The Point of Vanishing - Maryka Biaggio (large ebook reader TXT) 📗

By the time she returned with the Vogels and a ladder, seven other neighbors had descended on the scene. Herr Vogel ran for the window, and two other men followed. He wedged the ladder against the house and climbed up but couldn’t reach the window. The men beat on the side of the house and hollered. But the flames only thickened, belching from the window and up the side of the house. The men pulled the ladder away and joined the others in front of the house.

They all stood gaping at the flames and babbling. Why weren’t they fetching buckets to fill? Then, as if they’d agreed on a plan, the neighbors set upon the house, sprinting in and retrieving the thick-slabbed kitchen table, the odd variety of chairs, lamps, and bookcases—all the furniture from the first level. Next, they brought out smaller items, canisters, plates, and cupboard goods.

They dashed in and out until the smoke grew dense and puffed out the front door and all the windows. Fire ate away the blue kitchen curtains. The roof flared with hot, licking flames. It was impossible, she realized. The slow-trickling trough of water on the property would’ve been useless against this greedy blaze.

The neighbors gathered around and questioned Helen in sharp bursts. She explained in as many ways as she could contrive in her rudimentary German: Herr Künstler had done it. He set the fire. He locked himself inside. He might have shot himself. Finally, they seemed to understand and murmured to each other in disbelieving tones.

Helen stood among the hushed crowd watching flames consume the cottage. With a roar, a wall crumpled and crashed under its dwindling weight.

Police and a fire brigade arrived in cars and trucks. The police urged the onlookers to make room for the brigade to operate. Firefighters ran a hose from the stream a few hundred feet away but only managed to pump up halting feeble spurts.

One of the police officers questioned a few of the neighbors and then addressed Helen in English. She explained it all, starting with Herr Künstler’s peculiar conduct, the sound of the gun, the dresser barricading his doorway. The officer nodded, encouraging her to tell every detail, and then interviewed the Vogels.

The crowd gazed on as the fire consumed the cottage. There was nothing anyone could do. Before long, the fire reduced the house to a mound of rubble, with the round-bellied stove and scorched bedposts jutting up like pathetic ruins. The firemen poked around the smoldering heap. One of them hollered and pointed down. Everybody quieted. The policeman by Helen’s side said, “They’ve found him.”

Helen pressed a hand over her heart. How dreadful. Herr Künstler had killed himself and taken his cottage with him. Why? Because Hilda had rejected him? Quite possibly, although she’d heard him complain about debt collectors and also learned from neighbors that his shop was struggling. Despair must have overtaken him. How sad. And senseless.

She wanted to hold Barbara, comfort her, and be comforted by her. She turned around, searching for her. There she was, on the rise across the road, bent over her notebook, writing. Nick stood beside her, surveying the smoky scene, his expression drenched with shock. Barbara looked up, studied the firemen gathering around their gruesome discovery, and resumed her writing.

My God, she thought, while the rest of us stand here dazed, Barbara is writing about it. The anguish that’d gripped Herr Künstler, the crowd’s stunned sense of mortality, the smolder of charred ruins, none of it touched Barbara. Was it that she couldn’t bear the pain? Or, like her heartless father, did she lack sympathy for the suffering of others?

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

BARBARA AT TWENTY

Boston, August 1934

Barbara reread her mother’s letter. She couldn’t decide whether it pleased or annoyed her. She enjoyed the news about Sabra’s spunky ways and speedy recovery from a broken leg. The excellent reviews of Stars to Steer By, her mother’s book about their South Pacific sojourn, cheered her. And Helen had included a check for $20, which she greatly appreciated—and sorely needed.

But her mother showed no respect for her new life: You can’t imagine how hard it is to write, shop, cook, clean, and everything else that needs doing around the apartment. Won’t you visit for a month? You could chum around with Sabra and get to know her again. Or maybe it’s time to come home for good since you’ve nothing to show for your time in Boston. And she demanded: Exactly how long do you plan on living in a boarding house, and when do you expect to bring in a regular paycheck and support yourself? Even worse, she scolded her about Nick: I hope you’re not making a fool of yourself, waiting on Nick like a mooning puppy. You ought to make some friends, like Sabra’s done, so you don’t have to depend entirely on Nick.

Well, she’d not let her mother’s old-fashioned scruples sway her. She grabbed her pen and picked up where she’d left off on her letter: I’m getting on well enough with odd typing jobs, and I’m feverishly revising Lost Island. Nick comes around whenever he can, for lunch on some of his workdays, and we always go out on Friday or Saturday. Besides, he needs me now. He’s still terribly torn up over his father’s death.

She stopped herself from adding anything else about her and Nick. Breathing a single word about her qualms would only lead her mother to insist all the more that she return to New York.

Something had shifted between her and Nick since they’d returned from Europe. He seemed preoccupied, even distant. When he explained his job was awfully demanding, she told him: “I understand you need to get off to a zinging start at Polaroid, but I miss courting adventure with you by my side.” She did see him three or four times a week, but she always felt empty afterward, as if he were a drug she constantly craved.

And