Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker(65)

She shrugged. “Ah well. It’s not as if I want to be married again, so don’t act so terrified.”

“This is a very excellent cider.”

She had the good grace to laugh over her shoulder at that as she returned to the house.

Nearly dozing in the chill, he started, and the cup dashed to the ground but didn’t break. A man was coming in the gate.

“Only one person I know wears an eye-patch, but he is much younger than you are,” said Franz. “He doesn’t have grey at his temples.”

“He does now.”

“It’s shaking with cold at this hour.”

“I wanted to wait here. I don’t want to come in.”

“Well, we’re not going to bring supper into the garden at this time of year.”

“I won’t stay. I just wanted to see you and your brother, and find out how you are.”

“Doing all right. The trade is brisk. Increasing unity among the German nations is good for business. I’ve four stout men under my eye now, can you believe that? When once my father and you did the whole thing by yourselves?”

“I did next to nothing, but you were too young to see that.”

“A fine-grained crap of the family bull was I. Maybe you started out incompetent, but after Mutter died, you were indispensable. We remember. Gerwig couldn’t have kept the business together without your help. He really ought to have given you an interest in the trade.” Franz grinned, an old look from boyhood. “But as he didn’t do it in his day, I’m not about to break with family tradition. Look, let me put down my wares and relieve myself, and I’ll be back with two portions of ale. I won’t loiter here for long, I never could tolerate the wind off the lake at this time of year. My balls retract so fast they thump my kidneys. But I’ll stand with you over a stein.”

Dirk watched Franz hump away. The current Pfeiffer tradesman was already thick in the middle. Where really did boyhood go, or childhood?

He tried to grip the invisible thread that slipped by—

Some sense of the parables, the loaves and the fishes, the consoling spirit of the dead mother in the ash tree—

But it was like sifting a stream for its shadows. The sieve comes up wet and empty.

Franz was back, carrying two portions of a tawny ale with a sour, gingerbready aroma. He stood against a stone wall and Dirk rested an elbow on the wooden gate. At their knees, the abandoned childhoods of young Franz and young Moritz still thrived. Ghosts with random twigs and bird feathers invisibly acted out the history of the world once again. Franz didn’t seem to mind, or perhaps notice.

“Are you here on business?” asked Franz, after quaffing half his share.

“Business done. Such as it was. Of no significance.” Dirk wasn’t sure if this was true, but in any case it was none of Franz’s affair. Franz made no claim on Dirk’s affections. He was more like the grown child of a long-dead friend than an actual intimate. Dirk couldn’t entirely recall why he had come.

Franz was Nastaran’s grown son. That was why. Dirk tried to keep this impossible notion central in his thoughts (it was a blur of incandescence), but it kept winging away and alighting elsewhere. Franz the grown man looked so much more Teutonic than Persian. Nastaran, having left the world, perhaps had taken her half of Franz with her.

“Our stepmother is still here. She’ll want to see you,” said Franz. “Won’t you come in and give her a thrill? A little vague now but she’ll recognize your grimace, and accept a rigid embrace for old time’s sake.”

“I’ve already greeted her. Her grip still seemed steady to me.”

“Well, it comes and goes. Have you married, have you a family?”

“Have you?”

“I’ve a maiden in mind. She’s just coming of age this year. If she’ll have me, we’ll wed in the spring.”

Dirk finished his ale. He set the tankard upon the stone wall and said, “What about Moritz?”

“Ach, Moritz,” said Franz. “Well, that’s not so happy a tale, is it.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“He couldn’t stay here, you know. It was too much for him. In the end we have put him in an asylum out the road toward Lindau. We visit him two or three times a year. You could go there if you liked.”

“Oh, no, I could not,” said Dirk. His hand shook as he dropped it in his leather satchel. “Look, Franz, here. Take this to him, though. A present for me, from the past.” He brought out the old Nutcracker.

Franz wouldn’t touch it. “He doesn’t need to go backward, Dirk. He isn’t made happy by memory. This thing cannot save him.”

“You have it, then. A gift from me.”

“You sound distressed,” said Franz. “A weaker man than I am would take this just to get rid of you, Dirk, and toss it in the fire as soon as you were gone. But I am better than that. I won’t take it either. All these years on, I don’t blame you for our mother’s death. All these years later. So many years later.” He finished his ale. “But I don’t credit you with saving her life, either.”





78.


He spent the night in Meersburg, in a cold room above a quiet stable. He thought about the lost childhoods of Franz and Moritz and then, inevitably, about his own.