“So?”
“In Kavsak, a child can’t be adopted without the consent of his father.”
Chapter 15
Daniel stood beside Quiet Boy’s crib, looking down on the dying child, inwardly cursing Kavsak. How did men so lose sight of their humanity that this became possible?
Brenna bent down and looked solemnly through the bars of the crib. Tch, he heard. After a moment, she straightened up. “I’ll go fix the pears for Mr. Fierce.”
Work was the antidote to despair.
The boy jerked. Clear brown liquid trickled from his mouth. Daniel rested his hand on the baby’s back. Roza had already lain him on his side so the vomit wouldn’t choke him. Apart from that, there was nothing he could do except whisper false reassurances, just as he’d done for his own son, Joseph Alden.
“Daniel?” Brenna reappeared with a plastic bowl of pureed baby food. “I think it’s going to take both of us to feed Mr. Fierce.”
He agreed, and turned away from the silent crib.
Mr. Fierce growled when they approached him.
Since he wouldn’t allow himself to be held and his crib was too filthy to eat in, they decided to set him in the tub and feed him there. While Brenna distracted him, Daniel snatched him up under the armpits. Mr. Fierce’s face knotted in crimson fury. Daniel held the squalling child at arm’s length as he carried him down the hall. He didn’t give in to the temptation to hold that boy a little closer. Nosiree. Those furious little legs were spinning like windmills, right in range of the Ellsworth family jewels.
“You know,” Daniel told him, “if you don’t practice good manners, people won’t want to be friends with you. You need to think about that.”
Mr. Fierce, apparently, did not care for the advice.
He released a golden arc of urine and hosed Daniel.
“Arrh, shit!”
Brenna, turncoat, bit back a laugh.
“Easy for you,” he retorted. “Your luggage isn’t charcoal.” He set the tot in the tub and slowly released him to be sure he was steady on his feet. Ducking under Daniel’s arm, Brenna slipped the bowl down the edge of the tub. Fierce grabbed it and dug his fingers into it.
Daniel noticed a container of hand sanitizer on the back of the toilet and grabbed it.
He and Brenna eased away. The child settled visibly with each retreating step. All he wanted, it appeared, was to be left alone.
Brenna leaned against the doorway watching Mr. Fierce push pear puree into his mouth.
Daniel pumped the gel into his hands and smeared it generously over his shirt, pants, and hands. “You think an eighteen-month old can be a sociopath?”
She shrugged.
“I’ll go strip his bed. I’m already full of piss—may as well sink up to my elbows in shit while I’m at it.”
While she acted as warden, he stripped the crib, using the soiled linen to wipe up as much of the guck as possible. As he worked, he heard Mr. Fierce throw the plastic bowl across the bathroom. Hopefully, he finished eating before he gave vent to his spleen.
Half a minute later, Brenna reappeared beside Daniel, holding the thrashing Mr. Fierce—facing outward. “Here.”
“Whoa!” he said, and jumped back. “Don’t point that boy at me! He might still be loaded!”
She burst out laughing.
The sound cut through him. Her laughter was beautiful—like sunshine on a bubbling creek. More. Let me hear it again. He hooked his thumbs in his jeans, affecting a cowboy accent. “Now, Little Missy—” he said, pointing at the naked boy. “It ain’t fittin’ fer no lady to be operating one of them gizmos. ‘At’s a job fer the fellers. We get special training, from childhood…”
She guffawed.
He bent over, roaring with laughter, joining the giddy lunacy—needing the catharsis of laughter as much as she did.
“Stand back!” She swung the baby in playful threat. His dirty little legs swung forward as if he were on a swing. “He might go off any moment.”
Daniel stepped forward, hand out in a calming gesture. “Put him down, Little Missy, and no one will get hurt.”
“Retreat, I said!”
With the exaggerated manner of a cartoon character sneaking up on an unsuspecting foe, he advanced, stepping high, hands held out to catch her. One step, two steps, closer, closer—
She screeched and ran, escaping down the hallway, swinging the baby at him at intervals. “Now, Fierce! Pee on him! Pee-ee!”
