The Ragged Edge of Night(100)

They leap from bed in the same instant and fly to the window. Elisabeth’s teeth are chattering with shock and fear. The children cannot be here. It’s too dangerous for them now. If they’ve truly come, Anton must send them away, and both their hearts must break all over again.

But when they look down to the lane, there is no mistaking Albert—taller than when Anton saw him last but just as pale, just as freckled. He is no ghost. The boy is running, his arms flung out like wings. Behind him, Paul comes skipping and singing, holding Maria’s hand.

“Mother Mary!” It’s all Elisabeth can say. She runs for the cottage door and the staircase before Anton can caution her. He can’t catch her, either; he can only hurry along behind, reaching for her, trying to steady her as she bolts down into the yard. Barefoot, her hair a mess, clothed only in her nightdress, she sprints across the wet grass and catches her children in her arms.

Frau Hertz is running from the farmhouse, waving something above her head, something white and black and fluttering. A newspaper.

“Anton!” He looks up, and there is Anita, in her laywoman’s dress, hustling down the lane, red-faced and puffing. There is an auto parked behind her, round-hooded, soft gray. She jingles a set of keys in her hands, as if to say, Look what I’ve got; are you jealous? Then she squeals with happiness like the girl she used to be, catching him in a tight embrace. She spins him around and around. “Look at you, in your nightshirt. You slept in too late, Little Brother. You missed the news!”

“What news? For goodness’ sake, what has happened? Why are you here—and the children?”

The children squirm out of Elisabeth’s arms, run to Anton, and throw their arms around his body. He is squeezed and patted to within an inch of his life, and he laughs—laughs with the gladness of it until he is wheezing and breathless.

“You haven’t heard yet?” Albert cries, face alight. “It’s done now. It’s all over!”

“What? Speak sense!”

Frau Hertz arrives then. She thrusts the newspaper against Anton’s chest. He takes it and holds it out—he hasn’t put his glasses on, and he can barely read the neat headline. But through his blurred vision, the words seem to advance upon him, resolving with startling clarity.





FAREWELL TO HITLER


“He’s dead,” Anita says. She laughs wildly and thrusts a fist in the air. “We heard it quite late, yesterday evening. The Party tried to suppress the news, of course, but the streets of Stuttgart are flooded with talk. Our dear, brave leader took his own life, rather than face surrender. How do you like that?”

“Are you sure?” Anton clings to his children, gripping them so tightly Maria twists away and runs back to her mother.

“No one’s sure of anything yet,” Frau Hertz says. “But I suppose the paper wouldn’t have printed this story unless they were certain at least that he’s dead. Dead and off to Hell, where he belongs.” She spits in the mud.

“You know the Party will deny he took his own life,” Anita says, “until they can’t hide the truth any longer. But it seems the sort of thing he would do, doesn’t it? After all the misery he’s spread, all the people he’s made to suffer, he hadn’t the courage to face the trials and a proper punishment.”

Did he really take his own life, Anton wonders—or did he choke on turnip stew? It hardly matters now—now, in the morning light.

“I have to go see Father Emil,” Anton says. “I must know if he’s heard the news.”

Elisabeth laughs. Tears of joy have thickened her lashes. “Not like that; look at yourself. You can’t go to the priest in your nightshirt.”

In their home—what a joy it is, to hear the old house ringing with the sound of the children’s voices—Anton and Elisabeth dress as quickly as they can. Elisabeth makes a cursory attempt at tidying her hair, then finally smashes a hat atop her head. “Good enough,” she says. “Let’s go.”

Anita drives them to the church while the children run along behind the car, hooting and dancing, turning cartwheels between puddles.

But when they arrive at St. Kolumban, Father Emil isn’t there. The nave is empty. So is his little room in the back of the building.

Elisabeth’s smile fades. “Has something happened to him? Oh, merciful Lord—they didn’t come for him last night, Anton? Not now!”

“No, darling—no. Come; I know exactly where we’ll find him.”

He leads Elisabeth to the field behind the church. The earth is lush with new growth, the soil soft and yielding. A smell of dew fills the air—dew and unfurling blossoms. Emil, in his black robe, is on his knees, pawing through the soil with his bare hands. He looks up at Anton’s shouted greeting. When he sees the family approaching, he jumps to his feet, spry as a boy of eighteen. “Anton! Have you heard the news?”

“I have!”

More people must hear; the whole world should know. Anton brings the shovel from the churchyard, and he and Emil dig into ripe, dark earth. Soon Elisabeth and the children join them, moving soil with their hands—Anita and Frau Hertz, too. More hands arrive, more help. Two and four, a dozen, twenty—the field fills with neighbors, all those who have come to the church to give thanks for this new morning.