Natasha's Dream Read Online Free

Natasha's Dream
Book: Natasha's Dream Read Online Free
Author: Mary Jane Staples
Pages:
Go to
she was indeed near to starving. She looked as if she had beenexisting only on what she could get from a soup kitchen.
    He went to a sideboard and poured a large cognac for her. He handed her the glass.
    ‘Sip it slowly,’ he said, ‘while I get you some hot soup and bread.’
    He disappeared. She sipped the cognac, a little at a time. Its fire hit her throat. She coughed. She looked around. The comfortable atmosphere of the room was not diminished by the fact that it looked a little untidy. It was a masculine untidiness. Books had been left on a chair, a notebook perched precariously on the rounded arm of the chair, a pair of dried-out shoes lay close to a porcelain heating stove and a jacket was carelessly draped over another chair. There was a newspaper on the floor beside the sofa. She rose to her feet to test herself. Immediately her head swam and she sat down again. It was not nausea this time, but simply weakness.
    The man brought the soup to her after a while, a large bowl of it. On the tray there was also a plate containing a large amount of dark brown bread, bread that looked fresh and was not of the cheap black kind. It was evenbuttered. She sat up. Butter on bread to be eaten with soup? Oh, such extravagance, and such rapture. She took the tray on to her lap and looked up at the man. His hair was a deep brown and his eyes were warm. His smile was friendly and encouraging.
    ‘Oh, thank you,’ she said, and seized a portion of the thickly cut bread. Its fresh feel and glistening butter galvanized her hunger and she brought it ravenously to her mouth. Her white teeth tore at it. She chewed and swallowed, demolishing the entire portion. The smell of the soup assailed her nostrils. She quickly swallowed the bread in her mouth and picked up the soup spoon.
    The man sat down in an armchair. He took up the newspaper and glanced through it, tactfully keeping his eyes off the starving girl.
    ‘There’s more if you want it,’ he murmured.
    She gulped the nutritious soup, pushing in bread with each mouthful. ‘You will forgive my manners?’ she said, suddenly embarrassed.
    ‘Oh, manners,’ he said, murmuring the words in English, ‘they’re the indulgence of the well fed, not the starving.’ In German, he added, ‘Don’t worry.’
    She was staring at him. ‘English? You are English, kind sir?’ she said in that language.
    ‘Yes.’ He looked up from the paper. ‘Do you speak English, Fräulein?’
    Her pale, smudged face and her dark, hungry eyes were suddenly transformed by a delighted smile. He felt that if she were not so painfully thin, she would be a very attractive young woman.
    ‘Do I speak English? But am I not doing so?’ The language was clear and fluent on her tongue, with scarcely the faintest hint of an accent. ‘I speak it to perfection. My—’ She stopped, and her moment of brightness faded. Her face became full of shadows. ‘I mean, in my school there was an English lady who taught English. She was married to Peter Gregorovich Alexeiev, who was the headmaster. They—’ Her mouth trembled and she bent her head. ‘I speak German well, but not as well as I speak English.’
    ‘Shall we communicate in English, then?’
    ‘Oh, yes.’ A little of the brightness returned, and she resumed her meal, attacking it with the unaffected relish of one who considered it a banquet. ‘How kind you are, dear sir.’
    ‘Dear sir?’ repeated her host.
    ‘That is English, isn’t it?’
    ‘Indeed it is,’ he smiled.
    ‘Then, dear sir, I—’ She put soup and bread into her mouth. She chewed, swallowed and went on. ‘I wish to say how fortunate I am in having met you. In Berlin, there are a thousand thieves in every dark doorway at night. The world is so unhappy, and people have turned away from God.’
    ‘Perhaps they feel God has failed them.’
    ‘Oh,’ she said, and gazed at him over the dripping spoon. ‘Oh, you are not a heathen, are you?’
    He laughed. It was a richly comforting
Go to

Readers choose

Bernard Beckett

Christine Merrill

Kelly Martin

Ursula K. Le Guin

Douglas Jackson

Regina Sirois

Don Bendell