, she saw Marie’s unmistakable handwriting with its deep loops and slightly oversized capital letters.

Saturday, 14th January. A week ago today I was driven from Paradise. A week ago today I discovered that my husband, my “beloved,” is not a man of honor but a murderer.

Wanda froze.

Next came a detailed description of all that Marie had heard that night at the office door. A few pages later she had written:

I still cannot believe it. Every part of me fights against the knowledge. Night after night I lay in bed next to a murderer, I delighted in his caresses. Perhaps he already had deaths on his conscience when I fell in love with him? The idea almost drives me mad.

How could I have been so mistaken about him? Again and again I remember our time together in New York. What did he say and when? And how did I answer? I feel like a surgeon, placing my scalpel to the chosen spo
t . . .

The pain in those words! Wanda could hardly bear it. She lowered the diary and looked at Marie for a few minutes as she lay there asleep. What demons was she fighting when she thrashed about and moaned? Wanda could not imagine. She did not doubt for a moment the truth of what she had read. All the same she was unable to make the connection between the words in this book and the people she knew. She began to read once more.

Perhap
s . . .
if I had listened more closely at the time, I would have realized that light and dark are very closely mixed in Franco. But I was so much in love that I did not want to see what I was looking at, to listen to what I heard! Otherwise I would have realized that the Italians, the restaurant owners, treated him with a mixture of fear and contempt. I was a silly cow to believe that they were showing deference, that they respected his noble name! And why did I never wonder why he did not ever want me to go to the harbor with him? When he was otherwise so jealous of every minute I spent with others?

There was more such self-recrimination. Wanda felt shocked, but also enraged and deeply, deeply sad. What had Marie done to herself during all those weeks when she was imprisoned? None of this was her fault! Nobody had seen through Franco; he and his family had put up such a fine show that nobody would have suspected their evil deeds!

When she read about how Marie had tried to escape, her heart almost broke. The count and countess were monsters!

. . .
after that Patrizia did not come to see me for a few days. She sent that dreadful Carla instead. It’s crazy, I know, but now I actually feel guilty that I tried to escape.

The old witch! It wasn’t enough that she kept Marie under lock and key, but she had been playing mind games with her as well! Wanda looked toward the door, filled with hatred. If only Patrizia should dare show herself now! She frowned and read on.

And I can shout and rage as much as I like—Patrizia doesn’t see that she has done anything wrong. She is convinced that she is only acting in the family’s best interests and she says that I will simply have to put up with a few “inconveniences” for that reason. What an elegant way to describe this prison they have put me in!
Una famiglia
—how often must I hear those words! Nevertheless, if there is ever another chance I will try it again. But only if I do not put the baby at risk. Patrizia may put the family above all—but for me, my baby is more important than anything else. They can take my freedom, but they cannot take my child!

Wanda smiled sadly at all this useless bravery.

Tuesday, 14th February. Today I was startled to discover that I had spent all morning staring at a tiny rip in the wallpaper. I have to take care that I do not truly go mad. If only I could pull myself together and sit at my workbench! Patrizia has offered to buy me some more glass. She probably believes that she can keep me quiet this wa
y . . .

“So? Have you read it all?”

Wanda gave a start. She hadn’t noticed Marie wake up.

“No,” she choked out. “But I have read enough! It’s a good thing you wrote everything down. What do you think the police would say if I showed them this?”

Marie shook her head weakly. “No, not the police.”

“But why ever not? They can’t go killing people and locking you up here and—”

Wanda stopped when she felt Marie’s cold hand on her arm.

“Please don’t, I’m begging you! You have to think of Sylvie. You have to use what you know to help he
r . . .
”

“What do you mean? Surely it would help Sylvie if all of this was known and investigated?” Wanda asked, frowning. But Marie’s eyes closed once more. Her moments of wakefulness were getting ever shorter—the realization struck Wanda like a thunderbolt. She had to face the truth. Marie was not going to get better. She had been fooling herself.

Marie slept. Her breath came and went in gasps, and she tossed and turned restlessly.

The doctor had looked even more worried after his last visit. He had stood in the hallway, talking urgently to Patrizia. A little while later Patrizia had come into the room and taken Sylvie’s cradle away. Then she put a candle on the bedside table. Not long after that a black-clad priest arrived. He was very old. He read a passage from the Bible aloud to Marie in Latin. Soon the sickroom was filled with the scent of incense.

