The Ragged Edge of Night

by Olivia Hawker

  Franke is already waiting at the wheel, staring out rather peevishly above the sign painted on the truck’s door: “Franke’s Fine Furniture.”

  Anton grins at his new landlord. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll ride in the back with the boys.”

  “Suit yourself.” Franke starts the engine.

  Anton climbs up to the truck’s bed. For a moment, he feels happy and energetic, as he must have felt when he was thirteen, fourteen, but that was so long ago. Like the boys, he sits on the lid of a trunk. He takes the promised coins from his pocket, passes them around, and the children hush themselves, turning the reichspfennig over in their dirt-blackened fingers. There is a sort of magic in those coins, the bright metallic gleam of something unexpected: an adult who has kept his word to children.

  “I have this, too.” As the truck makes its way along the dirt roads of Unterboihingen, Anton retrieves a packet of waxed paper from his knapsack. He opens it carefully, revealing amber chunks of hard honey candy. “Take as many as you’d like.”

  The boys make quick work of the candy. “These aren’t like the honey drops we have here,” one says. “Where did you get them?”

  “Prussia.”

  They look at Anton with greater reverence now, all wide eyes and cheeks flushed with awe.

  “Are you a soldier, mein Herr?”

  “I was,” he says. “But my back, you know. It’s a minor complaint, but still—that’s why I couldn’t manage the trunks myself.”

  “How was your back hurt?” They nudge each other, elbows to ribs, fidgeting in anticipation of his answer. Who is greater, what fellow is more a man, than the soldier with his guns and his grenades? What man is better than one who fights to defend the Fatherland?

  He can think of a thousand better men. But it wouldn’t serve to teach these children any better if he were to scold them or cast shadows on their boyish fantasies. He didn’t stand fifteen years at the head of a classroom for nothing. He knows how to hand along a lesson, and how to make it stick.

  Offhandedly, he says, “Jumped out of an airplane, going into Riga.”

  Two of the boys shout together, “Prima!” Another cries, “Cool!” It’s a Tommy word, the sort of thing a Brit or an Australian would say—a puppet of the International Jewry, to quote Goebbels. The boys goggle at their friend for a moment, stunned by his audacity. Then they dole out his punishment: a hard slug on the arm, one from each. The offender takes his licks with red-faced meekness.

  Anton laughs gently as the boy rubs his smarting arm. He finds one last piece of candy in his pocket and passes it to the lad; all is forgiven. But laughter feels foreign to him now. When he looks back on his Wehrmacht days, it is not to find joy or pride in heroism. The Fatherland holds no claim on Anton’s heart; it deserves none of his loyalty. The Führer took Anton and held him under duress. Hitler and those poor, damned souls who follow him ripped away the friar’s habit and replaced it with a soldier’s uniform. The injustice of it still takes his breath away whenever he allows himself to think of it—as does every outrage, every numberless affront, that has followed. And yet, Anton was lucky. He only marched, and fired his rifle in the direction of men he never intended to hit. There was no crueler service to which he could be compelled, no more heartrending work the Party could force upon him. A friar has no wife, no children—no love that may be weaponized. There is no tender, hallowed gun to press against his temple. The only life he stands to lose is his own, and so he is as good as worthless, impervious to the Führer’s tactics.

  But he did see Riga burned. He smelled the thick black smoke, heavy in the hot July air. He had gone to Latvia under the banner of liberation. He could have borne the loss of the friar’s life, if his company had freed those people from Soviet oppression. But the Reich had intended no such thing after all. The Latvians who welcomed German intervention fell at once under a new brand of despotism, almost before their cheers had died on their lips.

  My back, you know. A hard landing in a black field, on a warm but windy summer night. Rolling in the lines of his parachute, the tumbling world a thunder in his ears. The Franciscan novitiate did not instruct its men in the art of paratrooping. A minor complaint. His back was hurt in the jump, but even so, he could have marched for miles more, days more, years without end. But he decided in Riga, under flags of smoke, with the screams of hopeless women in his ears: never again would he lend his back or his legs, nor his hands nor his heart, to any purpose that served Adolf Hitler.

