The Unknown Beloved(31)

“Will you have anything to carry back?” he asked.

“Yes. I will take the soiled things home to wash. But I can leave them here for the time being. At least until I can return with my wagon.”

He hesitated again. He didn’t feel right about leaving her.

“You can go, Michael. Really. I don’t expect you to help me with this. It’s not pleasant work. Though it’s a lot better during the winter than the summer.”

“You’ll still have death all over you.”

“I scrub down when I’m finished, and my clothes are covered. You don’t have to help me. I’ve been doing it for years.”

“Years?”

“Years.”

He flinched. Dead bodies decomposed quickly in the heat. The cold was indeed good for something. He didn’t know if this place would be tolerable in July. He stamped his feet to warm them, but he didn’t leave.

Dani shrugged at his hesitance and filled up a wash bucket at the sink. She carried it to the tables holding the dead and came back for a clipboard, a ledger, and one of the lanterns, and began her work. She moved between the tables laden with the dead, taking quick assessment of what she needed, talking to herself and maybe to him, though he wasn’t sure.

“New shirt and trousers. And he has no boots.” She wrote it down and sighed like that was a problem, but moved on, calling out what articles of clothing each body needed or whether she could make do with what they already wore. When she pulled off her gloves and began peeling off a dead man’s coat, Malone barked at her.

“Good God, Dani. Put your gloves back on.”

“I did not ask you to come, Mr. Malone,” she said quietly, and rolled the corpse onto its side, freeing the garment. She had clearly done it all before, but her work would be a good deal easier if he helped instead of watching.

He removed his coat, yanked a gown from the hook, tied it around himself with impatient hands, and then exchanged his mittens for a pair of the coldest rubber gloves he’d ever had the misfortune to don.

“So I’m Mr. Malone again?” he muttered as he moved to her side.

“I find it hard to be casual in these circumstances,” she said, but her voice sounded odd. When he cocked his head to see her face, he saw that her cheeks were wet with tears. Had he done that?

“You should wear your gloves,” he said, his tone apologetic.

“I do wear my gloves, but they’re awkward, and they slow me down. And I can’t hear their stories with my gloves on.”

“Why do you want to?” he asked.

“Because . . . because no one else ever will.”

“Do you always cry?”

“No. I do not,” she sniffed. He dug a handkerchief from his pocket—a task not easily done with the layers he was wearing—and blotted at her cheeks like a nurse assisting a surgeon. He didn’t want her wiping death all over her face.

“So why are you crying now?” he asked.

“Because this poor man . . . Ivan. His name was Ivan. He was in love. She died a while ago, and he . . . he was glad to go. He wanted to die. But his love for her is here.”

“Here?”

“Here in the cloth.”

“Oh.” The man’s coat—if it could even be called a coat—was so black with soot it could have been the color of apples and no one would know it. Malone stuffed his handkerchief back in his pocket and hoped he wouldn’t need it again.

“The woman he loved was Johanna,” Dani said, her voice rising like she needed to convince him. “She . . . had a lovely smile and she wore a flower in her hat. A poppy. One of those paper ones that you can buy on street corners. He gave it to her. And every time it wore out, he’d buy her another.”

“All right,” he said, guarded, and she sighed. She turned to her clipboard and made some notes, her handwriting graceful and neat, gliding across the page like she was writing invitations to a party instead of descriptions of the dead. Then she set the clipboard aside and added another set of notes to what appeared to be an official record.

He didn’t ask about the particulars; he didn’t find he cared all that much, but when they finished removing the outer layers of “Ivan’s” attire and dressed him in a clean shirt and trousers, Dani removed a paper from her clipboard and tucked it in his breast pocket.

“What’s that for?” Malone frowned.

“I write their stories—in a few words—and put them in their pockets.”

“Why?”

“Nobody’s going to say words at their unmarked graves. These are their eulogies.”

“Is that part of the job?”

“No. And Mr. Raus—and the men who come to retrieve them for burial—probably think I’m mad. I don’t know if they toss the papers I tuck inside their clothes. But it makes me feel better. I keep good records so that someday . . . if someone comes looking, they can be found.”

“Good God, Dani.”

“You say that a lot, Michael.”

“Yeah. Well. I don’t know what else to say.”

“He’ll have to wear those old boots. That is one thing I can’t spare. Look at his poor toes,” she mourned.

He had no wish to look at the man’s toes protruding from the ends of the boots, but he obeyed and immediately wished he hadn’t.