The Ragged Edge of Night(42)

“You don’t need to head back yet, I assume,” Emil says.

“Not just yet, no. I told Elisabeth I’d be gone for an hour at least.”

“Then sit with me a while, my friend.”

He does, though not without some trepidation. Father Emil is not his usual self today. There is something chary about the old priest; his jovial light is smothered under a clandestine bushel.

“How are you and Elisabeth faring?”

“Well enough.” It’s not a lie; since their argument over the hidden brass, there have been no further quarrels. Yet he can’t help feeling he has deceived Father Emil. In all things, Anton and Elisabeth have been cordial, cooperative, respectful. Anyone would call their relationship admirable—if they were neighbors instead of husband and wife. She hasn’t mentioned the instruments again, but her knowledge and her need have hung over Anton all those weeks since the end of October. At night, he hears unspoken accusations whispered in her sleeping breath.

“I wish I could pay you more for your services on Sundays,” Emil says. “You play so beautifully, and I can see how much the congregation enjoys your music. You have brought considerable light to us in a time of grave darkness.”

“It’s my pleasure. I know a parish can’t afford much in the way of pay. Not in times like these, when all of us struggle for our daily bread.”

A pause. “Just how much are you struggling, Anton? The children—do they have enough to eat?”

“We get by.” Now, in the deadest and coldest part of winter, there are times when Maria and Paul cry because their bellies ache with hunger. But although sometimes the food is less than filling, Elisabeth sees to it that her family eats three meals a day. It seems disloyal, ungrateful, to mention any small lack when so many in the country—indeed, in the world—suffer far worse. “We’re luckier here in Unterboihingen than we deserve to be. Even in the winter, the hens still lay a few eggs, and our shed is full of roots. We’re blessed, aren’t we, to be able to trade with one another. It makes our ration stamps stretch a little further.”

“The trading is good,” Emil agrees. “But for you, a man on your own, to take on the support of four other souls—and three of them helpless children. Well, I imagine you find yourself in a difficult place. That’s why I say, ‘If only I could pay Anton more.’”

He lays a hand on Emil’s shoulder. “Really, there’s no need to worry. I’m still teaching Frau Becker’s daughters the piano.”

“Only the Becker girls? What happened to the Abts and the Schneiders?”

He withdraws his hand, sighing. “They’ve had to delay lessons until the spring, I’m afraid.”

“Ah. Even those families feel the pinch, I see.”

“Don’t we all?”

Those words open a door. Emil turns to him, wordless, but his stare is forceful and direct, laden with meaning. For a long moment, they merely look at one another, the priest pressing his lips as if fighting the urge to speak again, Anton prickling under a wave of caution.

At length, Emil says, “Spring is a long way off.”

“Not so long. Six weeks, perhaps.”

“I think about how much can happen to a man—and to the world—in six weeks. The thought makes me shiver.”

Anton shivers now. Is it only this strange turn in Emil’s mood that has set him on edge, or is some other force at work? There is a tremor in his soul, a quaking fire as before the presence of the Holy Spirit. This hour, this moment, is important. He waits for the priest to speak. In the silence, in the dense winter stillness of the air, he feels two unseen hands upon his head, and a wash of holy fire.

Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds. When the morning is light, they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand.

Emil says, “There are other ways a man might earn a little pay. Something to stretch the rations.”

And they covet fields, and take them by violence; and houses, and take them away: so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage.

Anton nods. Go on; speak.

“I tell you this only because I consider you a friend. I am right in that consideration, I hope.”

“You are.”

“These ways to earn a bit of money… they amount to no more work than walking from one town to the next.” Emil turns back to Mother Mary. Casually, he says, “Or if it’s too far to walk, you might take the train, or a bus. Sometimes business may take you farther afield.”

“Business?”

“Walking. Just walking. And carrying something for me.”

A pause, long and cautious. “Carrying what, Father?”

“Only words.”

“Messages.” He is robbed suddenly of breath. Anton’s voice, a whisper, barely fills his own mouth. But the fire that fills his soul, the ice that floods his heart and makes his body quake… He says, stronger now, “Whose messages? Which side do you serve?”

Emil smiles. “Anton, my dear friend. The question does you credit, but how can you doubt that I serve God? I always serve the Lord.”

That can only mean—aided by the Spirit, illuminated, Anton sees with the bright-white clarity of a bolt from Heaven—Father Emil does not serve the National Socialists. He is no gauleiter, no fat Franke in his furniture shop—no lapdog of Hitler. “You resist?” The words tumble out of him, half laughter, and his eyes burn with tears. “There is a resistance?”