"Janice Wycliffe."
The woman looked down at her, blinking, and Janice repeated it. She tried to pronounce it, but the "j" and "wy" sounds were difficult for her. She made a try at it, then shrugged apologetically, and Janice thought of her middle name, Irene. The woman looked blank when she said it, then she spelled it, using the German pronunciation for the letters. The woman smiled and nodded. "Irene," she said, pronouncing it "ee-ray-nah".
"Sehr gut, Irene."
"Wie heisst du?" Janice asked, then she suddenly realized she had spoken in the familiar form and started to apologize. "Es tut mir leid…"
She waved it aside with a smile and a chuckle. "Annalisa Grevenburg. Auch Anna oder Lisa. Liebchen."
It was the second time the woman had addressed her with an affectionate form, and what had once been a dull grammatical oddity now seemed pregnant with meaning and strangely thrilling. "OK. Lisa."
"OK." Lisa repeated with a chuckle, walking to the door, then she turned arid smiled at Janice before she went back out into the hall. "Auf wiedersehen. Irene."
The direct force of her smile was like a hard punch in the stomach, and Janice felt weak and shaky as she shuffled her feet awkwardly and nodded… "Auf wiedersehen, Lisa…"
She was almost totally exhausted when she went to bed, but sleep still evaded her because her head was spinning with what had happened and from the brutal force of the crash lessons. The peculiar, unsettled feeling in her stomach was still there, not unpleasant but very disturbing. Janice was surprised that she wasn't shocked with herself when she identified it as sexual desire for Lisa. The tantalizing, alluring scent Lisa used seemed to be lingering in the room like a haunting reminder of her thrilling presence, and Janice carefully examined her memory for how it had felt to rest against Lisa with her smooth, white arm around her shoulders. The memory was fragmentary and dim because of the outburst of emotions while she'd cried, but there were tiny remnants of sensation. She savored them, smiling to herself in the darkness. Then she finally slept and dreamed of making love with Lisa.
Janice got up late the next morning, and she raced to her first class. It was with Professor Klampfurt, a particularly stern, stone-faced man, and her heart pounded with trepidation as she ran up the stairs a few seconds after time for the class to begin. The class was already seated when she sidled in the door, and all the seats in the rear were filled. And the professor was taking the skin off the ears of a red-faced, trembling Austrian youth for coming in late. Janice experienced a moment of panic as the professor's eyes turned toward her, but he simply nodded neutrally to her and indicated a vacant seat near the front. She tiptoed down the aisle as he made a few final acid, cutting remarks to the student, and she sat down and humped up, waiting her turn. But the professor simply began thumbing through his notes and organizing them for the lecture. Several of the students glanced at her than at the professor in mild surprise, then dived for their pencils as the lecture began.
He seemed to speak more deliberately, not remarkably so but at a pace that she was able to follow by working furiously on her notes. She looked over her notes in satisfaction as he closed his notebook and walked from the lecture podium to the desk, the usual preliminary to dismissing the class. There was a surreptitious shuffle of papers as students quietly began to get ready to leave. The professor looked down at his desk, then turned. He waved to the class in dismissal, and looked at her. "Fraulein Vy-cliff-eh. Bleiben sic, bitte."
All of the students looked at her as they got up to leave, and there was more than mild surprise on their faces. He had addressed her in the formal manner, mandatory for students to use in addressing professors but unheard of in the other direction. Also, private conferences with professors for beginning students were unknown. Their shortcomings were a matter addressed in a loud tone and at long length by the professors in open class. A cold stab of terror dug through Janice as she held her books in her lap and waited.
The professor gathered up his notes and books as the class filed out the door. He glanced around the classroom, then looked at her and asked in slow, clear German if she had understood the lecture. She swallowed and licked her lips dryly. "Jawohl, Herr Professor," she squeaked, then quickly added, "dankesehr."
He nodded slightly and looked down at the floor, thinking for a moment, then he looked back at her and asked in the same slow voice if she had any questions. She was becoming more terrified, and she also wanted to go to the bathroom. She shook her head rapidly. "Nein, Herr Professor, dankesehr."
He nodded again, then cleared his throat and gave her precise direction for getting to her next class. When he finished he asked if she understood the directions, and she nodded wordlessly, feeling her face alternately flushing and going pale. His face almost relaxed in a wintery smile as he dismissed her, and she fled in panic.
She got to her next class on time for a change, even though she'd had to make a side trip to the bathroom, and she was still wondering about Professor Klampfurt's strange behavior. Not that she didn't appreciate it, but it was completely out of character. When she came in the classroom the other students were getting seated and shuffling their books and papers around, and the professor was at the lecture podium, arranging his notes. He looked up and his eye caught hers, and he beckoned her down to the front row and pointed to a seat. Another student, a young Austrian with a crew cut, was walking toward the seat. The professor gave him a cold look, and he hesitated. The professor kept looking at him, and he turned to get a seat in the back. Janice paused, and the professor motioned her toward the seat again. She got in the seat and took her notebook out, feeling almost naked as the students around her glanced at her, and she dismissed it from her mind as the professor began lecturing.
Then it happened again – all of it. She managed to get a good set of notes from the lecture, and the professor kept her after he dismissed the class to ask if she understood the lesson and if she had any questions. She was becoming more and more puzzled by the strange, unexpected turn of events, but she couldn't muster the courage to ask him what had induced him to keep her and ask her. She replied as she had before, then he gave her directions to her next class and asked her if she understood them. She thanked him politely and told him that she did, and he dismissed her.
It happened all day, and by the time she got back to the rooming house that evening her head was swimming. On top of that, the landlady intercepted her on the stairs and said that she had a better room for her and she could move immediately if she liked. It was almost too much, and she asked the landlady why she'd suddenly discovered a better room for her. The fat, red-faced, congenial woman smiled and shrugged, saying that the room had recently come available, and she took Janice's arm and led her on up the stairs and along the hallway to show it to her. It was a much larger room with better furniture, a larger bathroom, and a good view from the window. Most of all, it had a tiny fireplace to supplement the largely ornamental hot water heating system which seemed to be ages old. She put her books on the nightstand and thanked the landlady, and the woman smiled and left the key in the door as she walked back out of the room.
When Janice went to her room to get her things and move them, there was a small square of cardboard on the bed. She picked it up and looked at it; it was a ticket to the Staatsoper for that evening. She looked at it closer. It was a box seat ticket. She slowly walked over to the window and looked down at the street. There had been tenuous, half-formed plans in her mind to go to one of the smaller concert halls that evening because it was Friday and she didn't have any classes until the following Monday. But not to the Staatsoper and certainly not a box seat. It must have cost a hundred shillings or more, and anything she spent over her weekly allowance had to be individually itemized and explained to the trustees. And if they didn't agree, it was deducted from subsequent allowances.