The Old Women lean from their front windows for hours. Pillows between bosoms and windowsills, they let gossip ferment. Across the space between their windows they comment on everyone who passes; click their tongues at couples who walk hand in hand in public; applaud when children play hopscotch or do cartwheels—just as prior Old Women applauded them when they were little girls—and in that become children again, living all moments of their lives at once—child, woman, Old Woman.
Now that Lotte Jansen is back in her house, the Old Women help as much as she lets them. They feel an added meaning to their days because Lotte makes them more compassionate. Measured against her misfortune, they’ve been spared the worst, and they take comfort in their luck, in their competence. They fret about Wilhelm.
“I saw her carry him across the dike to where the others drowned.”
“That poor little boy.”
“I’ve seen her laugh.”
“Laugh with her baby? That’s not odd.”
“She’s already thrown him into the sea once.”
“Because she turned from God and—”
“From herself. Lotte Jansen turned from herself.”
“Crazy with grief.”
“No, she’s amazingly sane.”
“Crazy.”
“Crazy just that one day.”
“I would have put stones in my pockets by now,” says the Oldest Person of Nordstrand.
“You should!” says the Second-Oldest Person.
This competition for Oldest Person honor corrupts the beauty of aging, the wisdom of aging. You can be a devoted grandmother, say, only to turn ruthless as you get closer to the title. Winning grows more significant than your families. Instead of being joyful with your grandchildren and great-grandchildren, you brood over your health: cough syrup at the hint of a scratchy throat; long hours of sleep that matter far more than the nightmares of your little ones. As the surviving Oldest Person of the year, you can no longer be trusted.
Your rivalry bonds you. Two may connive against a third, coaching one another: live, live, live; but if the third indeed dies, the feud between the finalists will be epic. Shameless. Not that you’ll trip one another on the church steps, or stir arsenic into peach marmalade, though you may contemplate that. Your weapon is compassion. With tales of woe—true and fabricated—you’ll remind one another of lost loves and lost children and lost friends, only to push one another deeper into heartache.
Tell me more.
Once crowned, of course, you have to train for the following summer solstice because you may still outlast your rivals. You feel them wheezing behind you, waiting for any misstep, any light-headedness, blood in your piss, god forbid. If you’re bedridden for a day, say, or a week, they bring you fatty meals to hasten your end, lean over you to estimate the level of your malady. You, too, have done this. With spite and with intent. Now you know what it’s like.
Lotte is afraid of forgetting her children’s faces, their smells, the texture of their hair. That’s why she has to climb deeper into her grief. Like picking a scab. Below is still the wound, but it doesn’t bleed as much. One day before Christmas she bundles Wilhelm into Martin’s pajamas and Bärbel’s coat, carries him to the edge of the sea, sits down and pulls him onto her knees. “Look at the lights.” She points to the cool glow in the sky, blues, and above a band of white that pulls the sky closer. “Lights for your birthday, Wilhelm. One year, you’re one year old today.”
His narrow back against her chest, thumb between his gums.
She rests her chin on top of his head. “The same sky your sisters and your brother are looking at. This very moment.”
Wilhelm rocks his head, tilts her chin up. Down. And up.
“Bärbel and Martin and Hannelore.” Lotte tastes their names. “You were eight months old last time you saw them, Wilhelm. Martin’s favorite is buttermilk soup. Just like your favorite. He helps me make it, crumbles bread into a bowl of buttermilk, lets it soak…” She feels them nearby. It’s happening in the telling to Wilhelm. “Our Hannelore, she likes the eggs of seagulls, likes searching for them. Knows to take just a few and leave enough to hatch. And our Bärbel—”
—you cannot cook applesauce without seeing Bärbel’s upturned face, lips already open, waiting for that first spoon too hot she says, repeating what you tell her, too hot—
“Our Bärbel is wild for anything sweet. Remember what we call her?” Lotte turns Wilhelm so he faces her. “Verfressenes Kaninchen.” Greedy rabbit. She can sniff out sweets even if we hide them. She stuffs them into her cheeks. Like this.”
Lotte puffs her cheeks.
Wilhelm pops her cheeks. Giggles. Puffs his cheeks pops his cheeks. His feet tickle sheep have feet sheep have knees. Sheep have lips and teeth. Lips snatch the fog. Teeth yank it from earth. Make earth tremble. Chomp chomp go the sheep.
She breathes in his Wilhelm-smell, mud and buttermilk. Another smell then, earth and sweat—Bärbel. She can recognize her children by smell. Cinnamon and milk for Hannelore. Schwarzbrot—black bread—for Martin. And she’s here for them—
Now—and whenever you’ll need me. A different connection than pain and guilt because I’ve lost you, a connection to you beyond any moment of longing and panic, and I’m here in the world for you with you, a certainty that is stronger than any uncertainty when I will see you again, a peace that won’t be mine every hour though I’ll recall what it feels like and how it is there for me.
