Read The Star of Kazan for Free Online Page B

dungeon in a castle on an island in the middle of the sea.
    ‘That’s what she’s like. She’s a Countess of Monte Cristo,’ Pauline said. ‘They’ve walled her up and she can’t get out.’
    It was Annika who found out that the ‘countess’ lived not in a dungeon but in an attic. It exactly faced the attic where Annika slept, across the square, and on the third day she saw something carried to the chair beside the window. Then the window was opened, and the old lady was aired – like the washing, thought Annika – before the window was closed again and she was carried back to bed.
    It was not until the beginning of the second week that Mitzi, one of the Eggharts’ maids, was able to slip into Ellie’s kitchen for a cup of coffee and tell them what was going on.
    The old lady was Herr Egghart’s great-aunt. She was ninety-four years old and sometimes wandered in her mind, and the Eggharts had done everything they could to find a hospital or old people’s home where she could be looked after.
    ‘They put her in the asylum – the one they’re going to pull down, behind the infirmary,’ said Mitzi, ‘but the man who ran it found she was related to the Eggharts and he said she wasn’t mad and they should take her in. She’s very frail and he said she wouldn’t live long. There was quite a fuss, but the Eggharts were afraid of what people would say so they agreed. She has a nurse in the morning and evening to tidy her up, but she can’t get downstairs and most of the time she just lies in bed. She’ll go soon; old people know when they aren’t wanted.’
    ‘Poor soul,’ said Ellie, stirring her coffee. ‘It’s hard to be old.’
    This annoyed Annika, who was sitting on her stool in the corner, stringing beans. ‘No it isn’t. It won’t be for you because I shall buy a house in the mountains and look after you – and Sigrid too.’
    ‘Mind you, she can be a handful, the old lady,’ Mitzi went on. ‘She didn’t get on with her family and when she was fifteen she went her own way and the family lost touch with her.’
    The Eggharts had been forced to take in their great-aunt but that was all. They never mentioned her to visitors who came to the house, they never took her out. It was as though they were pretending to themselves that she wasn’t there.
    What happened next was odd and Annika couldn’t make sense of it. Loremarie stopped to speak to her when she met her in the street – and not to sneer or to show off. She was polite, almost friendly, and though she still stuck out her behind, the black eyes, sunk so deep in her face, did not seem quite so baleful.
    The first time Loremarie came up to her was when Annika was wheeling out the new Bodek baby in his ancient, rickety pram. Usually Loremarie walked past all the Bodeks with her nose in the air, but now she forced herself to look under the hood and even asked how old he was.
    The second time, Annika was returning from the shops with a basket of new potatoes and this time Loremarie actually crossed the street to speak to her.
    But it wasn’t till she found Annika leaning over the rim of the fountain, crumbling bread into the water for the goldfish, that the reason for Loremarie’s friendliness became clear. She wanted something from Annika and it was the last thing that Annika expected.
    ‘You know you’re poor,’ she began, ‘aren’t you?’
    Annika shrugged. She was worried about the goldfish – one of them had fungus on his fins – and though it would have been nice to hit Loremarie, there was always a fuss at home when she hit people.
    ‘So would you like to earn some money?’ Loremarie went on, looking back at the windows of her house to make sure her mother wasn’t watching.
    Annika crumbled the last of the bread into the water.
    ‘How much money?’
    ‘Quite a lot. Twenty kreutzers. Each time you go.’
    ‘Each time I go where?’
    Loremarie looked round again furtively. ‘Go and read to my great-aunt. Sit with her.