The Master Butcher's Singing Club

by Louise Erdrich

  DECEMBER’S FUGITIVE thaw turned into implacable cold; the wind brought on a headache as a person walked outside. In her room, far from the stove, Delphine slept under every quilt in the house and when she got out of bed she immediately put on a set of wool long johns underneath her skirt. She wore her coat in the house. Now, she was standing near the stove, bundled up, peeling potatoes for a potato pie. Thinking of browning a lump of uncased sausage she’d brought home from the shop. Maybe an onion, if they weren’t all sprouted. Suddenly the door banged open and then shut on an icy blast of air. Roy rolled into the house shedding his padded woolen coat and unwrapping two knitted scarves from his head.

  “Murder and mayhem,” Roy announced in an aghast voice. “Terrible doings. Clarisse under suspicion!” He nodded to Delphine, as though, since she was Clarisse’s friend, she should know all the details. Then he continued to speak in newspaper headlines. “Whole town in shock. Sheriff found stabbed!”

  Roy sat down at the kitchen table, his mouth agape. He shook his head in bewildered protest. “Hock,” he stated, as though trying to persuade himself. Then wonderingly, he said again, “Hock. Of all people!”

  Delphine held up the peeler, riveted in shock. She stared at her father as though he’d suddenly spoken fluent French or grown a hoof.

  “Of course, upon reflection,” Roy said, “when we say ‘of all people,’ so often the person is the logical person to become a victim after all. He was the sheriff. He was in love with Clarisse Strub. He was found with his pants down around his ankles, obviously planning to violate more than the privacy of her bedroom.”

  Delphine waved the peeler in distress, still unable to speak.

  “Hock.” Roy returned to his shocked attempt at self-persuasion. “Hock. Yes, Hock. Died in the Strub girl’s boudoir. They’re saying that the necessities of her profession drove her around the bend.” Roy’s face turned grim. “I concur, poor duck. Her uncle shouldn’t ever have let her take on clients. Sawing up the dead. Replacing their blood with vinegar! And she’s just a sweet young thing. You ever hear of a girl undertaker?” Roy’s hands twisted together, clasped as though in prayer. He bit his knuckle, and softly marveled. “A slip of a thing, yet she gutted him neat as a pig.”

  “She didn’t use vinegar, and she was tough as an old rooster,” Delphine muttered, turning from her father, wildly revising the narrative she’d concocted after leaving Clarisse’s house on Christmas morning.

  Roy glanced up at his daughter, then shook his head as if she had it all wrong. “She was a little duck,” he insisted, “and Hock entered the sanctity of her nest. I never saw it coming, never took it all that serious. Oh, Hock wrote songs for her that he’d even try on the rest of us, but it was all a romantic fairy tale. And then, under the pretext of an investigation he conducted ‘a search,’ had a warrant, everything. Now they think she”—Roy nicked his head in the direction of the pantry, the boarded-over cellar door—“killed them, too.”

  There was something unsettling in the way her father gestured, Delphine thought, an awkwardness. As though he was suddenly struck with inspiration and acting a part, and poorly. But she attributed his clumsy insincerity to the strangeness of things in general, for the compound mystery was linked—the three who’d died in Roy’s cellar, Hock who was investigating their deaths, and then Clarisse.

  “She didn’t hide, why should she,” said Roy, stoutly slapping his hands on his knees. “She had to protect her innocence, after all. The world is hard. Men are capable of the unthinkable. People saw her. She boarded the morning train with her big brown valise and a little round hatbox. Red. Ticket to Minneapolis.”

  “I expect they’ll catch up with her there,” said Delphine, sitting down now across from her father, feeling tranced and dizzy. “They’ll arrest her. What then?”

  “Don’t count on them finding her,” said Roy with a keen and prophetic glare over the top of his bulb nose. “I knew her grandfather and two great uncles. Slippery buggers. Once in the city, she is likely to go to ground, change her identity. She’s an agile survivor.”

  “I thought you said she was a little duck,” said Delphine, but with small appetite for arguing.

  “A tender female of a venomous species then,” said Roy. “How delicate, how winsome, the eight slender legs of the black widow spider. How fragile the lady scorpion’s barbed tail! And the mosquito, who stands on her head to bite. She’s hardly a wisp of air, barely a living thing at all, weighing zero, yet she can kill you with malaria.”

