The Lily Pond Read Free

expectations, she was very wrong. In the Söderberg home, she is a boarder, not a member of the family.

    The first evening Stephie is invited into the dining room for dinner with the doctor and his wife. The doctor asks afew distracted questions about Stephie’s parents in Vienna and her father’s work. Stephie tells him how the Germans forced Papa to close down his private practice two years ago. Now he works at the Jewish hospital, where the patients are dying for want of medicines.
    At that, Dr. Söderberg looks uncomfortable and changes the subject, turning to his wife and complaining about the new nurse in his office.
    “She pays no attention to detail,” he grumbles. Stephie soon stops listening and finishes her dinner in silence.
    After dinner, when Mrs. Söderberg has told Elna she can serve the coffee in the parlor, she turns to Stephie.
    “Good night, dear,” she says.
    Obviously, she doesn’t want Stephie to spend the evening with them. Stephie mumbles good night, thanks them for dinner, and withdraws to her room.
    Something is bothering her. Where is Putte, the family dog, whom she got to walk so often last summer that he almost felt like her own? What if he’s gone to live with Karin and Olle? As soon as the possibility crosses her mind, she’s so upset she nearly starts to cry. If Putte had been here, he could have slept on her bed.

    The next morning Stephie wakes up early. It’s Sunday, and silence reigns outside her closed bedroom door. She’d liketo get up and use the bathroom, but until she knows that the doctor and his wife are up, she doesn’t dare. Around nine she hears the front door close and tiptoes down the hall to the bathroom at the far end. Afterward, she heads toward the only open door; it leads to the kitchen, where Stephie finds Elna preparing a breakfast tray. Elna tells her that Mrs. Söderberg always breakfasts in bed, and that on Sundays the doctor goes for a morning walk and has only coffee when he comes back. He never eats anything before lunch, Elna explains to Stephie.
    “How about you? Are you hungry?”
    Stephie nods.
    “Sit down here, and I’ll get you something once I’ve taken the tray in.”
    When she returns, Elna gives Stephie a cup of tea and a cheese sandwich and has a cup of coffee herself. Elna shows her the bread box, and where the butter and cheese are kept in the pantry, a big walk-in cupboard. Starting tomorrow, Stephie is supposed to make her own breakfast and her lunch sandwiches for school, Elna tells her. And she’s to have dinner with Elna in the kitchen, unless Mrs. Söderberg gives other instructions.
    “Who’s paying your way, your parents?” Elna asks curiously. “Do they send money from abroad?”
    Stephie blushes. No, her parents have no money to send. Everything they had is gone, confiscated by the Nazis. Her beautiful, elegant mamma is now someone’s maid, just likeElna. But she doesn’t say any of this out loud. And she doesn’t tell Elna that some of the money Aunt Märta and Uncle Evert are paying the Söderbergs for her room and board comes from the Swedish relief committee; they took up a charity collection on her behalf. She doesn’t even say she’s been awarded a scholarship for “gifted girls of little means” to pay for her schoolbooks.
    All she says is “My foster parents.”
    Stephie spends the whole long Sunday in her room while the sun shines outside her tall window. Everything is unfamiliar. Her window looks out not onto the park, but onto the courtyard with the rubbish bins and the shed. A high wall separates their courtyard from the one next door, with rubbish bins and a shed of its own. The only difference she can see is that there is a green bush in one corner of the next courtyard. She could, of course, have taken a walk in the park, but to do that, she would have had either to ask for a key or ring the doorbell to get back in. She doesn’t want to trouble Elna unnecessarily. Not to mention that Sven might