Hotel of the Saints Read Online Free PDF Page B

My father hesitated. But then she waved again, and he patted his brown mustache to make sure it was in place as he started toward her. Frau Hilger’s lipstick made her white teeth look even whiter, and she was wearing white again, this time a silk suit with a scarf and that elegant butterfly belt. To me, she seemed like the kind of woman who always wears belts, even with coats.
    She invited us to sit and eat with her and her husband, a quiet man with thick eyelids and thick earlobes that gave his face a sleepy look. After greeting us politely, he said little while she recommended the
spezzatino di maiale — a
stew made with pork and olives —and asked my father about his work as an accountant for a boarding school.
    Over dessert she told my father, “I admire a man who takes on the responsibility of being a parent.” Looking straight at herhusband, she said, “I’ve never been fortunate enough to—”
    â€œDon’t,” he said.
    Her lips trembled.
    â€œDon’t, Anneliese.” He tapped his fingers against the starched tablecloth.
    â€œI’ve never been fortunate enough to birth children.” Her eyes shimmered with tears when she looked at me as if I were the kind of daughter she would have wanted for herself, the daughter she would have never left behind; but soon she was laughing again with her red-red lips.
    While Herr Hilger was getting even more silent, my father was talking more than he did when we were alone, and his shoulders were no longer stiff. A few times her ringed hand slid along the back of my father’s chair—not touching his neck, though her fingers flexed as if already rehearsing. When we stood up to leave, her husband picked up her purse from the table and handed it to her without grazing her skin.
    In the lobby she pressed a few of her oval pills into my hand—“Just in case,
Liebchen”—
and gave my father two tickets. “There’s a cruise in Grignano Bay tomorrow afternoon. Herr Hilger and I would be so delighted if you joined us.”
    My father stared at the tickets as if weighing their value. Perhaps she already guessed that he was not a man who could let anything fall to waste. I’d seen him finish burned pancakes my mother wanted to throw out, follow her from room to room to switch off the lights she left on—sometimes on purpose to tease him.
    Frau Hilger smiled and curved one arm around me. “The statue of San Giusto lies at the bottom of Grignano Bay. But there’s no need to decide now. After all—this is a vacation. A time to be spontaneous. If you’re not there, Herr Hilger and I’llamuse ourselves. But just in case, I’ll bring a picnic for all of us.”
    All of us.
From that day on, all our encounters felt choreographed by Frau Hilger. Mornings, she’d call a greeting to us across the wall between our balconies. She’d insist on cooking the midday meal for us—usually German recipes—in her suite, which was the same size as ours, with two bedrooms and a living room and kitchen. In the evenings, we’d eat
rigatoni
or
cannelloni
with fish or chicken in Trieste or in the dining room of our hotel. When we’d sun ourselves on the beach, it would be next to the Hilgers. While he’d read biographies of composers and I’d swim in the sea, Frau Hilger and my father would stroll along the sand toward Maximilian’s white Miramare Castle; but she’d never go into the water above her knees, and even when the wind was strong enough to flip the pages of her husband’s book, only a few single hairs would slip from her braided chignon.
    â€œThey live on old money, the Hilgers,” my father told me. “Inherited money from his grandfather. It’s all invested in music stores.”
    Those first few days around them, I barely noticed Herr Hilger except when he did something for his wife, like open a door or drape her white jacket around