  Roy continued in his meditation on the contradictions of the female sex, but Delphine had already stopped listening and gone to her room, where she piled all the quilts upon her bed and slipped underneath, to get away from Roy and yet stay warm enough to think.

  AFTER A FEW DAYS of shock and strangeness, days in which people in Argus could talk of nothing else and strained after each detail, explanations stalled. Just as Roy predicted, Clarisse had disappeared. Sheriff Hock’s body was removed from the house, wrapped in a tarp, sealed, and driven to the coroner in Fargo. The house was locked tight. A deputy was appointed and the town’s life began to flow around the jagged events like water. The horror of what happened would be worn down by daily ordinariness. By talk. More talk. Years of talk and speculation. Eventually, the bloody mess in Clarisse’s closet would become a colorful piece of town history. She vanished, but with flair, she and her red hatbox and brown suitcase. She vanished right out in the open, just rode away on the train, apparently got off in Minneapolis, changed trains, changed names, changed her whole self perhaps. Because there was no sighting of her. No capture.

  As for Cyprian, no one had seen him leave town. When questioned about her friend, Delphine did not volunteer the details of her Christmas morning visit, and no one asked. The presence of Cyprian’s car near Clarisse’s house had gone unremarked. That morning’s new snowfall had hidden Delphine’s tracks. No one had seen Delphine drive the car to her house. As she kept it parked where the corner of it could be seen from the road, no one even realized for months that Cyprian was not living in the house with her. Even Roy thought that Cyprian was consumed by some clandestine smuggling activity, and he noticed only how the winter dragged without the younger man’s presence. Once, Fidelis asked Delphine, with studied casualness, whether Cyprian had quit the singing club. When Delphine shrugged and told him, “Not as far as I know,” he shut up. Only Delphine was aware of the connection between Cyprian and Clarisse. For a while it ached in her thoughts, a sore place, a strange place right beside the black sinkhole of the murder of the sheriff. She examined and revised, reexamined and analyzed, submerged herself in all that she knew of her friend Clarisse, and still came up gasping for air. She missed Clarisse the way she would miss a leg or an arm—always and in all she did. Work was harder. Loneliness distracted her. She visited Aurelius and Benta. They sat and drank coffee together, but it was no good.

  Delphine began to read with a mad attention when she wanted to talk to Clarisse. She saw that in her life there was a woman-shaped hole, a cutout that led to a mysterious place. Through it, her mother, then Eva, and now Clarisse had walked. If only she could plunge her arms through and drag them back.

  TWELVE

  Traumfeuer

  THERE WAS IN the butcher’s kitchen a large crockery preserving jar into which Delphine cut up the last bits of fruit as they went in and out of season—cherries, tough peaches, raspberries, raisins, bananas, apples, and grapes. Over each addition she dumped sugar and a measure of brandy. The stuff, spooned over pound cake or ice cream if they ever had it, was a dessert reserved for weekends, when it didn’t matter if the boys went to bed slightly tipsy and woke up late. Perhaps that was the origin of its name, Traumfeuer, dreamfire, and the reason they loved to eat it just before they went to sleep. Delphine, who never stayed that late, didn’t know where the stuff went and had no idea that Fidelis let the boys get into it. On the day before they were to leave for Chicago, she was eating a large bowl of it in the midd
le of the afternoon. She’d poured Traumfeuer on a hard piece of sweet bread and added a bit of cream, treating herself because she’d packed the boys’ clothing into a suitcase that would be roped on the top of the car. It was more, she knew, as she spooned herself another powerful helping, a way of blotting out the next day’s plan.

  Tante had finally persuaded Fidelis to let her take the boys, excepting Franz, since he was nearly finished with school, back to Germany. Tante would raise them with the help of the grandmother, who was lonely. With the sewing machine, which she had purchased instead of acquiring a husband, Tante felt confident of returning. And now she was bringing the boys along, although, she pointed out, it would not be forever! It would be a year, at most two, before Fidelis came over and brought them back himself. Without the exhaustion of taking care of them, the store would flourish. They would be more responsible by then. Old enough to help.

