Out on the road, the late-afternoon light was unfiltered. Only a thin film of water shimmering off the telephone wires and the puddles in the ditch, deep and almost clean-looking, left a trace of the rain that had come through. The asphalt itself was pale and dry.
Daniel lay against the bench in the back seat. Eric lit a cigarette, his window down and the wind whipping at the crumbling ash. They had the radio on, and Heike rolled the dial between her thumb and forefinger, looking for something you could dance to. It was warm in the car, and she tucked her dress under her legs so that her skin wouldn’t stick against the vinyl.
The look on her face when she saw that porcelain figurine, Eric had said. He knew he’d gone too far. He’d brought her a glass of ice water in the bath. Daniel played in the next room so that she could hear him.
— I had no idea you’d brought anything with you out of Germany, Eric said. You’re full of secrets.
Heike had sipped at the water and said nothing.
Then, thinking better of the silence, she set the glass down and tried to smile.
— How long was Dani awake before I got home?
— Oh, I don’t know. Twenty minutes? Not long. We had a little time together.
— Did he show you his drawing?
— What do you mean?
— This morning, while I was making breakfast, he was very busy drawing at the kitchen table. He made a Mickey Mouse. You should see it; it’s so cute. He’s really very good for his age.
The corner of Eric’s lips curled up, just on one side. Amused by her.
— That’s funny. He told me you sent him outside to play with Rita this morning.
— Why would I do that?
— He said he wanted to stay inside, but you shooed him out the door. Are you sure you’re remembering correctly?
— Of course I remember. Don’t be silly.
Heike had picked up the glass again and held it against her lips, not drinking from it. Eric reached out and tucked her hair behind one ear.
— Maybe you’re thinking of a different day. You’re more delicate than you know. We have to take care of you, he said.
He’d suggested a little dinner out, just the three of them. An apology, he said, for riding her so hard all day long.
She was surprised when they passed through Ithaca without stopping.
— It’s early yet, Eric said. He passed her his cigarette to hold and she relit it for him with the red ember of the car lighter. She was looking out the window at the houses, white and wooden and barely set back from the road. There’s a particular taste to a cigarette lit for the second time.
They were between the lakes. He’d bought himself a new hat a few days earlier and fit it onto his head in front of the hall mirror before they left, admiring the angle of it. When it was satisfactory, he’d pulled his billfold from his pocket and counted out twenty-five dollars.
— Here, he said. Why don’t you buy yourself a new dress. Or two of them. Pair of party shoes. He held the bills out for her to take. I just want you to be happy, he said.
Heike folded the money in her hand, two tens and a five. Eric took a last look at himself. He’d caught her eye in the mirror:
— I only spent fifteen on the hat, you know.
She nodded, and closed the hand tighter.
These houses belonged to poor people, Heike decided now. Landlocked little properties with zigzag fences, pretending to be farms, and the people in them mechanics or cashiers or girls like Rita. Now and then you could see a vegetable plot set to one side, where the fence rails were missing or fallen down. There was a dog lying out on a tether in one driveway, lapping at a puddle, and at the next, another dog, loose, chased along beside the car, its paws battering the rough shoulder of the road. The dogs looked matted and forgotten, and she wondered if they were fed properly or just sent out into the woods. Eric was talking to her. The dog chasing them turned back. They had reached the end of his domain.
It wasn’t the hangover so much as the gambling, Eric said. It made him reckless. It made him feel like he could spit on the world. He’d meant to bring her some flowers, but perhaps the new dress would do.
— Why are we going to the hospital? Heike still held the cigarette, but it was burnt down to the filter now and she threw it out the window. She’d recognized the turn near the bottom of Seneca and sat up a bit smarter, remembering his earlier remark. Almost a threat. His new jovial mood too hard to trust.
Eric pulled a case out of his breast pocket and flipped it open with one hand, offering her a new cigarette to light.
— For me, he said.
He let the cigarette case slip onto her lap. Heike gave the lighter a slow push to heat it up. The lake spread out ahead of them, and if she leaned just slightly out the window, she imagined she could still see Cayuga in the rear-view mirror. Or the light off the water, anyway.
