Etta waited until Max had left before she went into his room. He was out walking again. He left every morning after breakfast. He came home for lunch, but he left again right afterward and was gone until dark. Who knew where he went or what he did outside. When he came back at night he paced around his room, and she heard him knocking sometimes against the walls. The sound kept her from sleeping.
“This one’s a roamer,” her mutti had always said when Max was just a baby. “I can tell from the light in his eyes.” He followed the tracks when he got older, all the way to Hafenlohr and farther on to Rothenfels. He was restless, so different from Georg, who stayed inside his room even on sunny days. Max climbed trees and dug around the muddy banks, and he brought home frogs and worms and river snakes. He hid them in secret places, but she found them anyway. “This is a house,” she’d say, “a house and not a zoo,” and she’d march him back to the river. “You have to put them back in their spots. You have to bring them home.” He hid them and she found them, even the snails in their sour brown water. What a mess you’ve made, what a stink, and though she aired his room and mopped his floors with vinegar, the smell lingered. She scolded him then. She shook her finger in his face, but he looked at her with those pale eyes, crestfallen that his three snails had died neglected in their jar, and she gave up.
His room was messier now than it had been when he was little. She took off the sheets and pillowcases and dusted all his books. An old almanac and Bernhardt Otto’s Natural History of Birds and the complete works of Lucretius and books in Greek and English and French. His room looked more like the library in Würzburg than a bedroom. She left the books open so he wouldn’t lose his place. He had underlined some passages in pen and marked the margins with strange scribblings, with stars and numbers and arrows that pointed to nothing. They taught him strange things in the army. He hadn’t written in his books before, not even with a pencil.
She opened his window to bring fresh air inside. A lone black bird flew in circles above the trees. She caught a motion below. It was Josef out there in the garden, hopping on one foot. She leaned on the sill to get a better look. There he was, jumping up and down first on one foot and then the other, his face flushed from the damp air. He stopped his hopping and started to run in place. Puffs of steam came from his mouth as he exhaled. He was exercising, and in the cold. It was no good, these strange exertions. Every day he became more peculiar. Sometimes he sat in his chair and rubbed his chin and she wondered who he was, this old man with his pen and paper, and what he’d done with her Josef.
She went down the stairs and out the back door. “Josef,” she said, “stop for a while and come inside.” She reached out to touch his arm, but he kept running. “It’s too cold out here. You’ll catch a chill. You’ll get a lung infection.”
“I’m getting ready,” he said. His nose dripped, but he didn’t stop to wipe it.
She sniffed but could smell no beer on his breath. “Tell me what you’re doing.” She reached for his arm again and caught it.
“They need me.” He licked his lips. He was tired from running and began to slow his pace.
“Come inside for a while,” she said again. So he’d seen the posters and wanted to join. She knew he’d see them when he went into town. They were everywhere, by the waterspout and the bank and outside the beer hall, calling for old men and boys to sign up and fight. Come and join the Volkssturm, they said. We’ll all do our part. For freedom and survival. Men were joining in all the towns and cities, old men and the injured and veterans with bandages. Soon there would be only women left in Heidenfeld, old women and the bell ringer and the priest to bless the dead.
Josef squinted at her but didn’t resist. They went to the kitchen together, and she pulled his damp jacket from his arms. Drops of sweat rolled down his forehead and into his eyes. “I don’t have much time,” he said, and he rubbed his eyes with his knuckles.
“Have some soup, and then you can go back outside.”
“We meet next week.” His hand shook a little as he lifted his spoon. “We’re all going together.”
She set a spot for Max in case he came back early. Josef dipped his bread and drank from his bowl, but he stood up from the table as soon as he had finished. He went back outside, and she watched him from the window. He ran between her beds, where the chamomile grew and the peppermint. He stopped every little while and bent at the waist. She shook her head. All those old men training like soldiers. They were an army of grandfathers, and it was a sorry thing to see. He pumped his arms. His hair was wet and lay flat on his head, and as he hopped she saw his bare ankles under the cuffs of his pants. He’d forgotten to put on his socks again. She noticed this only now. She’d set them out for him, and still he forgot. He’d get blisters in those stiff leather shoes, but she didn’t go to him.
