Read Online The Madonna on the Moon by Rolf Bauerdick - Free Book Online

his mouth and nose and he fell into the snow as if struck by lightning. Without a moment’s hesitation both Grandfather and Dimitru jumped into the river. Blinded by
the wind-whipped snow, they fought their way through the icy chest-deep water toward the screams of Agneta and Antonia. While the nag thrashed around to keep from drowning and just got more and
more entangled in the harness, Grandmother held on to the wooden stanchions of the wagon for dear life with one hand and pressed Antonia to her with the other.
    When Grandfather and Dimitru finally reached them through the biting cold, Antonia hung stiff and blue from her mother’s arm. The men expended their last bit of strength and pulled the two
of them to the bank. Dimitru immediately tore Antonia’s wet clothes from her body and wrapped her in a horse blanket. “Rub, rub!” he shouted to Nicolai. “Rub your sister
warm or she’ll die!” Then Dimitru’s eyes fell on his father. Laszlo lay dead in the snow, a blood-red wreath spreading around his head.
    “God give me a long life to mourn you,” Dimitru cried out and turned to Ilja and Nicolai. “Take the horses and get mother and daughter into bed at once!” He clapped his
hands, and the Percherons got to their feet. “Ilja, take your daughter, and you, Nicolai, take your mother. Mount and ride home! I’ll come on foot.”
    “No,” Ilja protested. “We’re not leaving you and your father here alone.”
    Dimitru didn’t listen. Instead, he raged and howled the soul out of his body, uttering curses so foul that the shivering Agneta blushed red and was infused with a moment of warmth.
“Leave me be!” the Gypsy screamed and clapped the horses’ flanks with the flat of his hand, sending them trotting off. Dimitru struggled out of his stiff frozen coat and took off
his shoes and his pants. Then he started running. “A Gypsy is tough!” he screamed into the storm. “And I’m a Gypsy. A Gypsy! I’ll live forever! Live to mourn my father
forever. Father, dear Father!” Then his voice was swallowed by the storm.
    Thanks to the endurance of the Percherons, Grandfather’s family arrived safely in the village an hour later. Neighbors hurried over to wrap the half-frozen family in thick feather
comforters and brew gallons of peppermint tea.
    Amazingly it was little Antonia who was up and about first. By the next morning she was completely recovered, and Ilja, too, aside from a powerful head cold, seemed to have survived unscathed.
But his wife was so thoroughly chilled that she couldn’t warm up despite a double goose-down comforter. For three days her body was shaken by frightening chills so that it was all Grandfather
could do to get a spoonful of hot elderberry juice into her mouth. Around the clock, Ilja and Nicolai watched by Agneta’s bedside, rubbing her hands to get them warm and laying hot towels on
her forehead.
    After a while, Grandmother seemed to get better. She even sat up a bit and was able to lift a cup of honey-sweetened milk to her mouth with her own hand. But then the cold in her body turned to
heat. Agneta was burning up, and the mercury in the fever thermometer rose above one hundred four degrees. She groaned, was racked with chest pains, and could hardly breathe. She coughed and
vomited. When they finally called Dr. Bogdan from Apoldasch, he diagnosed acute pneumonia. The only hope for Agneta was a new drug called penicillin. He didn’t have any himself, but some
could almost surely be obtained from György the druggist in Kronauburg. Hermann Schuster leaped into the saddle. When he returned ten hours later with the promised tablets, my grandma had just
died in Granddad Ilja’s arms.
    Foresters found Dimitru in Apoldasch at the place where the road to the Schweisch Valley and Kronauburg forks off. In the blizzard he had run in the wrong direction, gone in a circle several
times, and finally completely lost his orientation in the darkness of the night. The