The Goddess of Small Victories by Yannick Grannec

Author:Yannick Grannec [Grannec, Yannick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59051-637-9
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2014-10-13T16:00:00+00:00

33

At the appointed hour on the appointed day, in an astrakhan toque with her cheeks rouged, Adele lay in wait for her accomplice. She asked Anna to help her slip on a peacock-blue coat that would make them detectable a mile off. The young woman didn’t have the heart to refuse. It must have belonged to an earlier life. Mrs. Gödel counterfeited a sleeping body in her bed by leaving her turban sticking out of the covers—less on the theory that it would actually work than out of nostalgia for her mad youth. Gladys stalked up and down the hallway with a conspiratorial air. Adele scolded her, and she adopted an attitude of normality, which was even less convincing.

Jack met them as promised by the ivy-covered gate and installed the elderly woman in the car while Anna hid the wheelchair behind a bush. The fifteen miles to the movie house seemed interminable. Adele smiled incessantly at the young woman behind the wheel, indifferent to her anxiety. Anna, unused to seeing Adele so animated, imagined all the worst possible consequences of her risky plan. Her back ached and her temples pounded. All this to spend three hours with Julie Andrews. Anna had never liked the big ninny. Mary Poppins still gave her nightmares.

The County Theater, a recently renovated neighborhood movie house, had kept its illuminated marquee with the big black letters in a crooked line. If it hadn’t been for the fast-food joint with its aggressive neon display next door, Anna might have thought she was back in the 1950s. When Adele saw the film’s title, which Anna had wanted to surprise her with, she didn’t hide her disappointment. She had seen The Sound of Music when it came out in 1965. “The Americans sweetened our history just the way they do their coleslaw. It disgusted me.”

When she had settled Adele in her narrow seat, Anna started to breathe normally again. Only then did her mind, fixated on operational details, finally grapple with the one fundamental problem that had slipped her notice: this musical comedy was set against the backdrop of the Anschluss. Mortified, she attacked the vast bucket of popcorn Mrs. Gödel had insisted on buying as they entered.

“You’re not too tired?”

Adele shoved the container onto her lap. “I hate people who talk at the movies!”

Anna suppressed her irritation by looking around the audience. The last person she wanted to see was a staff member from Pine Run out on a spree. She could relax. The seats were almost empty: a young couple looking for a dark corner and a row of giggling teenyboppers.

She sat silently through the endless title sequence—an aerial view of the Tyrolean peaks, with lots of greenery and church steeples, leading to the first deafening trills of Julie Andrews in an apron, her hair in a Joan of Arc cut. Adele fingered the notes happily on the armrest. Anna wondered how long she could stand it. She had never watched this clunker through to the end, always falling asleep before the intermission.

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