Wanda stood at the foot of Marie’s bed together with the count and Patrizia. Although she had never witnessed such a ceremony before now, she knew what was going on. This was the Extreme Unction. The priest anointed Marie with blessed oil as she lay dying to bring her closer to God, and he was saying a prayer for her comfort. As she lay dyin
g . . .
every fiber of Wanda’s being recoiled at the knowledge.

“Marie, darling Marie, you mustn’t die,” she whispered after the priest had left the room with Patrizia and the count. Her heart clenched with fear. “Stay with us, please. We love you. And we need you.
I . . .
don’t know that I’m as strong as you think I am.”

She stroked Marie’s cheek. As she leaned forward, the diary hidden inside her bodice pushed at her belly. She had only been able to forget for the briefest moment how Marie had suffered, how she had been mistreated.

How sanctimonious Patrizia had been, standing there next to the pries
t . . .
Wanda had to struggle to stay calm. She had to think of Marie. And of what Marie had told her: she had to use what she knew to help Sylvie. By now Wanda knew what that meant, though everything within her struggled against it.

Marie opened her eyes. A strange light shone in them that Wanda had never seen before. It was as though they were glowing from within.

“Wanda, deares
t . . .
I still have so much I want to say to you. Bu
t . . .
too weak. You mus
t . . .
take Sylvie back to Lauscha. You promised. My daughter must grow up among glassblowers, not amon
g . . .
murderers.”

“She’ll grow up with you!” Wanda called out in desperation. “You’ll be well again soon; the fever just has to leave you.”

Marie shook her head almost imperceptibly. “The fever won’t leave. I shall.”

And she shut her eyes for the last time.

31

The funeral took place the very next day. That was the way things were done in Italy, the countess explained. Wanda was tearful and devastated.

There was no time to tell Lauscha. No time for Johanna and Peter and Magnus to come and see Marie buried. No time even to get used to the idea that she was dead. Beautiful Marie. Marie with the sparkle in her eyes.

Only a few people gathered for the burial: the count and his wife, Carla and another chambermaid, and Wanda. Sylvie was with the wet nurse, and Franco was in prison in America. Nobody had even told him yet that his wife was dead.

The cemetery was not like the ones Wanda knew in New York. Nor was it like the one in Lauscha. Wanda watched, her eyes blank, as Marie’s coffin was placed in a niche in a huge stone wall. One niche among many, with a hastily chiseled inscription. All around, on either side, above and below, were more niches with their own dead bodies. No flowers, no crosses, no “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” no return to the bosom of Mother Earth. The ground here was too stony to receive the dead.

It wasn’t good for Marie to be buried here—she belonged in Lauscha. The thought stirred somewhere at the back of Wanda’s mind, but it was all happening in such a hurry that it never quite became conscious. Perhap
s . . .
if Mother had been there with her, or Johanna—they would never have allowe
d . . .
But there was nobody else here, and Marie’s body was deposited in the stone wall.

Wanda’s departure was quick and dramatic. The count and countess shook Wanda’s hand stiffly. To her astonishment, the count had even ordered a coach to bring her to the station with her luggage and the baby—she would never have imagined that he would be so “considerate.” He even rode along with her. At the station he helped her find the right train. Wanda took her seat with Sylvie in the compartment where the count had reserved two places.

She stared out the window, her eyes blank. Although the train moved very slowly, she noticed nothing of the grandeur of the Alps passing by. After the exertions of the last few days she was more tired than she had ever been in her life. Every thought was an effort, yet the dreadful feeling that she had done something wrong never left her.

How could she have allowed them to bury Marie in Genoa? Shouldn’t she have insisted that Marie be cremated, so that she could take her ashes back to Lauscha? It would certainly be very complicated to try to arrange that from Germany. Wanda expected yet more recriminations from the others when she got home, for she had not even been able to telegraph and tell them that Marie was dead. But how could she have put such a terrible event into a few short words? The whole thing was so dreadful that she hadn’t even sent a telegram to Richard.

And then there was another worry that was much more pressing.

A few minutes earlier, the conductor had come by to tell the passengers that they were approaching the Italian-Austrian border.

