Authors: Esther Freud
Eva’s eyes narrowed when Marianna told her, and she twisted round quickly to see if they were being overheard. ‘We’ll go off, just the two of us.’ Marianna lowered her voice and Eva, finding they were alone, gave her a smile of such complicity it opened up her heart.
Eva was left with how to break the news. ‘Do you know Mama is planning to desert us?’ she said one evening as they lay curled together in their usual place, their hands too cold for knitting. Martha shook her head and gasped incredulously, although she’d heard a murmur of the news from Dolfi.
‘She hates us all, I always knew it.’ Bina laughed.
Martha added, ‘Poor Papa,’ simply out of habit.
Eva took on a thoughtful air with her head a little to one side. ‘What can she possibly be planning?’ She closed her eyes in an attempt to fathom out the mystery. Bina tapped her nails against each other as if she almost knew.
‘Maybe . . .’ Eva started. She could feel the others looking at her. ‘Maybe I could find a way of going with her.’ There was a pause and then, to shake off any lingering suspicions, she added, ‘Mama could hardly refuse, and if she does, well, then, we’ll know it’s something really serious.’
Eva had never seen Gaglow at this time of year. It was a crystal palace with intricate designs of frost chiselled across each window, which gave the rooms inside a magic feel as if they were encased in gingerbread, each square frame latticed with angelica and laced between with water-sugar panes. She cupped her hands over her mouth and blew, watching as the moisture cleared a space on the glass. Outside, the lawns were rolled in snow and the heaped banks of the garden looked quite plain against the intricate designs of frost.
The five dogs circled round, still nervous from the journey. Their mouths hung open and large gasps of steam rose curling from their tongues. Marianna led them through the house, past the draped piano and the covered rugs, and let them out into the corridor where the marguerites had shrivelled from neglect. Their claws rattled as they ran, growling in excitement, lifting up their ears as they caught a glimpse of Eva spinning, with her arms outstretched, back and forth across the tiled hall. She kept her face tilted to the octagonal ceiling only remembering from time to time, as she passed the open door into her mother’s study, to dart her eyes inside.
Marianna laughed, and patted the cool coats of the dogs. ‘Come on,’ she called, and raced with them to the back door where they streaked out into the snow to hunt for rabbits.
Marianna built a fire in her study with branches of damp pine. It took an impossibly long time to catch and in her effort to encourage it she tore page after page of carefully stored dates and figures from the notebook on her desk and crushed them into kindling. The fire smoked and sighed and then the flames licked into the dry centre of the wood and, sizzling with shooting sparks, roared up the chimney in a burst of colour.
‘Eva!’ she called in her excitement. ‘Quick!’ And she ran up the back stairs shouting urgently for her daughter to come down.
Eva dropped the treasure box she’d brought with her from Berlin into the string cradle underneath her bed, and, with icy fingers, pulled the covers down on either side. Her mother’s voice was high and full of hurry, and Eva almost tripped over her own feet as she clattered down the stairs. ‘What is it?’ She burst into the study.
Marianna pointed to the hearth. The flames were tulip-shaped, leaping up around the sticks of pine, and as they watched the fire cracked and sprinkled into stars. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ she gasped, and Eva saw that she had two streaks of soot across her face and that she was smiling like a child. ‘Come and get warm,’ Marianna urged, and Eva dropped to her knees and held up her hands to the heat.
‘It’s warmer in here already,’ Marianna said, and she pushed two chairs as close in to the grate as they would go. Eva sank into one and uncurled her frozen toes. She stretched her legs and, resting her heels on the ridged back of a dog, fell almost immediately asleep.
*
Eva and Marianna spent most of each day foraging for food. There was still a quantity of old supplies stored in the kitchen cupboards, and they set out together through the icy maze of the ground floor to select a jar of pickled beetroot and to wonder and discuss how it might transform itself into a meal. Eva had never seen her mother look so well. Her eyes glowed with the purpose of each day, and the pallor of her face was livened by their forays and the daily shovelling outside for food. They found a hoe leaning up against an out-house and while Marianna dug into the ground Eva turned it over, chopping it and occasionally rolling out a frozen turnip or the blighted mess of a potato. Sometimes they would lurch excitedly upon a piece of stone or the root of some forgotten tree and then, unable to control themselves, they would lean, convulsed by laughter, and howl over the wooden handles of their spades.
