“Remember when we found treasures on the Watt?” Nils asks.
Lotte stares toward the window.
He shifts his body into the path of her gaze. “When we were in third grade … that spring the Nordsee carried off muck and sediments above Rungholt. Remember?”
Outlines of cisterns and of cellars.
“Tell me what you remember,” Nils whispers.
Posts and plow tracks. You can hide in those memories. Vanish.
“There was talk of treasures,” he says. “You and Kalle and I were eight. We hiked out at low tide with hooks and pails and shovels. Entire families were out there, digging. You and I found the handle of a plow.”
Three shards of clay.
“Two shards of clay,” Nils says.
Three.
“You were good at finding treasures for the school museum.”
He reminds her how proud they were when they brought a treasure to their teacher. And though Lotte doesn’t answer, it feels like a conversation because he senses that she, too, sees the shards of clay, the handle of the plow, images that he’s seen and that move them both forward into other images: the shelves and glass cases that displayed maps and diaries; fragments from ceramic bowls and whetting stones; stiff garments and kitchen utensils from ancestors; jewelry that people willed to the museum.
Every find is worthy of investigation. An ancient inkwell. Half a spinning wheel. A copper teapot. Brilliant shards of ceramic that date back to foreign sailors who traded on Rungholt. Generations of students have practiced their handwriting on cards that document each artifact by name, century, location, and finder.
Tintenfaß | 14. Jahrhundert | Bennersiel | Dietrich Maier | Kupfer Teekanne | 17. Jahrhundert | Herrendeich | Rosemarie Link |
Over centuries, the museum has grown, curated by the current teacher, who has a desk in the museum. After hours, the teacher is allowed to use the museum as a parlor, sit in the embroidered armchair or lie on the sofa, eat at the fourteenth-century marble table, surrounded by seascapes and framed documents. Unless the teacher is a Sister and must be back at the St. Margaret Home before dark.
From the stillness of her bed in the St. Margaret Home, Lotte maps the route of the Ludwig Zirkus through her longing, into towns and villages along the Nordsee, up the coast through Germany, into Denmark, and then back through Germany into Holland.
Next August he’ll have to come back because the Ludwig Zirkus will set up on Nordstrand once again. You cannot be sure of the exact week. Something unforeseen may happen along the way—sick animals or broken wheels—that’ll push all performances back or ahead. But once you hear that the Zirkus is performing in Husum, you know Nordstrand is next. Will he come to the house? Or will he avoid her? Hide out in one of the wagons? Keep his door locked if she were to come to him?
Maybe she’ll be the one to hide with Wilhelm in the house. Let Kalle be the one to come to her. But what if he doesn’t? She understands why he left, but she can’t understand why he doesn’t write to her. And why he stays away. She thinks of Sabine Florian with her strong, willowy body. Sabine, free and fearless, who should use her body to anchor her daughter to earth—not tempt another woman’s husband young enough to be her son.
If Lotte could, she’d stop her longing—kill it throttle it burn it. It sucks you in, seduces you into hope unless you withdraw instantly. Because there are two sides to longing, hope and the danger of letting hope devour you. Longing trips you. Tricks you. And yet gives you brief respite from your despair while beyond your window the seasons stage their extravagant transformation: winds sweep across yellow rapeseed fields where countless blossoms sway as if one surface, and clouds ripple like wetlands after the tide retreats, dappled valleys and ridges as if the earth had turned itself upside down.
Longing. But not grieving. Not for Kalle.
To grieve him and her children together would be disloyal to her children.
When the Ludwigs meet with Kalle about restoring the wagon panels, both want magic and passion; but where the father envisions additional Bible scenes, the son wants to replace every panel with scenes from Arabische Nächte—Arabian Nights.
“Too expensive,” Herr Ludwig says.
“We need something more exciting than virgins and apostles,” Silvio says.
Kalle listens carefully to figure out how to get along with both. “It may be dramatic to merge your story lines—”
“That’s impractical,” Silvio Ludwig says.
“Impractical,” his father echoes.
“It would keep your costs low,” Kalle says.
The Ludwigs glance at each other. Then at Kalle. Wait.
“I won’t do unnecessary work. I’ll keep what I can of the Biblical panels.”
He begins with the kitchen wagon, removes the rotting half of The Last Supper and splices in veiled belly dancers who gyrate toward the leftover apostles. As a toymaker he’s created intricate features, but with the Zirkus he’s learning to work on an expansive scale. By afternoon he’s exhausted but can’t sleep at night because he dreads waking up and remembering he’ll never hold his children again.
The memory of body—impossible to overcome. The memory of how they latched on to Lotte: Hannelore wanting to do it all for herself as soon as she could, both hands pulling Lotte’s breast toward her mouth; Martin always curious, turning his head to follow whatever was happening nearby, stretching Lotte’s nipple; Bärbel with her fervent appetite and will, clamping onto Lotte—lips, gums, tongue, teeth—
Once again he barricades his soul, takes refuge in feeding the animals and shoveling their droppings till he’s drowsy, only letting himself think of what needs doing that moment and what needs doing the moment after that moment until he’s calmed, gladdened even, by their nearness and smell, by his hope that he’s good with them. He doesn’t do his other work. Tells himself that he is the veterinarian, at least closer to being a veterinarian than anyone in the Zirkus. He cooks gravy for the sick animals, just as he used to at home. While he browns a bit of meat and simmers it, adding water, the animals sniff the air, press closer, and he calls them his little cannibals, talks to them till he calms himself and the meat is in shreds and has turned into gravy that tastes like meat; and when he pours it over feed they’ve already refused, he gets even the most reluctant animals to eat, gets life to flare in their eyes again, ignoring the advice of anyone who’s told him that grazing animals don’t eat gravy because that would be cannibalism.
At first both Ludwigs are enthusiastic about Kalle’s work; but one evening in the kitchen wagon, Herr Ludwig is agitated. For a while they eat silently.
“Yesterday you liked the belly dancers,” Silvio says.
His father shakes his head.
“We agreed, Vater.”
“Did not.”
“We agreed. On everything. You forgot.”
“Did not.”
Silvio points to his father’s uneaten food.
“Don’t want to.”
“You’re letting yourself get too thin.”
“No belly dancers on my wagon!”
“Don’t you get sick.”
“Oh…” His father picks up a wedge of boiled potato, bites into it cautiously, fingers against his lips, hands like claws.
“You hear me?”
“No belly dancers! Your mother would be outraged.”
“We can keep our wagon silver and black. Let’s wait till we see what Kalle does with other wagons.”
“He’s not doing his work.”
“Sabine says it’s sadness about his children.”