Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker(22)

He took them out. They walked the streets of the upper town and then wandered down to the water. The great steamboat that had brought Dirk here at the start of the summer was nearing the jetty, making a silhouette in front of the ice-grey Swiss Alps in the distance. Dirk and the boys climbed on the rocks, enjoying the spray and the noon light. After that, they made a circuit of the town by the lanes that had grown up outside the medieval walls. By the time he had exhausted the boys and returned them to the household, the laundry maid was done with the washing and had already hung it to dry on ropes slung between house and barn. She sat down with Dirk, the boys, and their father, and they all made a late lunch out of headcheese, mustard, and brown bread.

“Take them up to the nursery and read to them or something,” said Pfeiffer when the meal was through. “I have to go see someone about an unpaid bill of lading.”

“I don’t think I am a governess,” said Dirk.

“I don’t think so either, but try,” replied his boss.

The nursery, which doubled as a haphazard schoolroom, faced the courtyard between house and barn. Settling the boys with graphite and paper—there was always a lot of paper in this house—he turned when flashes of light began to arc across the walls. In the summer heat that lingered into early autumn, the glaring white sheets had already dried, it seemed. With large motions, the laundress was harvesting the dried sheets and table runners.

“Tillie,” called Moritz, “let me see if I can hit you through the sheet with this ball!”

“If you muck up this laundry,” began the girl, Tilda, but left the threat unstated.

“Sit down and draw,” said Dirk, “or I’ll teach you something about hitting.”

He stood at the windowsill and watched. The sheets were like pieces of cloth paper, in a way. Shining panels. He noticed four hands above the lines, untying knots, folding the bedding away. Frau Pfeiffer was helping.

He might catch a glimpse of her if the laundry came down in the right sequence. He watched as, behind the remaining panels, the two women worked together, folding great cloths in a kind of shadow-puppetry dance sequence.

Now this one must be the last. He would see what she looked like. Perhaps she was monstrous, and kept to herself out of courtesy for others.

Not yet—what revealed itself wasn’t Frau Pfeiffer but yet another panel more like a banner than bedding. That is to say, it was a sheet upon which something had been painted. Dirk made a tchhh sound, and the boys looked up.

“Good work, Mutti!” cried one of them.

“Whatever is that?” asked Dirk.

Tapered hands, more refined than a washerwoman’s, loosened the pennant from its ropes. The sheet swooped around in a zephyr caused by quick movement, and Frau Pfeiffer disappeared through a door into the barn before Dirk could learn anything of her but that she could move swiftly.

“It is Mutter’s drawing, and here’s mine,” said Franz, so Moritz pushed in front of his big brother to show his own work.

“But what was it a painting of?” asked Dirk. “I couldn’t see.”

“Oh, something,” replied Franz, “or something else.”





28.


Several mornings after this, Dirk approached the small salon where Herr Pfeiffer oversaw the affairs of his household and his trade. The door was halfway open. Dirk paused, not to eavesdrop but to wait for an acceptable moment to enter.

“But you’ve taken in another hobbled goose, I hear.” A woman’s tones, arresting to Dirk because they didn’t sound like anything he’d ever heard before. It reminded him of his first exposure to the voice of the ’cello. Hers was a pearly instrument that made of workaday German something more velveteen, throaty. What she said, the way she put things. Emphases, sudden diminuendos. “I’ve seen him, you know. He wears a mark of the woods.”

“He’ll do just fine here. Trust me on this. He’s not a local boy.”

“I can tell that. Is he altogether put together?”

“He’s a good lad, and no known family. Don’t fuss about it.”

“Well.” There was a silence and the sound of fingers drumming on a tabletop. “I am trying to ask you your business with this boy.”

“Ah, Nastaran. He is taking over the duties of the lad who had to leave to tend to his grandfather in the Thurgau.”

“But sleeping here in our own home? Is that proper? Are our affairs to be public property?”

“The past assistants were all local, as you know very well. They all had plenty of scope for backstairs chatter if they’d been inclined. But they weren’t, and this one isn’t either, I can tell. Now, were you here to ask for more supplies?” The husband’s voice tired and consoling. “I will get you what you need.”

“You can’t give me what I need.” Oh, the ’cello in that sentence. “But you can get me a pot of blue the next time you are in Munich. I’d welcome that.”

“What shade?”

The silence went on for so long that Dirk began to inch backward. Then she said, “I want the sky, Gerwig. Either you know the color of the sky or you don’t.”

“You should rely on it that I don’t, my love. Give me a sample of cloth or paper and I’ll see if I can match it. I’ll undoubtedly get it wrong, but perhaps not so wrong as to cause offense.”