Midnight Train to Prague: A Novel by Carol Windley

Author:Carol Windley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press

In January, a farmer—a neighbor of Reina’s parents—came to Anna’s house with a delivery of two dozen eggs and a large parcel of meat wrapped in butcher’s paper and tied with string. He wore a long overcoat, the collar turned up, and a cap low on his forehead, very incognito. Anna had been too surprised to ask his name or even thank him. Franz carried the parcels, which were from Reina’s parents, up to the kitchen, and Sora unwrapped them. Anna’s father said they must share this unexpected bounty. He telephoned Magdalena’s aunt and invited her and her husband to dinner. Then Franz invited Ivan and Marta. Sora, whose late husband had owned a greengrocery, still had friends in the trade who were more than willing to sell her certain commodities under the counter: a five-kilo bag of white sugar, a tin of baker’s yeast, a slab of dark chocolate. Anna, Reina, and Franz ate the chocolate slowly, savoring it. Sora baked bread and vanilla cookies and used the last of the chestnut flour to bake the Italian cake castagnaccio.

Anna and Franz lit the candles in the candelabra on the dining room table. Anna slid into the chair beside Aunt Vivian, who told amusing anecdotes about the SS wives who came into her shop to buy hats. Reina said the same wives patronized the bookshop, stocking up on romance novels and snooping for banned titles they could report to their Nazi husbands. Some of her customers had chauffeurs to carry their purchases out to their cars, Aunt Vivian said. It made her want to slap their faces. “The wives or the chauffeurs?” Franz said. Aunt Vivian laughed and said, Both.

Franz put Mozart on the gramophone: Eine kleine Nachtmusik; Anna’s father said the grace, giving thanks for the generosity of Reina’s family and the fine meal they were about to enjoy. Then he uncorked the wine and poured a glass for everyone, even Anna.

On their way to dinner, Ivan said, a few flakes of snow had begun to fall.

“Didn’t I tell you?” Uncle Tomáš said. “Didn’t I predict snow?”

Anna’s mother said, “Ivan, your face has healed nicely. The scar is almost invisible. Such a shame it happened. Most of those SS men had the benefit of a good upbringing and should know better. But thank the Lord it turned out all right.”

Sora said she must apologize for the dumplings, which she’d concocted of millet flour and starch, in lieu of potatoes. “The brown sauce is a disguise and a panacea rather than a sauce.”

When Franz repeated what he’d heard on the BBC news—that in the Winter War, as it was known, Finns equipped with nothing more than snowshoes and rifles were decimating the heavily armed Soviet forces—Uncle Tomáš interrupted. He continued to be employed as an accountant in the Reich Protectorate Office at the Hradčany, he said, but as a Czech his position was precarious. He had learned it was wiser not to discuss politics or the war. There followed a

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