Master Butchers Singing Club

by Louise Erdrich

  The boys, as could be expected, had no interest in having their minds delved. Delphine bought them some cotton candy swirled on a paper cone, told them not to get lost, and paid a quarter to enter.

  Of course, thought Delphine, the Delver of Minds was a woman. She looked up rather grumpily from where she sat next to a little charcoal burner that she stirred with a slim iron poker. Without a word, gesturing abruptly for Delphine to sit in the wooden chair across from her, the Delver busied herself with unwrapping and then sprinkling onto the charcoal some powdery substance, maybe a kind of incense, that gave off a penetrating spicy aroma. The smell was extremely pleasant, and Delphine breathed it in and looked curiously at the woman.

  She had white hair but her face was young. Perhaps she was not much older than Delphine. Although she was quite delicate, and seemed a bit chilled even swathed in misty blue folds of material, she also had a broad-lipped mouth and powerful hands. Her wrists, as she laid out a pack of cards in some peculiar order, were bony and slender. But those fingers, thought Delphine, could crack walnuts.

  “You’re watching me pretty close, miss,” said the Delver.

  “I was just noticing your fingers—strong enough to crack walnuts open—that’s what I was thinking.” Delphine laughed.

  “Crack walnuts. The man in question does that with his fingers. You can look at me all you want,” the woman said, putting away her cards, “but you paid to get your own mind read.”

  “Well,” said Delphine, unnerved by the walnut reference, “go ahead then.”

  “You’re in town on some desperate errand,” said the Delver.

  “Pretty good,” said Delphine. “I’m here to send off the man’s boys, the man I work for.”

  “They’re going to Germany.”

  “What?”

  “You’re in the meat business,” said the woman. “I looked at your hands, too.”

  Nicked and gouged, already missing a tiny corner of a fingertip, scarred with small white nicks, roughed with lye and toughened from mixing hot spices for Italian sausages, Delphine’s hands had changed. She looked at them, lying there on the little copper table, as though they were the hands of an alien being. “I never noticed,” she murmured.

  “No,” agreed the woman, “you never even tried to hide them when you walked in. Women around here wear gloves. That says something, too.”

  “What does it say?”

  “You’re not going to hide anything,” said the woman. “There are people who pretend to themselves they are honest, and there are people who actually tell the truth. You’re still between the two. But you’re heading toward the latter. I hear music. This man, you love him.”

  “No,” said Delphine. Then she added, “He sings.”

  “Oh, all right,” said the Delver. She closed her eyes and then pinched her fingers to her temples, as though she was suffering from a sudden headache. “There’s some kind of animal in your way. Oh, I can’t be right.” She began to laugh to herself. “I am seeing in your mind the picture of a large black bug . . . skinny at the middle like an ant.”

  “Well, you are right,” said Delphine, too amused to be totally surprised. “It’s the boys’ aunt.”

  “You hate her guts with good reason.”

  “You could put it that way.”

  “But she’s going.”

  “She’s . . .” and now Delphine’s breath stuck, painfully. “She is taking the boys.”

  “And you love them.”

  “Yes,” said Delphine promptly.

  “The man is too bright to look at, too dark inside to read. He is a widower. Marry him.”

  “I can’t,” said Delphine, now obscurely irritated.

  “You’re no coward, either,” said the Delver, “so the reason lies elsewhere.” She turned over the glowing coals and sprinkled a different powder onto them. A bitter and soothing scent rose between them. “You’re tired of holding them all up, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Delphine.

  “Then let go of the ones you can do without. She won’t let you take them all, anyway. You will not prevail over her, or divide the sister from the brother, not if they’re blood.”

  * * *

  DELPHINE GATHERED the boys and walked away from the Delver’s tent—she’d said other things, statements Delphine needed to sort out. And her head now ached mildly from the smoke of the powder she had breathed. That afternoon, the boys were getting their passport pictures taken, anyway, and they were to meet at the hotel just before.

  “Let’s get those strings of candy off you,” said Delphine, brushing Emil’s suit jacket, which she’d let out as much as it would go. She plucked away some spiderwebby bits of pink floss. Markus brushed Erich off and unstuck some pieces of straw from the elephants’ bedding from his wool socks. Erich grinned, his two front teeth looked huge and comical. His other teeth were still missing or only half grown in.

  “Now you all look good,” said Delphine, but her voice stuck in her chest and came out half strangled.

  As they walked back to the hotel, there entered into her mind the unwilling but compelled conviction that she had to talk to Fidelis alone. And she would do it. Never mind what blocks Tante threw, she’d make sure that she and Fidelis had the chance to talk this over before the four of them took off on that train—who knows, it could be forever, the way things were going. She’d kept track of what was happening over there ever since the purge of 1934. Details of that terror were still coming out and she collected them in her mind, would not forget the slaughter as Fidelis and Tante conveniently did when the Saarland was returned and then the Rhineland militarized. All they could talk about was the strength, the prosperity, their family’s increased holdings. The strange, compelling genius of the leader. At the bottom of a Minneapolis newspaper’s foreign section, a tiny blurb on a rampage of hate against Jews and glass breaking made Fidelis shake his head, but then say, after a few moments, that things had always been so. There was always this poison, a few who would express it. Johannes, er war Judn, he said, but didn’t translate or explain. Now, even though Delphine was convinced she could argue him down, even though she believed she’d thought more about the situation that the boys faced than Fidelis, she was afraid to talk to him. Even the thought made her heart beat uncomfortably fast, made her tough hands sweat.