Eva wrapped herself in furs to climb the back stairs to the nursery. She rifled through the contents of her wooden box, sorting and inspecting her most recent treasure – the skeleton of a leaf and the high white dome of the first snowdrop. She perched on the window-sill and, looking out over the frosted garden, she began to write.
Dear Manu,
I am learning how to cook and build a fire so that we won’t need any servants. Maybe just someone for the laundry, unless the river curved right in beside the house and we could peg the clothes with rocks and let them wash themselves. I’m enclosing drawings of the top floor of our house and as you can see we have three long windows each, with a bath under one and a bed below the other.
I’ve been wanting to ask you for some time, do you remember when Bina was first born. Did she have soft brown hair, and if so, how did it change? Slowly so you’d hardly notice, or overnight?
Your devoted and impatient sister, Eva.
*
One morning Eva woke to find the frost had thawed and warm sunshine glinted on to stone. The dogs twitched and snuffled in their sleep and when Eva stirred they raised their noses at her. ‘Come on,’ she whispered, not wanting to wake her mother, curled comfortably in her chair, and she held the door for them as they filed politely out. They ran through the slippery grass to see if, after one warm night, any of the seeds they’d dibbed into the earth were showing signs of sprouting, carrots, spinach, and a spiral of radishes, which Marianna said were the easiest things to grow. She noticed that the oldest dog was running with a limp, and she had to keep stopping to let it catch up. They trotted through the orchard, past the empty stables and round the side of the house until, exhausted and unfamiliarly warm, she lay down on the bench that curved against the ice-house wall. ‘Poor hungry dogs,’ she crooned, helping the last one to climb up on to the bench, ‘living off mashed bread and apple cores,’ and she let her hands droop over their tapered waists. She began to think of things that they might like to eat. Liver and bright red cuts of meat and, as she closed her eyes, a bowl of chocolate heaped with cream swam into her view. She stretched out, her face tilted to the sun and fell asleep dreaming of a mountain made from soft white rolls so that her stomach rumbled noisily and sharp juices pulled and stretched her jaw.
When she woke, the dogs had wandered off. She sat up and tried to catch the images she’d had of peaches, bright orange and the colour of Fräulein Schulze’s hair. ‘If you don’t want them, I’ll eat them all myself,’ she’d shouted. And then the fruit had turned into a bowl of marbles and she was swallowing them while Schu-Schu spun round and round the room.
Everywhere the frost was melting, and the sound of trickling water made her desperate for a drink. She was about to run back to the house when she remembered where she was. Jumping up she pushed the heavy door into the cellar of the ice-house and, packing down the insulating straw, felt for the pick that hung against the wall. Another door forced the passage back upon itself, and a third was divided into sections so that Eva had only to lift the centre panel to slip through to the store of ice. For all the freezing weather the ice was low, and she had to climb down into the pit to get at it. It lay like boulders moulded together with fine cracks and, careful not to trap her fingers on the sticky surface, she splintered off a piece and, juggling it in the folds of her skirt, backed out into the warmth, sealing the doors as she passed through them.
She sat picking straw out of her clothes and dripping the ice against her mouth. She could see her mother shaking rugs by the back door, her hair covered by a scarf, and she wondered what the local children would think now if they could see her. She was making use of the first spring day, beating and dusting and hanging out their clothes to air, and as Eva watched she had an idea for a treat. She’d have to work hard and start immediately but she could make her an Easter present out of ice. She’d carve an ice sculpture, moulding it into the figure of a dog and present it to her as a centrepiece for supper. She’d need to hack one large block for a trunk, and she was sure if it was possible to form the curved neck of a swan, it must be a simple matter of patience to chisel a whippet’s spindly tail.
Eva had been working hard for several days when Bina and Martha arrived. They stepped down from their cart in a cloud of city air, and when Eva and Marianna ran out to greet them they were stopped short by their astonished looks. Eva glanced in confusion at her mother and noticed for the first time how her hair, piled under a fur hat, was ragged with loose strands. There were spider’s legs of silver running through it and the thicker width of these white hairs gave her a dishevelled look.