How good it felt to move in the damp air. How good to get the heart pumping instead of sitting by the radio waiting for more news. He had another half hour before the announcers came back on. Every day the battle was coming closer. Every day another place was lost, and they’d have to work together to push the Bolsheviks back, every boy and every man from nine to ninety. Age didn’t matter when duty called. It was almost two years since Stalingrad was lost, two years falling back, and it wasn’t any better to the west. The Amis were pushing hard against Aachen and Metz, but none of the sacrifices were in vain, the announcers were certain. Every battle lost was a prelude to the victory that would come, and so he ran around Etta’s rosebushes and the low herb beds. He slipped on the wet stones and went down to his knee like a suitor asking a girl to dance. His wool pants were torn. His knee throbbed. It would swell and turn blue, but he didn’t care. He looked up toward the kitchen window to make sure Etta hadn’t seen, and then he pushed himself back up and kept on with his running.
He was as fit now as he was at forty, even Etta would have to agree. All those years he rode his fine Hercules bicycle around the countryside, and even now his muscles remembered how to move. He rode when he was free for summer or when the schoolhouse was closed for measles. It’s better than the train, he’d told Etta, much better because you can see things as you go. He’d put on his fine wool knickers and his cap or his rain cape, and off he’d go, pedaling fast as a boy. Max was still in elementary school back then, and Georg was a baby who wailed through the night and found no comfort when Etta held him against her breast. While Etta stayed home with the boys, Josef toured with the other teachers in the group and he joined the ice-skating group, too, and a choir. He loved his groups, he did, he loved their politics and their administrative duties and all the meetings and discussions necessary to keep their affairs in order. They’d meet in the beer hall, sitting at their regular table and holding their glasses close to their chest, usually the house beer but on special occasions they’d have a glass of fine Kulmbacher beer, too, and he missed those afternoons when the work was done and they sat together playing skat in groups of three. The men were old now and some were dead already, and his bicycle was long gone, too, and he didn’t remember what happened to it, but his body was still strong and for that he was grateful.
Etta took out the tablecloth she’d made years before and centered it on the table. She’d tatted the border and embroidered all the roses, and it didn’t have a single stain. The china came out and the candlesticks and what silver she had left. She’d traded away all the serving pieces, one by one they went or sometimes in pairs. She traded them for knitting wool, for black tea and smoked ribs and cases of writing paper for Josef. The teapot was gone and the sugar tongs and her creamer, but she had eight forks still and eight spoons, and she stayed in the kitchen while she polished them because it smelled so sweet there by the oven. Ilse had given her butter, just enough for one of her cakes. Butter was how heaven smelled, she was sure of it, butter cookies and butter cakes and thin veal cutlets fried in buttery pans.
The ladies came just before two, wearing hats and their best shoes. She opened the door and took the mitbringsels they brought. They gave her marmalade and dried fruit, and Regina Schiller gave her a piece of perfumed soap wrapped in silk, so old that the scent was gone and the silk had faded at the edges. Ilse was the last to knock. Her eyes were shiny as a cat’s when she came inside, and all the ladies looked at the bowl she brought, heaped high with whipped cream.
Regina sat beside Etta and then came Maria and old Hansi the spinster and then Ilse, who sat on Etta’s other side and was closest to the platter. Etta cut the cake and ladled out the cream, and they were impatient and fingered their plates. They tried to eat slowly, all of them, putting their forks down from time to time and sipping muckefuck, chicory coffee, from their cups. Ilse finished first and cut herself another slice. Thin as a knitting needle, and look how she eats. Etta uncrossed her legs. Her skirt was tight already, and she wanted to unbutton it.
“How is Max?” Maria set her cup on its saucer. She was wearing rouge today and her perfume was strong and smelled of gardenias. “He looks busy when I see him.”
“He’s fine,” Etta said. She cleared her throat. “Every day he’s better.”
“Of course he’s better,” Ilse said, with a sidelong glance at Maria. “I saw him just yesterday walking the bridge. He’s fatter already and not so pale.” Nothing better than being home again and walking in the air. Georg would be home soon, too, and then Etta would have both her boys.
The ladies went quiet. They raised and lowered their cups. They reached for the sugar and smoothed their skirts, and Maria cleared her throat and tried again. “Frieda Richter’s off to the old people’s home,” she said. She leaned over the table, and her voice dropped low. “To a shared room.” They shook their heads. What a shame how those girls treated their mother. They were tight with the money, and her youngest lived just two towns over and still she couldn’t spare the time to help with the move.
