The Ragged Edge of Night(32)
“I could find larger shoes for Paul,” Elisabeth says. “Something man-size, or close to it. But then I would have to stuff the toes with rags, and he wouldn’t be able to run and play. It would be as good as hobbling him. I’m sorry, Anton—I know it’s a burden to you. But what else are we to do?”
“Don’t apologize. The boy needs what he needs.” And what is a father for, if not to give his children whatever they need? Heaviness settles in his chest. Lessons from the two families won’t be enough. He will need train fare to Stuttgart and enough reichsmarks to convince the back-alley traders to part with a good pair of shoes—just big enough for a boy to grow into, but not large enough to keep him from running. Anton must find more work, and soon.
He goes to the hook beside the door and fishes for his pipe in the pocket of his jacket. It’s only now he sees how thin and patched his coat has become. He won’t bring it to Elisabeth’s attention; let her keep the precious wool for the children’s clothes.
“Where are you going?” Elisabeth asks.
Anton holds up his pipe. “The tobacco rations are still useful, at least.”
“You aren’t angry?”
“No, Elisabeth—no.” Only worried. What else should he be? “A man merely needs some time alone with his pipe and his thoughts, now and then.” Time to plan. Time to fret where no one can see the despair hardening his face. He steps outside and descends to the dusky yard.
Strange, how quickly warmth vacates the world, how ready the season is to sink into darkness. Every year it takes him by surprise—the shortening of daylight hours until it seems the natural state of the world, since the day of first creation, is twilight or the time just before it, the soft gray dullness of a sunset lost behind a wall of cloud, and a smell of promised rain.
He has been working for two weeks now, but what has he to show for it, really? For a fortnight, he has been able to call himself a teacher—something he’d thought he never could be again. The work lifts his spirits, when spirits can be lifted, but darkness still catches him now and then. That’s the nature of darkness. It comes at the end of every day, predictable as the striking of a clock’s chime, even in the heart of summer, when the light is full and lingering. You can never quite escape the night. Perhaps that’s as God wills; this must be His design. How are we to know when our lives are good and when we are blessed, if we have no sorrow, no deprivation for comparison’s sake? There is, he believes, a purpose to all the Creator’s ways. But the mind and heart of God are beyond the understanding of Man. You can know your suffering serves a purpose—that the suffering of others plays some inscrutable part in the grand drama of Creation. But knowing brings you little comfort. When night drops its heavy curtain across the world, darkness is cruel and unforgiving. The way all your happiness can snuff itself in an instant, like the flame of a candle pinched between a licked finger and thumb—it can shake your faith, or strip faith away entirely, if you let it.
On the long march to Riga, the men had often sung. Whenever that straight, unvaried road passed by empty fields or forests instead of homesteads—whenever they could feel sure no one was listening—they would take up the thread of some old-fashioned tune. They held to the music, clinging to it with chapped and trembling hands—and like a guideline, it pulled them through the cold and the dark. The songs were simple. Folk music, reminders of times long ago when the country was something different from what it is now. When we could find real pride in the mere fact that we were German. And sometimes they sang hymns, Catholic and Protestant, with every man joining in. They sang songs written by that Lutheran hymnodist, and “Warum sollt’ich mich denn gr?men.” They sang “In Christ There Is No East or West.” The Lutherans have such lovely music, Anton can forgive them for their heresy.
But singing while you tread the endless road, just to keep warm—your wool uniform soaked with dew and your teeth chattering in the Prussian night—isn’t the same as playing. He hasn’t played, not like this—the organ at St. Kolumban and even the piano beside his young students—since well before the order was disbanded. There was no time for playing in the Wehrmacht, though, Lord knows, he spent as little time in service to the Party as he could contrive. When you play music, when you put an instrument to your lips or merge your hands with ivory, the act transforms. It makes of you a conduit between Heaven and Earth.
There are some feelings, some states of mind, that cannot be expressed in words. The transcendent beauty of moonrise over a quiet field, when your soul stills itself for a time, just long enough to remind you that you are still alive, still human, in a world that seems ravaged by inhuman beasts. And the deep, haunting song of loss, with its crossed harmonies and poignant discords, the way it reaches to the inside of you and turns your spirit out, everts the essence of your being through your heart or through your mouth and leaves it to hang there, vulnerable and exposed. There are some refrains that have taken up residence in his heart and mind and become a permanent part of him—and sometimes he likes to imagine that the men and women who composed those works felt exactly what he feels when he listens or plays. His very thoughts are theirs, and through the spell of rhythm he can sense, across the improbability of time and space, every throb and ache of the composer’s heart. Music is a way of transporting emotion from one breast to another. It is a way of knowing the unknowable, of feeling what we can never allow ourselves to confront in any other way. These agonies and ecstasies—they can break us, use us up, burn us away unless we shield our hearts with music.