The Ragged Edge of Night(25)

When he reenters the cottage with its blessing of candlelight, Elisabeth is still vanished behind her door. He changes into his nightshirt in the empty living room. The candle has burned down to a tiny stub, almost to nothing. He must find out whether his wife has more candles. If she hasn’t, it must be he who gets them, he who buys them. That is what husbands do—husbands and fathers. They see to it that no one goes wanting.

In his nightshirt, he stands and waits, listening—for what? The house is silent and still, but the air is dense with another remembrance, ripe and heavy with its own sort of hostility. Anton can all but see him—the first husband, the one who will never buy candles again, nor kiss Maria on her forehead, nor share a slice of cake with Elisabeth. The man is restless, besieged by his own heart, angered by all the things left undone. His shade paces around the room in the dull umber slant of shadows.

To the memory of Herr Herter, Anton whispers, “I only want to be good to Elisabeth, and to your children. God willing, my friend.” He hopes it’s enough to dissipate the chill in the air.

Anton takes the candle, almost burned away now, and taps on Elisabeth’s door. “Come in,” she says, her voice thin and emotionless.

He edges carefully into the room. She has placed her candle on the dresser and stands before it—before the square mirror hanging above—tucking her hair into a lace-edged nightcap. She moves away, stepping out of her slippers and placing them side by side just beneath the edge of her bed, and Anton, hesitant, occupies the space she has left. He sets his nearly exhausted candle on the dresser beside her own. The flame thins itself in a pool of oily wax, gathered in the cup of the candlestick. Like the memory of a flame. He imagines Herr Herter, watchful in his grave, gripping one thumb, left eye open.

“Did you close the curtain in Maria’s room?”

“I did.”

“Thank you.” Such a formal thing to say to one’s husband.

Elisabeth gets into bed. She is so tidy in her movements, so carefully controlled, that he hardly sees her do it. One moment she is standing; the next, she is flat beneath the white quilt. But why shouldn’t she be at ease here? This is her house, her bedroom, her family.

He blows out the remnant of his candle. Then he pinches the wick of Elisabeth’s light, too. He climbs into her bed, stomach knotted, shoulders aching. There is a tingle on his thumb where he touched the flame. Through the mattress, he can feel Elisabeth’s tension, the stiffness of her back and the quiver of her limbs.

He needn’t think, and he doesn’t think. He rolls onto his side, confining himself to the edge of the mattress, where he may put his new wife at ease.





10

In the morning, Anton follows the children outside to gather eggs. They are glad to have someone to hold the basket; it frees them up to play around the corners of the chicken coop. They lift rocks and tear apart the woodpile to search for salamanders; they jump across the ditch to the hedge, where brambles still hang a few honey-scented berries in patchy shade, the last of summer’s sweetness. Despite their ceaseless movement, their peregrinations about the farmyard, the children are remarkably smart in their work, and the basket fills quickly. Anton settles the handle in the crook of his elbow where the weight is easier to manage.

When Al decides they’ve collected enough eggs, he leads the way under the apple trees, down the lane with its remnant of hollyhocks toward the village market. The younger children run ahead. They lash tall roadside weeds with sticks, snapping off seed heads and scattering dust in the weak autumn sun. Al remains beside Anton. The boy’s gaze shifts and slides along the rutted road. Al has the strained air of having something important to say.

Anton waits for him to speak. Finally, the boy says, “We usually get good trades for our eggs—flour, this time of year. And there will be some vegetables, and maybe some marmalade or apple-peel jelly.”

“Your mother has told me how the town makes trades. It seems a very clever system to me.”

“Yes, but I wonder…” A pause; Al stuffs his hands deep into his pockets, as if reaching for courage down there among the pebbles and marbles he’s collected. “I wonder what you’ll do to support us. Now that you’re our stepfather.”

“It does you credit, that you think about such things.” What a world we live in, where an eleven-year-old boy must trouble himself with a man’s concerns.

Anton has often wondered himself what he ought to do, now that he is the father of a large and hungry family. A friar’s staples of bread and tinned beans won’t do, except in extremity of want—and anyway, the modest sum of money he has stretched since his discharge from the Wehrmacht can’t last forever. How will you support them, now that you’re their stepfather? The two weeks he spent waiting for the marriage, pacing above Franke’s furniture shop, ducking his head to avoid the slope of the ceiling, he asked himself that same question more times than he could count.

“I had thought,” Anton says to the boy, “I might be a teacher. I used to teach, in my life before.”

“But Unterboihingen has enough teachers already. There are only the two schools, one for the oldest children, one for the little children—and none of them are wanting.”

“I see. Perhaps I could teach music, if you think there is interest.” Unterboihingen does not appear to have a music teacher. During his strolls through the village, when he walked alone with his thoughts, he detected no signs of lessons—no tempo-less plunking of piano keys, no tortured screech of a violin. “What do you say, Al?”