The Star of Kazan

The Baron did not get up when they came in; getting up was something which took him a long time because his joints were crippled and bent with arthritis, but he welcomed them jovially and insisted on kissing not only his niece, but Annika.

‘Well, well, a pretty little thing, isn’t she?’ he said. ‘You’ve done well, Edeltraut. Don’t know why you kept her hidden all these years.’

Conrad von Keppel was the brother of Edeltraut’s mother; even before he was struck down by illness he must have been smaller and slighter than the von Tannenbergs. His hair was white, he smelt strongly of toilet water and his blue eyes were keen and alert. He offered them wine and biscuits, but Frau Edeltraut said that she would go with Hermann to the rifle range and come back to the hotel in an hour to pick up Annika and take her to the lawyers.

‘Don’t hurry back,’ said Uncle Conrad. ‘Annika can come with me to the baths; I like to be accompanied by pretty girls. You’ve brought the boy, I take it?’

‘Yes. He’s downstairs. But don’t keep her; our appointment is at eleven.’

Zed was waiting with the wheelchair, wearing an armband with the name of the hotel on it. Though he had refused to touch his cap to Hermann he saluted the Baron respectfully, tucking a rug round his knees, and it was clear that he was used to working in the spa.

He began to push the chair along the promenade towards the big bathhouse, and Annika walked beside him. Uncle Conrad seemed to know a great many people and they stopped again and again while he was greeted by ladies in enormous hats, or men on horseback or other invalids on their way to the baths who stopped their chairs beside him.

‘That was Lady Georgina Fairweather,’ he said after a very tall willowy woman with a huge muff had greeted him. ‘You wouldn’t think it, but her kidneys are in dreadful shape – completely covered in fungus. They’re putting her on to thermal effervescence. And that man there in the bowler hat, he used to be the Dutch Ambassador to the Solomon Islands, and when he was out there he got an enormous tapeworm in his gut. They’re trying to draw it out with hydro-suction, but pieces keep breaking off.’

Though she was sorry about Lady Georgina’s kidneys and the tapeworm, Annika looked about her with pleasure, enjoying the elegant shop windows, the well-dressed people, the hanging baskets of greenery on the lamp-posts. This was a different world to Spittal.

They were getting near the baths now and the treatment rooms. The smell of hydrogen sulphide grew stronger, more wheelchairs joined the procession. And now, coming towards them with towels round their necks, was a group of men looking very damp and clean.

As they came closer, the Baron whispered, ‘Ah, the dentists, delightful people. They’re going home tomorrow – I shall miss them.’

Annika too was pleased to see the dentists, who had been on the station platform when she arrived. It made her feel established, as though she belonged. Not all the dentists were there, but there were at least a dozen who had gone to the treatment rooms early and were now going into the town. They stopped by the Baron’s chair, greeted him and advised him to be careful about the water in the first of the hot pools.

‘The temperature’s very high in there today,’ said a tall dentist with a moustache. ‘I’d miss that one out.’

‘You wouldn’t believe how much I’ve learned from them,’ confided the Baron when the dentists had wandered on in search of coffee and cakes. ‘You see, when you’re in the treatment rooms there are only curtains between one cubicle and the next and you can hear everything your neighbours are saying. Apparently the Duke of Arnau bit right through the thumb of his dentist when he was doing a filling. And the new zinc treatment for gums is absolutely useless, but the patients go on begging for it.’ He shook his head. ‘Next week it’s undertakers, so I suppose I shall learn about coffins, but it won’t be the same. There’s always something so fascinating about teeth.’ He looked over his shoulder at Zed. ‘Do you remember the jewellers who came at Christmas? Three hundred, no less – and the stories they told would make your hair stand on end. You don’t have to leave Bad Haxenfeld to know everything that’s going on in the world!’

They had reached the entrance to the bathhouse. Only patients and their attendants were allowed beyond the entrance. Uncle Conrad’s doctor came out of his office with a piece of paper listing details of the Baron’s treatment for the day, and Zed wheeled him away down the long stone corridor.

‘Don’t forget I’m expecting you to lunch,’ Uncle Conrad called to Annika over his shoulder, and she nodded and made her way back to the hotel.

The office of Herr Bohn was comfortably furnished with a deep carpet, a large mahogany desk, a palm tree in a brass pot – and a clerk who led them in and begged them to be seated because Herr Bohn would be here in a minute.