What if the border patrol saw something wrong with Sylvie’s papers? What if everything she had done in the last few days ended in failure because some stubborn official’s suspicions were aroused when he saw a young woman with a baby in her arms?

Wanda glanced at the baby, asleep on the seat next to her in a bassinet. How she clenched her little fists as though to fight against the whole wicked world! Yet no force in the world could protect her against fat
e . . .

Beautiful, stubborn Marie was dead.

Wanda shut her eyes and waited for the pain to pass. If she grieved for Marie now, she would never stop crying. She had to pull herself together, put off her grief, or she at least had to try. She took a deep breath. She just had to do her best to keep Sylvie safe. That was all she could do.

Should she wake Sylvie when the officers came into the compartment? Men didn’t like crying babies so perhaps the passport inspection would be over more quickly? But perhaps it would draw the officers’ attention to the young mother with her child. Wanda tried to look at her reflection in the mirror, but the morning sunlight made it difficult. She knew, however, that even with makeup and a more grown-up outfit, she still wouldn’t look much older. An older woman traveling with a child might not be so conspicuous. But she was traveling on her own, without family or a servant, and her passport would soon reveal that she was unmarrie
d . . .

Wanda bent over and looked into the bassinet every few minutes. The little one was asleep. Everything seemed to be all right; her cheeks were rosy pink but not too flushed. There were tiny crescents of shadow beneath her eyes cast by her eyelashes, which were astonishingly thick for a newborn—Marie’s daughter was an exceptionally beautiful baby.

So far she had been the perfect traveling companion; she had fallen asleep almost as soon as the train got moving. When she woke up, Wanda gave her a bottle of the milk that the wet nurse had expressed for her and changed her diaper just as the wet nurse had shown her. But she didn’t know whether she would be able to make the baby hush if she began to cry.

She mustn’t think so much. One thing at a time. Everything had been all right so far.

Her hand trembled as she took her own passport from the bag along with Sylvie’s papers. How she had had to bluster and threaten to get her hands on those papers!

All she had wanted to do after the burial was sit in a corner and cry until she could cry no more. Instead she had threatened the count that she would make Marie’s discoveries public until, at last, he had given way to her demands. Secretly she was rather surprised. Why didn’t he try to get the book from her? Why didn’t he try to buy Wanda’s silence some other way? She didn’t like to think what else he might have trie
d . . .
In the end she suspected that the count was already in so much trouble that he didn’t want to be burdened with a motherless newborn baby girl on top of everything else.

He had grumbled that she could take Sylvie with her if she must and the two of them could go to the Devil together. Then he had suggested a trade: Sylvie, for Marie’s diary. Wanda had agreed and the count had set out to twist the arm of one of his corrupt contacts in Genoa’s city hall. Perhaps it hadn’t even required that much pressure—Marie’s notes revealed that there were plenty of corrupt officials to choose from. However it had happened, Wanda now held a birth certificate proclaiming that Sylvie was her daughter, born while she was visiting the de Lucca family. She would have to take this to the authorities in Lauscha. Or would she have to go into Sonneberg for that? She didn’t know. And then? What name would Sylvie have growing up? Who woul
d . . .
She shook her head in irritation, as though trying to shake off a fly. She mustn’t think too much.

Wanda didn’t care whether the doctor, the priest, or the servants knew about the deception—perhaps the old man had paid them to keep quiet as well. The de Luccas were living in a web of lies and would entangle themselves in it ever deeper—
she
had only done what she had to.

One thing at a time. First she had to get the baby to Lauscha. And there was nobody who could help her do that.

Though Wanda longed for Richard, she couldn’t let herself think of him—and of his broad shoulders that she could lean on if he were here. He would probably be worried when she didn’t show up in Venice as planned. But she mustn’t think of that either. She would tell Richard everything when he got back to Lauscha.

The immigration officials were in the next compartment. Wanda could hear their clipped tones. Her heart was beating like a drum. She had to stay calm, had to think of something else.

