The Ragged Edge of Night(56)
Anton rests on the cottage’s lowermost step, transferring his pipe from one hand to the other, watching Elisabeth hang up her clothes. Every article is spaced along the drying line at precisely the right distance. Nothing is crowded, and not a hand’s width of line goes unused. She bends to her laundry basket, lifts a damp dress, and pins it to the line with a casual grace she doesn’t even know she possesses.
When she pauses in her work—every time she rests—Elisabeth’s eyes wander up to the peak of the cottage roof. Still, she is thinking of the tiny attic space, the unused void above her family’s heads. Still, she wonders. There are those in Unterboihingen who would call Elisabeth cold, but Anton knows she is not—not where it matters most, in the center of her soul.
When she has hung the last garment on the line, Elisabeth wanders to the stairs with her laundry basket balanced on her hip. She lets the basket fall to the dry golden grass and then lowers herself to the step beside Anton, sighing.
“You know I don’t like it when you smoke that thing.”
“I know.” He puffs and grins at her, teasing.
“I suppose I can’t complain, though, after the wonders you’ve worked with Maria.”
Anton has convinced the girl not only to attend school daily but to maintain her best behavior, too. He still can’t credit his own achievement. When he looks back on the complex web of scolding, religious lectures, and bribery—largely involving old magazines, which Maria may use for her paper dolls—the route to his daughter’s reform makes him quite dizzy.
“I don’t suppose Maria’s teacher has had any cause to complain recently,” Anton says, cautious.
“Not a bit. She seems quite satisfied with Maria’s behavior. So you may smoke away, as far as I’m concerned.”
The boys’ shouts carry, thin and distant, across the pasture. Anton and Elisabeth turn to watch as Paul and Albert scramble through knee-high dull-yellow grass. The two white goats leap away from the boys and run to the farthest corner of the field. The sun will set soon; the goats must be penned in before dark, bedded down with the milk cow in the stone foundation of the cottage.
“One would think those boys would have learned how to manage goats by now,” Elisabeth says. “They’ll never catch them by chasing.”
“They’re only playing. The good Lord knows, it’s no easy feat to find some fun nowadays.”
Elisabeth watches the boys in silence for a moment. Albert gestures, and Paul runs in a wide arc across the pasture, trying to outflank the goats as they mill and dart. Al waves his arms; the goats break toward Paul, then dodge in another direction when Paul springs at them like a tiger from the tall grass.
“I’m glad they have one another,” Elisabeth says. “I’m glad they’re close.”
“As close as brothers ought to be. Imagine what an Eden our world might be if we were all as close as brothers.”
“I’ve seldom seen brothers as tightly knit as Paul and Albert. The Kopps, maybe—but few others.”
Perhaps it’s the war that has tied Paul and Albert so closely together. In a world that might upend itself at any moment, blow itself inside out in a ball of fire and noise, maybe brotherhood seems all the more precious.
“I’m worried about them,” Elisabeth says suddenly.
Startled, Anton takes the pipe from his mouth. “What—worried about Al and Paul?”
“Yes. They haven’t been eating as much as they used to. Haven’t you noticed? At suppertime, they don’t take as much food. Could they be ill?”
“We’d know for a certainty if they were ill.” Anton frowns across the pasture. Al and Paul have captured the white goats at last. They lead the animals by their collars, moving quickly through the tall grass. The boys seem as energetic as ever. “I can’t find a thing wrong with them—except now it’s Al who’s struggling with his shoes, not Paul. Look; can you see him limping?”
“Yes.” Elisabeth rests her chin in her palm and props her elbow on her knee, the very picture of dejection. “It never ends, does it? I should be grateful to God that He has allowed my children to thrive on little more than rations. Instead, all I can think is, ‘They grow like weeds, and how will we ever keep up?’”
Anton reaches into his pocket and counts out a few reichsmarks, which he hands to Elisabeth. “We’ll manage. Don’t worry, my dear.”
She tries to refuse the money. “There will always be more things we need, more we must spend.”
“If Albert needs shoes, there’s nothing to be done but see that he gets new shoes.”
Elisabeth takes the bills and crumples them in her hand. “You’re right, of course.” Then she brightens. “What would we have done if you hadn’t sold those instruments? The extra money has been such a blessing to us, Anton. I almost feel rich.”
He smiles, but he can’t quite meet Elisabeth’s eye. He should tell her—confess everything—but the thought of it makes him blanch. He hasn’t sold a single horn—not one. He never even considered it. The instruments are too dear to him, the memories they hold too intimate and raw. Silence stretches at the tail of Elisabeth’s remark. In another moment, Anton’s stillness will come to feel like secrecy, and then she will question him, then she will pry—