The Dividing Stream by Francis King Read Free Book Online Page B

to wave his naturally straight blond hair.
    As he lit the spirit stove, he said: ‘‘I managed to slip into the room while Ma Kohler was out shopping. For once she had forgotten to lock the door. The girl was hot stuff, I can tell you. She liked it all right when she got it—and came back for more!’’ He continued with his story while the stove whined and spat, and Enzo, in a disgust which he could never dare to voice, continued to splash the cold water over his face, arms and torso.
    The Rocchigianis had let out two rooms near the top of their house to a German woman, one of the many destitutes of that nation, who attempt to scrabble an existence in a city where they are now no longer wanted. Fräulein Kohler, who had been manageress of the defunct Pensione Germania , took in needlework, gave occasional lessons in German, and offered herself as a guide to bewildered Swiss tourists. With her was a girl, of obvious Italian features, whom she always called her ‘‘niece’’. The niece was nineteen, but being both epileptic and slightly simple, did no work except sewing, and never left the house except in her ‘‘aunt’s’’ company. She could have been a beautiful girl, with her large, vaguely melancholy eyes, her soft hair and skin, and her clear features, but for the fit which as a child had caused her to fall on to a stove and shrivel one half of her face. She had always frightened Enzo, particularly when in the darkness of night he would be woken, on a sudden, by her shrill, unearthly screams; so that meeting her on the stairs, he would always hurry past with no more than a glance and a quick ‘‘ Buon giorno ’’. But Giorgio had long since decided that she was, in his own crude phrase, ‘‘ a lovely bitch’’.
    Fräulein Kohler, whether through an intense possessiveness, or through fear of what other accidents might befall, always locked the door on her niece when she went out; and the niece herself, Bella she was called, never seemed to rebel or even fret against this strictness, appearing content to sit for hour after hour at an open window, sometimes sewing but more often merely gazing out into the Borgo. If Giorgio or some other of the local boys whistled up to her, she would look down but make no other response. When her ‘‘aunt’’, a big, red-haired woman about whom everything seemed aggressively competent except a pair of small, strangely frightened green eyes, talked to Bella, the girl would answer her in a soft voice without any trace of German accent, usually in monosyllables; she would rarely talk to anyone else. But sometimes, when the two women sat out together with the Rocchigianis on a hot evening, Bella, who appeared to be paying no attention to the conversation, would all at once let out a strange, high-pitched, whinnying laugh at a remark which no one else had thought funny. Only on such occasions, and during her fits, would there be a stir in the dreamy immobility in which her whole life was passed.
    Giorgio was explaining how he had found a key that would open the door of the bedroom in which the two women slept, sharing a double-bed, which was covered after the German fashion in a balloon-top scarlet eiderdown. That evening, he continued, Bella had told him that her mother would be acting as cloakroom attendant at a dance at Fiesole and it was unlikely that she would return until the early hours of the morning. ‘‘ So it’s money for jam,’’ he said. ‘‘As soon as Mum and Dad have turned in, I can open the cage.’’ He chuckled, and then noticed that Enzo was staring at him, his face dripping with water and a rag-like towel in his hands. ‘‘What’s the matter?’’
    ‘‘Nothing.’’
    ‘‘You prig!’’
    Enzo shrugged his shoulders.
    ‘‘You don’t think I should do it?’’
    ‘‘I didn’t say that.’’
    ‘‘But you think it. You do, don’t you?’’
    ‘‘Well—yes.’’
    ‘‘My God!’’ Enzo admired his brother for many things