Madensky Square by Eva Ibbotson

Author:Eva Ibbotson
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2010-12-04T16:00:00+00:00

August

Sigismund’s uncle fainted today on the stairs. Frau Hinkler told me this in her usual pleasant manner. ‘He’s starving himself to keep up the instalments on the piano. I didn’t get a doctor; what’s the use? He can’t pay.’

I’ve never been inside Sigismund’s attic; the glimpse through the window that first night was enough for me, but in the evening I put some fruit and a jar of soup into a basket and went across.

Frau Hinkler let me in with a bad grace. She longs to evict the Kraszinskys and any sign that they’re not friendless infuriates her.

Oh God, that wretched room! The piano stands in the centre and I see it now as a black monster devouring the lives of those two miserable exiles; endlessly consuming the money that they need to live. It alone had been wiped clean: everywhere else, on the bare boards, on the window sill, the dust lay clotted. Sheets of music and a few tattered books were piled on newspaper on the floor — and on a trestle bed against the wall lay Kraszinsky, still wearing his rusty black clothes, with his arms by his sides like someone waiting for the undertaker.

‘I’ve brought you some soup. Is there somewhere I can heat it up? Do you have a kitchen?’

Sigismund, who had appeared silently by my side, led me into a scullery with a dirty sink, one dripping tap, a paraffin stove. His crucifix, I noted, was once again tied with a grubby piece of string. I scrubbed out the only saucepan, disposed of a cockroach, rinsed the grease from two tin bowls.

‘We are going back,’ said Kraszinsky as I returned to his bedside. ‘We are finished. I have written to Preszowice.’

‘You’d like that?’

He shrugged. Tor myself, yes. Perhaps I can get my old job back. But there is nothing there for the child — nothing. I dream about my sister.’

As I was leaving, Sigismund beckoned to me from the doorway beside the scullery. It led to a windowless slit of a room with a skylight so begrimed that it let in almost no light. This, clearly, was where Sigismund slept — only what was it that he wished to show me? The rancid smelling mattress on the floor? The one cane chair with a broken seat?

No . . . something else. Against the wall, on what must have been the wooden box in which he’d brought his few possessions, Sigismund had set up an icon corner such as all pious households have in the east.

In the centre was a picture of a young woman in a leather frame. Kraszinsky was right — his sister had been beautiful. The oval face was tranquil, the mouth full. Beside the picture was a bracelet made of woven hair, now faded but still retaining the reddish tint it had had in life. Had they cut the tresses from Ilona’s head as she lay murdered in the forest? It was hard to hold it and admire it as the boy put it into my hand.

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