Free The Left-Handed God by I. J. Parker Page B

realized where he was when the road made a bend, and the trees parted.
    And there, under a blue and rosy sky, lay the Bodensee. The English and French tourists called it Lake Constance after the town Konstanz at its western end. To the Romans it had been lacus brigantium after their city brigantium, now Bregenz. The lake was old and had seen much of life and death, of war and peace.
    As if in welcome, the westering sun turned its surface to molten gold. Small, white-sailed fishing boats were headed home. Here and there along the shore, cheerful towns with onion domes and quaint, steeply-pointed tile roofs lay like jewels in a necklace of green and flowering trees.
    Franz saw his lake through a haze of tears and felt such a dizzying surge of love, of passionate devotion to the lake, that he had to clutch the seat or he would have tumbled off.

5
    The Homecoming
    Deformed persons tend to avenge themselves on nature
    Francis Bacon, Exempla
    F rau von Langsdorff suffered from the warm spring wind that people called Föhn . She spent a great deal of time moaning and resting in her bedroom at the back of the house.
    Unimpressed by her mother’s suffering, Augusta took advantage of the good weather to clean the front windows downstairs. Frau von Langsdorff did not permit her to do such a thing in full view of neighbors and passersby, but the windows were grimy and, to Augusta’s mind, this was much more embarrassing than being seen washing them. She put on an apron, tied a scarf around her hair, and carried a bucket of water and some old dish clouts outside, then got the short ladder from the shed in the back garden and went to work.
    The day was blue and pretty, with puffy clouds sailing along, and Augusta did not mind the wind. It helped dry the windows more quickly. She made good progress and thought that she would be done well before the church bells struck eight and her mother emerged from her room to nibble something for her supper. They always ate late because “only servants and laborers” had their evening meal before the sun set.
    The sun was setting, and she had reached the last window when her neighbor put her head out to call, “Gusterl, look who’s coming. That’s Franz, isn’t it? Oh, the poor boy!”
    Augusta swung around, upsetting the water bucket and causing the ladder to wobble. Halfway down Fischergasse, a soldier in a blue and white uniform pushed himself forward awkwardly on a crutch. When he saw her, he stopped. For a moment it almost looked as if he meant to turn and stumble away.
    Augusta slid down the ladder, picked up her skirts, and ran. “Franz,” she shouted, her voice as joyous as a lark’s, “Oh, Franz!” When she reached him, she threw her arms around his neck, half laughing and half crying. “O, Franz, my dear, it’s you, it’s finally you. I’ve been watching for so long but you never came.”
    He did not hug her back and said nothing, and after a moment she let him go to look at him. His crippled leg shocked her. He was also unshaven, thin, and very pale, but there was something worse in his face, in the blue eyes that would not meet hers, in the tight clamping of his lips. It frightened her.
    “You look tired,” she said in a falsely cheerful voice, more to convince herself that was all it was. “Come, lean on me. Mama will be beside herself with happiness.”
    He still said nothing and glowered at the neighbors who came from their houses, smiling and curious. They greeted him, asked how he was, patted his shoulders, gave him joy. Many young men had left for the war and not returned.
    Franz neither smiled nor spoke. He nodded, shook his head, gestured that he was exhausted, in pain, eager to get home. And so they let him go.
    Augusta closed the door of their house, and they were alone. “Welcome home, dearest Franz,” she said in the dim hallway. “Oh, how I’ve prayed to see you here again. How I’ve promised God anything if He would only return you to us. Why did you