August. And the dresses of the St. Margaret Girls billow, graceful and weightless. Wind cradles their bellies so they can run again, laughing with their friends on this sandy path bordered by beach roses. Two things to look forward to: today they’ll make jam from the hips of these roses; tomorrow the Zirkus will cross on the ferry from the mainland and the parade is already a presence for the Girls, dazzling in its music and smells and colors.
From the midwife they learn the Latin name for these roses, Rosa rugosa. “If you pick them too soon,” she says, “they’re hard and sour.”
“But if you wait too long, they’re pulpy,” says Tilli, who has lived at the St. Margaret Home for an entire year, longer than any other Girl.
Pails swing from their hands as they fill them with the ripest fruits of wild roses. They want to keep their new friendships forever because they feel closer to St. Margaret Girls than to any friends before—except for your first best friend who was you and you her with no fences between—but some of the Girls will get away as soon as they can, flee from the shame of getting big, rip these new friendships from their souls so that nothing can tilt them into memories of the St. Margaret Home.
Hagebutten Marmalade—rosehip marmalade from the recipe of Old Women. In the kitchen of the St. Margaret Home, Tilli warns the Girls that the tiny, sharp hairs on the hips can lodge in your fingers.
“Like splinters.”
“To get them out,” the midwife says, “you must scrape your front teeth across the tips of your thumb and forefinger. Like this.” She sticks the tip of her thumb into her mouth, presses it against her upper front teeth as she pulls it out.
“Just don’t swallow the splinters,” warns Tilli.
For the rest of the day, she works with the Girls: they trim tops and bottoms from the rosehips, cut them into halves, and scoop out the white seeds. Next, they chop the halves and boil them in water. Once the rosehips bubble in the big pots and turn the water brickred, the midwife demonstrates how to strain the mixture through sieves to get rid of the last splintery hairs. Tilli gets to add honey before they ladle the Marmalade into jars and seal them in a simmering water bath. For days the Girls’ fingertips are scarlet.
“When you leave us, I’ll send a jar with you,” the midwife promises.
While roustabouts unfold the unwieldy canvas for the tent, three St. Margaret Girls drag a ladder from the carriage house to the huge driftwood Jesus who raises his left arm as if giving orders to them; they stick wildflowers—Butterblümchen und Kornblümchen und Kleeblümchen—into his thorny crown to welcome the Ludwig Zirkus. The Sisters are delighted by their Übermut—exuberance.
As the roustabouts pound stakes into the ground, one stake dislodges a dirty clump of gauze.
“Look at this!” The blacksmith holds it up, flings it away in an arc.
“Must be from the war with the Danes,” says a farmer.
“Would a bandage keep a dozen years?” asks the baker.
“You think there’re still bodies down there?”
A toymaker kicks at the ground. “Wouldn’t surprise me.”
“My uncle had to fight on the Danish side,” a fisherman says.
“My father had a leg amputated,” says the blacksmith. “Green after a bullet.”
The first time Lotte sees Kalle again is when he comes to the house to get the zebra for the parade. But it’s agitated, staggers in a circle, whinnying, ears standing up.
“What’s wrong with you?” He pats the zebra’s throat and jaw.
“I haven’t seen her like this.” Lotte strokes the silken length between the animal’s nose and eyes.
“Something is upsetting her,” Kalle says.
“Maybe the smell of the Zirkus animals. She must know they’re back.”
“She’ll see them in the parade.”
The zebra butts her head against him, nearly knocks him over.
He laughs. “Getting stronger, are you?”
He swoops Wilhelm onto the zebra. Holds him steady with one arm around him. Children and dogs run to follow the parade.
“Some earthbound Ark we have here,” Vati tells Wilhelm.
Verrückter Hund raises his leg. Wobbles topples.
Vati says it’s because the Sisters don’t teach him how to pee like a boy dog. “But you can show him, Wilhelm. Butt your shoulder against his side. Keep him from toppling.”
Pee like boy dog … Dove flies at church door. Nest above door.
“See the shadow of the steeple,” Vati says, “how it points at the St. Margaret Home?”
Wilhelm sees. Rides over shadow of steeple.
Flies teem around the eyes and nostrils of the Zirkus animals, not moving if the animals swing their heads or tails. Mud sucks at the shoes of the spectators, darkens the tips of their umbrellas. They swat at flies, lift small children who’ve slipped in the mud, but all that is part of the festivities that will include their purchase of tickets—Saturday and Sunday performances sell out quickly—and the blessing of animals once the priest and two altar boys appear in a puff of myrrh that scares off the flies.