  Maybe it was the pile of bills that had finally persuaded Fidelis, or that he could not pay Delphine for the hours she was working. Perhaps what had happened to Markus in the hill was the reason. Or the forehead of Emil, peppered with still healing dents made by a neighbor boy’s BB gun. Maybe it was Erich’s last fall off the roof, which laid him out cold for half an hour. Or the raft they had constructed of trash lumber, which had whirled them miles down last year’s spring river. Maybe it was all the clothing they needed and Fidelis could not afford. Their wristbones had grown past their sleeves. They were still in short pants, which galled Markus.

  The plan for tomorrow was for everyone to drive down to Chicago in the DeSoto. Fidelis, Tante, and Delphine would ride in front. The boys in back. For three days, Franz would take care of the shop. They would leave in the middle of the night, get there in the morning and handle all of the passport proceedings and red tape with the consulate on that first and second day. On the third day, Tante and the boys and their luggage would board a train to New York City. The day after that, their ship embarked. They had reserved one cabin with an added floor pallet and a tiny window, luxurious according to the agent they had telephoned, and yet a bargain.

  Delphine spooned more fruit onto the sopping bread. The brandy loosened her shoulders, but her face burned and a ringing started in her temples. She sealed the top of the crockery jar and decided that she would go home and get some rest. It felt as though she were dragging herself through an underwater atmosphere. As though she were suddenly twice as heavy. Added gravity. As she was washing her bowl and the rest of the dishes in the sink, she felt Markus enter the kitchen. She did not turn. He walked up behind her, as the boys often did when she was working at the stove. As always she pretended not to hear him, allowing him to draw very close to her.

  “What’re you doing?” he asked.

  “Just washing dishes.”

  He stood with her, watching her hands move in and out of the water and the suds. Delphine had noticed that there was something about a woman doing kitchen chores or standing at a stove that seemed to make boys feel safe. With her back turned, they would be apt to confide in her. They would stand right next to her while she was stirring or frying food and they would tell her things they’d never reveal if they were, say, sitting at a table across from her. Markus, especially, was apt to do this after his school day was ended. Delphine stirred soups endlessly and drew out her chores just to keep him talking—over potato soup he’d told her, for instance, that he’d got a Valentine once from the Ruthie who died in the cellar. And he’d also told her what it was like to sleep inside the hill. He told her some of his dreams, and he also, with a lonely eagerness, talked about his mother. And when he talked about Eva it was good for Delphine as well. Once she’d said, ladling out a bowl of dumpling soup, “Your mother taught me this recipe, but I’ll never make it like she did.”

  “Yeah,” said Markus, “but yours is good, too.”

  And when he’d said that, a rough emotion grabbed her throat, and she’d put her hand on his head, actually stroked his hair.

  Now she was supposed to say good-bye.

  “I’m going to send that soup recipe to your grandma. That soup you like so much,” she told him.

  “Oh,” said Markus. “That’s good. Do they make good dumplings in Germany?”

  “That’s where the dumpling was probably invented,” said Delphine. “Noodles, too, spaetzle, and they bake bread like nobody’s business. Your mother told me. She said they have a chocolate so dark it is almost black, that tastes of oranges. And they have this light cheese they spread on toasted rolls in the morning, and jams of all kinds. Marmalade. You ever have marmalade?”

  “It’s on the store shelf.”

  “I don’t like it, but she just swore by it. She said the marmalade they have over there comes from oranges in Spain. Not like the pitiful oranges here, she said, all rindy and full of seeds and too sweet. These Spanish oranges taste like bitter sunshine even preserved in sugar.”

  “That sounds good,” said Markus, his voice clogged as if he was about to cry.

  “I know it sounds like I’m hard-hearted, talking about marmalade when you’re leaving all the way to Germany,” said Delphine, turning to him. “I’m all broken up inside. I don’t want you to see it.”

  She turned away and as she did so Markus put his head against the back of her arm, and leaned there. She did not move. There was a long sigh of quiet in the kitchen. He had chosen her, once again. At that moment, Delphine decided. He was hers. That was that. She would not let him go. It was just a matter of finding the right way to keep him, but she would do it. Tante hadn’t a chance.

