Winter's End Read Online Free

large car. They lock all the doors and drive off in silence.
    “Why have you locked the doors?” she asks the man next to her. “Do you think I’m going to jump out or something? Where are we going?”
    He doesn’t reply, doesn’t even turn his head. All the way she smells the strong odor of his leather jacket and the cigarettes that the other two are smoking in the front of the car. They drive through the countryside for hours, and then the road runs beside the river to the nameless little town and the gray boarding school building.
    About a hundred other girls are waiting in groups of five or six, coats over their arms and small books in their hands. They are all surprisingly quiet. She is led along shabby corridors to the room outside the headmistress’s office, where she has only a few minutes to wait. Then the door opens and a girl comes out, also with a coat over her arm and a book in her hand. She is small, wears thick glasses, and looks even more downcast than the others. This, as Helen will learn later, is Catharina Pancek. She just murmurs, “Your turn to go in,” and then walks away. Helen cautiously goes through the doorway.
    “Name?”
    This is the first time Helen hears the headmistress’s voice.
    “Dormann. My name’s Helen Dormann.”
    “Age?”
    “Fourteen.”
    “Come here.”
    Helen goes up to the desk, where a massive woman with short gray hair is sitting. She wears a man’s jacket, and her shoulders are wide and powerful. Helen will soon discover that the girls’ nickname for her is
the Tank.
The Tank searches some papers, finds a file on Helen, and runs through it. Then she opens a drawer and brings out a leaflet.
    “Here, take this.”
    The leaflet is well worn; its cover has been mended many times.
    “These are the school rules. You must have them with you at all times. There are eighty-one rules. Learn ten a day. If you have to come back here, which I hope you will not, you must know them all by heart. Go into the cloakroom next door, find a coat that fits you, and go out. If there’s anyone sitting outside my door, tell her it’s her turn.”
    Helen goes into the room next to the office, which is full of dozens and dozens of coats hanging there like theatrical costumes. Except that all these costumes are identical: heavy wool overcoats with hoods. It’s like a maze.
If I ever need to hide,
thinks Helen,
I’ll know where to go.
She chooses a gray coat that looks a little less threadbare than the others, tries it on, and decides that it fits. She takes it off, puts it over her arm, and goes back through the headmistress’s office. The Tank ignores her.
    A tall, pale girl is sitting on the bench in the waiting room, bleeding slightly from the nose into a handkerchief stained with red. Helen will learn later that her name is Doris Lemstadt; she will become so ill that she leaves the boarding school. “Your turn!” Helen tells her, and she goes out into the yard where a faint ray of sun falls on the girls standing there motionless, with their coats and their booklets of rules.
    “I know — I’ll say duck and drake instead. Is that better?”
    Helen came back to the present and smiled at Octavo. “Yes, that’s better. Not as funny, but better.”
    The delicious smell of baked potatoes wascoming from the kitchen, and Paula called, “How’s your friend Milena? Is she all right? Do you admire her as much as ever?”
    “She’s fine,” said Helen, laughing. “And yes, I do! She’s waiting for me in the library. Can I take her something from supper?”
    “Of course, and a slice of tart if there’s any left.”
    Paula was always cooking: for herself, for Octavo, for people who happened to drop in. It was impossible to go to her house and not eat anything, or come away without something to eat: a helping of bread-and-butter pudding or chocolate cake or just an apple. She had one child, Octavo, but no husband. When Helen asked her about that, she had said she didn’t need