CINDERELLA AND HER SISTERS

This is a new story…

A novella probably. I’m starting with 19,000 words and get to start anew. I get a chance for a redo on a story I wrote and put aside years ago. But now I kinda know where I want to go with it.

Let me explain something.

I started this story arc, an idea for a novel of interconnected stories taking place in Vienna before the First World War, during it, and after, with the post-war revolutions and civic unrest. It’s one of those things that just sits in your head until you do something with it.

But this is what I want to give the reader…the best I have to offer.

Let’s hope you like it.

CINDERELLA AND HER SISTERS

*

CHAPTER ONE

1917

I

Anna stands over the washtub staring into the emptiness of the courtyard as the steam surrounds her and the mist gathers in her hair. Her mind is lost at the moment, in another place—or maybe it’s in another time altogether, she doesn’t know anymore—and she brings herself out of her absorption with a quick snap of her head. She considers the reality of her situation, as well as the hopelessness of it all, and surrenders herself to whatever the future has to offer. She paws at her hair absently, feeling the limp curls that frame her haggard expression and tries pushing the curls out of her face, under the kerchief she’s wearing. She pats at the sweat on her face with the back of her wet forearm, and begins stirring the sheets in the washtub with her paddle.

Ordinarily, Anna’s not the type of woman to let her mind wander aimlessly. She’s always been the sort of woman to be in control of her life, and of her destiny, if not the particulars surrounding her life. Over the past three years however, she’s found herself to be a woman of singular purpose, with an agenda that’s always been more in line with her own self-determination than anything else. She likes the sound of that word and what it means to her, especially the personal revelation it seems to signify for her, and everything around her. She doesn’t look at it as a single word, but as an idea, or the expression of an idea, and smiles at the thought of herself ten years earlier when she’d first heard it spoken. It means survival, she tells herself, and if that isn’t what the word means, maybe it should, she thinks as she continues stirring the sheets with the paddle.

There should be no compromises as far as life goes; and no compromising as far as she’s concerned with herself either. One does what they have to in order to survive, she tells herself; it’s something she’s resigned herself to, more than something that’s been forced upon her. It’s a matter of acceptance rather than blind compliance. She works for the sake of the children, she tells herself; but she also works in place of her sisters—just as much as she works for Poppa and the Countess. She works, in order for all of them to survive. Anna has always put them before herself, and lately, she's been wondering what that leaves her. When does her life begin now that she's found the place where it ends?

She doesn’t feel the cold as she stands outside; the steam from the tub keeps her warm, but the work wears her out. She must look like a mist monster, she tells herself—if there is such a thing—and she breathes in deep as the steam envelopes her completely. She looks at her reddened hands as she dips them into the hot water of the tub. She picks up one of the sheets and folds it in half, and then folds it once again and slips a dowel through one end so she can wring the sheet out. She watches the water drip along the length of it, melting into the snow underfoot. There are tiny ice crystals of snow floating in front of her, and she finds herself thinking of The Snow Queen, wondering if it’s possible her heart has turned to ice as well, because she doesn’t feel the cold.

She feels the damp penetrating her dress though, and welcomes it like an unfamiliar lover. The snow has melted around the tub, and the water makes a mud puddle where she stands, or walks about. She unwinds the steaming sheet and throws it over the clothesline. She watches it steam, and then reaches up to stretch it tight. She picks up an old tree branch she’s been using for the last three years, and props the line up so that the weight of the wet sheet won’t pull it down into the mud.

That’s the last of it, she tells herself. She looks at the sheets lining the courtyard, knowing that the first sheets she put up earlier are already frozen and will have to be brought into the kitchen later, with the rest of them. She brushes the snow from a block of wood she keeps to the side for herself, and sits down as she tries to remember what the courtyard used to look like three years ago; it’s a game she sometimes plays with herself—remembering how life used to be. She finds a crumpled cigarette in the breast pocket of her Mackinaw, and tries to straighten it as she searches for a match. The small trees, with their neat, white benches, tucked underneath them, are gone now, used for firewood ages ago. Just the darkened stumps remain, looking like old blackened fence posts sticking up out of the packed snow. They had to make room for the wounded in the early years of the War, they told her, and the trees were the first innocent casualties, like the casualties they brought back from the front at Caporetto. That was during the first months of the War, before Anna had even arrived. Of course, that was in the heat of a clear summer, when no one thought any different about laying the wounded out in the courtyard. And even when the rain started, no one thought the War would carry on into the Winter.

The roses that once climbed through the empty trellises and bloomed with saucer sized flowers, have long since withered and died. She would’ve loved to have seen those she thinks, as she finds a match. And the rhododendrons. All of the flowers that once lined the walkways and the manicured lawns are gone now, reduced to a memory of mud every time the wounded are brought in and laid out in the dark halls. The shrubs that lined the western wall are gone as well—what was it that doctor used to call it? The Wailing Wall? she tells herself. They were the last to go. Now, when the rains come, the water puddles up against the wall and snakes its way into the hospital. Last year—was it last year, or two years ago?—one of the doctors said the shrubs would have to go, and she wept as she helped him pull them out one afternoon. She can’t even remember what they were anymore. He told her, she remembers that much about it as she holds the unlit match in front of her, but she’s since forgotten. Juniper? Jasmine? Holly? All Anna remembers is how they scratched her arms, and bled sap all over her hands. She thumbs the match alive, and lights her cigarette.

Anna stares into the flame of the match, and remembers the softness of the doctor's hands; there was a tenderness to his touch, and a depth to his understanding that was beyond her own. And there was the passion they had for each other. But like everyone else she's known over the last three years, and everyone else she's tried to hold on to, he left. He went south, to the Tyrol and the Front—back home to his wife, she imagines, as she takes a deep pull on the bent cigarette. He tried writing to her, even though she told him not to. When the letters stopped, Anna knew he was dead. A piece of her died with his memory and she still grieves for him when the loneliness of her life seems impossible to confront; or when the solitude and separation of the life she once knew overwhelms her. She doesn’t grieve for him the same way she grieved for her husband; the brief love affair she’d had with him, and the love she’d had for her husband, were of a different sort. The one was an awkward comfort, a duty to her family, while the other had an intensity and a physicality within it she doubted she’d ever know again.

When she feels the familiar desire well up inside of her, she squeezes her thighs shut, as though she’s shutting out an overwhelming love, and puffs on her cigarette. There’s no time for fantasy lovers, she tells herself. Besides, she doesn’t think she has any love left to give. The well is empty. Dried up.

Instead, Anna loses herself within her chores. She lets her mind wander the distant hills surrounding the old monastery, and tells herself she’ll never let herself fall in love again.