Maria sat back in her chair and folded her hands across her lap. She was finding her rhythm, and they all leaned in to hear. She knew things. She heard things at the beauty shop and in the milk line and down by the bridge. Young Fischer was back. He’d lost his hand. He wouldn’t be playing the piano anymore, but at least he was safe. Dr. Kleissner was making his rounds again. He was going on visits all over town. He went to see the Schneidermanns about their boy, their soft-cheeked Franz whose voice had never changed and he was almost sixteen but he didn’t know his numbers or his letters and he sat beside his mother while she worked and clapped his hands and sang. Dr. Kleissner with his shiny leather satchel, and Etta’s chest went tight at his name. He had a new office down on Marienstrasse, and who knew what he did all day because he birthed no babies and stitched no cuts. He came from the city and he had no family in Heidenfeld and no wife or children either.
And what about Trudi Helmner, Maria was asking. She was big enough for twins, the way she waddled, and she’d dropped already and was carrying them low. What a scandal. What a shame for the family and her mother especially, who acted like the bump wasn’t there. It was best to agree with the poor woman. Something might come unstrung inside her head if they didn’t all agree. Yes, they said, it’s a pity, the men are all gone and the girls are having babies. Godless times we live in. Strange godless times, and two more boys were dead and buried. The Gabler brothers from Rothenfels, and Etta blinked hard to keep from crying. The radio announcers spoke of battles in distant cities and how things would turn around once their boys were closer to home and fighting on their own land. Victory was inevitable, they said, victory was a given, but the ladies knew better. Their boys went away, every day they left and they didn’t come back or they came back broken and what use was victory then when everything was lost.
Etta brought the wine jar when the coffee was done. She filled their glasses, and the windows steamed from the heat of the stove. The rain came down against the panes and the garden was empty and the street beyond, and all the world was gray. “You make a sweet drop,” Regina said. “Honey-sweet.” The stove clicked and popped, and they all nodded, yes, it was sweet as peaches. Etta knew just how to soak the berries. Not so long ago their boys would play outside while the ladies chatted. Even in wintertime they played, Maria’s boys and Regina’s and Max and sometimes even Georg when he was willing to set aside his books. They ran around her garden and the neighborhood boys would come, too, and bring their soccer ball, and their shouts and their laughter came through the window. Etta would warn them if they got too rowdy. “Careful with my roses,” she’d say, “don’t climb up on my shed,” and she’d shake her finger and smile because they were boys and wild and she left them to their running.
Regina went to the piano when the talk began to slow. She played classical pieces and a few popular ones, too, sentimental songs that the ladies all knew. They sat around the table and drank their wine and listened to Regina, whose eyes were closed. Her hands stopped shaking when she worked the keys. It was better than any medicine, and that’s why she still played the organ at services, even in wintertime when it was cold inside the church and everyone else wore mittens.
“One more,” Ilse said when Regina stopped. “Just a quick one.” Ilse’s eyes were soft from the wine. She didn’t want to go home just yet. The other ladies clapped. “Just one more,” they said, “it’s early still. It’s not even dark outside.” This was the nicest time, when the wine jar sat on the table and the candles burned low and cast a sweet light around the room. Their houses were empty and their stoves cold, and they didn’t want to leave. “One more,” they said again. There was time for another song. Etta went around the table and filled their glasses, but only halfway this time. She still knew how to make them happy. Even now she threw a fine klatsch and kept them in their chairs.
Regina sat back down. She took a breath and played something she had never played for them before. It started slow, sped up and slowed down again, lingering in unexpected places. It was mournful, the way she played it. She moved her head to the music, and Etta was certain Regina was with her boys, with her three boys who were buried where the ground was always frozen and no flowers bloomed. She looked around the table at all the ladies. Their springtime had long passed, and their summer, too, and they were deep into winter now. Bare as the branches of the trees.
Nobody spoke when the song was done. It was time to go. They walked with Etta to the door and thanked her. Regina leaned in to give Etta a peck on the cheek, and she squeezed Etta’s hand. “He goes to the cemetery. Every morning I see him there.” She pulled Etta closer. “Keep him home if you can. He shouldn’t be out walking.”
