The Ragged Edge of Night(27)

Her smile is brief, indulging. “Something tells me you don’t know how to market properly. Not yet.”

“That’s so; I can’t deny it. When I was a friar, St. Josefsheim handed me everything I needed—and Wehrmacht food wasn’t any good, but I never had to trouble myself how to get it.”

“You’ll learn, in time.” She is distracted, eyes and thoughts far away. They walk on in silence for a moment. Then Elisabeth turns to him suddenly, wringing her hands. “I don’t know if I did right, Anton. And I’m dreadfully afraid I’ve done something terrible—something unforgivable.”

“Elisabeth.” Should he call her something else? Dear, darling, meine Liebste? “Whatever do you mean?”

She draws a breath, then shuts her mouth tightly. He is quick enough to catch the look she gives him from the corner of her eye—searching, wary, untrusting.

“Whatever it is, you can tell me,” he says. “I am your husband, after all.”

“Yes, but—” She swallows hard. But you are a stranger to me still. But who really knows whether anyone can be trusted, in this world, in this Germany? As she hesitates, wrestling with uncertainty, Anton can all but feel her heartbeat, thick and racing, tight in her throat. He’s about to say, I will never betray your secrets, or perhaps, Whatever you’ve done, we can undo it, if need be—when Elisabeth turns to him again with that same rush of desperation. “It was pork, Anton. In the basket. I told Claudia to pass along word that it’s beef. And it was smoked, so I suppose that’s all they’ll taste. But what if they know the difference?”

He lets out a slow breath, understanding. “Claudia—that blonde woman—she’s hiding a family?”

There is no need to specify what kind of family. The better part of the nation’s undesirables have already been netted and filtered into camps—the Gypsies, the journalists, the mentally unwell. The men who love men, the women who love women. It’s the Jews who have made the most tenacious stand, refusing to leave—or unable to leave, poor souls. The lucky ones, the ones who might have some frail hope of survival, huddle in ghettos or live like rats in darkness, cringing between our walls, in the attics of our homes.

“Not Claudia,” Elisabeth says quietly. “I don’t know who it is—who in Unterboihingen has opened up their home. Perhaps they aren’t in Unterboihingen at all but some other village along the river. It’s better if I don’t know, of course, for if trouble ever comes here, they’ll punish anyone who knew, anyone who didn’t report it to the gauleiter.”

If trouble ever comes. If the SS come.

“But Claudia knows who.”

Her eyes fill with tears. “You won’t say anything. Please, Anton—I know we aren’t supposed to hide them, but I can’t. I can’t just go on living as if nothing is wrong, when I know what they do, where they send the Jews when they catch them—”

“There, now.” Gently, like soothing a frightened child. If his arms weren’t full of squashes, he would take her hand. “You have nothing to fear—not from me. I’ll never tell a soul, Elisabeth. I promise you that. Certainly, I will never tell that gauleiter.”

She nods. She sighs, a long and shuddering sound, releasing the better part of her fear.

“But you gave them pork?” Anton doesn’t want to laugh. It isn’t exactly funny, and yet there is precious little humor in the world.

“It was all I had.” She shakes her head, caught up, too, in an irreverent desire to smile. “A small ham that Frau Hertz and I smoked this spring. I had planned to save it for the winter, but when Claudia told me about that poor family, how badly they need food… The ham will keep better than anything else I could have sent, say eggs or potatoes. I could have spared some oats, but I suppose they have no way to cook, hiding in an attic or a cellar.”

“You did right,” Anton says. “It was good of you. Generous. It’s food from your children’s plates, but you gave it willingly.”

“We’ll do all right, with Albert’s eggs.” She presses her hands to her cheeks, as if trying to cool the heat of embarrassment. “But what if they know it’s pork, Anton? What if Claudia forgets to say it’s beef or lamb? They’ll think I’ve done it to be cruel—that I’m mocking them with a ham.”

“They’ll think no such thing. Even if they can tell it’s neither beef nor lamb, they will be grateful. They won’t turn their noses up, I’m sure.”

“If they can tell, and they eat it, anyway, then I’ve made them break their laws. God’s laws.”

“God will forgive. Of that, I’m certain.” In the worst extremities, God does not resort to pedantry. The creator of all things has more sense than that, or so Anton believes.

“Here, give me those.” Elisabeth takes two of the squashes from his arms. “You shouldn’t have to carry everything yourself.”

“And neither should you. Shall we make our way home?”

“Yes. Albert will bring the little ones home when he’s finished with his eggs.”

At home, when the squashes and cheese have been installed in the shed, waiting in an orderly row on the shelf over Anton’s trunks, Elisabeth stands in the trampled yard in a shaft of late-morning light. The beet greens trail from her hand, tips of dark leaves brushing the earth. She stares up at the cottage, raised on its stilts, her head thrown back so she can see the highest window, and above it, the peak of the roof and the small attic space it conceals.