Eva Ibbotson - The Star of Kazan

Things were done to people in Bad Haxenfeld which you might think people would pay not to have done to them. They were dipped into very hot water and very cold water, so that they turned from pink to blue and back again. They had steam blown over their bodies; they were pummelled and massaged and lowered into tubs of evil-smelling mud — and every year the doctors invented new treatments like blowing hot smoke into the patients’ mouths to cure them of toothache, or fixing air pumps on their bodies to extract the rheumatism from their joints.

You might imagine therefore that people would stay away, but you would be wrong. Rich people flocked to the place. They seemed to love being bullied by the doctors, and whether they got better or not, they certainly thought they did because they had paid such an amazing amount of money.

And round the baths with their smell of hydrogen sulphide and clouds of steam, there sprang up luxury hotels and casinos and ballrooms and tennis courts and bandstands. Parks were planted with rare trees; winter gardens were built; fabulous shops and cafes opened, and at night music was played in the hotels and in the pump room, where people paid all over again to drink the water which tasted so disgusting that it had to do them good.

And it was here, in the largest and most expensive hotel of all — the Hotel Majestic — that Frau Edeltraut’s old uncle, the Baron Conrad von Keppel, now lived.

Annika sat beside her mother in the carriage, with Hermann on the other side. Hermann hated missing his routine, but he wanted to practise shooting at the Bad Haxenfeld rifle range.

There had been a surprise when the carriage clattered into the courtyard to pick them up. Instead of Wenzel driving, it was Zed. He got down to open the door for Annika and her mother, but he wouldn’t touch his cap to Hermann and Hermann started to grumble as soon as they were on the road.

‘He ought to treat me with proper respect,’ he said angrily to his mother.

‘Hermann, leave it. I told you it won’t be for long,’ she said under her breath. And to Annika, ‘Zed helps my uncle when his own servant has a day off. He wheels him to the bathhouse and he makes himself useful in the hotel.’

When they had driven for nearly an hour the countryside began to change: there were hills now, and the colours of the ground grew richer. Ten minutes later they had reached the town.

Annika turned her head from right to left and back again, taking in the large exotic trees that lined the road; the luxurious villas and stately hotels. They passed a building with a brilliantly gilded roof and a flight of steps leading up to an ornate door, but when Annika asked what it was, her mother shuddered.

‘It’s the casino,’ she said. ‘It’s a dreadful place. People go there and gamble away all their money and when they lose they borrow more and start again.’

‘There’s a clump of trees at the back where people go to shoot themselves when they’re ruined,’ said Hermann gleefully.

But the people passing by in the promenade did not look at all as though they were going to shoot themselves; even the ones in wheelchairs or walking with sticks seemed to be enjoying themselves. They passed chauffeurs washing limousines and a uniformed porter crossing the road to the park with five dogs of assorted sizes on a long lead. No one at Bad Haxenfeld had to walk their own dogs or look after their own motors.

Then they drove through an archway and into the courtyard of the Hotel Majestic, and while Zed saw to the horses, they made their way into the building.

Waves of warm air from the steam heating wafted towards them. There was the scent of pot pourri from porcelain bowls in the hall. An orange tree grew in a tub by the reception desk. Winter was not allowed to trouble the guests of the Majestic.

‘Baron von Keppel is expecting you,’ said the head porter at the desk, and clicked his fingers for an underling to take them to the lift.

The Baron did not get up when they came in; getting up was something which took him a long time because his joints were crippled and bent with arthritis, but he welcomed them jovially and insisted on kissing not only his niece, but Annika.

‘Well, well, a pretty little thing, isn’t she?’ he said. ‘You’ve done well, Edeltraut. Don’t know why you kept her hidden all these years.’

Conrad von Keppel was the brother of Edeltraut’s mother; even before he was struck down by illness he must have been smaller and slighter than the von Tannenbergs. His hair was white, he smelt strongly of toilet water and his blue eyes were keen and alert. He offered them wine and biscuits, but Frau Edeltraut said that she would go with Hermann to the rifle range and come back to the hotel in an hour to pick up Annika and take her to the lawyers.

‘Don’t hurry back,’ said Uncle Conrad. ‘Annika can come with me to the baths; I like to be accompanied by pretty girls. You’ve brought the boy, I take it?’

‘Yes. He’s downstairs. But don’t keep her; our appointment is at eleven.’

Zed was waiting with the wheelchair, wearing an armband with the name of the hotel on it. Though he had refused to touch his cap to Hermann he saluted the Baron respectfully, tucking a rug round his knees, and it was clear that he was used to working in the spa.

He began to push the chair along the promenade towards the big bathhouse, and Annika walked beside him. Uncle Conrad seemed to know a great many people and they stopped again and again while he was greeted by ladies in enormous hats, or men on horseback or other invalids on their way to the baths who stopped their chairs beside him.

‘That was Lady Georgina Fairweather,’ he said after a very tall willowy woman with a huge muff had greeted him. ‘You wouldn’t think it, but her kidneys are in dreadful shape — completely covered in fungus. They’re putting her on to thermal effervescence. And that man there in the bowler hat, he used to be the Dutch Ambassador to the Solomon Islands, and when he was out there he got an enormous tapeworm in his gut. They’re trying to draw it out with hydro-suction, but pieces keep breaking off.’

Though she was sorry about Lady Georgina’s kidneys and the tapeworm, Annika looked about her with pleasure, enjoying the elegant shop windows, the well-dressed people, the hanging baskets of greenery on the lamp-posts. This was a different world to Spittal.

They were getting near the baths now and the treatment rooms. The smell of hydrogen sulphide grew stronger, more wheelchairs joined the procession. And now, coming towards them with towels round their necks, was a group of men looking very damp and clean.

As they came closer, the Baron whispered, ‘Ah, the dentists, delightful people. They’re going home tomorrow — I shall miss them.’

Annika too was pleased to see the dentists, who had been on the station platform when she arrived. It made her feel established, as though she belonged. Not all the dentists were there, but there were at least a dozen who had gone to the treatment rooms early and were now going into the town. They stopped by the Baron’s chair, greeted him and advised him to be careful about the water in the first of the hot pools.

‘The temperature’s very high in there today,’ said a tall dentist with a moustache. ‘I’d miss that one out.’

‘You wouldn’t believe how much I’ve learned from them,’ confided the Baron when the dentists had wandered on in search of coffee and cakes. ‘You see, when you’re in the treatment rooms there are only curtains between one cubicle and the next and you can hear everything your neighbours are saying. Apparently the Duke of Arnau bit right through the thumb of his dentist when he was doing a filling. And the new zinc treatment for gums is absolutely useless, but the patients go on begging for it.’ He shook his head. ‘Next week it’s undertakers, so I suppose I shall learn about coffins, but it won’t be the same. There’s always something so fascinating about teeth.’ He looked over his shoulder at Zed. ‘Do you remember the jewellers who came at Christmas? Three hundred, no less — and the stories they told would make your hair stand on end. You don’t have to leave Bad Haxenfeld to know everything that’s going on in the world!’