In Darmstadt, Elizabeth finds herself with time on her hands and news of the world

It would come after days spent rolling merrily along, the lady observing the passing scene with a cup of tea and feeling more of a stranger on solid ground than in the gentle rocking cars: an accident, the whole world bursting in a magnesium flash as the train bucks like a bull from the rails, earth drawn across the window like a curtain and the lady’s teacup stuck bloody in her wrist, her body so soft against the things that once served it, the worst of it not the shock or pain, but the simple realization that her whole world could be tipped from its axis, that she could find herself flung into a new state of being, her legs crushed under a table, the world’s blooming orchestra rendered to a tinny buzz. It was how Elizabeth imagined it, anyway.

That sense—that the planet could violently revolt at any moment—was precisely the speculative thrill Elizabeth came to crave when she sat down to read the daily news. After the story about the train derailment, she spent the rest of the morning in delicious agony, fantasizing the feeling of her body being thrown across every room she entered. These brief sojourns into crisis were more tantalizing than fiction and simpler to attain, but she found she slowly grew dependent on them and needed the newspaper more and more. She started milling around the neighborhood grocery until the boy came by with the late edition. When she gave him her money, she would hold one hand with the other to keep him from seeing how she shook with anticipation.

Just the month before, a man in Mühlhausen had taken the lives of his wife and children and then gone on to murder strangers in the street. The unadorned fact was enough to get Elizabeth going, but she was thrilled to find the paper printed every detail: he wielded a pair of army revolvers with two hundred cartridges in reserve; he was calm and smiling when they captured him, though he was beaten almost to death; the children were found bludgeoned in their beds, his wife’s throat slit in the hall; he happily confessed every bit of it as the police dragged him away. He was the town’s mild schoolteacher and knew most of the children he slaughtered. It was an evil thing that came upon him, but the law could not discern what inspired it, and he wasn’t ill with drink or spurred by circumstance. After she read it all, Elizabeth had to lie down, her heart pounding in her chest.

For days, she watched every edition to see if some detail would emerge that might better explain it, but subsequent articles only confused her more. The man wore a veil over his face, in letters he spoke of wanting the Devil; none of it made sense to her. At least when unsinkable ships went down, there were icebergs to blame. Or when the Windsor caught fire in New York and Elizabeth had to run with the children through the throng of sirens, delirious with smoke and fear as ladies fell from the sky like squalling myths—at least with the fire, there was probable cause, a lamp, a drape. These were things she could avoid, lessons she could learn.

But this! She hated the feeling of helplessness, waiting for the lesson that would never come. With the murderer in Mühlhausen, she felt as if she were witnessing the beginning of a troubling modern trend.

Just as the papers seemed to turn from the crime, the airship L2 burst over Johannisthal, killing twenty-eight. Elizabeth exhausted herself, staring at the pictures of the craft’s aluminum ribs drilled into the earth, of the bodies of boys hauled off on shrouded sleds. She couldn’t look away.

She tried to tell Max about her repulsive attraction. He was usually very understanding of her moods, having often stated that feminine sensitivity was ideal for the creation of great art. Even though Elizabeth didn’t see sensitivity as a feminine trait exactly and also did not view herself as an artist, rather as a technician and a teacher, she appreciated his attempt to place her in the constellation of his own theories, finding her in the golden telescope of his intellect and making a note of her as the wayward, looping planet she was.

As it happened, however, Max was the worst person she could have told. He kept interrupting to ask why she didn’t simply stop reading the papers, why she didn’t focus on softer stories. Eventually, she gave up on explaining herself, and allowed him to pour her a thimble of bitter Underberg. They sat together on the porch and watched evening pass them by.

As she settled more comfortably into a stuffed wicker chair, her mind drew idly to Romano. She wondered if he had seen the same news, of the murder or the airship. Perhaps he had read of something equally stunning closer to home. Tragedy seemed to only attract him. He spoke of how, as a boy, he walked the seawall to see the fresh shipwrecks, enjoying the sound of hulls wailing against the shoals in the persistent tide. Perhaps she could go to him in Italy, visiting macabre sites along the way.

Leaving Darmstadt was her most seductive fantasy, but it was truly impossible. The girls needed someone to keep Max in check; one more long trip, and he would have them marching in lockstep. And anyway, such a trip would require her to accept that the horrors were so near. She was happy to speculate on tragedy but preferred not to be its neighbor. And so she stayed, and read the paper.