The Ragged Edge of Night(14)

We are all children of God, made by the same hands—the Jews and Gypsies, the strong and the weak, the whole of mind and those who are fractured. Paul and Al are not so very different from the children he taught at St. Josefsheim. Elisabeth’s boys are bright. Few of Anton’s students had ever been called bright, but their innocence had been worth much to the Lord—their innate kindness, so much greater than one could find in any whole-minded person, and more generously given. Did You truly call me here, O merciful God, to play father to one widow’s children? Or is this of my own devising?

He obeys the giver of all laws, but he knows, too, that he acts of his own will, hoping to redeem the irredeemable. Praying he might find, in the shape of these happy, living children, the resurrection of those he did not save, and relief from the burden of his sins. What are his sins? He numbers them in his thoughts—in every thought, in every beat of his heart. Cowardice; weakness; obedience to a regime that crosses the Father of All with every move it makes, every stride across the continent toward dominion.

As they round the corner of the bakery, Maria appears, running, her fists clenched in determination and her knees making her skirt ripple and fly. She collides with Anton’s legs and stands there, stunned and wide-eyed. She is making up her mind whether to cry.

“What are you doing here?” Al scolds. “You aren’t to go past the lane! And your dress is torn. Mother will be so angry. She has too much work to do already, and you only give her more!”

Maria has decided not to cry. She says to Anton, “Mother is very tired.” Reciting a simple fact of the world—the sky is blue; cats have whiskers.

Anton says, “You must go straight home, Maria, or Mother will be worried. When you get home, change into a new dress and give this one to your brothers. They will bring it to me at my room over Franke’s shop.”

“All right.” Maria goes sunnily into the custody of her brothers, as untroubled by the possibility of an angry mother as she is by her torn dress.

That evening, as Anton eats a simple supper of bread and butter and cold tinned beans—as he was used to doing at St. Josefsheim—Al and Paul come stamping up the stairs to his room. Paul holds Maria’s green dress balled up in his fist. “Mother was cross anyhow. We told her you said to bring it to you, and she threw up her hands and said, ‘Do what your father says!’ Are you our father now?”

“I will be, once your mother and I marry.” He takes the dress and smooths it over his knee to examine the damage.

“Why are you going to marry her?”

Anton chuckles. “Is there a reason why I shouldn’t?”

“No,” Paul says, while Al goes pink, flustered by his little brother’s unrestrained talk. “I like you for a friend, and I guess I’d like you for a father, too.”

Al is quick to correct him. “A stepfather.”

“I hope I didn’t anger your mother by sending for Maria’s dress.” He rises from the edge of his bed and opens one of his trunks to search for his small roll-out sewing kit, bound in leather. The glitter of late-day light over smooth brass captures the boys’ attention; they both hurry to the trunk and peer down inside.

“Prima,” Al whispers.

Anton says, “You can take the instruments out, if you’d like to look at them closer. But better not to try to play. We don’t want to disturb Herr Franke downstairs.”

“Good that you don’t upset M?belbauer,” Al says as he examines a cornet, fascinated by its tubes and turns, its slick, cool surface. The pure-white keys are capped in mother-of-pearl.

“Why is that? Is his temper very bad?”

“Yes. And also, he’s our town gauleiter.”

Surprise steals Anton’s breath, even as he unrolls the sewing kit. He gives every impression of unconcern—doesn’t want to upset the children—but there is a painful pressure in his throat. Unterboihingen, of all places, has a gauleiter? They are the Reich’s eyes and ears, governors of districts on behalf of the National Socialists—and to a man, every gauleiter is tucked deep in the pockets of Hitler and his highest men.

“Funny,” he says casually, testing the point of a needle. “I’d never guess a place like Unterboihingen had any need for a gauleiter.”

“We haven’t any need,” Al says quietly. “That’s what some of my friends say—that’s what their fathers have told them. No one thinks of us here, in this small village. We aren’t important.” He relaxes subtly as he speaks, his thin neck bending over the cornet. The boy derives some relief from the simple fact: we here in Unterboihingen count for nothing. Now that he thinks on it, Anton finds it comforting, too. “But M?belbauer,” Al says, “has ambitions.”

The boy makes this pronouncement so solemnly that Anton almost laughs, though it’s hardly amusing. He can just imagine the schoolboys, with their short pants and skinned knees, whispering hedge to hedge: Watch out for M?belbauer. He has ambitions. Their parents’ words, repeated like a charm against warts. But a man with ambition is dangerous in this place and this time. Al and his friends seem to know it.

“Don’t you dare repeat that to anyone,” Al says to Paul.

Paul looks up, surprised to be addressed. He has been engrossed the whole while in the treasures of Anton’s chest—the horns and flutes, the little cymbals muted with pads of felt.