  He lied to evade further service in the Wehrmacht. A damaged back. To lie is a sin, but God also commanded: Du sollst nicht töten—thou shalt not kill. The Lord will be his judge—a God he has never seen, but in Whom, nonetheless, he believes.

  2

  Herr Franke had not been lying when he said the room was small. There is barely space to fit the four trunks, let alone Anton. A narrow bed stands opposite the door; above it is a small window with a heavy curtain, dark blue, pulled aside to admit a peaceful golden light. A washstand, a round mirror above it, a porcelain pot beneath the bed. Pinned to the drapery, a note in precise handwriting: Achtung! Halten Sie den Vorhang bei Dunkelheit geschlossen. Keep the curtain closed after dark.

  Once the boys have gone, clattering down the staircase—at least the boarding room has a private stair—Anton stands in the middle of his new home, hands on hips, head ducked to avoid the sharp, treacherous slope of the ceiling. Below, he can hear Franke going about his business in the furniture shop, thumping and scraping, cursing at a child or a dog.

  He checks his pocket watch, the one his father gave him when, at age eighteen, he ceased to be Josef Anton Starzmann. He donned the gray robe of his order and became Bruder Nazarius instead. Never had he imagined that he would take up his old name again. Never could he have foreseen this—the Catholic orders disbanded by a fanatical government. The complacent ones went wherever the NS ordered them: nuns and monks, Fathers and friars, forced back into the lay world, the dull world beyond their cloisters. Those who did not comply met a different fate. Often he has asked himself: Was it cowardice, to abandon Bruder Nazarius so easily, to become Anton again? Should I have fought and died for my faith? For many months, he believed he was a coward, until he heard the voice of God calling. After so many months of black silence, the thunder of certainty came again. He understood that the Lord had preserved him for a new work and was giving him a chance at redemption. God woke him from a long slumber, raised him up like Lazarus. It was not his lot to fight and die—not yet. There is still work to do, in God’s name.

  The afternoon light flashes on the watch face, running a golden circle around its rim. Time is short. He returns the watch to his pocket, where it settles among the beads of his rosary. With a brisk energy, he sets about making himself presentable.

  He opens one trunk, the smallest. Even though he knows what he will find beneath its lid—he is braced for the sight—still the curves of brass strike him with a jolt of pain. Like the other three, this trunk is filled with the musical instruments he has kept for seven months. They are his relics, the last reminders of what was lost. Like bones in an ossuary they lie, silent yet voluble in memory. Their bells hold the echoes of remembered lives, and in the reflections bent and distorted around their smooth curves, he can see the expressionless faces of his children.

  A bundle of clothing lies tucked in one corner of the trunk, pushed down deep, below the circle of a French horn. He extracts it; the bundle is tied with a cheerful blue ribbon. That’s the work of his sister, Anita, who had lived as Sister Bernadette until the Führer tore up his own Reichskonkordat and spat in the eye of the Holy See. After their respective orders were destroyed, Anton and Anita both stumbled back to their mother’s house on the edge of Stuttgart, stunned and bereft, neither knowing what to do next. When he’d met Anita at the station, she had stepped off the train in a green dress, sober in color yet fashionably cut, and her shoes had been of patent leather with smart, clicking heels. Her hair was pinned and rol
led just like the girl’s, the one back on that last train, who had kissed her fingers to Anton. He hadn’t seen Anita’s hair since she had donned her habit at age sixteen. It was no longer the golden yellow he remembered from childhood, bright as falling water. It had darkened to soft, pale brown, like the velvet of a mouse’s pelt, and there were strands of white caught up in her curls, catching the light and glittering. They were both getting older now, but Anita was still as lovely as she’d ever been. He had thought, How pretty my sister is in laywoman’s clothes. Shame had struck him, cold and hard, immediately after. What kind of man finds a nun agreeable when she has been stripped of her sisterhood?

  Anita had faced up to their new reality with her usual pluck and game. “I was a bride of Christ,” she said that day, laughing ruefully and taking her little brother’s arm, “but I suppose He has annulled our union.”

  “You shouldn’t joke that way,” Nazarius said—Anton said.

  “Don’t worry.” She winked at him, spirited, unsisterly. He could see it still, could feel his own hesitant amusement. He remembered the way she had tilted her head toward him, her strangely uncovered head with its ash-colored curls. “Lord Christ and I, we’ll make it up, as soon as all this mess with the Führer is sorted.”