Mr. Fierce was so taken aback he stopped flailing.
“Here I come!” Daniel gave chase.
She ran into the bedroom and clambered on the bed, using Mr. Fierce as a shield, holding him this way and that each time Daniel tried to get close.
Suddenly, Daniel pounced. Bending over them, knees on the bed, he tickled them both mercilessly.
She rolled into a ball, clutching Mr. Fierce, laughing helplessly. Oh, how he loved her laughter.
Then a miracle occurred. Mr. Fierce laughed, too—a long burbling laugh of sheer delight.
Brenna shot a look of amazement from Mr. Fierce to Daniel.
“Aha!” Daniel exclaimed, playfully jabbing the tot’s armpits. “You’ve been holding out on me. You’re not a lost cause after all.”
Mr. Fierce yawned, revealing his nippy white teeth. Two minutes of play had exhausted him.
Brenna swooped him down the hallway like an airplane.
Walking behind her to the nursery, restored by the near-hysteria of their crazy game, Daniel eyes followed the smooth curve of her hips. Hovering over her in that narrow bed had made him acutely aware of how much he wanted her. He was charged as a lightning bolt seeking ground. He wanted to kiss her soft mouth, cup her breasts, stroke her hips. He wanted to open her and reach inside.
She lifted Mr. Fierce over the crib rails and lay him on the mattress. Leaning over him, she brushed his sweaty forelock to one side, exposing his bruised forehead. Mr. Fierce allowed her to rake her fingers through his scruffy hair. His eyelids drooped, then popped open again as if he didn’t want to miss the tenderness that had appeared in the fog of misery enveloping the nursery.
A long slow wave of pleasure and sexual desire rolled through Daniel. One day, he wanted a woman looking at his children like that.
He tipped his face to see her better. She had done well with Mr. Fierce—the child who might hurt her—but been tentative with Squeak, who couldn’t. Why? Because you couldn’t break what was already damaged? Because she didn’t know what to do when her heart opened? And it had with Squeak—he’d watched her fall in love with the baby, watched her eyes return to Squeak time and again as she helped with the care of the others.
Brenna gave comfort but shied from receiving it. Why? Because receiving comfort lay her open to feeling the love implicit in the gesture? Love, after all, had nearly killed her. She was a solitary woman, with a single extraordinary link to the outside world—her ability to see into the human soul. Maybe the gift was a burden. Maybe retreat was her only safe choice.
Mr. Fierce closed his eyes and surrendered to Brenna’s caresses.
Calm. Brenna thought, pulling Mr. Fierce’s knit shirt down so it covered his little belly as much as possible. Silence. The room felt tranquil. She felt content, caring for children with Daniel at her side. Makeshift as it was, this was family life, a single footprint on a path that always eluded her. Daniel had conjured it from the simple act of sharing his heart. If she’d entered this nursery alone, it would have been nothing more than a room with people in it.
Daniel tiptoed to the corner crib and reached in for Dying Boy. “It won’t hurt if I hold him,” he said. “Maybe he can still feel some comfort from it.”
She wanted to warn him. He’s all but dead. Don’t forge a link with no future—you’ll only get hurt. Attachment to mortals carried a heavy penalty.
But Daniel pulled the infant into his arms and took the baby with the death sentence to the rocking chair. Settling the boy on his chest, Daniel rubbed his back and hum
med. Daniel was everything she longed for. He was light in a world of darkness, steadfast as the lighthouses in his native state of Maine that stood firm in the face of darkest nights and howling gales.
She thought about last night at the hotel, how she had turned him down when he so clearly wanted to stay and make love. She’d thought only of her own potential loss—that he could die—but not of the emotional risk he would take, of linking himself to her, when she, too, might also perish.
She dropped her head. His moral courage put her to shame.
She turned abruptly and picked up the camera.
“Where are you going?” Daniel asked over the baby’s head.
“I’m going to get some shots of Roza.”