— I’ve been waiting for a certain package to arrive, Eric said. Research chemicals.
— Yes, you told me. Remember? Your little bottles. But it wasn’t what you wanted?
— Wrong stuff. Interesting, but no, not what I wanted. The details would bore you. I’m afraid that’s why I was such a bear all day. The hospital pharmacist is a skinflint, but there’s another doctor. Someone I knew in the army. I just need enough to finish this project, and then maybe we’ll go back to the city, yes?
Eric switched hands on the steering wheel and reached over to pat her knee.
— Don’t worry, everything’s fine. Look, I’m cheered up! You can go for a little walk in the gardens. You and Dani. Then we’ll drive back into Ithaca for supper. What do you want, a steak?
He pulled up next to an outbuilding. They could see the main hall from where they sat.
— All gone in to have their dinner, Eric said. You’d think the place was abandoned.
He let the engine die.
— What’s in there? Heike said.
— Nothing. Workshop building.
— A workshop. Like for crafts? Or real working? She twisted around to look at Daniel in the back seat. His eyes were closed, and she could see movement under the lids. Dreaming. He had a stuffed bear in one hand, half-tucked under his leg for safekeeping.
The grounds stretched out warm and glowing in the low evening light. Eric had told her once how they used to keep patients chained up in the basement. Like a French prison, he said, and now it was all Heike could think of when she looked at the place.
She tapped a finger against the cigarette case.
— Eric? Let’s go. Dani is already sleeping, and it will be hard to wake him up for dinner.
Eric seemed suddenly at peace, intent on watching the sunset behind the hall. The lighter popped out and he reached for his cigarette, the paper browning at the edges with his inhale.
— There he is.
Eric hunched into the windshield. Heike followed his gaze. There was a man walking across the field, toward the building. The light was still strong enough behind him, his silhouette curving at the shoulders. An old man.
— Who is that? she said.
— Marek.
— And he is a doctor?
— Patient.
The man moved steadily along, his head down, following the walking path.
— What’s wrong with him?
— Nothing.
Eric’s body relaxed and he leaned on the steering wheel with one arm.
— What do you mean?
— Nothing, Eric said. I like to watch him.
— Why don’t you let him go? Heike squinted.
— He’s been here since the twenties, Eric said. Or earlier. Must’ve been sick sometime. I asked him if he came here after the war, and he said he fought for the Kaiser. Older than you think.
— So he’s German?
Eric didn’t answer. He held up one hand, thumb out, like a painter judging perspective. Heike realized what he was really doing: blocking the old man out. Erasing him.
— They call it the bughouse, he said. And there he is, cutting his little path every day like an ant in an ant farm. He closed the hand and brought it away from his eyes, as though he were checking to see if the old man was still there. Spend your life under some other man’s thumb, he said.
The heavy door swung open and Marek disappeared into the building.
— Surely you have to send him home. You say he’s not mad. Eric started the motor again, and the car crawled down the drive toward the main parking lot. He tipped a little ash out the window.
— What’s home? He says he fought for the Kaiser; maybe he worked at Kaiser Deli in Brooklyn. How should I know? Some of them get brought in by train, all the way from California. He eased into a spot and killed the motor. Madness follows you like a dog, he said. These people, who knows where they’re from. That’s why we say committed. No way out once you’re in.
Heike leaned down to tuck her purse under her seat, pausing there for a moment to look at him. She reached back and gave Daniel’s leg a little shake.
— Dani. Hey. Naptime’s over.
Daniel kicked his feet in a kind of protest, but his eyes opened. Eric took a last look through the windshield for Marek, but the field was empty. He leaned back and tapped the rear-view so he could see himself and adjusted the new hat.
— Besides, Eric said. He digs all the graves. What would we do without him?
Heike opened the back door of the car, and Daniel swung his legs toward her. He’d kicked off his sandals on the ride. He wiggled his toes.
— Daniel, stop. Let Mami buckle your shoes.
But he wiggled some more, until Heike grabbed the toes with one hand and jammed the sandal on with the other.