Would the count have given way to her threats if the baby had been a boy? Perhaps he would not have let go of a young heir to the title so quickly. As it was, he had simply insisted that Wanda sign a declaration that Sylvie had no claim on the de Lucca family. Wanda had signed. It was only when the ink began to dry that she wondered whether she had given in too easily. Her signature had robbed Sylvie of any rights to a share of the de Lucca family fortune. Wanda wondered nervously what they would say to that in Lauscha. Probably that Wanda had let Franco’s father swindle her. But it was done now. And the others hadn’t been there when Marie begged her to take Sylvie, Wanda decided stubbornly. Marie had said very clearly that she didn’t want her daughter to grow up having anything to do with the de Luccas. That meant financially as well, didn’t it?

Patrizia had put up more of a fight, pleading with Wanda to leave Sylvie with her. How was she to explain to Franco when he got back that his daughter would grow up in a foreign country? He would never forgive her for that, or for her failure to tell him when Marie died.

What a dreadful woman! She hadn’t felt the least bit guilty, not even after Marie’s death.

“If Marie had stood by her husband the way a wife should, we need never have taken such drastic measures. But she wanted to leave Franco at the very moment when he most needed her support,” the countess had declared, her voice quivering. Wanda sensed that she still hadn’t forgiven Marie.

I feel sorry for Franco,
Wanda thought as she opened her passport. Franco was a victim of that web of lies. But no, he was guilty as well; there was no way around that. How could they all have been so wrong about him? Her handsome Italian, Marie had called him.

“Good day, miss. Your papers, please!” A uniformed official was standing in front of Wanda with his hand out. When he spotted the baby in her bassinet, he frowned.

“Good day.” Wanda handed over the papers with a smile.
Don’t tremble, look cool and collected but not condescending, breathe calmly,
she told herself silently as though this were a class in finishing school.

The man studied Wanda’s American passport. He seemed especially interested in her entry stamp.

A vein in Wanda’s neck began to throb. Surely he could find nothing wrong with her passport! She fought against rising panic. How disdainfully he looked at her! She cleared her throat. He must have seen her as a fallen maiden who somehow had the money to travel across Europe with her illegitimate baby. Perhaps he thought her family had disowned her. That she was on the run—and he wouldn’t be far wrong. Wanda was almost cheered by the thought.

At last the official handed her documents back. “Did you know that my colleagues in Germany put their stamp in the wrong place?” The man tore the passport abruptly from her hands and pointed. “That’s supposed to be where the American exit visa goes!” He waved it impatiently in front of Wanda’s face. “If everybody went on this way, we would never find our way around a passport!”

“O
h . . .
I see, I see. Yes, that was very careless of the
m . . .
”

Thank you, God. Thank you a thousand times.

Once the border official had gone, the trembling started. First her right hand began to tremble. Then her left. When she looked down, she saw that her knees were jiggling up and down as well. She glanced around the compartment. Had anybody noticed? But nobody was looking at her, just as nobody had sat down next to her.

Suddenly it was all too much for Wanda. The last few days by Marie’s sickbed with hardly any sleep, the burial service at the dusty, rocky cemetery, the struggle to save Sylvi
e . . .
Tears flowed uncontrollably down her cheeks, and she sobbed loudly. Her nose swelled up and she could barely breathe.

Marie was dead. Shut away where no gleam of light could reach her, no shine of silver or glitter of glass.

It was so unfair! Marie had never done anything to harm anyone. All her life she had never done anything but work; she had never even wanted to do anything else. And then, the first and only time she wanted to escape from that life, fate had not allowed it.

Why?

Try as she might, Wanda could see no sense in Marie’s death. She buried her face in her coat.

How could somebody with such an appetite for life just die? How could that happen?

Old people died—or not, like Wilhelm Heimer, clinging to life with every fiber of his withered old body. Why had Marie not been strong enough?

Feve
r . . .
that damned fever. Why hadn’t it broken? If it had just ebbed a little, day by day, Marie would be healthy again. But to just shut her eyes like that and say, “The fever won’t leave. I shall.” She couldn’t understand it.

Wanda blew her nose, her fingers trembling, and then she spotted a movement out of the corner of her eye. Sylvie was waving her little hands in the air as though beckoning to her. Her blue eyes under their long lashes were looking aimlessly around.

“Come here, you little thing!” Wanda lifted the baby carefully out of her bassinet. Luckily the trembling had stopped, and she could put her arms around the warm little body.

Wanda held Sylvie so her head was nestled against her shoulder. The baby would have to grow up without a mother.

“We’ll all of us miss your mama. We’ll miss her terribly.”