The Star of Kazan

And in the centre of the group was the coal-man, who had been delivering bags of fuel to the professors’ house, and to whom they were all listening.

‘I tell you,’ he was saying, ‘there was Ellie slumped at the kitchen table, crying her heart out, and Sigrid looking at me as though she’s never seen me before, when I’ve been to their house once a week for the past—’

He broke off. His listeners had turned and now everybody could see Annika and Stefan coming towards them. The coal-man fell silent. Everyone fell silent except Hansi, who wailed, ‘I don’t want Ellie to cry, I want her to make buns.’

Annika stopped.

‘What is it? What’s happened?’

‘You must go home, Annika, they’re waiting for you,’ said Pauline’s grandfather in a solemn voice.

Now she was very much afraid. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked again. And as no one answered her she said, ‘Will you come with me, Pauline?’

Pauline stepped forward, but her grandfather put a hand on her shoulder. ‘No. Pauline, you stay here. Annika’s family—’ He stopped himself. ‘They . . . will want to have Annika to themselves today.’

Annika was already running across the square. She threw open the kitchen door, and what the coal-man had said was true. Ellie was slumped at the kitchen table, her face was blotched and, most extraordinary of all, she wasn’t doing anything. Not beating something in a bowl, not kneading dough, not slicing vegetables. Sigrid sat in the wicker chair; her hands too were empty and she seemed to be staring at something no one else could see.

‘What is it – what’s happened? Why will no one tell me anything?’ said Annika, throwing her arms round Ellie. ‘Are the professors all right? Has someone died?’

Ellie managed to shake her head. ‘No one’s died.’ She loosened Annika’s arms. ‘You’re wanted in the drawing room.’

‘In the drawing room?’

So something serious was the matter. The servants never went into the drawing room except to dust or clean. As a matter of fact the professors did not go into it much themselves; it was a dark and formal room, not welcoming like the other rooms in the house.

Sigrid roused herself enough to lunge at Annika’s hair with the comb she kept in her overall pocket. Then she said, ‘Go on; you’ll do.’

Annika went through the green baize door, along the corridor, up the first flight of stairs. She knocked, entered and curtsied.

Professor Julius and Professor Emil stood on either side of the writing desk, which was covered in official-looking papers. They seemed somehow smaller than usual, and this was because, standing between them with her back to the door, was a very tall woman wearing a dark fur cloak and a hat with osprey feathers.

‘Come along in,’ said Professor Julius, and his voice seemed strange; a little husky. And then, ‘This is Annika.’

The woman turned. She had very blue eyes, but her brows were black and the crescent of hair showing under her hat was black also. With her strong features and her height, she looked to Annika like a queen.

The woman stood absolutely still and gazed at her. She lifted up her long arms so that her cloak spread out on either side like a pair of wings, blotting out the two professors. And only then did she say the words of Annika’s dream.

‘My child,’ said the tall woman, ‘my darling, darling daughter – have I really found you at last?’

And she stepped forward and took Annika into her arms.

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APPINESS

There is nothing more amazing than walking into one’s own dream. Her mother was real, she had come, and Annika, from the moment she felt her mother’s arms round her, was in a daze of happiness. She could hardly bear to be separated from her even by the length of a room.

Annika had imagined an elegant and confident woman, but even in her wildest dreams she had not thought that her mother might be an aristocrat – a nobly born woman with a ‘von’ in front of her name and a family crest – yet it was so.

Her mother’s name was Edeltraut von Tannenberg and she lived in an ancient, moated house in the north of Germany which had been in her family for generations.

Not only that, but she was beautiful: tall with thick black hair that she wore in plaits round her head; long, narrow hands and feet, and a slender neck. The way she carried herself, the way she spoke – in her deep, serious voice and in an accent so different from the lilting speech of the Viennese – held Annika spellbound. Even the scent she wore was different: a dark, musky, exotic scent that smelt as though the flowers it was made of came from an unknown land.

Frau von Tannenberg had of course brought papers to show that she was truly the woman who had left her baby on the altar steps in the church at Pettelsdorf. Among these was a document witnessed by one of Vienna’s most famous lawyers, Herr Adolf Pumpelmann-Schlissinger. It was an affidavit signed by the midwife at Pettelsdorf, Amelia Plotz, swearing that she had assisted at the birth of a daughter to Frau Edeltraut von Tannenberg on the sixth of June 1896.