The Left-Handed God Read Online Free PDF Page A

head‌—‌making a large gray and black fur cap for his mistress. Between them, these two seemed to absorb all of the feeble warmth that came from the small fire on the hearth.
    Augusta cast an impatient glance at her mother. It was ridiculous not to have enough wood to warm at least the kitchen properly on New Year’s Day. The Kachelofen in their parlor, a handsome tiled stove that could be stoked from the kitchen, had been unused all winter. Instead, they huddled here. This past autumn, before the snows came, Augusta had wanted to gather kindling in the woods. She had borrowed their neighbor’s tall basket to strap on her back, but when her mother found out, she had forbidden it. The thought that a von Langsdorff would be seen at such menial work, “work that was only done by poor old women and maids”, scandalized her.
    Poor old women indeed! They were as poor as anyone in Lindau. And when it came to maids, Augusta could have gone into service two years ago when she turned sixteen. She would have been warmer, and certainly better fed.
    Augusta pushed the wooden darning egg impatiently into the next stocking, threaded the needle with black wool and started the weaving which would fill the large hole she had worn into the heel. Regardless of how neatly she darned her stockings, they ended up with clumsy welts of wool that rubbed her heels raw. It seemed unfair that she should have been born to a name that obligated its owner to the pretense of nobility without a commensurate income.
    Not that there was anything very noble in her background. Her father had been a younger son in a family that had converted early to the Protestant faith. The religious wars of the past century had cost them most of their lands but, being a stubborn breed, they persisted, passing their small holding and title to the oldest son, sending the next to the university to become a clergyman, and any others into the military.
    Augusta and her brother loved their father deeply, but Pastor von Langsdorff had been an unworldly man without ambition, too caught up in his studies of religious writings to inspire his congregation with rousing sermons, and too improvident to gain their respect. His charities were indiscriminate and when they exceeded his own purse, he spent freely from the tithes. The church elders demanded his dismissal when they discovered that their money had benefited poor Jews and Catholics. The Langsdorff family left the large parsonage in Heidelberg and moved into this modest house in the Fischergasse in Lindau.
    The shock of his unexpected dismissal had been so great that Pastor von Langsdorff suffered a stroke. Not even the beauty of the lake and the gentle climate could heal the wound to his trust in God. He lingered a year as an invalid, then died.
    Their house was part of his wife’s dowry and survived their father’s charitable disposition. There was barely enough money left to send Franz to the university in Heidelberg.
    When Pastor von Langsdorff’s pension ceased with his death, Augusta had offered to go into service. Her mother would not permit this and sold her jewelry and the family pictures, as well as their father’s library and some of the furniture. But those funds eventually also ran out. Franz had left the university to go to war, and now the money he had sent was also mostly gone. Augusta bit her lip. How could their mother have permitted Franz to offer up his life to her foolish pride?
    Frau von Langsdorff made a sudden sound very much like her husband’s final death rattle, causing the cat to wake and hiss, and Augusta to stick the needle into her finger. Her mother mumbled something, then started snoring gently, her chin resting on the lace fichu at the neck of her black silk gown.
    Volteur arched his back, cast a baleful look at Augusta, and jumped down, stalking off with his tail twitching. Franz had given him his name; it was French for “Jumper” and sounded like “Voltaire,” her brother’s