  Anton unties the blue ribbon. The sober cloth of his friar’s habit unrolls across his bed. Anita has ironed and folded his best suit, wrapped it in the habit, but he sets the suit aside and runs his hands over the coarse gray wool. The knotted cord that was his belt is there, too, coiled neatly upon itself, a sleeping serpent dreaming of lost Eden. He can all but feel the cord’s weight swinging from his waist. The habit still smells of the school, St. Josefsheim, Kirchenstraße. Wood polish and chalk dust, apples from the orchard, the pipe Brother Nazarius smoked each evening when the children were tucked in their beds. He can smell sweet myrrh from a swinging censer and the sweeter hands of the little ones, sticky from the candy he brought from town twice a week if they were good. They were always good.

  Perhaps he’d been too naïve then, a fresh young friar brimming over with earnest desire to heal the world and the unshaken belief that he could do it, too. From his hands would the mercy of Christ extend and pour out into the world like blood from His sacred wounds. And then, this unexpected resurrection: Anton pulled up from the very grave into which they had thrown Bruder Nazarius. This is not the life he pictured when he first donned his habit. But this is not the sort of life anyone dreams of. Even Hitler, he thinks, must be surprised that he ever got so far—that it has all been so simple to take, to destroy. In his moments of despair—and there are many—Anton wonders whether God Himself ever dreamed it could come to this.

  He unfolds the suit. Anita, bless her, pressed it perfectly, and scented it with lavender and cedar to keep the moths away. He closes the blue curtain, leaving the note pinned in place. A trace of yellow light filters around the curtain’s edge. He dresses carefully by that dim glow, rolls the old suit in the friar’s habit, and tucks the bundle away among the silent horns. Clumsy hands struggle to recall the necktie knots his father taught him when he was a boy. It has been almost a year since the order was disbanded; that should be enough time for a man to learn his knots again. He frowns into the little round mirror on the wall, talking himself through the motions. Cross over and tuck behind, pinch the top as you pull down. When he has combed his hair and adjusted the angle of his glasses on the bridge of his long, thin nose, he is surprised to see Brother Nazarius looking back at him, despite the suit and tie. Perhaps the old identity is not as dead as he first thought. Did not Saint Francis say, The world is my cloister, my body is my cell, and my soul is the hermit within?

  There is work to be done here, in this small village of Unterboihingen—good work and true. After many dark months of silence, of distance, the Lord has spoken. He has called the friar who is no longer a friar; He has awakened Anton to his appointed task. Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in His holy habitation.

  3

  He knows her at once when he sees her, though they have never met before. Elisabeth is as prim and hard as her handwriting, her manner every bit as guarded as the letters made her seem. She is sitting on the edge of an iron chair at a small table outside a bakery. The immaculate light of afternoon, golden and low, falls on her like a halo. In that perfect glow, she is neat and composed—rigidly so, not a pleat or button out of place. Her dress is of a blue so deep it is almost char gray, the neckline high and unadorned. Her brown hair is dull but arranged in faultless symmetry, framing and emphasizing a round, unsmiling face. There is a sense of order about her, a stoic control he can all but feel from across the street. A hard determination to hold all things together in a world that, day by day, falls ever more apart.

  When she notices Anton—crossing the dirt road from the direction of Franke’s Fine Furniture—she seems to recognize him, too. The woman’s eyes lock with his; she lifts her teacup but doesn’t drink. She watches him without the least betrayal of thought or emotion as he comes, smiling, toward her. Midway across the street, he sees himself in a wrenching flash, as if through a woman’s eyes—an inversion of perspective, a lurch back through time into a mind-set he hasn’t adopted since he took his vows to the order. He had been youthful then, and when men are young, they believe themselves the handsomest things in God’s creation. Now, thirty-eight years old and with such foolish convictions long behind him, he is rather shaken by the realization that he falls somewhat short of attractive. Very tall, with the blondest hair and bluest eyes the Führer could desire—his coloring is a rebuke to him now, a daily reminder that he was deemed worthy of life while others more deserving were judged unfit. His face is as narrow as his body. His eyes sit too closely together, an effect somewhat mitigated by his round glasses, though the glasses also draw attention to the nose on which they perch. Large and curved, it is far too strong for such a thin, delicate face. But his eyes . . . will she be put off by them? Anita used to say, teasing, Shall I jab my finger between your eyes, little Anton, and pop them farther apart? When he swallows this sudden, unexpected fear, his prominent Adam’s apple presses uncomfortably against the knot of his tie. At least he has that kind, disarming smile at his ready disposal. It is some small consolation.

