The Ragged Edge of Night

by Olivia Hawker

  Elisabeth needs his help. These children need his help—Albert and Paul and little Maria. Anton has never turned his back on a child in need, except when the guns of the Schutzstaffel forced him to do it. Except when the Schutzstaffel goaded him into unforgivable cowardice.

  “Their father,” Anton says gently. “Was it the war . . . ?”

  Elisabeth’s face goes blank as a wiped slate. She sits up straighter, shoulders square, hands precisely folded on the tabletop. “No, not the war. It was blood poisoning that took him.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.” He waits, inviting her to say more, but she only watches him, silent and firm. It’s clear she will not speak another word on the subject of Herr Herter, the first husband. Anton must be content with her silence.

  “Do you have any questions for me?”

  “Yes,” Elisabeth says. Now that they have broached the uncomfortable fact of her widowhood, she lifts the teacup again. This time she drinks, a long, thirsty draft; the tea has gone cool enough to take it in all at once. “In your letter, you said you were a brother of the Franciscans.”

  “I was.”

  “And you left the order because . . . ?”

  He smiles. “It was not my choice to leave.”

  “Of course.” She blushes, and the coloring of her cheeks seems to strip away years and hardship, revealing a bright yet delicate portrait of the girl she once was. She is like the soft white core of wood exposed by a carver’s knife—hard outer layers stripped away, scars and weather-beaten crags gone for the moment. Inside, a tenderness, yielding and sweet. She says, “I am sorry, mein Herr. I should have been more thoughtful.”

  He laughs lightly. The sound lifts her brows, and perhaps her spirit. “You are no trouble to me, Elisabeth. If we are to be married, we must get comfortable with one another. We must speak freely.”

  “If. Yes.” She picks up the paper, opens it to the advertisement section. Anton watches as she reads the notice she placed three weeks ago. It’s a plea for mercy and relief, sent out in a moment of surpassing desperation to a world too tortured to care. She blushes again, as if for the first time she sees her plight through another person’s eyes—Anton’s, and those of all the other men who chanced to read her notice but were not moved to respond.

  As for Anton, he has read Elisabeth’s advertisement so many times, he can recite it like holy scripture.

  Good churchgoing woman, widowed, mother of three. In need of a humble, patient man, willing to be a father to my children. Interest in legitimate marriage only. I have no money, so those who think to profit need not reply. Must be willing to relocate to Unterboihingen, Württemberg, as health will not permit us to move elsewhere.

  She sets the paper down and looks at him—stares at him, assessing his fitness for the role, guessing at his motives. The moment stretches, silent but for a sudden clash of pans from somewhere inside the bakery and in the distance the low, repetitive clucks of a yard full of hens. Elisabeth is perfectly still, clear-eyed and considering. She is asking herself every question she can think to pose; Anton can all but hear her thoughts. Have I done something foolish? Have I set in motion something I can never stop? He is a stranger to me; what kind of mother trusts the lives of her children to unknown hands? But Mother Mary, I am left with little choice.

  When she speaks, she asks a question Anton did not anticipate. “Will I be condemned for this, I wonder?”

  “Condemned? I don’t understand.”

  She lowers her eyes and turns the teacup on its saucer. “This is a kind of whoredom, wouldn’t you say?”

  Startled, he finds he can barely hold back a laugh. “Certainly, I would not say it. Your advertisement specified that you sought a legitimate marriage. God does not consider marriage a sin, meine Dame.”

  “He might consider this marriage a sin.”

  Her voice is so low, Anton hardly catches the words. He thinks perhaps he was not intended to hear them. Gently, he says, “What do you mean?”

  Resolute, Elisabeth straightens. She lifts her face and meets Anton’s eye with a frank, unwavering stare. “I made no secret that I am only seeking a husband for his money.”

  “Times are hard, Elisabeth. We all must do what we must do.”

