Hotel of the Saints Read Online Free PDF

of blond than my mother’s, was not short but braided back into a chignon. She had red-red lips, and she was studying me across the partition from the next balcony. “I’ll be right there.”
    After her face vanished, I heard the scraping of a chair being dragged onto the balcony. As she climbed across the wall, her back to the sea that lay three floors beneath us, she talked herself through it: “Careful now, Anneliese … don’t look down there. You know how you are with heights. Easy, now.” The hem of her white dress flared above her high-heel sandals, and the butterfly clasp of her belt glittered in the sun.
    â€œThere, now.” She leapt down on our side of the balcony. “There, now.” Kneeling by my side, she put her arms around me and helped me to sit up.
    I could smell her perfume—not flowery like most perfumes, but like the kind of breath you want to hold in your lungs for a long time.
    She led me inside and settled me on the sofa, two pillows beneath my feet. “Where does it hurt,
Liebchen?”
    I motioned to my belly, my chest, my legs. Another cramp made me draw up my knees. “But it never hurts like this when I have my period.”
    She touched the strap of my swimsuit. “You didn’t go swimming, did you?” She sounded alarmed.
    â€œFor a while.”
    â€œBut it’s the worst thing you can do, going into salt waterwhen you have your period. It draws your blood right out of you. Some women try to bring on their bleeding by soaking their feet in salt water. Don’t you know that?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œPutting your whole body into salt water …” She clicked her tongue. “Poor girl. Didn’t your mother tell you this?”
    â€œShe—she went to India. Before I started periods.”
    â€œIs she joining you and your father here?”
    â€œShe used to come here … but they’re divorced now.”
    â€œJust when you need her most,” she said softly.
    Sudden tears crowded the inside of my head. I turned my face aside.
    â€œMen don’t know about things like that. At least not how to explain them to a young girl.”
    Her name was Frau Hilger, Anneliese Hilger, and she took hold of my life from that moment on. She brought me oval pills from her apartment, made peppermint tea, buttered crisp
Zwieback,
and made me rest on our living-room sofa with two of her German fashion magazines. When my father opened the door, she was frying paper-thin veal cutlets,
Wiener Schnitzel,
in our kitchen.
    â€œYour daughter is doing better,” I heard her whisper before he could say anything.
    â€œWhat happened? Christa didn’t drown or—”
    â€œI have her lying down.” Taking his hand into hers, she steered him toward the sofa where I was lounging, quite comfortable by now, surrounded by cups and plates and magazines.
    â€œMy God,” my father said.
    I sighed. Draped one hand across my forehead.
    â€œWhat happened to you,
Kind?”
    Frau Hilger winked at me, then smiled at my father as if shehad separate secrets with each of us. “Women’s problems.”
    He took off his glasses. Busied himself cleaning them with his handkerchief.
    â€œYour daughter should have never gone into salt water. It pulls all the blood out of you at once.”
    â€œDo you need anything?” As he tucked my hair behind my ears, he looked as if he were about to ask me something else, but Frau Hilger laid one slender hand on his arm and drew him toward the kitchen.
    â€œLet me pour you some Chianti,” I heard her say. “Sit down. We’ll eat soon.”
    â€œI couldn’t impose.”
    But she shook her head, firmly. “It’s at times like these that a girl needs the friendship of a woman.”
    That midday meal, it was just the three of us, but when we entered the dining room in the evening, she waved us over to the table where she was sitting with a man.