The Ragged Edge of Night(61)
He only needs to find some way to do it—some way that won’t end with Elisabeth and the children loaded onto a gray bus, with Anton choking on the smoke left behind.
22
Anton rises early the next morning, long before the sun is strong enough to seep around the edges of the wool curtains. His family is sleeping. In the un-light, quiet as a shadow, he dresses and takes his jacket from a hook beside the bedroom door. Across the small room, Elisabeth moves in her sleep: a rustle of bedding, a brief, baffled sigh. He sees her through the gray dawn gloom. Her hair is in disarray; she has thrown one hand up on the pillow, as if defending herself from her dreams. But her face is peaceful in sleep, as always. When she’s sleeping, it’s the only time she looks entirely fearless. She has grown used to sharing a bed with Anton. She no longer goes rigid when he lies beside her, and there are times when he would like to hold her, comfort her if he can. But he knows she will never accept comfort—not from him. Each night, as they lie side by side, as he edges into the blurred world of sleep, his arms seem to hold the ghost of his wife, a small, warm body grateful for protection. He can feel her, pulled close to his chest, and yet she is never there.
Anton slept very little last night, and when he did drift off, his fragmented dreams were all of the children he had already failed—those at St. Josefsheim. The calls of night birds, distant over the forest, echoed the wails of little ones torn from the friars who had sworn to protect them. They are lost souls now, frightened and unsheltered, vulnerable and small. By night, they weep across the dark and endless fields.
Anton leaves his cold bedroom behind and slips from the cottage, down the stairs into the damp chill of dawn. Sluggish with despair, he pushes the old shed door open and moves through the space inside, dragging dark and heavy thoughts.
It has been many months since Anton brought his clothing into the house—his other small possessions, too. His humble belongings now share the dresser and closet with Elisabeth’s things, though everything he owns, what he has brought to this marriage, seems to crouch in the presence of her life, frozen and panicked, like a rabbit that has forgotten to run from the hunter. Between what is hers and what is his, there is always a margin of emptiness—a gap between their hangers in the closet, a gulf between their folded sweaters and matched stockings, as if she can’t bear even for her possessions to touch his. But Anton has left the instruments in the old chests, locked up now so no one can find them. Cobwebs shroud the old trunks, clinging between wooden ribs. No one has touched the trunks for months, but they are not empty, despite what the spiders would have you believe.
He finds his key ring in his pocket and unlocks the nearest chest. There they all lie, cold, dull, and silent. They are creatures from a fairy tale, cast into endless sleep by a witch’s sorcery. He touches one, the cornet, and runs a finger along the rolled edge of its bell. Do they call me Herr Cornet, they who wait for the Red Orchestra to play?
I can’t do this, he tells himself. I can’t lead children into sin. I can’t teach them to do evil, to worship anyone other than God—especially not the beast who calls himself the Führer. I swore in Riga I would never again work for Hitler’s good. I can’t do this. I cannot, my God.
But what choice does he have? The gauleiter, with his notes and letters, with his contacts in Berlin… if Anton doesn’t obey, M?belbauer will surely bring him to heel.
And that will be the end of Anton’s family.
Something is stuck between the cornet and a French horn below. Small, gray, papery, its dry leaves are bent and soft around the edges. He pulls it free of the horns and turns it over in his hands. It’s his workbook from his Wehrmacht days. In this small book, in a neat teacher’s hand, Anton recorded all his doings, the everyday drudgeries of military life. Struck by a sudden urge to see what kind of man he was then—longing to find some difference in his spirit, some proof that he is someone better now—he goes to the doorway, where pink morning light spills in. He opens the workbook, but the lines of his writing bleed together into black and formless shapes, and he can’t make out the words.
His service in the Wehrmacht was not long—one ill-fated march and then his escape, with his injured back for an excuse. Nevertheless, his leap from the plane and the march on Riga come back with vivid clarity. Against the dawn sky, he can see a tower of flames, a church spire wreathed in fire—and to either side, darkness rolling out toward a faraway horizon. He is trapped now in that same snare, forced to do the Reich’s bidding. No matter which way we turn, no matter how we resist, there is a fist of power ready to close around us. The road is straight and unvaried. It leads us on, merciless, toward ash and fire.
Since he took Father Emil’s offer and joined the resistance, there have been times when Anton has felt himself beyond his depth. When he was new and inexperienced, he couldn’t deny that he had flung himself into treacherous water, and it was far above his head. But he never doubted his ability to swim. No matter how deep the mire, no matter how swift the current, he could fight his way up to the surface—he knew it; his faith was unshaken. But this—the gauleiter assigning him a repellent task, and no safe way to refuse… For the first time since taking up the secret cause—indeed, for the first time since coming to Unterboihingen—he feels he can do nothing but fail. It leaves him stunned and absent, with a taste like copper on his tongue. He is weak, powerless, as all men are against the forces that assault our humanity.