Free The Zigzag Way by Anita Desai

little to do but search for distraction himself. Then the attractive blond girl he had spotted earlier on the arm of one of those uniformed and bemedaled military men who were suddenly ubiquitous, and again on the stage as a dancer in the chorus of a lively musical show in a theater he had wandered into, reappeared in the lobby of his hotel. When he went into the dining room for his daily consolation of Wiener schnitzel and
apfelstrudel
, there she was again, alone at a table, casting him flirtatious looks. Flattered, charmed, he responded with all the gallantry he could summon. When it finally dawned upon him that no business was to be done that summer in Austria, or in Germany, and he regretfully informed her that he had to return to Mexico, she conveyed such an all-consuming interest in his home and family and business in that faraway land, their sugar-cane estates, their timber holdings, and the property they owned in Mexico City and the “silver cities” of the north, such a curiosity and enthusiasm, that he began to consider her as a replacement for the dear departed Doña Josefina. The speed with which she agreed to be his wife and with which she packed and prepared to leave did fluster him: it was not the way he was used to acting himself, even if he could see that circumstances had changed and called for changed behavior. It was she who searched for berths on an earlier boat than he had managed to find, insisting that they travel to England and catch one from Liverpool that would take them to New York and from there to Veracruz. Dismayed, he asked if this was really necessary, upon which she became nearly hysterical, demanding to know if he did not
understand
. Of course he did, he assured her, but clearly did not since he asked if she did not wish to spend some time with her family before she left. She assured him she had none. No family? That did give him pause for thought but before he could inquire further, they were boarding the boat for New York. During the entire voyage she was prostrate with seasickness and nerves and unable to come out on deck or into the dining room to meet other passengers. “It might do you good,” he tried to persuade her. “You would enjoy the company of a charming Herr Levi I have met. Or of Herr Wolfowitz and his wife . . .” She practically fainted then, begging him not to speak to them of his poor, sick bride.
    He remembered that now, as he regarded this shrill, shrieking woman whose cheeks were no longer porcelain white but red as a cook’s with anger, her blond curls damp on her forehead. No longer attractively dressed in pale blue or pink tulle or crépe de Chine but still in her nightdress and slippers, and without cosmetics or perfume. Doña Josefina would never have appeared thus at table, he reflected bitterly, never. She continued to complain—of boredom, of uneducated company: “merchants, shopkeepers, ranchers! And once I dined with generals, governors, statesmen!”—till he heaved himself to his feet, shouting, “And why were you so eager to leave them, their company, your glorious country, and come here?” She stopped her harangue then and looked at him, appalled. “Because it was all destroyed,” she said at last, in a much lower, less confident voice. “You didn’t see it but I did—how it was all up, finished.” “So then you are lucky, are you not,” he demanded, “to have come away?” and lurched off himself, to his study and the soothing company of his Great Dane, El Duque, and the silver flask of brandy behind the leather-bound volumes of the encyclopedia. He sat in his great leather chair and El Duque laid a drooling jowl upon his slippered foot with a groan of sympathy. Fondling the dog’s ears, he grumbled at himself under his breath for not having made inquiries about the woman he was to marry and her mysterious lack of family or means.
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    H E OUGHT