Lisa and Lottie. Erich Kastner

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СКАЧАТЬ put her arms around Lisa’s neck. ‘‘Our Mommy!” Two little girls clung tightly to each other.

      The gong boomed through the house. Children ran laughing and shouting down the stairs. Lisa started to put the photograph back in the locker, but Lottie said, “You can keep it.”

      Miss Ursula was standing before the desk in Mrs. Muther’s office. She was so excited that on both her cheeks were round spots, red as apples.

      “I can’t keep it to myself!” she blurted out. “I must confide in you. If only I knew what we ought to do!”

      “Come, come,” said Mrs. Muther. “What have you got on your mind, my dear?”

      “They are not astrological twins.”

      “Who aren’t?” asked Mrs. Muther with a smile. “King Edward and the tailor?”

      “No! Lisa Palfy and Lottie Horn! I’ve checked back in our registration book. They were both born on the same day of the same year at Linz. It simply cannot be a coincidence.”

      “I don’t think it’s a coincidence either, my dear. In fact, I have some ideas of my own on the subject.”

      “So you know?” asked Miss Ursula, panting for breath.

      “Of course. When little Lottie arrived, I got her date and place of birth and entered them in the book. Then I compared them with Lisa’s. That was the obvious thing to do, wasn’t it?”

      “Yes, yes. But what do we do now?”

      “Nothing.”

      “Nothing?”

      “Nothing! If you don’t keep quiet about it, I’ll—I don’t know what I’ll do to you!”

      “But—”

      “There’s no ‘but.’ The two children suspect nothing. They have just been photographed together, and they’ll send the pictures home. If that helps to unravel the knot, well and good. But as for you and me, we’ll not interfere. Thank you for your sympathetic understanding, my dear. And now, please, will you ask the cook to come in and see me?”

3

       New worlds are discovered • Mystery piled on mystery • The bisected first name • A serious photograph and a funny letter • Can children be cut in half?

      Time passed.

      The two girls collected their photographs from Mr. Appeldauer. The inquisitive Miss Ursula inquired whether they had sent the pictures home. Lisa and Lottie nodded their heads and said yes.

      But the pictures, torn into little pieces, are at the bottom of Lake Bohren. The two girls told Miss Ursula a lie. They wanted to keep their secret to themselves. They lied shamelessly to anyone who tried to pry too closely into their affairs. Their consciences did not prick them—not even Lottie’s.

      The two girls stuck together like burrs. Trudie, Steffie, Monica, Christine, and the rest were sometimes angry at Lisa and jealous of Lottie. What good did it do? None at all!

      They had slipped off to the locker room. Lottie looked through her locker, took out two identical sweaters, gave one to her sister, and put on the other herself.

      “Mommy bought these,” she said, “at Pollinger’s.”

      “Ah!” exclaimed Lisa. “That’s the store in Neuhauser Street, near—what is the name of that gate?”

      “Carl’s Gate.”

      “That’s right—near Carl’s Gate.”

      By now they were well informed about each other’s way of life, school friends, neighbors, teachers, and apartments. For Lisa, everything connected with her mother was terribly important. And Lottie longed to know everything—any little thing—that her sister could tell her about her father. For days on end they talked of nothing else. And in bed at night they whispered together for hours. It was as though they were each discovering a new and strange continent. They had found out that what they had known up to now was only half a world.

      And at moments when they were not fitting together these two halves in order to get a glimpse of the whole, another subject excited them, another mystery tormented them: why were their parents no longer together?

      “First, of course, they got married,” said Lisa for the hundredth time. “Then they had us. And they named me Lisa and you Lottie because Mommy’s name is Lisalottie. That’s pretty, isn’t it? They must have been fond of each other in those days, mustn’t they?”

      “I’m sure of it,” said Lottie. “And then they must have quarreled and parted. And they separated us just the same as they separated Mommy’s first name.”

      “They really ought to have asked us first.”

      “But when that happened we probably hadn’t even learned to talk.”

      The two sisters smiled. Then they linked arms and went into the garden.

      The mail had come. Everywhere—in the grass, on the wall, and on the garden benches—campers were sitting, studying letters.

      Lottie held in her hands the photograph of a man of about thirty-five. She was looking with loving eyes at her father. So that was how he looked! And this was the sort of feeling you had around your heart when you had a real live father!

      Lisa read aloud what he had written to her. “‘My dearest, only child’—what a liar!” she said, looking up. “He knows perfectly well he has twins!” She went on reading:

      I think you must have completely forgotten what your old father looks like. Otherwise you wouldn’t be so anxious for a photograph of him just before the end of your vacation. At first I thought I would send you a picture of me as a baby—one that shows me lying on a polar-bear skin. But you wrote that it must be an absolutely brand-new one. So I rushed off to the photographer’s, though I really couldn’t spare the time, and explained to him just why I needed it in such a hurry. I told him that unless he took my picture my Lisa wouldn’t recognize me when I went to the station to meet her. Fortunately he saw how important it was. And so you’re getting it in good time. I’m sorry for the counselors there. I hope you don’t lead them such a dance as you do your father—who sends you a thousand kisses and is longing to have you home again.

      “Lovely!” said Lottie. “And funny! And yet in the picture he looks quite serious.”

      “He was probably too shy to laugh in front of the photographer,” Lisa speculated. “He always looks serious in front of other people. But when we’re alone we have lots of fun.” Lottie hugged the picture. “May I really keep it?”

      “Of course,” said Lisa. “That’s why I got him to send it.”

      Steffie was sitting on a bench with a letter in her hands, crying. She wasn’t making a sound, but the tears streamed steadily down her round little cheeks.

      Trudie СКАЧАТЬ