‘How’s Papa?’ Eva asked, terrified to see he wasn’t with them, but Bina only leant over to stare at the tattered ribbon hanging from her matted plaits, pursing her lips as if she hadn’t heard.
‘Shall we go inside?’ Their mother smiled, and turned away as if nothing in the world had changed. She picked up the limping dog like a warm basket of sticks and, with the others prancing excitedly before them, they walked through the closed up and deserted rooms.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ Martha whispered, and Eva explained how her back legs had stiffened with old age, forcing her to shuffle like a rabbit.
‘No, you idiot,’ Bina cut in. ‘Mama.’ Eva, unsure what she was after, hurried on in silence. ‘Where are we going?’ Bina protested, flapping after her and grumbling that it was far colder in this monstrous house than it ever was outside.
‘Mama, where are you taking us?’ Martha asked, when they had reached the octagonal hall. Marianna didn’t answer but instead threw open the door to her study. A roll of smoke curled out, clearing to show the table lit up with a row of candles and the best plates carefully set out.
Marianna had spent the entire day preparing. With Eva’s help she’d rolled her desk into the centre of the room, had packed the pens and blotters to one side and spread it with a dark green cloth. They had worked together to push the chairs out from the fire and packed their clothes below the window-seats. The ragged blankets of the dogs were shaken out and folded and then placed neatly round the room as little oblong mats.
‘Good God,’ Bina snorted, ‘just look at this place.’ And Eva noticed her boots ranged before the fire and a string of drying, smoky vests and handkerchiefs hanging from a beam. Martha sneezed and her eyes were turning pink around the rims.
‘I suppose it is a bit smoky in here,’ Eva agreed and she stared down at the heaps of soft white ash piled beside the hearth.
Marianna turned her back on them. ‘I can offer you fried potatoes cooked with rosemary,’ she said, lifting the lid grandly off a cracked tureen, ‘or fried potatoes cooked with thyme,’ and the others, eager for this luxury, stopped staring and settled round the table while Eva reluctantly opened a window, letting in a fresh cold stream of air.
*
Eva had almost turned blue in her efforts to perfect the statue. She’d started off with great success, welding on ears with salted drops of water and chiselling a perfect snout, but the legs were causing problems, so long and thin, and suddenly so many of them, and the tail had proved virtually impossible. After each attempt she wrapped her work in reeds and laid it on the diminishing pile of ice. It was waiting now, its tail alongside it, to be presented to her mother.
‘Where are you going?’ Bina asked, as she jumped up from the table, but Eva slipped away without answering and ran out into the garden before it grew too dark to see. She opened up one door after another, and it was only as she squatted over the clear ice body, attempting for the last time to weld the tail, that she remembered she should not be showering gifts upon her mother.
‘Eva, Eva,’ she could hear her sisters calling, ‘where are you?’ In a sudden panic she threw the unconvincing dog back on to the ice and, shaking the reeds and straw out of her skirt, ran back towards the house.
‘So what have you found out?’ Bina asked, once they were ensconced in separate beds up in the nursery.
‘Found out?’ Just in time Eva remembered the point of her extended stay.
‘Poor Eva,’ Martha murmured, her eyes still red from the clinging smoke, and Eva turned over on her side to face them with a martyred air.
‘It has not been easy.’
‘Well, as for us, we haven’t heard a word,’ Bina hissed, and it took Eva a moment to remember whose words it was they’d spent the winter waiting for.
Eva curled up, clasping her knees and pressing them against her chest. She tried to re-create the comfort of her chair. It had seemed unnatural to retire after supper and leave her mother on the stairs. They’d exchanged shy smiles and nodded a goodnight, and Eva had been bustled off to hear the news and gossip of the last two months.
The next morning Eva found her mother sitting on the ice-house steps. The door to the cellar was wide open and the hinged panel behind it had flapped down. Eva brought her hands up to her mouth, remembering.
‘It’s all right,’ Marianna insisted, before she could confess. ‘I’m sure it’s only children. They won’t mean any harm. Just children from the village.’ But there were new deep lines around her mouth and the brightness of her eyes was strained. ‘I hardly dare look to see what they’ve done to the vegetable garden.’ She sighed, and then as if to herself she murmured that she’d never felt completely welcome here, not really.