Love Is Pink!

“You wait in the car with Baby,” I told Emma. I carefully moved out from under the dog’s head, grabbed my ski jacket, and joined David outside.

He stood at the edge of the road and stared down at the front of the car. I heard a loud fizzling sound.

“The tire?” I asked.

David nodded. “A flat.”

“We can fix that, can’t we? Every car has a spare tire, even a classic like this.”

As we spoke, a layer of snow had already formed on my jacket. I shook it off.

“In and of itself, it’s no big deal,” David said. “But at night, in the middle of a country road, and in this weather . . . I don’t think we’ll succeed.”

“But we can’t sleep in the car. We’ll freeze to death. And Baby is too weak.”

David raised his head and looked around. “We’ll have to walk to the next town.”

“In a snowstorm? With a little kid and a wounded dog?”

“Look over there,” he said.

“Where?”

He pointed diagonally in front of me. I followed his finger and made out the contours of a large black building, about ten or fifteen meters from where we stood.

“There’s a light,” he said. “In one of the windows of the old castle.”

“Are you completely insane?” I snapped.

“Why?”

“There’s a light. In one of the windows of the old castle,” I mocked him in a deep voice. “It’s like a line in a horror movie. When we get there, a hunchback with a candle in his hand will open a creaky door for us. We’ll go in. And we’ll never get back out again. Not alive and not in one piece, anyway.”

David sighed. “Do you see another possibility?”

I stuck my hand deeper into my jacket pocket. I was freezing. “No,” I said.

“So let’s try our luck.”

David’s comment sent a shudder down my spine. My good luck had left me days ago. Since then I’d been relentlessly chased by nothing but bad luck.

“What about Emma and Baby?” I asked.

“Better to leave them in the warm car for a few moments than to drag them out into the cold.”

“Okay,” I said. “But promise me: if we see ‘Dr. Frankenstein’ written above the doorbell, we’ll turn right back around.”

David grabbed my hand, and we walked toward the light.





29


David was right. Tall windows, thick stone walls—I could even make out a tower. This actually was a castle. Next to the wooden door, which had been worn down over time, a small lamp shone above a doorbell. Evidently, the building had electricity. That was something, anyway.

David rang the bell, and we heard it chime inside. We waited. Nothing happened.

I was just about to suggest going back to the car when the door handle started to move. The door opened a crack. And, naturally, it creaked.

Now the only things missing were a hunchbacked servant and an insane ax murderer—an end truly worthy of this day.

An old woman, not particularly tall, in pants and knitted jacket, squinted at us from behind the door. The cold wind blew snowflakes inside. She put her hand on her forehand to block them.

“Bonsoir, Madame,” I said.

David greeted her, too, and bowed his head lightly.

“Bonsoir,” she answered.

David started speaking French, so once again I didn’t understand a word. I tried to make a nice face, but it wasn’t easy to do in the frigid cold.

David stopped talking.

The old woman examined us with a skeptical gaze. She had clever brown eyes and many wrinkles. But it was clear that she’d been a true beauty in her earlier years.

I tugged on David’s arm. “Did you tell her that we have a child in the car and that our dog is injured?”

“Yes,” David said nervously.

“Oh,” said the old woman, looking at me. She proceeded to speak in German, instead of French. “You’re from Germany.”

“Yes,” I said, and pointed at the street behind me. “We have a flat tire.”

“Your husband just told me.”

“We really don’t want to disturb you, Madame, but would you happen to have a place for us to stay? Only for this one night. Maybe even in a nearby building or in a barn? And if that’s not possible, then at least for little Emma and our dog, who’s just had an operation? It’s simply too cold for the two of them to stay outside.” I was speaking so fast that I nearly stumbled over my words.

A smile spread over the old woman’s face. “My dear child,” she said. I was amazed that she spoke without an accent. “You think that you can come to my house shortly before Christmas—a family in need of shelter—and I’d make you sleep in my barn? What do you take me for?”

She stepped aside and made an inviting hand gesture. “Bring in the child and the dog immediately. We’ll catch our death of cold if we keep standing outside.”

“But this is a big dog. Really big,” I said. I marked Baby’s height at my upper thigh.

“He won’t be afraid of me,” she said.