Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker(28)

They crossed the emptied streets. The town was now quiet, nearly serene. An owl, a breeze, a scatter of dried leaves across a lane, a barking cur. Then, Nastaran. By the fountain. She was trailing her fingers along the lip of the well. The crouching stone bear that emblemized Meersburg was holding the carven arms of the municipality and staring blankly beyond Nastaran. She was barefoot, dressed in gauzes, and her womanly form showed in the moonlight through the garments. Her brow was covered with a mantle that gave her the look of a biblical heroine. Her eyes were open but her gaze was not upon the well, not upon her boys, nor upon Dirk as he approached her slowly, as one might approach a skittish foal. A new patterning of cloud had come in; the sky seemed to be paved of softly luminous blue brick.

“Nastaran,” he said with great tenderness, and reached out his hand. She might alight there in the cup of his palm, he felt.

She walked right by him. She could sidestep the winch and the housing of the pump, but she couldn’t see him. Her shoulder and her right arm pressed into him, her unclasped breast rolled against his forearm. And then she recoiled, the back of her hand to her mouth in fright, her eyes twitching to locate herself in foreign particulars.

“Mutti!” cried Franz, and ran forward. She suffered herself to be greeted but she didn’t clasp him. “Where were you going? Were you looking for us?”

“No,” she answered, when she could speak. “I wasn’t looking for you.”

“Then where were you going?”

“You are still there,” she said. “Already.”

“I don’t understand.”

Hearing his mother’s vatic remarks, Moritz looked up with a dark brow and spilled a remarkably foul and adult comment almost under his breath.

She gripped Dirk’s arm and allowed herself to be walked toward home. Halfway there, she stopped and fastened a silken cincture to keep the panels of her blouse closed. Farther along, she dropped his arm and stepped a foot away from him, but kept pace. When they’d reached the house and secured the door, and the boys had been put to bed, Dirk poured her a little Kirschwasser. She drank a sip, and then stood to return to her room without further comment. Following, Dirk was too tired to be mindful of his manners. “But where were you going?” he asked her as she was turning to shut her door. He put his foot in the breach to keep the door open. “Nastaran,” he said, with longing. “What are you looking for?”

With a few inches of space between their faces, she raised her dark eyes to him and regarded him keenly and openly. Her eyes were too damp, her face looked disarranged. She told him, “I don’t know. If I could only find out—”





38.


Nastaran took to her room and wouldn’t come to the door when Dirk knocked. The boys awoke at last, cross and dull-eyed, but wolfed their breakfasts and dressed to be brought out to the opening of the fair.

Perhaps the entire town had been awakened by the midnight commotion of arriving merchants and revelers. In the morning when Dirk went to the well, Meersburg seemed more than usually shuttered against him, the streets empty. What is a town but an assemblage of locked and secret chambers, he thought. The forest opens its arms more gladly.

In the scientific light of day, the midnight sense of mysterious presences had evaporated. Most stalls were heaped with ordinary harvest.

However, a few booths featured carved figurines, puppets and the like. Garishly painted. A population of mute and obvious toys. Mere figments of the exotic bestiary that had seemed to sweep into town by moonlight. Insults to them, actually.

Dirk watched how the Pfeiffer brothers paused over the toys. The old man in the forest—surely he used to carve figures? Not like these, though. Stout oaken gentlemen with mugs of beer, one in each hand. A wooden horse, two apes on its back. A doll that stood by itself, staring catatonically out of a porcelain head as perfectly ovoid as a grape. Her real cloth skirt featured real wrinkles. A few rod marionettes in the shape of officers with crested helmets. The boys were gentle, even reverential with the military figures. But Dirk had no coin with which to buy presents, so vendors shooed all three of them on.

Vexed at Dirk for apparent minginess, the boys ran off. He let them run. No harm could come to them now. However busy the residents of Meersburg, they wouldn’t let danger come near a child, not even one with a foreign look in the eye, an olive cast to the skin.

Dirk was still musing on Nastaran and her concerns when he felt a tap on his shoulder. At first he couldn’t even find the name on his lips. “Felix,” supplied the young ’cellist. “Felix Stahlbaum.”

The story of Hannelore and her pregnancy struck at Dirk, but lightly. He cared nothing for her. Or for Felix. Dirk did not hold out a hand or utter a greeting.

“I’m here for the festival,” said Felix. “We’ve come from the university. Baron von Koenig is presiding over some municipal ceremony, and either receiving an honor or bestowing one, I forget which. He’s also assembling a gaggle of his associates who dabble ineptly in atmospheric experiments. He sent for Kurt, and I accompanied him. I thought I might see you, if you were still in town.” He looked with happy scrutiny, as if Dirk were a specimen of exotic snail or an oddly designed fern. “I’ll stand you an ale. Look, that tavern has some benches set out. The light is nice. Come with me.”

“I’m looking for some boys—”