The sky widens into a fan, a swirl, that exalts Lotte, lets her grasp that her children are alive—BärbelMartinHannelore and a quicksilver murmur in a haze that warps and shimmers—alive on Rungholt that emerges once every spring for a few moments. No one can predict when. But you must be ready for its prelude, the Schwarze Sonne—black sun—when the wingbeats of a million starlings block the setting sun while they dance above the marshes in a symphony of light and motion.
Every time Lotte picks at the new scab—greedily, secretly—her wound gets smaller and her children get closer. She goes back and again to the edge of the sea where it’s easier to listen for their voices. To lure them to her, she tells Wilhelm the ancient legend she has grown up with and told all her children. About the Nebelfrau—fog woman.
“The Nebelfrau simmers the Nebel on her stove … lets it rise at dawn. But at dusk, she hauls the Nebel back down from the sky. It hides the sheep, then settles around their feet until they float on the Nebel and—”
“And what then?” asks Martin. Martin who wanted solid food long before the others. Even before he had teeth, he’d suck on a crust of Schwarzbrot, black crumbs around his lips.
“The Nebelfrau lives underneath the sea. Remember, Martin?”
The click-click of Wilhelm sucking his thumb.
Hannelore scowls at Wilhelm. “What did you do with my doll?”
To make her laugh, Lotte gives the Nebelfrau green fog.
“—not green!” protests Hannelore.
Martin chases green fog, stomps on green fog.
Wilhelm slides from Lotte’s lap, crawls on green fog.
Bärbel climbs on Mutti’s lap.
BärbelMartinHannelore … their names taste of sweat, of pollen. Bärbel snuggling against you, listening, Martin half listening, sorting pebbles into rows. Hannelore waiting to correct you in case you change a detail or leave one out. Familiar and unpredictable.
If Tilli picks Wilhelm up, he’ll sling his arms around her neck, his legs around her waist; but Sister Franziska, no matter how gently, will pry him off and send Tilli to help with the big children. Still, some mornings Tilli manages to spirit him away to the old Sisters in the retirement wing where the old Sisters tend to their rabbits. And to their lovey-birds: boy finches with reddish cheeks, girl finches with a black streak running from each eye.
The Sisters adore Wilhelm and hoard bites of sweets for him: a spoonful of pudding; a half-eaten cookie. Read him poems they’ve written with the poet from Niebühl who visits them Tuesday afternoons.
“Boy finches kill weaker boy finches,” Tilli tells Wilhelm.
“Nonsense,” says Sister Konstanze. “And don’t you scare him with that.”
“I won’t.”
“Who told you?”
“My father.”
Sister Konstanze scoffs. “Your father is wrong, but we already know that.”
Tilli laughs with astonishment and covers her mouth. Disrespectful, she thinks, and it is, disrespectful and delicious. She blurts, “He took my brother away.”
Sister Konstanze’s lips twitch.
“He said I can never come home.”
“My dear courageous child.”
Sister Hildegunde praises Tilli. “You have learned so much here that we are promoting you to—”
“Thank you,” Tilli says, pleased.
“—to work in the Big Nursery.”
Wilhelm, they’re taking Wilhelm from me.
The abyss where my own girl lives. And never another breath—
Sister Hildegunde’s heart is aching for this Girl with the square chin and apricot hair. “You’ll still get to see all the children.”
But the impulse to find Wilhelm is stronger than Tilli’s hope of changing Sister Hildegunde’s decision. Tilli runs. A dusting of snow.
and freckles on Tilli’s face on Tilli’s breast and the sky tips
“Drink, baby … my own…”
and the big freckle in Wilhelm’s mouth, dry, the freckle is dry and Wilhelm is cold
And Tilli’s body makes what her own girl needs and is now for Wilhelm and therefore her girl cannot be so far away.
“Here, drink…”
he tugs at the freckle tugs
hum-chuck-hum of bicycle
freckles on Tilli’s fingers fly up buttons
“Ssshhhh, my own.”
close buttons, hum-chuck-hum
“Ssshhhh, baby.”
Sister Franziska eases Wilhelm away from Tilli. “I wish I could help you.”
“I won’t do it again.”
“He is not your baby, Tilli.”
“I know.” Fear and shame and I’m sorry.
“I’m sorry too.” Tears in Sister’s voice. “I’ve asked too much of you.”
Tilli cannot envision being in a place where Wilhelm is not. “He opened my buttons. He knows how.”
“This is not good for you, either.”
“I won’t do it again. Please, Sister.”
Sister motions Tilli toward the convent bicycle toppled among frozen weeds. “Will you please ride the bicycle back?”
“But—”
“I’ll carry Wilhelm. We’ll talk when we get back.”