The Star of Kazan

‘For you it will be necessary to be particularly careful in view of your early life. Lapses in your case would be particularly serious.’

‘Yes, Fräulein von Donner.’

‘We shall do our best to train you to be a worthy daughter of the Fatherland.’

‘Yes. Only Germany isn’t my Fatherland. I’m Austrian. At least I used to be.’

Fräulein von Donner looked at her as though she couldn’t believe her ears. She fingered the three keys round her neck: the big key for the front door, a smaller key for the isolation room where troublesome girls were kept, and the smallest key of all which was also the most important. It was the key to the cubbyhole where the recently installed telephone lived.

Then, ‘That is something I would advise you not to mention. Or even to think,’ she said – and Annika was dismissed.

For the first week Annika still hoped. She hoped that her mother meant well by her and that something good could be made out of her new life. Perhaps there would be one teacher who could make her subject interesting; one girl who would show her friendship.

She set herself to work hard. She learned to walk downstairs with wooden blocks on her head so as to aquire an iron-straight back, and to recite the family tree of Europe’s noble families from the Almanach de Gotha. She learned poems about the glory of war, and who should be placed above a field marshal at the dinner table. There were even a few proper lessons, but not many because the teachers were as cowed and miserable as the pupils and the sound of the headmistress’s stick along the corridor sent all ideas of grammar or arithmetic out of their heads.

In the afternoon, if it did not rain, they were taken for a walk, lining up in pairs, but not allowed to choose their partners in case they formed special friendships. The walk took forty minutes exactly, marching down the avenue, turning left at the gate along the road to the village, then back to the drive behind the house. At all other times it was forbidden to go out of doors.

Annika’s mother had told her that it was difficult to get into the school, but it seemed to her that all the girls were there because they were not really wanted. Olga’s mother was dead and her stepmother did not like her. Ilse had a club foot and was teased by her sisters. Hedwig had been brought up by grandparents who found the care of a young girl too much for them.

‘Don’t let anyone tell you different,’ she said to Annika. ‘We’re here to be out of the way and because we don’t have to pay. The Fatherland could manage without us very well.’

The food was worse than Annika could have believed and the punishments were endless: being shut in a dark cupboard, kneeling on dried peas . . . Minna was served her breakfast four times then sent to the isolation room for a week.

Annika lost weight. She found it difficult to sleep. One day she asked Olga what had happened to pupil 126.

‘Hedwig is 125 and I’m 127, but who is 126?’

Olga looked down at her feet.

‘We are not allowed to talk about her.’

But Annika found that she already knew. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ she said. ‘She died in the school?’

‘Don’t ask me any more,’ said Olga. ‘I’ll get into trouble.’

But Annika was not so easy to shake off. ‘What was she like?’

‘She had nice hair,’ said Olga, and walked away.

All the same, some part of Annika would not give in to total despair. She forced herself to remember details of her life when it had been good; when she was busy and fufilled. So, lying in bed at night, Annika recalled her time in Ellie’s kitchen – and when she felt misery engulfing her completely she cooked the Christmas carp. She didn’t leave anything out. The part at the beginning where she washed the fish four times in cold water. Then the marinade: chopped onions, herbs, lemons and white wine. Not any old white wine but Chablis, which was the best and which Sigrid had fetched for her from the cellar.

Lying in her cold and narrow bed, Annika took herself through all the stages and when she reached the moment when Ellie had taken down the black book and told her to write ‘A pinch of nutmeg will improve the flavour of the sauce’, she could usually drop off to sleep.

But then came the night when she was going through the ingredients for the stuffing: truffles and chopped celery . . . grated honey cake and lemon rind and chestnut purée . . . but there was one other thing. One thing that was really important. Not chopped prunes – the lady in the paper shop had suggested chopped prunes, but Annika hadn’t used them. But it was something like prunes . . . Oh God, what was it? If she forgot that, if she forgot how to cook, everything was lost.

She sat up in bed in the dormitory where the girls snored and snuffled and whimpered in their sleep – but she could not remember.

And at that moment she was defeated, and she sank down into a dark place where nobody could reach her.

C

HAPTER

T

HIRTY

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WITZERLAND