She walked into the fetid miasma of Roza’s decomposing body and busied herself setting up the camera. She felt uneasy, ill-at-ease in her own skin. An indefinable truth hung at the periphery of her vision but every time she turned and tried to see it, it moved too.
She began from afar, getting a long shot of the barren room with Roza’s body in the foreground. She crouched, carefully framing the image so it both protected her dignity and revealed the shadowed corridor beyond her. She had fallen face-forward in the direction of the hallway that led to the nursery.
Roza must have been headed one last time to the children in her care. What had she planned to do with her last minutes of life? Tuck them in? Feed them? Say goodbye? Maybe she had just wanted the comfort of not dying alone.
A puff of breeze fluttered the hem of Roza’s skirt, a movement that gave the impression of life where there was none.
Brenna shot a close-up of the bloody fabric then rack-focused to her lifeless hand resting on the concrete floor. She held the shot steady for five seconds—enough time for a contemplative moment on-screen, or a slow fade.
She shifted her weight, still crouched, thumb poised over the record button in the handgrip. She needed a close-up of Roza’s face. But her body moved one way, and her emotions the other. She overbalanced and sank to the floor on her hip.
She couldn’t look Roza in the eye.
Not even through the distance of the viewfinder.
Her heart began thumping. She scrambled backwards, as scared as if Roza had suddenly risen from death and turned on her. Her back hit the side wall, but her boots kept pumping, sliding across the floor. She released the camera, pulled her knees up to her chest and circled them with her arms. She rested her chin atop her knees and rocked, staring at Roza.
Six children she had taken on. In a war zone. Without water, food, heat, or medical care.
Like Daniel, Roza dared to love in the face of calamity.
She, too, put Brenna to shame.
Today, Brenna had stood in the clearing, longing for the rifle shot that would free her from struggle. And in so doing, she’d nearly abandoned the man she loved.
A soundless sob punched her horrified breast. She dropped her face into her hands. The truth now made itself clear. She was a coward.
Not afraid of dying.
Afraid of living.
Daniel rocked sedately, hoping that the dying boy resting on his chest would find the cadence soothing. The child needed a real name. But what kind of name? Muslim? Jewish? Orthodox? It bothered him not to know who the boy was. What would his traditions have been? What language would he have spoken? What games would he have played?
It wasn’t right for a child to come and go and mean nothing in between. He should have been important already. Daniel’s own son, Joseph Alden, had been wanted, envisioned even before conception. Daniel had loved him as he grew in Aya’s belly, planned family events around him, dreamed dreams for him.
But this boy in his arms would die without a trace, unloved, unremembered.
The baby jerked and Daniel felt a small patch of the warm spit-up seep through the front of his shirt.
“Shh,” he murmured, cupping the back of the baby’s head. “I’m right here with you.”
Brenna lifted her chin from her knees and sat up. Something was wrong.
Listen, an inner voice warned. Listen!
She pricked her ears, attentive as radar sweeping the horizon. She heard poom, poom, poom. Distantly, to the west. Distantly, to the east. But no artillery close by. The barrage had slowed, then stopped altogether, like background music that faded and didn’t resume.
And she hadn’t noticed.
“Oh, God.” She grabbed the camera. There was no time to waste.
No artillery meant one thing.
Nationalists. On their way.
Shelling was halted when tanks and men advanced through a given zone, so they wouldn’t be hit by friendly fire.
She scrambled to her feet, cursing her stupidity.
She ran down the hallway. She had to get Daniel and the children out. She reached the nursery room door and froze. Squeak was in her crib, arms flailing in the air. Grub lay on her side, eyes wide open. Heckle and Jeckle’s heads bobbed, eyes wide and dark. Mr. Fierce swayed in his crib.
All of them, unnaturally silent.
Daniel sat in the rocker, humming a somber dirge, running his cheek across the top of Dying Boy’s head. He could have been any father, humming, calmly stroking his son’s back as he fell asleep. But the baby wasn’t warm or supple. He wasn’t making soft snorey noises in Daddy’s arms. He was inert, his color gone, no longer drawing breath.
