The Ragged Edge of Night(31)

“You aren’t going to sit in the back again,” she says, “now that we’re married.”

“No.” He winks at the children. Then, because he is brimming with confidence, he winks at his wife, too. “I’m going to sit all the way in front.”

“Anton? What do you mean?”

But he makes off without answering, straight up the aisle to the heart of the church. He has worked out the details with Father Emil already—when he should begin, which songs he will play—and when the moment comes, when the nave is half full, he touches the keys and raises from his instrument a cascade and a rumble, a chorus of bright, fulsome praise. He cannot hear the parishioners exclaim, but he can feel it—their wonder unfolding, their shudder of awe, shared in his own warming heart.

When the morning’s music has concluded and Father Emil takes his lectern, he tells the congregation, “We are blessed to have a musician among us again—our new neighbor, Anton Starzmann, husband of our beloved sister Elisabeth.” And at the end of the service, when the last hymn is finished, Anton rises from the organ bench to find Elisabeth standing at the foot of the chancel steps. She’s holding their children’s hands. She smiles up at him with appreciation, with unrestrained pride, and the light of her happiness is the most beautiful sight he has seen since he turned his back on Riga and marched the other way.

He thinks, I might, after all, avoid making a mess of this new life. I might even excel at this husband business—who can say?

Two other women join Elisabeth below the chancel. They are dressed as humbly as anyone else in the church—no bright colors, no diamonds or furs—but there is a newness to their dresses, a freshness of style, an unfaded quality that sets them apart. These, then, can only be Fraus Abt and Schneider, the Altgelt mothers of Unterboihingen.

“Vater Emil told me you are available to teach the children music,” one says. She is the taller of the two, dark-haired and dark-eyed. Her face seems to hold an expression of natural gladness, for the corners of her mouth turn up on their own, even when she isn’t smiling. She must be of an age with Elisabeth, but there are no weary lines around her eyes or her mouth, no trace of a permanent frown crossing her forehead. She is unmistakably pretty; yet somehow, Anton can’t help feeling his wife is more beautiful still.

The woman clasps her hands, eager and hopeful. “I am Frau Abt. I regret we haven’t had occasion to meet until now, mein Herr. But I have a piano, and I would be grateful if you would come and teach my children how to play. Once or twice a week would be ideal—or whenever you are available.”

“And I,” Frau Schneider adds. “I’ve a piano, too. Will Wednesdays do for you?”





12

The new wool cost Anton dearly—eight hundred reichsmarks, well more than a good pair of shoes might cost in a black-market Berlin alleyway. But for that extravagant price, he secured an entire bolt of plain brown tweed—enough to last the family through two winters, he prays.

Elisabeth is thrilled with the acquisition. She sends Albert to his room to try on his new trousers, and when he reemerges, she kneels beside her son to fuss with the cuffs, smiling in satisfaction. “They look splendid on you, Albert. Hold still, now, while I pin everything in place. With a little luck, you won’t outgrow these quite so fast.”

“I’ll try not to,” Al says.

“Off you go, then, and bring these back to me. Be careful not to prick yourself on the pins when you take them off.”

When Albert returns the trousers, Elisabeth moves two candles close to her sewing chair and begins fixing the carefully rolled cuffs in place.

“You make the finest stitches I’ve ever seen,” Anton says, watching over her shoulder.

“Flatterer.”

“It’s not flattery if it’s true.”

“I never had to work while my first husband was still living, of course. But after he died, I had some hope that I might support the children by sewing alone.”

She might have succeeded, had the war not dragged on so long. “I am sure, if people had any money to spend, you would be the most popular seamstress in all of Württemberg.”

“Now that is flattery.” Her smile fades as she works a few more stitches. “If we had more money to spend…” She trails off, her cheeks coloring.

“Don’t be afraid to speak,” Anton says, not without a twinge of wariness.

“We could do with a few more things. But when not? I don’t want to seem ungrateful, Anton. I know this cloth was expensive.”

It was. The Abts and Schneiders paid generously, but even so, Anton was obliged to dip into his meager supply of money to afford the wool. Precious little remains. The cloth is not a miracle he can repeat. But what has he come here for, if not to provide? “Tell me, Elisabeth.”

“Paul needs shoes. His old pair are pinching his feet something terrible. He tries to hide it from me—he’s such a dear little heart—but I can tell, all the same.”

“Every child receives shoes from the rations.”

“But only once a year, and Paul is growing almost as fast as Albert.”

“I see. And you’ve already asked around town, I suppose—”

“Of course.” She doesn’t look up from her needle and thread, not wishing to be confrontational. But Anton can sense the impatience in her words. It was a ridiculous question to ask. Who doesn’t seek a trade before spending precious money?