  “But this? Does it not go too far, to offer . . . what a wife has to give . . . for money’s sake? And anyhow, I still—” She breaks off and casts her eyes down again, but Anton can see the sudden shimmer of dampness on her lashes.

  “You still love your first husband,” he guesses.

  Elisabeth doesn’t shrink from his words. She only nods, calm and stoic. “Yes. So I wonder, is it a sin—is it harlotry—to marry under false pretense?”

  Anton smiles, relieved or amused—or both. He sees at once how to set her mind at ease, and it’s only now, in finding the solution to Elisabeth’s turmoil, that he can identify the vague, formless fear that has clung to him from his first correspondence with the widow. Hitler may have torn away the friar’s robes, but Brother Nazarius still lives in Anton’s heart. From age eighteen, he has lived under a vow of chastity. Perhaps if he had left the order of his own accord, he might find it easier to imagine doing what husbands and wives do. He might picture himself leading any number of women into every conceivable variety of harlotry and whoredom. But this was never his choice, and he is not so eager to abandon his old Franciscan ways.

  “You need not fear,” he says quickly. “In truth, I . . . I can’t engage in . . .” He clears his throat, uncertain what to say.

  Elisabeth’s brows lift again. She watches him, waiting and silent, but curiosity has replaced her shame.

  Anton tries again. “I’m unable to father children.” It’s technically true. If he has no appetite for the act—if he is still a friar in his heart, bound by his vows—then it hardly counts as a lie. “I was injured in the Wehrmacht. You understand.” Let her believe the injury was severe enough to render him incapable, if she chooses to believe it. It will make no difference; she’ll never learn otherwise. Elisabeth needs a protector and partner, not a lover. Anton needs redemption for his sins. Each of them can give what the other seeks; there’s no need to complicate this arrangement with the things ordinary husbands and wives take for granted.

  “I see.” Elisabeth’s businesslike manner has returned. Some of the color has come back to her cheeks, too. The prospect of sharing home and bed with an impotent ex-soldier seems appealing.

  “That’s why I’ve sought out just this sort of arrangement,” Anton says. “A widow, a good woman with several children of her own—she wouldn’t expect more from me, now, would she? A girl who had never married and never known the joys of motherhood—she wouldn’t care to take on a husband with my . . . limitations.”

  “But if you are”—her cheeks color again as she searches for the most delicate word—“incapable, then why marry at all?”

  “Surely there’s more to gain from marriage than that.” He laughs lightly. “I’m seeking what all men seek: purpose. I want to be useful—do some good before the Lord calls me home.”

  Elisabeth nods. She seems to understand. Under her breath, she says, “The saints know, there is an imbalance of good and evil just now.” Then she straightens suddenly and fixes Anton with a hard stare. “In one of your letters, you mentioned you’re not a member of the Party.”

  He offers a small bow of acquiescence, hand to heart.

  “Have you ever been? Might you be in the future?”

  He says quietly, “The NSDAP stripped me of my place in this world. They disbanded my order, closed my school—and did more, besides. I will never be loyal to the Party. If that troubles you—”

  “It doesn’t trouble me,” Elisabeth says at once. She smiles, then—the first smile she has shown. It is small, self-conscious, and restrained, but it suits her round face beautifully.

  “It seems we see eye to eye, where political matters are concerned.”

  “It seems we do.”

  “I’m no expert on marriag
e, but I believe that gives us some small advantage—a chance for success.”

  “If you are content to be . . . well, shall we say, a companion—”

  “I am quite content. So long as I may be useful.” So long as I may find forgiveness. A chance to do right—to protect those who cannot protect themselves, as I should have done when God first gave me the opportunity.

  “Then I . . . I am . . .” Elisabeth breathes deep, presses a hand to her stomach as if she seeks to quell a bout of nausea. She is not ready to say it, not yet. She can’t release the past as easily as that. Who among us can? What has gone before drags behind. As we move through our lives, our workaday habits, we trail our ghostly wakes.

