The Ragged Edge of Night(53)

He turns in place, searching the sitting room, but the house appears empty. Dust lies thick and pale on the furniture.

“Where are you, girl?”

“I’m here, Vati.”

He finds her sitting cross-legged behind the sofa, a great pair of black scissors in one hand and a magazine in the other. The floor is covered in a snowfall of paper scraps.

“For goodness’ sake, what are you doing?”

“Cutting,” she says. As if to prove her point, she snips at a page of the magazine, clumsily cutting around the outline of a woman’s body. The woman, fresh-faced and smiling, leaves the artificial realm of her soap ad and trembles in Maria’s hand.

“You naughty child!” Anton whisks magazine and scissors out of her hands; she looks up at him, her hard, affronted eyes filling with tears.

“I’m only making paper dolls!”

It’s then that Anton sees all the girl has done. More magazines poke out from beneath the sofa—a few books, too. Some lie open, their illustrated pages mangled with ragged cuts. Anton shifts his glasses and rubs his eyes. He can only hope the books weren’t valuable.

“Maria! Don’t you know it’s wrong to enter a house that isn’t your own?”

She climbs to her feet and braces belligerent little fists on her hips. “That’s not in the Bible! God never said so.”

“That doesn’t mean you aren’t doing wrong.” She is only seven. How has a girl so young developed such contrary habits? Elisabeth spoke the truth when she said Maria was as mischievous as the Lord ever made a girl to be. “Why aren’t you at school?”

“I don’t like school. I haven’t gone in ever so long.”

His hand falls from his face; the glasses drop too low on his nose. He stares down at the girl, astonished. “How long, exactly?”

Maria shrugs. “Since it got sunny and warm. I decided it was funner to be out playing, so I go out and play.”

“But your brothers walk you to the schoolhouse.” He’ll have to speak to them, and sternly, too. The boys must drift off, playing soldiers along the road, failing to keep their eyes on Maria. Such neglect of duty is dangerous at the best of times, but now, when any moment a plane might appear over the crest of a hill, laden with bombs—

“They do walk me, and Al holds my hand the whole way.”

A sigh of relief. “Then why are you here?”

She beams at him, pleased with herself. “I tell the teacher I must go to the bathroom. She lets me go, because if she doesn’t, I’ll pee myself.”

“And then you never return?” He fights to hold back a laugh. She may be a bad little girl, but at least she is clever.

Coolly, with a decidedly grown-up air, Maria nods.

It’s a wonder the girl’s teacher hasn’t yet spoken to Anton and Elisabeth. The poor woman must be run ragged, keeping up with all her students—and Maria can easily make as much trouble as five ordinary children.

“A few times,” Maria says proudly, “my teacher said, ‘I’ll go with you, to see that you find your way back from the bathroom.’ But I just stayed inside and said, ‘I’m not done yet!’ until she went back to the classroom.”

“Merciful Mother. That poor woman.”

“She’s not a poor woman! She’s dreadful and I don’t like her one bit.”

Anton suspects the feeling may be mutual. “Your teacher must be onto your tricks by now.”

“She is harder to fool now. Last time, she told me she would make me sit in my chair and she didn’t care if I wet myself in front of the whole classroom; I would have to sit in my own mess until school was out.”

“What did you do, then, to escape?” Anton isn’t certain he wants to know.

“Once I faked a sick stomach and ran outside to throw up in the bushes. But I didn’t throw up. I kept on running, and she couldn’t catch me.”

He resists the urge to cross himself, to plead with the Lord for mercy.

“And this morning,” Maria goes on, “I told her as soon as class started that my Mutti is sick and I must go home to help her with the chores. She said, ‘Then go, you bad little girl! It will be a mercy to me, to be free of you for the day.’ I don’t think she likes me, but I don’t care. She’s the worst teacher you can imagine, Vati.”

“It’s very wrong for you to deceive your teacher. And you’ve been deceiving your mother and me, too—and your brothers.” A thought occurs to him. He sinks down to her level, eye to eye. “But you always come home with your brothers, at just the right time. How do you manage it?”

“I listen for the church bells. I go meet the boys in front of the schoolhouse when the bells ring the right hour.”

The girl is too intelligent for her own good. Perhaps he ought to take her along on his errands; keep her under his thumb, and well supervised. But of course, that would be far too dangerous. If Unterboihingen has a gauleiter, why not Kirchheim or Wernau? If he were to be seen with his daughter, spotted by a man possessed of more ambition than mercy, the Party would know at once how to trap Anton Starzmann. They would have no trouble making that instrument sing a pretty tune of betrayal.

“You’re coming home with me now.”

“I’m not done cutting!”