The Ragged Edge of Night(92)

But Anton hardly dares to wait so long. There is no telling when the SS will come for him. Elisabeth and the children must be gone before the SS arrive; they must be well beyond his enemies’ reach. If any place in this world is beyond the reach of evil.

As the snow falls, muting the earth, he still delays what must come. Grant me one more day of love, God, and one more, and another. One more blue afternoon with my children’s voices filling the sky—this, my only music. One more sight of their breath rising in plumes against the cold, so I may know they’re still breathing. Give me time enough to fix these memories in my heart. Let me write this love upon my soul. These memories will be my only comfort. This is all I may bring with me into the gray camp, and later, the chamber. This love will keep me warm inside my grave.

Now—now that he has made time for them at last—the boys have taught Anton how to use a sling. He has learned the rhythm of the spin and the feel of the stone’s weight departing. He can knock over a little house of twigs from twenty paces, fifty. There is something comforting about the action, something soothing in the way the sling and the stone and the target steal all your thoughts away. The escape is all too brief, but it is an escape. A relief, while the leather whirls in your hand.

On a bright Saturday, when the sun is glaring white on snow, Albert and Paul take him hunting. In perfect silence, except for the slow crunch of their feet on the icy crust, they follow a rabbit’s tracks from the heart of the wood out into the Kopp brothers’ field.

“There he is,” Al whispers, pointing.

The rabbit is small, a dark spot in a sea of brightness, moving slowly along the line of the hedge, searching for any green thing in this colorless, barren season.

Al nudges his father. “You take the shot.”

Anton loads his sling with a stone from his pocket. He spins it until it hums, but when the time comes to release the stone, he finds he can’t do it. He can’t take the rabbit’s life. He looses his shot, but it lands wide, and the rabbit springs into flight. It bounds over the field, swift and afraid but with its life intact. Anton watches it go with a painful sort of satisfaction.

One morning, when the light is gray and low, he walks with the children past the home of the town eccentric, a wild-eyed old man called Eugin. Eugin is seldom seen outside his home, but today he is perched on a tiny stool just this side of his door. Each spring, the swallows nest in Eugin’s eaves—they have done so for generations—and layers of old droppings have coated the ground around the house’s foundation whiter than the snow. The old man’s breath makes beads of ice in his heavy mustache. He is shaving pieces from a chunk of lard, clutched in his greasy hand. As Anton and the children glance his way, Eugin takes the lard delicately from the blade with his teeth. He chews with gusto, smacking his lips in that tangle of beard.

He proffers the lard in his fist. “Want some?”

“No, thank you, mein Herr,” Maria says politely. “I’ve already had my breakfast.”

Anton would laugh at her remark. But now, all he can manage is a faint, disbelieving gratitude that the girl has learned some manners. I have left her something, taught her one good lesson at least. Thanks be to God for that.

The old man’s rasping laughter fades as they hurry past his house. St. Kolumban rears before them, a white edifice in a silent white world. They can see the stork’s nest, a damp, black tangle of sticks piled high with snow. Untouched, unoccupied since the bird fell.

Albert says, “I don’t like to see the nest like that, all covered in snow.” The poor boy has been unable to forget the stork since the day the steel door opened. Anton can only imagine what violence fills his son’s dreams—visions of red ripped through white.

“What do you suppose it means for us now,” Al says, “since the stork is gone?”

Paul sighs heavily, kicking his feet in the snow. He doesn’t like to talk about it, but Al persists: “Father Emil said it was the luck of our town.”

“There is another stork,” Anton reminds them. “The other one still lives.”

Paul blurts out an answer suddenly, as if, all at once, something has loosed his reservations and freed his little spirit to confront that senseless death. “But the other stork will never come back. Father Emil says they mate for life. It will never come back because the nest reminds it of its dead mate, and it will never take another mate, either, because it’s too heartbroken now.”

Maria stares at her brother for a long moment. The vapor of her short, rapid breaths rises ever faster as she struggles not to cry. She gives up the fight and covers her face with her hands, keening. Paul blinks and shuffles his feet again. He wipes away his own tear.

“Is it true?” Maria clings to Anton’s hand. “Vati, is it true?”

“No, darling. It isn’t true.” He bends to stroke her hair, to kiss her hot forehead. “Storks do find love again. In time, when it’s not so sad, ours will take another mate. Perhaps they will even come back here, to our town. They might take up in the same old nest on our bell tower.”

“I don’t want them to come back to St. Kolumban,” Paul says. “It won’t be the same! It won’t be our stork, the one we lost.”

“There, there.” He gathers them all in his arms, these three precious children, gifted to him by God and fate. “After a time, you won’t cry over it anymore. The pain won’t hurt so badly.”