The Star of Kazan

17 A Smell of Burning

After Annika went away with her mother, odd things happened in the professors’ house.

For example, the professors would come downstairs to the smell of burning. It might be the breakfast rolls singeing in the oven, or the soup boiling dry on the stove, but it was such an unusual thing to happen that they found it hard to believe their noses. Ellie had not burned anything since she had first gone to work as a kitchen maid twenty years ago, but she burned them now.

Then Sigrid broke a plate. It was not a particularly valuable plate but it was a nice one, with a pattern of golden stars and blue flowers. It lived on the dresser, and when Sigrid picked it up to dust it, it slipped from her hand to the floor.

Just as Ellie had not burned anything since she was fourteen years old, so Sigrid did not let things fall from her hand. The professors trusted her with their mother’s precious crystal glasses and they were right to do so. Her large, square-tipped hands picked up objects as if they were eggshells.

All the same, after Annika went she broke a plate. Sometimes if you don’t let your feelings out, you do odd things instead. Ellie and Sigrid did not think it was right to cry and wail and moan because they had lost what they thought of as their daughter, but their unhappiness came out in other ways.

The professors too were not in the best of spirits. By the time she left them, they realized that Annika had done a lot of work in the house and they decided to take over some of her jobs.

This was not a success.

Professor Julius decided to buy his own flowers from the lady in the square, and to arrange them himself in a vase beneath the portrait of Adele Fischl, his beloved — but when he did so she seemed to be looking at him in a very gloomy way. Arranging flowers is not as easy as it looks, and the lilies of the valley, jammed together like a bundle of leeks, seemed to upset Adele, who had always felt things keenly.

Professor Gertrude had decided to help by choosing her own hansom cabs to take her to her concerts and this too did not end well. Cab horses were just a blur to Professor Gertrude, who was short-sighted and did not care for animals very much, and she and her harp had some very bumpy and unpleasant rides.

As for Professor Emil, he missed Annika for different reasons. Just after she went, the museum had shown him a new painting of three bare-footed ladies dancing in a meadow and asked him if he thought it was a genuine Titian. He had known at once that it was not because of the way the feet were painted — Titian never used models who were pigeon-toed. This was the kind of thing that Annika would have understood at once, and he was getting ready to hurry home and tell her before he remembered that she was gone.

The people in the square did not make things any easier. The lady in the paper shop said she was not at all sure that the climate of north Germany would suit Annika; Josef from the cafe said he did not like the way the Emperor Wilhelm was carrying on, and Frau Bodek said they could say what they liked but the baby missed her.

Then the first letters came from Spittal. Pauline and Stefan carried theirs to the hut so as to compare notes and both agreed that Annika’s letters were strange.

It had been difficult to stop Annika from talking when she was excited about something, but she wrote about her new life in a careful sort of way, rather as if she was writing an essay for school.

What she made clear to both of them was that she was very happy. In Pauline’s letter she had underlined the word ‘very’ and in Stefan’s letter she said she was very happy indeed. She wrote about her marvellous and amazing mother, who looked after Spittal all by herself, and she wrote about Hermann, who was going into the army and did press-ups and bayonet practice in his room. She wrote about how big Spittal was and how brave the aristocracy were, not minding about being cold and never having pudding and she described the bear pit in the hunting lodge into which a drunken labourer had fallen.

There were some crossings-out in both letters. Something about Jesus having been a carpenter, which they couldn’t read or make out properly, and a few lines about the farm, and the stable boy who looked after Hermann’s horse.

After that came the questions. These flowed on in quite a different way, as though she had written them quickly without thinking. Had the baby’s teeth come through? What was Pauline reading? How were the goldfish in the fountain? Had Loremarie got a new governess?

‘Do you think she’s all right?’ asked Stefan.

‘Of course she’s all right,’ said Pauline, sounding cross. ‘Why shouldn’t she be?’

Ellie and Sigrid had hoped to read their letter quietly by themselves, but the postman had spread the news that Annika had written and presently the kitchen filled with people who demanded to know what she had said. Mitzi from the Eggharts’ house, Josef from the cafe, the lady from the paper shop…

‘Well?’ they asked. ‘Is she happy?’

‘She is very happy,’ said Ellie firmly.

She knew that this was so because Annika had said so in her first paragraph, but she found the letter puzzling and wasn’t quite sure what to tell them.

For Annika had found it difficult to explain certain things to Ellie: the dead birds with pellets… the leaking roof… She asked if Ellie could send her some chilblain ointment; she described the lake, which was large, the frogs, which were hatching, and a beautiful bay horse, which belonged to Hermann but was looked after by the stable boy. Her mother had said she might soon have a pony of her own.

After that, she exploded with questions. Her questions to Pauline and Stefan took a whole page; her questions to Ellie sprawled over three. Was the geranium cutting growing? Did Uncle Emil manage his cravats? What was the flower lady selling? Had Cornelia Otter started to sing again at the opera? How many letters had Uncle Julius written to the newspaper? Was Ellie going to bake a poppy-seed strudel for the end of Lent? Had the asparagus seller come to the market yet…?

And right at the end she told them once again how very much she was enjoying her new life.

A week after Annika’s letters came, a serious-looking man in a dark suit, carrying a briefcase, rang the bell of the professors’ house.

‘I’m looking for the guardians of Annika Winter,’ he said. ‘I believe this is the right address?’

Sigrid, who had answered the door, turned white.

‘Is she… has something happened? An accident?’

‘No, not at all. I represent the firm of Gerhart and Funkel in the Karntner Strasse and we have some business with her. Perhaps I could come in?’

‘Yes. Yes, of course, I’m sorry.’

She showed him into the drawing room and fetched the professors, and after a short time both Sigrid and Ellie were sent for.

‘I have explained to Herr Gerhart that Annika was adopted by you as a baby, and given Ellie’s surname, and that I agreed to act as her guardian,’ said Professor Julius. ‘Also that she is no longer in our care because her real mother — her birth mother — has come forward and that Annika is now living with her. It seems that the old lady she used to visit — Fräulein Egghart — has left Annika something in her will.’

‘It’s nothing at all valuable,’ said Herr Gerhart. ‘Just a trunk with some keepsakes from the theatre — old clothes and suchlike. All the same, we shall want to check the new adoption papers. You see, the child is definitely described as living at this address.’

‘She did live here,’ said Ellie in a choked voice. ‘She lived here all her life till two weeks ago.’

The lawyer gave her a sympathetic glance.

‘It shouldn’t take too long to get everything sorted out, since the professor has kept copies of the documents which Frau von Tannenberg brought. The affidavit signed by Herr Pumpelmann-Schlissinger should be decisive. When we’ve investigated them we will inform her and send the legacy on to her for the child.’

‘Annika will like to have the trunk,’ said Ellie when the lawyer had gone and they were back in the kitchen. ‘She can use the things for dressing up. She’s probably doing some acting with her new friends; you know how fond she was of making up plays.’

‘Yes. Though she doesn’t say anything about it in her letter.’

‘Well, it’s early days yet,’ said Ellie, sighing. And then, ‘Shows how fond the old lady must have been of Annika, leaving the trunk to her and not the family.’

‘Well, that’s nothing to wonder at,’ said Sigrid gruffly, stacking plates beside the sink. ‘Being fond of Annika, I mean.’