  He gives her the courtesy of time and silence to order her thoughts, to set her heart upon the path. He feigns interest in the men across the street, walking slowly past a fabric shop (long closed, painted sign peeling), with their coats slung over shoulders and their armpits darkened by sweat. Anton can’t help squinting as he watches the men pass, as if by narrowing his eyes he might see through flesh and bone, past the unassuming façade we all must show in the open, into their hearts and spirits. Who are these men, really? For that matter, who is Elisabeth? Even in quiet Unterboihingen, you can’t be too confident, too careful. No place is free of disease. Hitler has breathed his hatred over the whole of Germany; there is no telling who is festering inside, who has succumbed to the black fever.

  From the side of his gaze, even as he watches the men, Anton still sees Elisabeth. She seems to occupy the whole world. Her presence is looming, dominating—commanding in the urgency of her need. He has fixed his attention to the pale roundness of her face, the meticulous part of her hair, a straight line of scalp pinked by the sun. Or she has taken his attention and now holds it, a mild surprise to him. How long has it been since he looked at a woman this way? Twenty years? Even as a friar, he was still a man; to appreciate what God has made is no sin. But there was no possibility of romance in those days. No woman left Brother Nazarius sleepless—such longings would have been impractical—and if visions of feminine beauty haunted his thoughts when he ought to have been concentrating on his rosary or the Stations of the Cross, they did so no more often than memories of a rose garden or an especially moving line of music. Twenty years of celibacy have left him unprepared to confront his own heart. Elisabeth is attractive, in her way. Somewhat younger than he. She is no great beauty, though if her eyes were not so desolate and her mouth not so hard, she might come close. But outward beauty indicates nothing of real value—not to God and not to Anton. Little though he knows her, he can’t help but admire her courage, her fortitude, the great towering force of her faith. He is willing to make this marriage work, provided she is also willing. Provided God forgives him for the lie—the second one he has told today. He can find the redemption he needs with this hard-eyed woman. He feels certain of that. And he can do her good, too; yoked together, they might find it easier to toil in the traces of life.

  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 mor
ning 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.

  But the British were not subdued, were they? And now, with their fleet bombed last December in Pearl Harbor, even the circumspect Americans have been goaded to fight. You hear the news in Munich. A man pulls his hat lower, sheltering beneath its brim. He says, They never meant to bombard London in the first place. There’s not a damned thing that fool of a Führer can get right. You hear the news in Stuttgart, passed from mouth to ear beside the ruins of a church where smoke and dust still rise like incense to Heaven. The Reich suppresses and contorts the truth. The Reich lies outright, and what are we to do about it? The papers, like whipped dogs, piss themselves and cringe. Reporters sit up and beg. When the Master snaps his fingers, he wants a show of loyalty. But what can we expect? Any press not controlled by the Party disappeared by ’34. Editors and journalists, declared racially impure, were made enemies of the state. If they didn’t see what was coming and flee to France or Canada, then they met their ends in Dachau, knees knocking together in the predawn snow. Truth cannot feed your children. Integrity doesn’t keep a man warm.

  They pass a farmhouse. Barred and speckled hens scratch in the yard, cackling now and then as they fight over grubs. Elisabeth watches the birds until the farmhouse lies behind them. Then she turns again to face the road ahead. “Until this spring,” she says, “I worked at the ration center. There were fifty or so women who worked with me; they came from every village along the Neckar, and each of us was responsible for packing the weekly ration boxes with our particular type of food. One lady cut salted pork to the right size, another put the pork into the boxes. Another put in the butter, another the cheese, and the marmalade, the flour, the sugar, and so on. Eggs were my duty. Each of us was expected to waste a certain amount of food every day. You can’t help it, sometimes; even the most careful person will drop a bit of cheese or a jar of preserves every now and then. I never dropped a single egg, though; I simply wouldn’t allow myself to do it. Those eggs were too precious. But I marked them down on my sheet, every day—the ones they expected me to drop, the eggs they allowed me to waste. When no one was looking, I slipped the extra eggs into my skirt pockets.”