When Kalle brings Wilhelm home on the zebra, they stop in the barn to get more ropes. He lifts Wilhelm off the horse, lifts him high, higher yet, and that’s when he hears it—laughing in his kitchen. A man’s voice. Then Lotte’s. She doesn’t laugh like that when she’s with me. An icy-hot stab behind his eyes. He sets Wilhelm down. Riffles through the shelves above his workbench, looking for chores that’ll postpone entering the house.
“Can I ask you a question about a Sister?” Köbi asks Lotte.
“Which Sister?”
“The one with the long legs.”
“You cannot see a Sister’s legs.”
“I know what hers look like. She’s younger than the others and walks fast. If you watch closely, you can picture her legs. You’ll notice it in her walk … the way only long-legged women walk.”
“You must explain something to me.”
He flinches. “Explain what?”
“How does a long-legged woman walk?”
He blushes as he used to in first grade.
“You’re blushing.”
“And you—you have no mercy.”
“Must be the new Sister. Sister Bertha.”
“Sister Bertha…” He sighs. “Those sweet legs. Almost too long. And that swivel…”
“What swivel?”
“Of her … her personality. Her hips.”
“Women adore you,” she teases Köbi. “Women melt just looking at you.”
“I know.”
She laughs aloud. When’s the last time she heard herself laugh? “Women cannot wait to get engaged to you.”
“A sad thing.”
“It is a sad thing.”
He grins. “Abundantly sad.”
“Why a Sister?”
“Love chooses for us. Love chose for my ancestors. My great-uncle took a year to walk through Germany and met this young woman on Nordstrand.”
“Don’t tell me another Sister.”
“A weaver. His entire family traveled to Nordstrand for his wedding and never returned to the Schwarzwald. Now—this Sister Bertha? Do you know her well?”
“Well enough.”
“What is she like?”
“Why?”
“I must know.”
“And then what must you do? Get engaged again?”
He winces. Four broken engagements so far.
“You love getting engaged but not being engaged because that leads to marriage. So—let’s imagine Sister Bertha leaves the convent for you.”
He looks startled.
“She moves in with you and—”
“Oh no.”
“—and her beautiful love for you replaces her beautiful love for her eternal bridegroom—”
“No.”
“—and she ends her engagement to her eternal bridegroom. Devotes herself to you.”
He groans.
“Hungry, Vati.”
“First we must clear this out.”
All around them sharp tools … a scythe a shovel an ax a pitchfork …
Wilhelm tugs at a bucket of nails.
“That’s heavier than you. You’ll get hurt if you drop it on your feet.”
“Nein,” Wilhelm cries.
“Stop it!” Kalle yells, instantly ashamed. He hands him a wooden ruler. “You can carry this.”
“I help.” Wilhelm tunnels his little hand into Kalle’s fist and—
No— Martin tunnels his hand into Kalle’s fist. That’s the hand Kalle wants in his, not the hand of his lastborn whose eyes are too mild to match Martin’s.
In back of the lowest shelf he finds a nest of shredded rags, evidence of mice. Kalle grabs the shovel, ready to kill, but when he flips the nest, a female falls from it, three tiny mice latched to her teats, sucking and still latched to her while dropping to the floor where she lies on her side. Kalle can’t raise the shovel. He’s killed mice before. And now is saving them. Because of the nursing. Because of the not letting go. Because he is still a father with one child hanging onto him.
He drapes a burlap sack around the milking stool and sets it above the mice. To shelter them? To give them privacy? He shakes his head. Privacy for mice.
“You stay away from mice,” he warns Wilhelm. “They’re filthy. They get people sick.” Then he positions Wilhelm on his shoulders—his armor, his conscience—and walks toward the house, pushes the door open.
“I’m already over her,” Köbi says to Lotte.
“I don’t believe you.”
Kalle bristles. “What are you doing here?”
“You said you’d meet me here.” Something cocky in Köbi’s voice. “To talk about wood shavings.”
“Well … last time they were too small.”
“I’ll tell them at the toy factory. Again.”
“Our animals sneeze when they breathe them in. You should know that.”
“I know that.” Köbi organizes the collection of wood scraps and leases barn space from farmers to store mounds of shavings and sawdust that settle and dry from brown to silver. If the sawdust doesn’t get replaced often enough, it gets nasty from dung and piss.
Wilhelm’s heels thump against Kalle’s chest and he catches them in one hand. Holds them still. “You must explain to the toymakers the difference between sawdust for the arena and wood shavings for bedding that must be large enough so they cannot get into the animal’s lungs.”
Lotte raises her arms to Wilhelm. “Come here, Kindchen.” She won’t look at Kalle. Won’t step in front of him. Just reaches for her son from the side and lets him glide into her arms without touching her husband.