The Ragged Edge of Night(34)
The mere suggestion is a blow, a stab deep and vicious enough to bleed him dry. He struggles to keep the hurt and anger from showing on his face. He is failing in that—he knows he is. He flexes his fingers on the cornet’s keys, depressing them one by one, fighting to control his temper. “I can’t sell my instruments to the Nazis, Elisabeth.”
“Why can’t you? We need the money, Anton. Yes, I know Father Emil has been paying you to play at Sunday service, and you play beautifully—but you know we need more.”
“I…” He falters, heart constricting. This is what he came to do, isn’t it? Provider for those in need, protector of the helpless. But he could never have imagined God would be so cruel as to demand this sacrifice. “I can’t, Elisabeth. I can’t sell these things.”
“Why not?”
Because they are memory. And miracle. They’re the last proof I have that God exists, that He ever existed in this cold, bleak world. He says, “It’s the wrong type of brass. It’s thin and adulterated with other metals. It would be useless to the SS. They wouldn’t pay.”
The hard press of her mouth, the narrowing of her eyes—she is desperate, worried. And most of all, she is disappointed in Anton. She gambled on him—committed to him. She took a holy vow that can never be rescinded. And yet this man persists in a stubborn failure to provide. “Scrap metal is always useful,” she says. “The SS will pay something for it. Something is better than nothing.”
“Damn it, Elisabeth, this is not scrap metal!” He lurches away from the trunk, his fist tightening protectively on the horn he’s still holding. The sudden movement frightens her—and why not? He is still largely a stranger; she doesn’t know him, doesn’t know what he is capable of. He isn’t capable of that—violence. Never; not he. But his anger has boiled over, and he can’t control it now. Unknowing, she has ventured too close to the source of his pain, and any animal in pain will react when provoked—will lash out or gnash its teeth or howl in agony. A small part of him is aware of the look on Elisabeth’s face—the fear, the way she shrinks with hands up, clasped in front of her throat. He regrets his haste in the instant. He hates himself for frightening her. But he is more frightened than she. He forces himself to stand still, giving her room to flee if that’s what she chooses to do. With an effort, his voice strangled by distress, he speaks to her more calmly. “This is not scrap, Elisabeth, and it’s not for sale. It never will be. You’ll have to make peace with that fact, because I will not sell these instruments.”
Seeing now that he intends her no harm—other than the damage already done to her pride and her feelings—Elisabeth gathers herself, icy and calm. “Very well. If you will not do right by your family, let it rest on your conscience, not mine. It is for you to take up with God, Josef Anton Starzmann, not me.”
She turns and strides out into the dusky yard past Albert’s hens, small round shadows scratching in the mud. Anton takes a few useless steps after her, but he knows she wants no comfort—and what comfort can he give? He is as unused to making up with a woman as he is to quarreling. He watches her march stiffly through the orchard, through trees stripped bare of their leaves, standing gray and skeletal against a darkening sky. She knocks on Frau Hertz’s door. In a moment, the door opens, and Elisabeth is admitted to the bosom of sympathy. Only the angels can say when she might emerge again.
Anton turns his back on the farmhouse. He walks out past the hen yard, past the stone wall that sometimes contains the goats, when they agree to be contained. He walks without seeing, moving beyond this present place, this point in time; he feels himself pulled back, or picked up and dropped suddenly into an unwelcome past.
He is standing in the courtyard outside St. Josefsheim. Memories wash in, a flood tide that threatens to rise above his head—drown him. Yet he is reluctant to banish that memory, despite its danger. It’s as if he hopes that by reliving his pain, he can make some sense of it. As if by sinking willingly into black water, allowing the current to take him, he might come to understand his past. It’s the instruments that have done this to him. He has touched them, and remembered. He has absorbed what they contain, like poison through his skin. If he were to do as Elisabeth wants and rid himself of the things, perhaps the memories could never haunt him again. But forgetting—that would be another pain altogether, and a far greater shame than the one he already bears.
Here, in a wide field stripped of its harvest and far from the farmhouse, he is as alone as one can ever be in a small town. And alone, there is ample space for pain to crowd in. He lifts the cornet again. He plays a long, low, melancholy tune and prays the sound will drive away remembrance. But remembrance takes him in its knife-sharp talons, more forcefully than ever before.
The bus. The children, queuing up, smiling and laughing—most of them—certain they were about to go on a grand adventure. A few—a few were bright enough to realize something was amiss. They looked about with lost expressions, wringing their hands or flapping their wrists to calm their fears. That was the way, for some of them; nothing else could ease their anxiety but to flail their soft little limbs in a soothing rhythm and cry out wordlessly—fragile birds. One of the SS, in his precise black uniform, watched a girl for a moment as she waved her hands in the air—it was Rillie Enns, one of her braided pigtails untied and unraveling. She called out, a high-pitched whine eloquent with fear. She had few words; that cry was the best she could do. But who has words at a time like this?