  It wasn’t the argument about the politics—it was the other, the unexpressed. All that she feared about the lay of her heart and did not examine. Nothing is by accident, nothing is by chance, she told herself. I went in to see that delver of minds for a very good reason: whether or not she could see the whole thing, I wanted to get my own mind clear. I had to hear myself say those things, had to hear out loud what I don’t even know I am thinking inside. I had to sit there with that white-haired lady and put it all out where I can see the shape of it.

  THEY ALL WALKED together into the great stone building set inside with tiny corridors of offices where papers were processed. The office ran in balconies around a central shaft open to the ground floor. Dusty light poured down from a vaulted skylight ornamented with obscure struggling figures. The boys craned upward, and Delphine held their hands, walking them up the broad stone stairway. Outside the room where passport photographs were taken, people waited in a line along the corridor, some on the floor, some slumped against the wall. It was a very long line. Tante was tired, but she didn’t slump. Her stiff suit seemed to hold her up. She made a face of severe annoyance, and said that the boys needed to eat.

  Delphine seized her chance. “Let’s go and get them some sandwiches,” she said to Fidelis.

  Tante said immediately, “Don’t bother. No. We’re not that hungry.”

  “The boys ate nothing,” Delphine said, with a composed firmness.

  “They’ll live,” said Tante, curt and loud. She produced, with an air of triumph, a clutch of lemon drops from her purse. Their sugary coating had gathered the usual purse dust, and they were stuck together in one lump. Tante cracked it lightly
against the wall and gave a piece of the candy to each of the twins, a tiny sliver to Markus.

  “There,” she concluded, “that will hold them.”

  “That stuff’ll rot their teeth,” said Delphine. “Let’s get them some nourishment,” she said to Fidelis. Then she looked straight into his face, opened her eyes, let the dull radiance from the great central skylight cascade down upon her, and she smiled.

  “You could use the air, too,” she said. “Come along.” And he followed.

  Outside, in the street, walking toward a delicatessen they’d both spotted, Delphine began to speak with a simple urgency. “I’ve got nothing to lose,” she said to Fidelis, “so I’m going to talk. Listen. You can’t let Maria Theresa take them back to Germany, Fidelis, it is all wrong. Impossible. You can see that she doesn’t know crap about taking care of boys.”

  “My mother will care for them once they are settled,” said Fidelis.

  They reached the doors to the shop, and almost entered, but Delphine’s mind spun furiously. She didn’t want to divert Fidelis from the problem with the mundane selection of cheap sandwiches. “Let’s keep walking around this block. I’ve got more to say.”

  “It is done,” said Fidelis.

  “No, it’s not, and you owe me to listen.”

  That got him—he never liked to owe anyone. And he knew she was right, knew that she’d cared for his sons to the full extent of her powers and beyond the limits of her job ever since Eva died. So they didn’t go into the deli but kept walking.

  “In Germany,” explained Fidelis, “they learn the proper way to do things.”

  “Maybe so.” Delphine breathed deep, tried to stay calm so she could argue reasonably. “But then what? Do you think they’ll want to come back here and help you in the shop? Do you think Tante will even let them come back?”

  Fidelis looked down at her, his face distinctly tightening. It was clear that he’d thought of this deep down, but stuffed away his apprehensions, or argued himself out of them. He paused, but then he spoke in a light, determined voice.

  “Then I go over there and get them myself!”

  “I read in the newspaper that new government is keeping any Germans who visit,” said Delphine. It was purely a rumor at the time, though it would indeed prove true, but Delphine decided to use it. “And the boys . . . what if the borders shut? You know what the war was like.”

  But that was going too far. Fidelis became serious and spoke with an earnest fervor. “I have seen war—there could never be another war! Es ist unmöglich! I believe this Hitler is strengthening the country for peace. That is why the family does good—and they buy things for the boys. They have money.”

  “Money!” said Delphine, fighting a surge of anger. “All well enough, but these are the sons you had with Eva!”

  Her name dropped between them like an anvil.

  Now Delphine used the fact that she had been saving for a moment like this, when the stakes were huge.

  “Tante stole the morphine—you must know that. How can you send your sons with the woman who made Eva suffer? At least leave Markus here! I’ll take care of him!”

  They both stopped walking at the same time. There, in that windy street, they looked at each other. Fidelis’s face was grim and ashen. Her face turned up toward his, a challenge, her eyes narrowed and watchful. When she stared at him, her eyes a magnetic ore, Fidelis felt himself moving toward her, nodding, allowing her to take control. As though the wind had pushed him, just a little, off his feet, he took a step to right his balance. He couldn’t think of anything else to say, because of course she was right. Tante wasn’t good with Markus. And yet, he looked away from her. Tante was right about some things. The younger boys would be better off back in Ludwigsruhe, surrounded by family, not digging their way into hills and floating down the river and nearly drowning themselves.