— I want to go with Daddy.
Eric was off across the lot already, two hundred feet away, his briefcase swinging.
— No, we go for a little walk. Then supper. What do you want to eat? You want some ice cream?
— I want a shrimp, Daniel said. I want shrimps in a cup with cold sauce.
She tugged his hand, and he hopped down out of the car. The door swung its wide arc and shut heavily. They stood there for a moment, holding hands and watching Eric walk away. He climbed the steps to the main door, and then he was gone.
— Now, Heike said. Which way do we go? She pointed ahead to where two trails cut through the grass. Daniel let go of her hand and ran up between them. Heike followed, the soles of her shoes sliding a little on the wet path. She swung her arms up into the air.
— Look out! Here comes the monster! The monster is chasing you!
Daniel shrieked and disappeared behind a bank of shrubs. They played at this for a while, Heike hurrying along behind him whenever he got too far away. On either side of them were lilacs, out of bloom now, arched and leafy. She could see the orchard from where she stood, and the farm to the south of that. The path was not quite paved but beaten down with time and had been layered with gravel, although not recently, Heike thought. The grounds were maintained in a good-enough way by the patients themselves, who worked for free as part of their rehabilitation.
It’s good for them to have an occupation: Eric’s explanation when he’d first told her of the practice. Plenty of fresh air to be had working the gardens and livestock. (And in the sewing room? And the slaughterhouse? Also fresh air? Heike said. This made Eric sulk, and he’d ignored her for the rest of the evening. At bedtime he’d held her gently from behind and pushed her thighs apart with one hand, moving into her fast and hard and leaning close to whisper that her kind of people should never make jokes about work camps. Arbeit macht frei, Heike. Don’t forget what you come from. Don’t forget what you did.)
Daniel disappeared into a lilac bush and suddenly cried out:
— I’m stuck!
Heike pressed a branch down and held it with her foot while he climbed out and ran on to the next one. The branches were full and green, and she combed at the leaves with one hand and wondered if the flowers had been white or purple in the spring.
— The little one is full from energy.
The voice surprised her. She turned toward it, and the branch jerked up from under Heike’s foot, thwacking sharply back into place. She stepped back. The old man, Marek, stood a few feet away from her. He was not much taller than Heike. Mostly bald, with a whitening fringe of hair over his ears and a thick grey moustache. Apart from a few deep lines, his age didn’t show. He wore a striped shirt, buttoned to the collar, and a dark jacket over top, also buttoned. His arms hung at his sides.
— It’s not so often we can see children here, he said. His English was practiced but broken.
— My husband is a doctor, Heike said. She gestured with an arm toward the main hall. We are just visiting. Then, testing him: Mein Mann ist hier Arzt. Hier im Spital.
Marek tilted his head back in understanding but didn’t say anything in German or English, and Heike wondered if she’d set him on edge. Or if Eric was wrong about him: his mind was gone. Daniel was calling to her, and she let him call, watching Marek’s face.
— You live here? she said.
— Ja, hier, hier.
— Hier im Spital? In the hospital?
Marek shook his head. He lifted a hand and looked at her almost affectionately, as though she also were a child, then pointed out into the field, away from the farm, out past the workshop building where Eric had first stopped the car.
— Im Spital nicht, nicht. Nicht! Meine Wohnung. I’ hab’ meine eigene Wohnung g’baut, i’ selbst.
He had his own house. Heike looked around, following his gaze.
But Marek had stopped talking. He rocked back on his heels and put his hands in his pockets. Heike checked on Daniel over her shoulder. He was crouched low in the grass, playing with something there.
— A little friend, ja? Noch ein Kamerad, das Kindlein da?
Heike turned back to Marek. His meaning was a little lost to her. She wondered how often he got a chance to speak to another person, someone from outside.
He gestured again with a hand, this time toward Daniel and then back to Heike, adding a slight bow of the head in her direction: A little friend.
— Nein, nein, no friend. He’s my own, my son. She touched her belly. Mein Sohn, mein eigenes Baby.