In the morning Etta gathered pine branches for her mother. The weather had started to turn, and it was time to cover her. She tended to the grave as she would a garden, planting roses there and pansies, and tulips for the springtime. In winter she set pine branches over the mound to protect the bulbs, and she set the prettiest branches in the urns and tied them with ribbons. “Winter will pass,” she said, “it will pass and all the flowers will bloom for you.” Her mother had hated the snow and the gray days of winter. She had loved spring best and summer and the warm evenings when she could stand outside in her garden. The light went soft then, and people fanned themselves and talked until late. All these things were lost now. Her mutti was gone, and she’d taken them with her. Etta laid the branches down. She sat on the bench and waited.
Max came through the iron gate just as Regina had said he would. He came through at half past ten. He tapped the cisterns as he passed and dipped his hand inside, but they were empty already, drained for winter. He walked past the stone building that held the dead for burial. He stepped off the path and onto the grass. Etta rose so she could see him better. He stopped beside a gravestone and held out his arms, as if beckoning someone to come. He hadn’t shaved and his hair was too long and he looked like a conjurer and not her boy. He looked like a gypsy.
She walked toward him. He gave no sign that he heard her steps. He raised his arms toward the sky and threw back his head. She was afraid for a moment that he was not there in the yard, that it was someone else standing there, some stranger casting spells over the stones. She came closer, and then she heard his voice, her boy’s voice, speaking, cajoling the headstone, “Loud,” he said, “you’re being too loud, and I can’t hear.”
She touched his shoulder. He gave her his hand as if he’d been expecting her, and they went together to the nearest bench. He put his hands in his lap and rocked a little. “I’ll sit for a while,” he said, “just a little while, and then I’ve got to go.”
“Come home with me,” she said.
He looked at the gravestones. “All their clocks have stopped.” He tapped his chest. “Mine should have stopped, too. I don’t know why it keeps on going.”
The first flakes began to fall. They wouldn’t stick. The snow would turn to rain again, but they fell now, fat flakes that melted against her cheeks. He had always loved snowy days. He stayed outside for hours when he was little, pretending not to hear her call. He skated on the pond, tracing circles in the ice, asking to stay just a little longer, Come on, Mutti, just a little longer, and his face was pink from the wind. She squeezed his hand. The first ladies were coming through the gates. They descended like crows, those ladies in black, and huddled low on the mounds.
Even when he was little Max had a way of fixing his eyes on her and asking questions that had no easy answers or no answers at all. “Mutti,” he’d asked her once when he was only six, “where do birds go to die? I see birds every day and never a dead one. Where do they go then?” and Etta could only shake her head at her boy, who thought of such things. “They go someplace nice,” she told him, “where it’s quiet and the cats won’t find them and the wolves and foxes neither. That’s why we don’t see them. They go to bird heaven.” He looked at her a long while and then he nodded, satisfied with her response. It made sense that birds could find their way to heaven. They flew beneath it every day. It would take only a breeze to bear them up and through the gates, only a breeze and they were gone.
She took him by his arm and stood up from the bench. “It’s time,” she said. “It’s time to go home and rest,” and there were red marks on his wrists like scratches from a cat. “What happened to your skin?” She tried to look. She bent close and reached for his sleeve, but he pulled his arm away.
Someone was knocking at the front door, but Etta stayed on her step stool. She had no need for company. Max had left the house early again. She’d tried to hold him back. She took him by the elbow because people would be watching him now. His outburst at the mass had drawn their attention. They’d be looking for more signs, but he shook himself free and he left without shutting the door behind him. She wiped each of the crystal drops on her entry chandelier. She used a white cotton cloth and she worked her way around its arches. She had been cleaning for hours. She had started with the bedrooms, stripping the sheets and reaching under each of the beds with her feather duster. She used a fine brush for the baseboards and the sills, and she’d wash all the windows next, even though it looked like rain. Everywhere she looked she saw dirt and dust and smudges. It was a wonder anyone could live in the house. The visitor knocked again, more loudly this time. She sighed and climbed down.
She looked out to her stoop from the hallway window. Dr. Kleissner stood on the steps, holding the banister with his left hand and his satchel in his right. He wasn’t her doctor and not Josef’s either, but she had to open the door. He’d seen her behind the lace curtain. He’d caught her eye and waved.
“Guten Tag, Frau Huber.” He took off his hat and held it against his chest. His pale eyes watered from the wind. “Winter has come early, hasn’t it. There’s no going back now.”
Etta nodded. “Guten Tag, Herr Doktor.” She opened the door wider, but she didn’t move aside to let him in. “How nice to see you.”