  “I can’t watch them enough,” he said to Delphine, and he put his hands in his pockets and looked down at the mottled concrete sidewalk between them. He had something more to say, and he didn’t want to say it. “I don’t have the money to pay you anymore.”

  “I know,” said Delphine, impatient. “That doesn’t matter. I want . . .” Then she was staring at the sidewalk, too. They stood there so long, both with the next words on their lips, that it seemed as though they might sink right through the stonework. The words had too much weight. Fidelis put his hand to his chin, looked down at her standing there, the smart taupe hat cocked over one side of her face, the little veil, the green feather. Without any warning, surprising him, his hand reached out. He touched the tip of the green feather. Her lips were naturally dark, not pink at all, but a deeper brownish crimson. He took a ragged breath.

  “Cyprian,” he said.

  She looked at him and then her smile flashed, and her comma-shaped dimples, her strong white teeth. He was dazzled by the freshness of her expression even before she spoke, shaking her head.

  “Cyprian and I were never married.”

  He took that in. That was something, and it was nothing. The two started walking again, side by side. They had nearly circled the block again before Fidelis found the words he wanted to say. It was difficult finding them at all, because he was ashamed of what he’d thought right after Cyprian had rescued Markus. Along with the relief and gratitude, Fidelis had suddenly been struck by an understanding: he could never, ever, in any way, make a claim upon Delphine. He owed the man she was with, the man he’d fought. He owed Cyprian. Even as he wished it were otherwise now, too, the marriage vow or lack of it did not figure into the picture. Delphine and Cyprian’s union was perhaps a shocking thing, but in fact it often happened that two people pretended to be married to thwart small-town gossip. He had noticed for some time she wasn’t wearing her wedding band. They had come full circle, around the block, and returned to their starting point.

  “You have slept with him?” he bluntly asked.

  “No,” said Delphine. “Yes and no. He couldn’t . . .”

  Fidelis stopped and looked at her with a rising sense of comprehension. All of a sudden he thought he understood. When he grasped it, he shook his head to clear it of all thoughts of Delphine. So that was the nature of Cyprian’s wound. As well, the reason for his touchy and protective rage regarding Delphine. Fidelis shielded his eyes with his hand, to blot her away from his sight. The only thing left to ask, Fidelis decided, was whether Cyprian was coming back.

  “Is he ever—” he began.

  Just then, Tante, furious, her jacket gleaming off her chest like a scratched glass mirror, emerged from the great doors of the stone building and yelled across to them. She charged toward Fidelis, the boys tailing her as she crossed the street. Fidelis saw her, turned back to Delphine, gave her a strangled, almost desperately pleading look, as though he wanted her to finish the sentence for him.

  “Is he ever what?” said Delphine. But without waiting for an answer, she lunged toward the boys, afraid of the traffic. Fidelis grabbed his sister’s arm at the curb, propelling her alongside him.

  “Come, Tante, we found a good place.” He waved at the delicatessen that stood open and gleaming just down the street. “Let’s go in. Let’s sit down.”

  Tante began to berate him for leaving them all and where, she wanted to know, were the sandwiches anyway, and she was missing her lunch, and that always made her light-headed. Fidelis calmly marched her into the delicatessen, which had small tables placed before a slide of great modern plate-glass windows, and he sat her down. Delphine took charge of the boys, settled them at their own table just behind Tante and Fidelis, and told them what they could have, what they could choose from the things that were cheapest on the menu. At one point, after their order was taken, as she sat with them, she looked up at the table where Fidelis was facing into the little storm of complaints his sister was making. He was nodding at all Tante said, but he was watching Delphine with thoughtful gravity.

  THEIR HOTEL WAS what they could afford, one bathroom down the
hall and a dreary gray feeling to the whole edifice. At least it was clean, the other people weren’t threatening, and there didn’t seem to be any bugs. The boys slept with Fidelis, and Tante and Delphine were together in a room. Delphine had dreaded this, and she hadn’t even thought about sharing the bed.

  The first night, the two had been so exhausted that they merely rolled in side by side, turned their backs to each other, and managed sleep even though Delphine was awakened several times by Tante’s tossing out one hand, the fingers flicking dreamily just under her nose. She nudged the hand away and slept on. This evening, after they had eaten the remnants of the food they’d brought, they were going to bed early, as the train was scheduled to leave the next morning.

  Tante sniffed as she entered the dim room.

  “Someone has been here.”

  She went immediately to her bags and began methodically to check through them, ticking off her possessions beneath her breath. Delphine sat on the bed, and watched her. Tante knelt before the brown cowhide valise and removed each piece of clothing as though it would explode. Then examined it suspiciously. What is she thinking, Delphine wondered, that someone entered our room, tried on her clothing, and folded it back into her suitcase? There was really nothing, besides the sewing machine, of any value in Tante’s luggage anyway, and she had left the sewing machine with the manager, safely under lock and key. She’d checked to see that it was still there before she’d retired.