The Ragged Edge of Night(46)
“The brass. You remember.”
The frown lifts from her face, and a radiance of relief alights in its place. “Anton! Are you sure?”
“Nothing is certain yet. I’ll need to discuss it… negotiate. After I give my piano lesson.”
She sighs happily. “That’s a weight off my back. Have you sold all the instruments?”
“I’ve sold nothing yet. Remember that; it won’t do for you to expect more than I can deliver. But I think one or two might sell.”
“It’s a start.” She smiles at him, briefly, almost shy. Then she returns to the cabbage. Anton tries to ignore the pressure of guilt swelling in his stomach.
“Which town are you visiting today?” Albert asks, rolling his red-orange egg in a towel.
“Kirchheim.” He tells the truth—in this, if nothing else—before he realizes he ought to lie. The secret work is still too new; he hasn’t learned the nuances of being a message carrier, a resister. He must be more careful—discreet. Surely the gauleiter sees every coming and going. No one tramps through a puddle in Unterboihingen without M?belbauer noticing.
Paul says, “Is there any chocolate in Kirchheim?”
What is Easter without chocolate? Outside, near the foot of the staircase, the children have built their Haseng?rtle, the rabbit garden, a round plot of grass fenced by broken twigs and bedded with soft green moss. Overnight, the visiting rabbit will whisk the dyed eggs from the willow branches and lay them out in the children’s garden, making a pretty picture to welcome the spring. If the rabbit is fortunate enough to find the traditional sweets—scarce, bedeviled as we are by war—then he’ll leave treats in the Haseng?rtle, too, hidden among the eggs and flowers. What a thrilling thing to discover in the morning light. Anton has not yet asked Elisabeth how she managed Easters past, especially since the war began. He has a feeling the Easter rabbit hasn’t brought these children a bite of chocolate in years.
He tells them, “I don’t know whether there’s any chocolate in Kirchheim. I suppose only the Easter rabbit can say.”
Al tilts his head, too old now for such fantasies. “We don’t need chocolate. There are heaps of other things we should spend our money on.” But Anton can hear the longing in his voice.
“Your mother raised you well. You’re a good, sensible boy.” He makes a private note: Find chocolate in Kirchheim, at all costs—the biggest, sweetest bar in all of Germany. Give it to Al and tell the boy he must eat the whole thing himself.
“You don’t buy Easter chocolate, Albert,” Maria says. She is condescending, with all the lofty wisdom of a girl on the verge of seven. “The rabbit brings it if you’re good.”
Albert rolls his eyes and sinks back in his chair. “Then I won’t waste my time wondering why the rabbit never brings you any.”
“I had better be quick,” Anton says, “if I hope to make Kirchheim in time to speak with the rabbit.”
Paul’s eyes widen. “Do you know him?”
“I’ve met him a time or two.”
He doesn’t attempt to kiss Elisabeth again. She is always stiff when he tries it; he suspects a brick wall would show more appreciation for affection.
Settling his old-fashioned hat in place, wrapping his coat tightly around this body, Anton descends the stairs and faces the bite of springtime wind. The breeze stirs the scraps of dirty ribbon the children have tied to their Haseng?rtle fence. In minutes, he is strolling down the main road, Unterboihingen at his back and his duty lying somewhere ahead.
He hasn’t yet carried a dozen messages for the Widerstand, the resistance. Father Emil has assured him that with time and experience, the awkward sensation will dissipate—the feeling that a hundred pairs of eyes are fastened to his back, that they chase him through the streets, they scrutinize his every movement and expression. Anton prays the priest is right. Lord, give me confidence, for my stomach is always knotted and sour by the time I reach my destination.
At least Anton has had one cause to thank God. He has never been required to take the tunnel—that musty old passage from the age of kings. Since the night just before Christmas, when he huddled with his family in the moldering ossuary below the church, the steel door has given him a shiver every time he has passed it. Dreams have often haunted his sleep—of groping through a blackness deeper than night with a folded piece of paper gripped in his teeth, while above, countless tons of earth sag, ready to fall, saturated and stinking with the coldness of death.
One would think such nightmare visions—he has them both sleeping and waking—would leave him all but crippled by anxiety, hour after hour. They did, at first. But day by day, he has come to accept this new reality. Now the fears only plague him when he works—when he boards the buses that take him to Kirchheim or the train to Aichelberg. The fear of being followed pursues him down the tracks. On the bus, he sits in the back row so he can’t feel a stranger’s eyes on the back of his neck or imagine he senses a knowing stare. But other times, going about the minutiae of a father’s life, he has never felt freer or livelier, not since 1933. He has taken action; he has made his stand. With a hidden fist, he has struck back at the Party. And though he is only one man, and can strike no blow that will devastate like a British bomb, in his heart he believes the Reich will feel his wrath.
He knows little about the messages he carries. They are, of course, encoded. Emil, too, remains comfortably in the dark. It’s better this way; they are links in a chain. If one link is apprehended and the connection is snapped, another can easily be forged—the mission will continue. Success is more important than knowledge. As for trusting the sources of their information and the safety of their orders, both Anton and Father Emil have already placed the fullness of their faith in God. It’s the best they can do, given their circumstances.