The old man’s eyes clouded for a moment, as though he were perplexed, but then he crossed his arms and his mouth opened to laugh. He tipped his head in Daniel’s direction:
— Jawohl, haben Sie so ein Kamerad. Kamerad, Kamerad.
Marek muttered the words over again—a friend, a friend—low enough that Heike had to step forward to hear. He seemed on the face of it no worse off than any other man his age, but his language had suffered, and perhaps he had never picked up enough English to compensate. Isolated, she thought. A bit lonely. She started to call to Daniel to come over and say hello, but Marek waved her off. He was tired, he said. An old man. He was going to bed.
— Nach Hause! Ins Bett!
Heike watched him walk off along the path, then up over the hill until he disappeared beyond it. At the last second she called out:
— Schlafen Sie gut! Sleep well, Herr Marek! He didn’t reappear, and she couldn’t tell if he’d heard her.
She felt something at her side and looked down. Daniel was there, his hand sliding cleanly into hers. He wanted something.
— Now you hide! Mami, you!
Heike shook her head a little. Daniel linked his fingers in hers and squeezed, insistent.
— Okay, I hide. I hide. But you have to count—can you count to ten? She took his hands and moved them over his eyes. You have to close your eyes, see? His fingers were pink and clean and damp from touching the wet grass. He screwed his eyes up tight. Heike started counting out loud and let him follow. When he got to five, she backed away and tucked herself behind the closest bush, crouching down into the branches. She called out to him:
— Seven, eight, nine, ten!
— Nine, ten! Daniel’s high little voice: Here I come!
Heike hugged her knees. She braced her heels back against the low, thicker branches of the lilac, where it was dry, and waited. Daniel ran up and down, swishing at the leaves.
— Are you here? Are you here?
Then he was quiet. Heike waited. She counted to ten in her own mind before straightening up and peering around the side of the bush. The sun was low now. Where the grounds opened up, flat along toward the farm, the sky was shadowed but still warm. The path had a violet cast to it. She squinted to find Daniel in the shade around each lilac bush.
— Dani?
Heike came around into the little clearing where she’d been talking to Marek. Daniel was maybe fifteen feet away, close to where he’d been playing in the grass. He stood next to a ridge of smaller flowering shrubs, batting his hands at the petals. He wasn’t looking for Heike. His mouth was moving, and she realized he was talking to someone. As she came closer, she could hear him, his voice a sing-song. She strained to see if there could be someone there, hidden by shade. The old man, come back around. Suddenly she recognized the song: her own rhyme again, truly this time, the song she’d thought she could hear at the pond. It made her feel cold now, something in it strange and ruined.
Hoppe, hoppe Reiter
Wenn er fällt, dann schreit er
Fällt er in den Graben
Fressen ihn die Raben . . .
It was an old rhyme, gory the way folklore can be. An anxious rider falls in the ditch, cries out; the ravens pick at him. Heike listened. He wasn’t batting at the petals. He was playing a clapping game, his hands coming together and then smacking at the air. The fingers, so pink and clean a moment ago, suddenly dark. There was no one with him.
Heike stopped moving and watched him, a stitch tightening across her chest. His little voice clear in the sunshine. She caught herself looking over her shoulder, then shook it off. She was ridiculous. Spooked by the hospital and tired from the long day. More than one long day. She was hungry and tired, and it made her jittery. Any little child sings to himself. She wiped her hands on her skirt and called to him:
— Daniel! You forgot about me!
She moved forward to take his hand, and he stopped the game and turned to meet her. His eyes were bright; there was no reason to worry about him. They would go and meet Eric and drive to town, and she would order him shrimp. Shrimp cocktail and an ice cream sundae. He reached for her hand, and she rubbed it in hers.
— How did you get so dirty so fast! The muck streaked her own hands, and Heike suddenly took hold of his and opened out the palms.
Not garden muck, but blood. Each little hand scratched open. She looked at him, and his face was placid. He stretched his fingers wider.
She dropped his hands and wiped at her own, the blood making a blush, a thin stain, as she rubbed it in.
— It was the game. The game hurt me.
Heike looked down at the ground near them and then up to where he’d been playing. He’d knocked the flowers with his hands. Shrub roses. The branches all full of thorns.
