Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker(23)

She was up and through the door so quickly that she’d have bumped into Dirk had he not retreated. All he saw was an ebbing of dress material on the bottom step before his eye could really focus. She rose out of sight as if in an updraft. He waited a moment and then approached the chamber, rapping lightly.

“Oh, you just missed the Frau. She is longing to meet you,” said Pfeiffer, peaceably enough.

“I’m surprised not to have had the pleasure yet.”

“Oh, well, pleasure.” The husband was ruminative, riffling some papers. “She is a retiring type, the Frau Pfeiffer. I can tell she will come forward soon. She isn’t used to having someone else live in the house. Our previous help has always come from nearby, and left in the evenings.”

“I don’t enter the barn. But in the house you haven’t told me what rooms to avoid, if she doesn’t care for company.”

“She’ll do the avoiding, never fear.” But he relented. “She’s from a different tradition. She will have nothing against you, but your lack of connection with anyone we know personally will take some time for her to overcome. In her society, she wouldn’t have generally met someone like you.” He sighed, and added almost under his breath, “Or me.”

“I am uncertain . . .”

“She keeps to the garden and her own chamber, across the hall from mine.” He looked up under his bushy brows. “You’ll have deduced that we accommodate Frau Pfeiffer. I’m sure at your age you know what relations between a man and a woman are.”

“Oh, I’m not questioning—and, no, I’m hardly in the situation—”

He laughed. “Well, if you don’t, you will soon enough. It helps keep the peace that the Frau and I should retire to separate sleeping chambers. But don’t worry about affection. I’m devoted to her, and always will be.”

“It’s hardly my place—”

Gerwig Pfeiffer stopped humming. “You’re quite right. Let’s to this day’s lesson in availabilities of glue, shall we? There are three sorts we use, depending both on the wetness of the atmosphere and the quality of the rag content we’ve boiled up. See here.” They bent over their work. Upstairs, a door slammed, once, then twice more, as if practicing outrage.





29.


The next morning Herr Pfeiffer had to be out to meet a steamship arriving with a shipment of rags. It was a drizzly day, and the boys were cross to be kept inside. Dirk hunted about the nursery for something to entertain them. He discovered a stack of woodcut prints. They’d been discarded from some printing job, probably for misalignment, as they all tilted at the same angle. The boys had used charcoal crayon on some of them. Dirk selected an image of a man beating a donkey. He cut the page up into fourteen or fifteen segments and shuffled them. “Now you are to put it back into the right form,” he told them.

“I wonder if the donkey will have run away,” said Moritz.

“How could he do that?” asked Franz.

“Dirk’s scissors have cut through the harness.”

The boys weren’t much amused by the puzzle, but they dallied and fought over it. The pieces of paper got gummy and stuck to their fingertips. It was a bit of a disaster.

Then a voice from across the utility courtyard: Frau Pfeiffer calling for assistance. Her tone was even. Moritz rose to go, but Franz was bigger and spilled him on the floor to get by. The older brother ran upstairs at once—a covered bridge-way spanned the courtyard on the third level, so those on high floors in either building wouldn’t need to go down and up so many stairs.

Moritz was sulking when Franz returned, carrying a small clay flask with a wide neck. “Mutter would like you to open this, if you can.”

He took it. Something heavy and liquid inside. The mouth of the jug had been covered with a square of cheesecloth. Wax had been melted across the top to keep the vessel secured and, perhaps, the liquid from spilling over or drying out or spoiling. “What is it, do you know?”

“Paint, I think. But I don’t know the color.”

Dirk tried to wrestle the wax off, but it had hardened to stone. He pulled the leatherfold out of his pocket and unwrapped his gnome-head knife, and he set to work carving chunks of wax off the edge.

“Let me,” said Moritz. “Franz got to bring the paint. It’s my turn.”

“I’m bigger,” said Franz. “You’d only stab yourself.”

Dirk wouldn’t hear of it. “It’s not a very sharp knife, but it’s sharp enough. It could slip. What does your mother use the paint for?”

“To paint with,” said Franz.”

“Well, think of that. I really meant: What does she paint?” His hand slipped and a short line of crimson showed up along the edge of his thumb.

“It’s red paint, then,” said Franz, not understanding.

“It’s the red paint we all have inside us.” Dirk went to the window, to rinse his hand in the rainwater that still splashed down.

“Stop,” cried Franz.

“It’s only blood,” said Dirk, but pivoted as a chair overturned.

Moritz had grabbed the blackened knife and was hounding his brother with it. “You never let me do anything you rotten stinking shitty!”

“Gott in Himmel, give me that!” roared Dirk, and joined the chase. The boys were too quick, and tumbled out of the room and halfway up the stairs hollering.