gave a shrill drunken laugh at her feeble joke.
‘But we’re . . . we’re not going to . . . you know. Are we?’
‘You don’t want me?’
‘Of course I want you, but it feels all wrong. You just offering it to me like a butcher giving me a steak. A man needs to . . . to . . .’
‘You need to woo me, don’t you? I should have known. It’s my inexperience, you see. I’ve blown it. Now I’ll never get the job . . .’ Her face twisted in anguish. ‘Oh Louie!’ She squealed and grasped my hand with fervour. ‘Can’t we just do it and forget about the world and everything in it? Just one night, that’s all. Oh please, Louie, please make love to me. Think of my little sisters starving in Hughesovka, don’t you want them to have a life too? Do you want to condemn them to spending the rest of their lives travelling on the Orient Express dressed in stovepipe hats? Is that what you want? Don’t they deserve to have a life too? Don’t they deserve to see the beautiful trees and flowers and walk under the stars just like you?’
‘This is just crazy.’
‘Think of little Lizaveta and Tanya, Louie. Think of their little hungry tummies and the pain in their uncomprehending eyes as they sit next to the cold fireplace.’
‘They won’t starve . . .’
‘Oh but they will, they will, you don’t know how it is in Hughesovka. Do you think I would be doing this if I had any choice?’
‘That makes it even worse.’
‘No, no, I mean of course I want to do it with you but . . .’
‘Why don’t we just pretend we did it. Who’s to know?’
‘My teachers would know when they developed the film.’
I groaned. ‘Look, Natasha, how old are you?’
Frustration creased her features. ‘Does it matter?’
‘Yes.’
‘Eighteen.’
‘No you’re not.’
‘I will be soon. Honestly, don’t worry about it. Girls in Hughesovka lose their virginity when they are twelve.’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘But, of course, I’m not like them, if that’s what you are thinking. My father was ever so strict. All through my teens he wouldn’t let me out from under his eye.’
‘What did he say when you took this job?’
‘He locked me in my room, so I escaped.’
‘You see!’
‘Oh Louie, don’t worry about silly old papa, he’s so old-fashioned!’ She paused and her brow clouded. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Natasha, I want you to stop all this honey-trap silliness and go back to your father.’
‘Oh Louie!’
‘I’ve never had a daughter so I can’t pretend to know exactly what your father must be going through but I do have my partner Calamity. She is about the same age as you, and . . . look, don’t ask me to explain.’
‘I understand,’ she said softly, with a deflated air. She drew back across the table. She wrapped her arms around herself. ‘Brrr! how cold the night is!’
I took off my jacket, walked round to her side of the table and put it across her shoulders.
‘I’ve been a complete idiot,’ she said. ‘I’ve really put my foot in it.’
‘Forget it, it’s nothing.’
‘You don’t understand. I’ve made a terrible mistake, the one mistake you must never make. The one they all warn you about. What a fool I am!’
‘What mistake?’
‘I’ve fallen in love with you.’
Chapter 19
A short hairy man called Igor with a walleye and saliva permanently dripping from the corner of his mouth picked us up in a buggy from the station at Sighisoara. We drove at great speed through the town as the setting sun festered like a crimson wound in the Transylvanian sky. Igor thrashed the backs of the horses mercilessly with his whip and flung curses at the nags in the ancient Bohemian tongue of his ancestors. Peasants leaped aside and crossed themselves as we passed. We thundered down the cobbled streets, through the main square and on towards a hill overlooking the town upon which stood a gloomy castle. It looked like a collection of organ pipes carved from the bones of a giant upon which had been placed in a variety of sizes some witches’ hats made of red tile. From time to time ravens swooped down off the battlements and rose again in lazy arcs to stain the face of the setting sun. A wind picked up and Calamity drew herself against me for warmth. The road twisted up the face of the crag and along the way we passed groups of peasants carrying torches who waved their fists at us in a strange greeting.
Igor cast anxious looks at the progress of the torch-carriers and cracked the whip even more, hurling ever fiercer imprecations at the horses. We crested a rise and clattered over a wooden drawbridge as Igor sitting above us suddenly ducked. Even so, the ragged tooth of the lowering portcullis almost parted his hair.
Our bags were carried away on the backs of two dwarfs in servant livery and we were shown into a hall the size of a modest cathedral. Igor assured us that the Count would be down shortly. The heads of animals hunted long ago watched us balefully through glass eyes that gleamed like the embers of a fire. Suits of armour receded into the gloom like Russian dolls, and torches pinned to the bare stone walls threw a dancing illumination that left much of the hall in shadow. Tapestries depicting ancient scenes of the chase through the forests of medieval Carpathia fluttered above our heads, and set against walls built from single blocks of stone the size of wardrobes were pieces of oaken furniture that seemed designed for the people of Brobdingnag.
Calamity gazed at everything in wonder and said, ‘You know this letter we are delivering to the Count, is there any reason why Mooncalf couldn’t have posted it?’
Two servants, formerly hidden behind stuffed bears, strode forth and opened two iron-studded doors. The Count stepped through to greet us. He had fine aquiline features, swept-back silver hair, and was dressed in a black Jesuitical frock that encased him from throat to floor.
‘Mr Louie and Miss Calamity!’ he said. ‘How good of you to come. Welcome to my humble abode.’ He gave a dismissive wave as if to apologise for the modesty of his living arrangements. I handed him the letter from Mooncalf and he took it to one side to read in the flickering light of a torch. He opened the empty envelope, paused for a second, and then cried out in theatrical delight. He threw the envelope with a flourish into the flames of a roaring fire. ‘Mooncalf is a great man,’ he said.
A wolf howled.
The Count explained that dinner would be served in an hour’s time and entrusted us in the meantime into the care of his housekeeper Frau Folterkammer, whom, he said, we must not pester with questions because she had no tongue. Frau Folterkammer led us to our chambers in the south wing carrying before her an iron candelabrum with seven tines. The corridor was a vortex of conflicting draughts and the flames of each candle twisted in agony as if each one was a virgin being consumed by the fire of the Inquisition. The floor was flooded with silver fire that was the moon cut into slices by the leaded lights. We passed an old dame sitting on a wooden settle and counting her rosary with rheumatic fingers. A door was open to our right and inside the dark chamber we caught the unmistakable outline of a spinning wheel. We paused and peered in; we saw no one but heard the sound of a girl weeping. Frau Folterkammer waved her hand angrily in front of my face and urged me to move on. I apologised for my indiscreet curiosity. It was a Semi-Saxon horizontal with the sheathed bobbin and slip-backed flyer. Old, but still good.
Frau Folterkammer stopped outside a door and indicated it was Calamity’s room. She handed me the candelabrum. As she went to open the door our attention was drawn to a sound coming from the room opposite – children’s laughter, and a music box faintly playing ‘Fur Elise’. Instinctively we turned towards the sound whereupon