She took hold of him by the wrist only, her fingers shaking a little against him.
— Come on, we wash you up. Before your father sees.
There was a garden hose at the exterior of the workshop building for the groundskeepers to use. Heike led Daniel over to it and held on to him with one hand, working the tap with the other. It stuck, the handle rusty along its grooves, and then gave suddenly, and she let the water stream out over his fingers. Heike held each hand flat and wide to clean it out. The shock of the cold water surprised him, and Daniel’s face screwed up tight. Heike cranked the handle shut and let the hose drop and showed him how to shake off his hands.
— Now let’s see what they look like. So. Much better! Just some scratches.
She blew on his palms. Each hand was a mess of little lines. She crouched down, drawing the hem of her dress up so that it wouldn’t drag in the mud near the tap.
— When I was a little girl, Heike said, I played hide-and-seek with my sister. We were on a picnic, and we went into the woods to play. I wanted to be very clever, so I crawled right underneath a raspberry bush. Wild raspberries. I was picking them when I was hiding there. But raspberry bushes also have thorns. My arms and legs looked just like this, just like your hands now. She lifted the edge of her skirt and patted his hands dry, holding them in hers. She gave the fingers a squeeze. But it hurt to crawl under that bush, Daniel. Tell me, didn’t it hurt to play in the thorns?
He rubbed the hands together and then opened them wide again.
— Do I need Band-Aids?
She watched him a moment, then looked up to gauge the dying light.
— I think you need ice cream, Heike said. She pushed up to standing.
— And shrimps, he said.
— And shrimps.
— With cold sauce, Daniel said.
— Yes, shrimp cocktail. But listen now: Next time if you are playing and it hurts, you need to stop that game. Okay?
She laid a hand between his shoulders, and they walked back along the path to the parking lot. Eric was leaning against the side of the car. He had his hat in one hand, and he tapped it lightly against his thigh. When he saw them, he fixed it back on his head.
— What happened to you?
— Dani got hurt. There are some rose bushes there, and—
Daniel held up his hands like little fans on either side of his face.
— I had to sing the song, he said. The thorns hurted me, but I had to do the game.
Something caught in Heike’s throat.
— I already cleaned up his hands.
— What are you talking about? Eric said. He was looking at the ground, at her feet. The soles of her shoes coated with muck, and the peekaboo tip showing off her first three toes, the softly rounded nails painted a delicate pink, with a slick of mud rising between them.
— Oh, Heike said.
— You look like you’ve been running through a sprinkler.
— It was the hose. I just grabbed the first thing I saw. Heike stepped forward to touch Eric’s shoulder, but he twisted away and walked around to the driver’s side.
— I can’t take you to dinner looking like that.
— Eric. It was only a little water. Here, I’ll wipe them off. Everything’s fine.
Eric stopped at his own door, and she heard the click of the handle as it sprang open in his hand, but he didn’t get in. He looked at her across the roof of the car.
— Everything’s not fine. You’re a mess. You look like you’ve been mucking out a farm stall in your dinner clothes. What did you think was going to happen?
— You told me to go for a walk.
— You could have chosen to wait in the car. Use some sense!
— It’s only water! Eric, this is easy to fix.
Heike opened the back door and held it for Daniel to climb in. She watched him crawl over the seat until he was square on the bump in the middle. Then she opened her own door and slid into the seat, leaving her legs outside the car and knocking her feet together, twice, three times, to clean them off. Eric flung himself in next to her and slammed the door.
— We’re going home.
— What about your package?
— There was no package. The supplier didn’t come through. What makes you think it’s any business of yours, anyway?
Heike pulled in her legs and shut the door. She’d left her hat and gloves on the bench between them, and now she picked them up and drew the gloves smoothly over her hands. Eric turned, one arm along the seatback behind her shoulders, and spun the car into reverse.
She pulled a compact from her handbag and pinned the hat smartly above her brow, fixing it into her hair despite the jostling of the car as it turned off the gravel lot, back out onto the road. In the back seat, Daniel opened his mouth and began to howl.