  Eventually, Markus grew embarrassed and moved off, wishing that he could speak, but unable to choose the right words. He started eating a cheese sandwich she put into his hand. Hypnotized by despair at the familiarity that he was soon going to lose, he chewed too quickly. He wanted to tell her that he could not go. Maybe even to beg her to hide him, or bring him home with her, or do something to persuade his father that this was a mistake. But his tongue was fat in his mouth, numb and stupid. The sandwich was dry and sticky all at once, and very difficult to eat. I’m just luggage getting moved from here to there, he thought. A thing that doesn’t matter. A stuffed pants and jacket. He couldn’t find the words to tell this to Delphine.

  *

  IN THE DEEP BLACKNESS, they loaded the car and the boys crawled sleepily into the backseat, collapsing immediately back into their slumber. Fidelis would take the first shift, driving, and so he got behind the wheel. Tante made certain she slipped into the middle seat, jostling Delphine aside in her haste to set herself next to her brother. Her sewing machine was latched in the trunk, nestled in its traveling case, crated besides so it would not suffer on the voyage. A small valise of her clothing was also set in the trunk, and her large black leather purse was secure in her lap. Tante was prepared. She had freshly aired and pressed her tough and shiny suit. She’d brought five boiled eggs in a sack—it hadn’t occurred to her to bring one for Delphine. But no one would notice the eggs, anyhow. Delphine had made sugar cookies in the shapes of animals, special for the boys, and she brought fried doughnuts, sausages, bread, hard cheese, apples, and a small insulated box that contained bottles of beer.

  Delphine was wearing an ordinary suit and coat, but in a round green case she had brought along two changes of underclothing and her one smart wool suit with a pinched-in waist. The suit matched a hat with a curved green feather stuck in the band, a hat she could tilt rakishly over one eye. There was a short dotted veil inside the hat that she could put down if she wanted to look more coquettish yet. But she didn’t. She just wanted to get through the whole mess. While Tante and Fidelis wrangled papers and got passports cleared, her job would be to take the boys out to see the monumental sights of Chicago. After lunch, she switched places with Fidelis. Driving, she could concentrate silently on the road. The car’s atmosphere was gloomy. There was some cheer from Tante, but Delphine thought it morbid. The boys drowsed and drifted in sleep. The closer they got, the more Delphine
felt that her appointed task—walking around with them looking at parks and historical markers and art museums—seemed about the grimmest, most upsetting thing she could think of to do. Once they were settled, she decided, they’d find a circus.

  WE SPENT TWO DAYS feeding peanuts to the goddamn elephants, she would remember with Markus, later on. Because while Tante and Fidelis made their complicated arrangements, that’s where they were. At the beginning of the stay, Delphine went into a bookstore, consulted a guidebook, and marked out in her mind which educational sights they should supposedly be seeing. After she made the boys memorize facts about the sights, they went straight to the circus and spent the morning at the sideshow feeding the monkeys and elephants and talking to all of the attractions, who were on duty in their carts and behind their cages or on their little podiums, their placement depending on their oddity. Because it was a raw late winter day and there weren’t many gawkers, and because the boys were so obviously smitten with wonder, but mainly because Delphine liked to talk to people, they made friends.

  There was a woman called the needle, so thin that when she turned sideways she was supposed to disappear (she didn’t). There was the usual fat lady—hers spread in pools beside her where she lay on a bearskin rug, as though she’d half melted. Seal-O was a young man with flippers for hands and completely turned-out feet. He had a mean personality and made fun of the boys’ worn and shrunken clothing. Seeing they were stung with shame, Delphine said to Seal-O, “You’re a fine one to talk. You should be balancing a red rubber ball on your damn nose.” He laughed at her in a nasty way, and she grabbed the boys before he said anything worse. They talked to Mr. Tiger, whose skin was really striped. He let them try to rub the stripes off, and they couldn’t. Girl Wonder Calculator made their heads spin. “How come you’re here,” asked Delphine, “not in the university?” There were a very bored strong man and a frightful person of no determinate gender who had another frightful half-a-person growing out of its belly. There was an exotic four-breasted mermaid, whom the boys were not allowed to see, but Delphine did see. She told them later that the top was real but the bottom was definitely made of rubber. And at last there was the Delver of Minds, a little off from things, in a solemnly draped tent.