  When he reaches her table—shuffles up somehow, though this storm of misgiving drags at him, shackled to his ankle—Anton doffs his hat. “Good afternoon, meine Dame. Would you happen to be Elisabeth Hansjosten?”

  She blinks once. “I am Elisabeth Hansjosten Herter.” Her voice is lovely, smooth and rich, even if she uses it like a sword. She reaches out to shake hands before Anton does. “You are Josef Starzmann?”

  “Yes—but please, call me Anton.”

  She gestures to the other wrought-iron chair. Numb, with heart pounding, he sits.

  “Thank you again for answering my advertisement.” She picks up her teacup, shifts it absently from one hand to the other, and sets it down again. He has never seen a woman look more self-possessed, yet the cup gives away her secret anxiety—the way it moves from hand to hand, and its undiminished fullness.

  He brings out another smile, doing his best to put Elisabeth at ease. “Make no mention of it. I brought the very paper along, in fact.” He produces it from beneath his jacket and lays it on the table between them—the Catholic periodical Esprit, which he has carried all this way from Stuttgart. It is markedly thinner than in years past—paper rationing, to say nothing of the suppression of the Catholic voice—but at least it is neatly folded. “Just in case I didn’t find you here and had to prove I was not a madman to all the ladies I pestered. ‘Pardon me, are you Elisabeth? Are you Elisabeth?’” He laughs.

  Her stern mouth yields no ground to the joke. “Why would you not find me here?”

  He stops laughing. He’s almost grateful for the excuse. “Never mind.” He tries yet another smile. His charm will work on her sooner or later. He’s determined that it will. “I am glad you agreed to meet me.”
/>   “It is I who am glad,” she says, sounding more businesslike than grateful. “You came a long way.”

  “The train ride was pleasant. This is a beautiful village. Lovely countryside. Of course, you said as much in the two or three letters we exchanged, but I had no way of knowing just how beautiful this place was until I saw it for myself.”

  “And you have found somewhere to stay?” In case I decide against you after all, her brusque manner says.

  “Yes. Herr Franke has let me a room above his shop.”

  Now, at last, her expression softens—only for a moment, with the slightest lift of one corner of her mouth. It’s a very marginal smile, and there is something sickly in her amusement. But it provides a fleeting glimpse inside her armor, and the small relinquishment of tension puts Anton at ease. “Bruno Franke?” she says. “Bruno Möbelbauer. That’s what the children call him.” The name means “furniture maker.” An appealingly simple epithet.

  “Your children. Tell me something about them, please. You’ve mentioned them in your letters, of course, but I would love to know more.” He has already made up his mind to love these fatherless Lieblinge, despite knowing almost nothing about their characters.

  Most women brighten when they talk about children—theirs or anyone else’s. Elisabeth does not. She lists their attributes flatly, as if reading from a bill of lading. “Albert, the eleven-year-old, is bright and inquisitive, always very thoughtful and kind. Paul is my boy of nine. He is very sweet, and helps me without being asked, but he often gets into trouble, being so young and not very thoughtful. Maria is six, as I have told you. I suppose I did not tell you that she is as full of mischief as the Lord ever permitted a girl to be.” Not a hint of fondness, though she must love her children beyond all reason. Only love could have led her to take out that advertisement. This is a woman pushed beyond gladness, almost beyond hope. She has reached the end of her wits and her strength. Everything has worn her down—the war, the bombings, the long stretch of unrelieved hardship. And the stories we all hear, of removals from the internment camps to darker places. The places of extermination—Chełmno and Treblinka, Sobibór and Auschwitz-Birkenau. As if, merciful Jesus, the Einsatzgruppen were not shame enough for our people to bear.