Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

Author:Nancy Horan [Horan, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-02-05T21:52:53+00:00

WHEN SHE RETURNED to the café a couple of days later, Mamah took a table near the window. She glanced toward the corner, where two of the men she’d met on Christmas night were huddled over their playing cards. They nodded when they spotted her. The waiter with the copper-colored hair delivered her tea, then presented a copy of Der Sturm with a friendly little flourish.

Was it her imagination, or had something changed in the space of two days? Because she certainly felt a difference. Even now people walking through the door acknowledged her.

She suspected Else’s sudden friendship had stamped her as “approved” among the artists. Mamah was amused by it. Back in Chicago, no one had heard of Ellen Key. Her name wouldn’t have bought Mamah a cup of coffee. Here at Café des Westens, it was her passport.

Outside the window, scores of office girls walked by arm in arm. Military men in epaulets passed, along with hordes of others: fresh-faced farm boys turned factory workers carrying tin lunch pails; businessmen in homburg hats; gray-braided grandmothers in black dresses; nurses, shopgirls, society women out for tea. And then a woman like none of the others emerged from the crowd and stepped into the café.

“You sit down in this café, and the devil has you,” Else huffed as she took a chair across from Mamah. She was wearing a purple cape. Scattered over it were cameo pins with tiny photographs of faces inside each one.

“Your family?” Mamah asked, pointing toward a picture of an old-fashioned couple.

“Oh, no. I found them in a pawnshop. They were all begging to get out of the place.” Else ordered coffee, and when it came, she said, “I come from a village like yours. I was married to a doctor.” She pressed her coffee cup against her cheek to warm it. “I had fine china. Lovely rugs on the floor.” The serious brown eyes were flecked with gold. “One day I woke up and thought, What have you done with your gifts? You’ve traded them for furniture.” She moved the cup to the other cheek. “As you can see, I joined a different tribe. I have almost no furniture now, by the way. I owe the morning waiter and the midnight waiter, and I’m wondering how I’ll pay the rent now that Herwarth’s going. Still…” Her voice trailed off.

“Where is your husband going?”

Else put down the cup and looked away. When she turned back, her eyes were narrowed. “This is what I know of you, Mamah Borthwick of Chicago. You are a translator for Ellen Key’s sex philosophies. And you have left your husband for an artistic lover. Yet you live among the bourgeoisie here in Berlin. You’re a puzzle to me.”

Mamah stiffened as if she’d just discovered someone snooping around in her drawers. She crossed her arms. “My room is the cheapest one in the pension,” she said.

“You don’t have to defend yourself.”

Mamah felt embarrassed. “I admire the way you inhabit your life. You don’t seem to care whether other people approve.

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