The Star of Kazan

The adults drove away before dawn, to catch the first of the trains which would take them south on their long journey to Switzerland. An hour later Annika came down to breakfast in the dining room, followed by Gudrun and Hermann. Bertha brought in the dark bread and weak coffee, but she seemed flustered and preoccupied and hurried back down to the farm as soon as she had cleared away.

After breakfast Gudrun followed Annika to her room and asked if she could see her clothes. Fortunately she was too tall to wear Annika’s skirts and dresses, but she sighed over two more scarves and a velvet hair ribbon, which Annika presented to her.

After that she wanted to play cards.

It was a long morning. At lunchtime there came the first sign that the domestic arrangements were not going to go smoothly. Hanne, the sulky maid who came from the village on the far side of the lake, told the children that she wasn’t coming back the next day. She’d got a proper job somewhere else, she said, slapping down the platter of cold breast of teal, and the musty potatoes; the kind of job where you got paid on time.

The afternoon dragged like the morning. Hermann went to his room to ‘present arms’ and Gudrun wanted to stay indoors and talk about boyfriends. Since she didn’t have any boyfriends and Annika only had friends who happened to be boys, conversation was slow and after a while Annika, looking longingly out of the window, agreed to play a paper-and-pencil game.

Bertha usually came up to serve supper, but today there was no sign of her – only more cold meat and bread laid out in the dining room.

‘What happens if she doesn’t come and spend the night here? We’ll be all alone,’ said Gudrun.

‘Well, it wouldn’t matter; there are three of us.’

‘I think the way servants behave these days is disgusting,’ said Hermann.

‘I’ll go and see what’s happened to her,’ said Annika.

She hurried down to the farm, gratefully drinking in the fresh air, and knocked at the door of the hut. Bertha was sitting in the rocking chair with Hector at her feet. Dozing on the bench by the stove sat an old man whom Bertha introduced as her brother.

‘He’s driven over from Rachegg,’ she said, ‘to tell me that his wife has died. My sister-in-law. He wants me to come to the funeral.’

‘And will you?’ Annika asked.

‘I’d like to,’ she said. ‘It would be proper. But I promised the mistress I’d come and sleep at the house.’

At this moment the door to the outhouse opened and Zed appeared with a grey blanket slung over his shoulder.

‘It’s all right,’ he said to Annika. ‘I’ll come up and sleep – there’s a bed in the room behind the kitchen. Bertha needs to go.’

Zed was as good as his word. When Annika got up next morning she found Zed in the kitchen, filling the stove.

‘It should burn now till lunchtime. But Bertha’s gone off with her brother. She’ll be away for a few days. Can you manage? I’ve got to go and see to the animals, but I’ll be back later.’

‘Of course I can manage. Thank you for doing the stove.’

Annika looked round, wondering what to do. She had promised her mother not to go into the kitchen and not to work as a servant . . . not on any account.

She had promised.

She put on the kettle and went upstairs to make her bed. Then she reached for the notebook Pauline had given her and untied the ribbon. All the people whom Pauline turned to when in trouble were there. The man with the back-to-front foot, the girl with the measles . . . the boy who had been stung a hundred times by bees and gone on to school to get top marks in his maths exam before he fainted . . . the cow sinking under the ice . . .

Disobeying one’s mother was difficult. It was almost as difficult as holding up a sinking cow by the horns or swimming the Danube with measles. But what if it had to be done? Would her mother want Hermann to go hungry?

She closed the book and went back downstairs.

There was some bread in the bin – half a loaf – and some butter out in the dairy. The strange yellow jam had been finished the day before and there didn’t seem to be any more. She put out three cups and plates on the kitchen table and made coffee.

Then she went upstairs again to wake Gudrun and Hermann.

‘There’s no one to help in the house today, so I’ve laid breakfast in the kitchen.’

‘I can’t eat in the kitchen,’ said Hermann, ‘I never have.’

‘Well, that’s all right, you can fetch your food and take it into the dining room.’

Gudrun too did not think she could eat in the kitchen, so she and Hermann took their slices of bread and cups of coffee through into the dining room, where they sat shivering and looking out at the grey lake.