“I’m frozen through.” He stepped around her and into the hall without waiting for an invitation. He set his hat on the credenza. “It’s the wind and not the cold. No jacket is warm enough when it blows.”
Etta didn’t move toward the dining room or offer him a seat. “I’m afraid there’s been some mistake, Herr Doktor. We haven’t called for you. You walked all this way, and on a day like this.”
“Is your husband home?” He looked past Etta into the kitchen, where she had a pot of chicory coffee brewing for Josef. His hair stood up in wisps from his head, but he didn’t try to smooth them.
“He’s doing his exercises.” Etta pointed toward the back of the house. “Every day he goes out there even in this cold.”
The doctor nodded. He set his satchel down beside his hat. “It’s good to see our older men working on their fitness. Your coffee smells good, Frau Huber. Might I have a cup?”
Etta set a place for him on the dining table. She brought out her good Rosenthal cups and peeled and sliced an apple and fanned the slices on a saucer. Josef was jumping now, she could see him through the window. He hopped in place on the rock path between their garden beds. Up down, up down, like a boy and not an old man, up down, and he stretched his arms out and bent at the waist and touched his shoes.
“What about your son?” The doctor ate the apple slices one after the next, and his hands were delicate and plump as any woman’s. He dabbed his watering eyes with his napkin. “Is he home?” the doctor was asking. “Is he home today?”
“I have two boys.” Etta turned from the window. “I have two and they’re gone the both of them.” She set her hand to her throat to make sure her pearls were still there. “Georg is at the academy, and Max is outside walking.”
“He likes to walk, does he? The whole family is very fit then. It’s a good thing to see. Fit in the body, fit in the mind.” The doctor reached for the last apple slice.
“He likes the cold air, my Max. He goes down by the river.” She found herself talking without meaning to. The doctor said nothing. He sat there with his coffee cup, and the silence in the room weighed on her. She talked just to fill the empty air. “He’s always been an athlete. He’s like a fish how he swims.”
Just then Josef pushed the kitchen door open and let it close behind him with a slam. “Du, Etta,” he said. “Where are my good socks? These socks here are much too thin.” His cheeks were red from the wind.
The doctor stood up when Josef came into the dining room. “Herr Hauptlehrer,” he said though Josef wasn’t a teacher anymore. He extended his hand across the table. “It’s an honor to meet you. I’ve heard so many things about your family.”
Josef’s chest puffed at the doctor’s words. He stood a little straighter and he gripped the doctor’s hand with a crisp nod. “I’ve heard about you, too, Herr Doktor. Forgive my hand. It’s a cold one today. Cold as January the way the wind blows.”
“It’s nice and warm in here,” the doctor told him. “Come join us. I’ve been chatting with your wife. She’s told me about your boys.”
Josef sat down and waited for Etta to bring him his coffee. She didn’t want to leave them alone together, but she went to the kitchen and came back out with another cup and saucer.
“I might come see you,” Josef was saying as Etta came to the table. He set his hands together, and they were chapped from the cold. “I might need to bring you a form,” and the doctor nodded, but he was watching Etta as she poured the coffee. Her hand was shaking and she rattled the pot as she set it down. “I’m almost sixty and they might need a signature before they can sign me up.”
Dr. Kleissner nodded again. “Not a problem.” He watched Etta as she lifted the cup, but Josef didn’t notice. “You look perfectly fit.” He checked his wristwatch. “He stays out for a long time, doesn’t he, your Max? He must have many things to do.”
The doctor sat there like somebody on vacation. He looked at Max’s medals on the wall and at the window to the garden where Etta had cut back her roses and covered her raised beds. The apple trees were full with crows. The wind bent the bare branches, but the crows stayed where they were. “It’s a nice house you have here. A very nice piece of land. It must be lovely in summer when the roses are blooming.”
“We grow vegetables, too,” Etta told him. “We grow more than we can eat.”
“That’s good to hear. I’ve got other houses to visit, but I’ll come again. I’ll come when Max is here. It’s a formality, nothing more. It’s for the records office. I’ll come by in the morning sometime and drink more of your good coffee.”
Josef pointed to the doctor’s empty cup. “Pour him another,” he told Etta, but the doctor shook his head.
“Another day,” he said. “Another time when I come back,” and Josef walked him to the door. They stood together at the top of the steps for a long moment, just two gray shadows against the rain-gray sky, before Josef came back inside and closed the door.