“No,” she whispered.
Daniel looked dazed, cheeks wet, lost in some distant place of sorrow.
She saw the moment through photographer’s eyes—a stunning study of tragedy and compassion. The kind-hearted man lost in the shadows, grieving for a child who wasn’t even his. She should capture this. He was in a stupor—she could get the shot before he realized she’d done it. The impulse raced through her—and stalled. She knew what this was.
Another fucking Pulitzer.
She didn’t want it.
Not the prize.
But the image? It was breath-taking. She couldn’t not take it.
She lifted the camera, framed the image, pressed ‘Record’. Fingers delicately working the lens, she held the shot, even as the voice inside her urged: hurry, run, the Nationalists are coming.
The problem was, Daniel was in shock. Even if she weren’t taking his picture, he couldn’t be rushed. He needed as gentle a transition as she could give him.
With the flick of a finger, she stopped recording and set the camera aside. She crouched in front of him, balancing on her toes.
She noticed with a sinking heart that there were brown stains on Daniel’s shirt, beneath the baby’s mouth and nose. The child hadn’t died easy.
While she had been fighting her own demons, Daniel had coped alone with the baby’s final struggle. The toll it had taken was clear. He looked beaten. This was more than the loss of the child in his arms. This had conjured old grief. How long had he been frozen in this awful moment?
She rested her hands on his knees, hoping that touch would help him return to physical reality. “Oh, honey,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry.” So sorry the child had died. So sorry she hadn’t been here to help. So sorry about his own son.
He tightened his arms around the boy, pressing his cheek closer to the little head that should have been warm and smelled of baby.
She stroked Daniel’s face, moving her own close to his. “You gave him a great gift,” she whispered. “You loved him for the hard part.”
His eyes came into focus. He looked at her as if he was surprised to see her. Her words seemed to sink in. He shook his head sadly. “It wasn’t enough,” he said, his voice tight with grief and anger. “This city made his life insignificant.”
“He’s not insignificant. He’s in our hearts now, yours and mine. We keep him.”
“We don’t even know his name.”
“Well…” she paused, considering. “What if we named him Kristjan?” She’d always liked that name.
His head rose. “Like ‘Christian’?”
“Yeah, only European.”
“What if he’s Jewish?”
His concern touched her. How like him to want the paperwork in order. “So, he gets to heaven and blames the goy.”
One corner of his mouth rose in a melancholy attempt at a smile. He considered her suggestion without hurry. “Kristjan is good.”
“Alright then, Kristjan it is,” she agreed. “Is there anything you want to do to mark his passing?”
He shook his head slowly. “I already prayed for him. He has a name. I don’t suppose there’s any way we could give him a proper burial.”
She shook her head.
“All I have to do is let go,” he observed sadly.
She eased her hands under the little boy and waited for Daniel’s consent.
At length, he loosened his embrace.
Brenna wasn’t certain whether God existed—but if he did, she knew he didn’t intercede in human affairs. When the shit hit the fan no amount of prayer changed the outcome. Any victim of the holocaust knew that, any woman in Tel Aviv trying to reassemble the man she loved. The purpose of prayer was not to beg for reprieve, but to ask for the grace with which to meet the inevitable.
She took Kristjan back to his crib, wrapped him in the bed sheet, and took him out to the front room. There, she lay him beside Roza. She rested her hand on him for a moment, but did not pray. His test was over.
Leaving the cocooned bundle, she hastened back to the nursery.
In order to move the children, she was going to have to abandon the camera. She ejected the memory cards and stuffed them in her jacket.
Next, she went to Squeak’s crib. Working around her, she started pulling up the corners of the fitted sheet. Her idea was to fashion a sling that she could put two or three of the children in, and carry them that way. Daniel could do the same.
He appeared beside her and picked up Squeak. “Are we doing laundry?” His voice lacked all color or inflection.
Brenna pulled the sheet free and grasped its diagonal corners. “We have to leave. I’m making slings to carry the children.”
Day Three Page 23
