The Ragged Edge of Night(33)
Even if we speak uncommon tongues, sound grants us the mercy of understanding. That sympathetic quiver of the heart, when a harmony rolls in thirds or a seventh resolves into the octave—it’s the greatest miracle God ever wrought, for it shows us that we are one. There isn’t a person among us, German or Tommy, Aryan or Jew, whole of mind or simple, who doesn’t feel what you feel, what we all feel. In his most na?ve moments, he thinks, If I could only play for the Führer, I might make him see it, the unity of God’s creation. And once he sees, how could he continue in this course of evil?
He shivers. The evening is cold; winter is already here, though no snow has fallen yet. In the bare branches of the apple trees, he can hear some animal moving, the hop and rough slide of a bird’s feet against bark. But he can’t see the bird, and it has no song to sing now. He pulls at his pipe, blowing the smoke in the bird’s direction. Smoke fades itself to nothing between dark branches.
In the deepest part of night, or even in the paleness of twilight, the fact that he goes on living often takes Anton by dull surprise. His life is undeserved, he knows, and any happiness this new arrangement brings is wholly unmerited. But that’s the way of life, isn’t it? You go on. You live. Even when grief turns your insides to lead and a featureless black sea rises. Men aren’t supposed to cry, not even friars, but who in this time and place doesn’t weep when he thinks no one else can see? Along the side of your nose, a track of red, the permanent chap of salt burn. And in your eyes a ready well, deep as the center of the Earth. Regret will do it, raise a flood of tears—regret for the words you might have said but didn’t, and the things you might have done, the touch of kindness on the back of a shoulder or on the top of a small, sun-warmed head. And regret for the gestures you might have made—tied a loose shoestring or buttoned a winter coat up closer to the chin. Everything you might have done but didn’t. Everything that might have been but never can be now. So many bodies lie in their graves, but not yours—not yours. Even when you think yourself motionless, when you try to strike the bargain: Lord, if I trade places with them, the ones You allowed to die—if I stay here, just as unmoving as they—will it be enough to appease You? Will You raise them back to life? But no matter how you concentrate on nothingness, on the great and hungry void, you are never as still as the dead. Your pulse trembles your limbs. It whispers in your ears, taunting and relentless. It nods your head—the slightest movement, a forced confession: Yes, I am still here. Yes, I go on living. My God, why have You forsaken me?
He tips the pipe out, taps it hard against his heel. Red sparks die against bare earth. The sudden movement startles him, though it’s his own body that moves. Still, he didn’t expect it. The bird in the orchard takes flight; he can hear its abrupt leap into darkness, the faint whistle of its wings through stiff night air. He thinks, I should go back inside, talk to Elisabeth, tell her what I’ll do. How I’ll earn more money, whatever we need. But he has no idea how he’ll do it, and he can’t face Elisabeth’s careful silence now, her way of not looking at him and the resolute movement of her needle. Instead, he goes to the old shed and eases open the damp-swollen door.
Inside, his breath is a cold mist, and the mist is all he can see as he waits for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He finds one of his trunks by feel and lifts the lid. A cornet is the first object that comes to hand—his instrument, after the piano and organ. The metal is cold; early winter and early night have intruded here. He rests the cup of the mouthpiece against his lips and breathes into it, livening the instrument with the heat of his body. You can’t tune cold brass. It resists you, until you have given enough of yourself to let it know you are committed, that you will not leave it cold. His breath rushes through the cornet’s compact, elegant curves. The metal warms in his hands, and the three pearlescent keys spring eagerly beneath his fingers.
A footstep at the open door. Anton turns, guilty, lowering the cornet, holding it stiffly like a child caught in some mischief. He had expected to see one of the children standing in the doorway, but it’s Elisabeth, a dark silhouette backlit faintly by the gray remainder of sunset.
Blinking in the dim twilight, she comes farther inside. “Is that… a trumpet?” Surprised—wary, as she often is.
“Yes.” More or less. Caught in the sudden grip of possessiveness, he resists the urge to step between his wife and the open trunk. These are instruments of his heart, his memory. They are relics, imbued with a fragile and sacred past. Why should he let her see, when Elisabeth has shown so little of her own heart? He reaches out to close the lid of the open chest, but Elisabeth crosses the space between them, too quick for Anton to stop her, and holds the lid open. She stares in astonishment at what the trunk contains. Another cornet, a French horn, a baritone horn, disassembled. There is a clarinet, carefully wrapped in thick felt and tied with twine to protect its delicate pads and springs. She can’t see the clarinet through its wrappings, but what she can see is enough.
“Anton! I remember the boys chattering about musical instruments the day you mended Maria’s dress, but I thought that was something from your past. What’s in the other trunks?”
He doesn’t want to admit it, protective of the places where his pain resides. But she is his wife now. He knows he must deal with Elisabeth honestly. “More of the same.”
She looks up at him, astonished and pleased. “I’ve heard the Party are paying good money for brass. The Schutzstaffel want it for casings—ammunition.”