The Ragged Edge of Night(9)

Still, Elisabeth hesitates. Her hand lies beside the empty teacup, and she is clenching her fingers hard, pressing her neatly filed nails into the skin of her thumb until the color drains away and whitens beneath the pressure.

“You don’t have to decide now,” Anton says.

“I might as well make up my mind. You’ve come all this way to meet me.” Another pause. She looks down into the teacup, thoughtful or shy. “But you should meet the children first. If they don’t take to you, there would be no point in going forward.”

The thought shakes him for a moment—facing children again—but he pushes the fear away. This, after all, is why he has come to Unterboihingen. “I want very much to meet the children. I was a teacher, when I was still a Franciscan—I believe I told you as much, in our letters. Children are dear to me, and I flatter myself in thinking I’ve got a certain useful way with them.”

Inside the bakery, he buys a box of Hausfreunde. Side by side, walking slowly, Anton and Elisabeth cross the town of Unterboihingen, talking and nibbling the butter cookies as they go. One drop at a time, Elisabeth thaws. They say the path to a man’s heart runs through his stomach, but it’s every bit as true for a woman. She licks the chocolate topping from her Hausfreunde slowly, making the moment last.

“I haven’t tasted chocolate for so long.”

“Neither have I.”

“I feel I’m eating it too fast, and yet I want to pop the whole thing in my mouth in one bite. Who can say when we’ll have another chance to enjoy chocolate? It’s almost a miracle that our bakery had any today. The supplies have been unreliable for years, here in Unterboihingen, ever since the war began—supplies of everything, not only sweets.”

“I imagine chocolate is easier to find in Berlin just now, but not by much.”

She takes a sparing bite. “You paid far too much for these.”

“Maybe,” Anton says, laughing. “But it was worth it, don’t you think? Anyway, the children will appreciate a little treat.”

She examines her cookie for a moment, critical and stern—the same expression she wore outside the bakery, assessing the stranger Herr Starzmann. “The apricot marmalade in the middle… it isn’t the same. The bakery used to make it a different way, when we first moved to the village.”

“They’ve made the marmalade with honey, I assume,” Anton says. “Ran out of white stamps for their sugar rations.”

“I’m sure you’re right. At least there are plenty of beehives in Unterboihingen, out there in the fields. We may run out of coal by wintertime, but we’ll never suffer from bitter tea.”

He likes her voice. It is mellow and confident; rich yet restrained chords of subtle humor play against a predictable melody of staunch sensibility. When he can hear the music in a person’s soul, he can understand them. Music has been his mother tongue ever since, as a boy of ten, he taught himself to play the church organ. Pumping the great bellows with his feet on a Friday night, hands mashing clumsily on the yellowed ivory keys, while the priest swept the cobwebs from the corners of the nave and shouted, “Well done, Anton! Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands!” His parents had had no money for lessons, but God opens every way for an earnest heart.

“It seems this little village has done well,” he says. “As well as can be expected, in times like these. Compared to the cities I’ve seen—Stuttgart, Munich.”

“Yes.” A brief, disbelieving laugh. “I always liked city life, and I thought it a great hardship—almost a curse—to be stuck here in Unterboihingen. But Paul has bad lungs, you see; he can’t take the city air. Ever since the war began, I’ve come to see country life as a blessing. I never imagined I could.”

The dubious miracles devised by war.

She says, “There is something beautiful about this village, the community we’ve made. Something Godly. In the city, we would struggle more—never enough to eat, and the bombs—constant danger. My children would go hungry. There aren’t enough stamps in all of Germany to keep Albert’s belly full, not enough rations to feed a growing boy. But here, we have cows and goats for milk, and plenty of eggs. Fields full of potatoes and onions. And whatever we can’t raise ourselves, we trade for. Everyone here raises a little more than his family needs, bakes a little more bread, kills an extra hen. We trade our humble excesses to one another. That way, no one suffers.”

“I can see what you mean,” he says. Godly. Surely this is the way the Lord intended mankind to live: neighbor loving neighbor, each brother safely kept.

“Strange, to think we tend to one another here, while the rest of the world…”

Her words trail away. She has forgotten the half-eaten cookie in her hand. Strange, that love can grow at all in a world shaded out, strangled by vines of hate. Reluctantly, Anton allows himself to consider the numbers. Fifty-four thousand dead, last month alone—and that is only the tally of German soldiers. Unfeeling figures, cold and stark, so emotionless a man could almost be forgiven for taking them in blandly with his morning tea and toast, like a report on the health of stocks he doesn’t own. There is no count of civilian deaths—not that he can trust. Certainly, no admission of what goes on in the concentrations camps, as if, by convenient omission, the Party can hide its sins from citizens and from God. There is little word from the press on enemy casualties, though when headlines crow, Blitzkrieg! 5,500 tons dropped on London; British brought to their knees!, one can infer.