The Noon Lady of Towitta Read Online Free Page B

see why. So yes, I admitted, I was notorious for being put inside a prison awaiting trial for murder. Prison was a world she knew nothing about and she was curious. She asked me if I was willing to share such memories. Well we will see how we go. I told her she would have to be patient with me as I needed time to think about what tales I would share.
    I found that after keeping secrets for so long, being asked to talk of this time was like someone taking the stopper out of the bottle containing an impatient genie. And so we always spoke about my life and family, rarely hers I noticed. I let her rush on with her own views about the Schippans, because until now I’d never discussed them. The trouble was where to begin. I thought the next time we met and if she had enough time, I would tell her about the life of a Wendish family in South Australia. It would take time to explain how one family came to suffer so much misery. I thought of keeping her interest by telling her a little at a time of our family, unfolding our story like a fairytale. This would give her a background to my life and how I ended up in this prison of a hospital. It would also help to make the days go by, though I know there are few left for me. But from the night following that first talk the nightmares returned.

2
    My father had told me and my brothers and sisters the story of his life many times as we sat around the kitchen table in the evenings. What he didn’t remember or chose not to tell, his sister, Aunt Giscelia, told us when we stayed with her. Like Father she was a good storyteller and made the family’s trials and tribulations sound more like nightmarish fairytales. From these tales I thought I had learnt all there was to know about Father’s and Aunt Giscelia’s life in Germany, their journey to South Australia, and their life when they arrived.
    But that night, after the first probe by Sister Kathleen, my peace of my mind was spoiled by having to think again about my family’s past. I lay awake reliving the events that befell my parents, my brothers and sisters, my grandparents and myself, pondering on the life of my father. From the time we were old enough to listen he told me and my brothers and sisters chilling tales of his early life in the Fatherland, intending them as a warning. He told us they were true stories that we should believe and learn from. But fact was twisted with fiction making it difficult for us to tell what was real and what was make-believe.
    When Sister Kathleen next visited I was impatient to tell her about my father’s and his sister’s early life in Germany. ‘I know you said you wanted to hear my family’s story but I don’t know if you will believe me because it was so tragic. Are you sure you really want to hear all this?’
    â€˜Of course I do, Mary.’
    â€˜All right, but it is a long story and will take many days to tell.’
    So I started to tell Sister Kathleen a story of events that happened long before I was born, so bizarre that it seemed not connected to me in any way.
    Mathes – my father – and his sister were rescued from a bleak forestry life and adopted by their uncle and aunt when he was about ten. My grandmother and grandfather endured great hardship in their foresters’ life. According to the family legend, my grandparents had met at the annual Cottbus May Day fete. After catching the roving eye of the gypsy-like musician, Josef, who was travelling with a group of troubadours, Mascha had run away with him when they moved to the next town. They travelled as entertainers until Mascha fell ill shortly before her first baby was due and they settled near his parents’ homeland on the borders of Bohemia and Silesia. Josef became a forester and they lived in a hut on the edge of a dark medieval forest. They never found time for a wedding; snow, mud, rain and new babies seemed to delay all their good intentions. While my grandmother was