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“Not another thought,” Herr Weilbacher declared. “Please, do me this favor,” he pleaded, looking sweetly sad as he added, “It has been so long since my Tessa has been gone from me.”
When I agreed, his face lit up. Chatting cheerily, he led me to a dining room ringed with ferns and orchids where gleaming silver and cut glass on white linen caught the glorious morning light. The waiters all seemed to know Herr Weilbacher, and if they were unenthusiastic about Rosie’s presence in their domain, his good humor—and perhaps a history of genially distributed tips—overcame their dismay.
“Now, what would you enjoy for breakfast?” he asked, rubbing his hands together with anticipatory relish.
“Anything, as long as it’s not oatmeal,” I said and listened, dazed, as he ordered for us while keeping up a steady stream of amiable small talk. Soon a team of waiters delivered large trays bearing tea and coffee, and boiled eggs, and rolls with butter and marmalade, and sausages, and oranges and melon.
I thought it was all delicious, but Herr Weilbacher’s face twisted as he chewed and swallowed a forkful of meat. “This is not so good as our sausages at home,” he told me in a low voice and then explained, “Like serious Jews, Muslims eat no pork and so: there is rarely any sausage worth eating in Egypt, not even in hotels that cater to Europeans. This sausage is fit only for dogs.” His face lit up again. “But we are in luck: here is a dog!” he cried and slipped a tidbit to Rosie.
“Oh, don’t feed her from the table,” I objected.
“It is only a tiny piece,” he said, winking. “When I was a boy, my brothers and I fed Tessa, just so.”
“But didn’t she learn to be a beggar?”
“Of course, but she was very adorable,” he said with a shrug and a look that asked, Why should we resist?
His face was remarkable, capable of all sorts of vivid, interesting things as he spoke. Straight and serious one moment, crooked and amused the next, his expression changed as quickly as his topics, which were as varied and light as clouds racing across a spring sky. He was so interested in me and Cleveland and how I’d come to be in Cairo— why, before ten minutes had passed, he made me feel as though having breakfast with a German gentleman in an Egyptian hotel was the most natural thing in the world for a lady from Ohio.
“And where is your home, Herr Weilbacher?” I asked.
“Please,” he said, buttering another crusty roll. “Call me Karl. I am from Stuttgart, in Württemberg.” When I grew thoughtful, his mobile face quieted. “You are thinking: he was the enemy.”
“Not at all!”
He smiled at my lie, and I looked down at my plate. “We Germans are not all the same,” I heard him say in his resonant, musical voice. “Germany has a north and a south as your country does, Miss Shanklin. We southerners are quite a different breed from Prussians, who love war and wish to rule.” He leaned over the table. “The kaiser came to Stuttgart when I was a child. My friends and I threw stones at his parade,” he confessed merrily. “In the beer hall, men gave us boys pretzels when we sang silly songs or recited a rude poem about the kaiser.”
“I know just the sort of boy you must have been. I was a school-teacher,” I said, and began to speak about my students back in Little Italy. I meant to tell him about how hard they studied and how quickly they learned English, but Herr Weilbacher seemed so curious, so sympathetic …
And the truth is, I can never seem to stick to a subject, as you’ve probably noticed, and I really do apologize for that, but everything always seems so co
Fed up, the parents would decide enough was enough. A father would appear at my classroom door. Hat in hand but defiant, he would declare, “My kid don’t wa
“And the children stood there, dying inside,” I told Herr Weilbacher. “I could see it! The boys would hang their heads. The girls would weep. I could do nothing, and it just broke my heart—because honestly? What the father meant was, I’m losing my power. I am diminished every day as this child grows more knowledgeable—”
I realized suddenly that Herr Weilbacher, so charming and chatty before, had fallen utterly silent.
You simply ca
I stared at my lap, hands clawed around my napkin. “I— My apologies, Herr Weilbacher,” I stammered, trying to drop my voice an octave and to soften its harsh midwestern timbre. “One does get carried away.”
Still he said nothing. He is disgusted, I thought. Disgusted by me, by my opinions, and my loudness and my accent. He is struck speechless by disgust.
He bent and lifted Rosie, one hand cupped under her muscular behind, the other supporting her chest. She could be wary with strangers, but there was something calm and assured about his hands. He shifted Rosie to the horizontal and stroked her back all the way to her feather-duster tail. His fingers stopped moving when he felt the misshapen bones.
“She was born that way,” I said, ashamed of her and of myself. “Her tail is a defect. I know that.” I glanced up then and saw that his face had become … Well, I don’t know how to describe it except that he seemed impressed and entertained, at once.
“You are compassionate,” he said softly, as though he knew that I had saved her life by taking her for my own on the day she was born. “I was not much of a student,” he confided then, “but perhaps I would have been if I’d had such a teacher as you, Miss Shanklin.” He set Rosie on the floor decisively. “I had an appointment this morning, but it was canceled. Cairenes are so unreliable. Everything with them is inshallah—”
“If it be God’s will,” I said, remembering the word from Lillian’s stories.
“Yes, but also ‘perhaps,’ or ‘someday.’ Or ‘not bloody likely,’ as the English say. Today, I think, this is good luck. It would be my pleasure to show you something of the city, if you and Rosie would do me the honor?”
Agnes, no! Mumma cried. He’s a complete stranger, and a foreigner.
Here in Cairo, Agnes is a foreigner, too, said Mildred. And that was true, of course.
“What a lovely offer,” I said brightly. “Just let me get my hat.”
We left the lobby with Rosie trotting ahead on her leash while Herr Weilbacher pointed out the sights. “Gardens like these are among the many European amenities in this neighborhood. This part of Cairo reminds me of Paris. Have you been to Paris? No? Ach! You must see Paris someday! Notre-Dame is on an island in the Seine just as Gazirah sits between two parts of the Nile. That is the Cairo Opera House, just there. It was built to celebrate the completion of the Suez Canal. Do you enjoy opera, Miss Shanklin?” When I allowed as how I’d never had the opportunity to hear one, he cried, “Then we must make an opportunity. I’ll try to get tickets for a performance. Perhaps Aïda! What could be better than Aïda in Cairo?”