That night she barely talks to him.
Long hours of work with the Zirkus the following day, and he gets back to Lotte late.
Morning, then. In the kitchen. And she lets out a shuddering breath. “I cannot do this by myself…”
“I understand,” he says, though he doesn’t.
“Some days when I’m alone … I cannot see them anymore.”
“Here. Here now.” He pulls a chair away from the kitchen table, settles Lotte on his knees. “We see them better when we’re together.”
“When we talk about them.”
“They’re playing in the sun.” He spins the story for her, embellishes, to lift her from her despair. And be with her.
“Hannelore … she’s in second grade. Her teacher says she’s eager to learn.”
“She’s always been curious. And Martin has been wanting to go to school ever since Hannelore started.”
“Sometimes he gets envious of her.”
“I hope the other family knows how to reassure him. Not punish—”
“They’re kind people,” Lotte says.
“Bärbel loves to play with the family’s animals.”
He restores Lotte to being with their children. He can give her that. Can give her Bärbel as she tags behind the teacher and the shipbuilder and tries to help with chores, not one bit afraid of the horses and cows. Can give her Martin trailing Hannelore, imitating how she arranges her bedding around herself, the two of them plumping and shifting and hiding like starlings in their pockets of leaves. Can give her Hannelore on her third birthday, songs and Kuchen and the wooden doll with the yellow dress that Wilhelm likes to drag around.
Lotte sighs. “But now the other family gets to celebrate her birthday with her.”
He runs one palm up and down her spine.
“I wish…” She lays her head on his shoulder.
“Have I told you about the playground at their school? Just like here. Sundays they take our children there and show Bärbel how to pump her legs on the swing—”
“—but not too high.”
“They always look out for Bärbel.”
Wilhelm tugs at his sleeve. “Vati? Vati?”
“Not now,” Kalle snaps, wishing he’d said it softly because Lotte raises her head from his shoulder.
Wilhelm keeps tugging, and what feels clear to Kalle is this: the boy does not fit into the world he and Lotte inhabit with their older children. He, who has never slapped a child, wants to demolish the boy and—in the waning of his flesh and spirit—get back his other three.
Where did that come from? Demolish? Certainly against my will.
“I’m not capable of that,” he blurts, mortified.
“Capable of what?” Lotte asks.
He shakes his head.
“So good with animals, aren’t you? But you don’t want to love your son.”
“That’s not so.” But the sweet trusting gaze of the boy makes Kalle uneasy, a glance that will suck all life from you if you let him. He must shield the boy from knowing. Wilhelm was already thrown away once—nothing can undo that.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “Also about how I was with Köbi.”
“You only want what you can’t have.”
Lotte stands up, but he pulls her back, pulls the boy up onto her lap, enfolds her between the boy and himself. She brings her arms around the boy’s back, settles in. When Kalle’s legs go numb, he doesn’t lift the boy back down; she’ll take it as a sign that he’s trying not to love Wilhelm.
Words that make pictures of their children. To be with her, he must remember the words she has told him, remember the sequence to establish their children for her. He must not miss one detail because he’ll need it to build the next detail. And the one after that. If he holds on to the power of reason he can let her slide into her make-believe but remain separate, ready to comfort her when she emerges, to caress her till she opens herself to him.
“Tell me what they are doing. This moment?”
He feels burned by her intensity. Is she testing him? The strength of his belief?
“Tell me they are on Rungholt now.”
“They are on Rungholt now. Probably still asleep.”
“Not probably.”
“They are still asleep.”
“It’s our secret.”
“Has the secret taken the place of our love, Lotte?”
“You’re not the only one who gets jealous.”
“Who?”
“As if you didn’t know.”
“I don’t.”
“It’s still early on the island,” she says and waits.
“Hannelore will wake the little ones … tickle them awake. You know how she is.” Hannelore, their firstborn, raising her chin when she asks yet another question. Hannelore who wears down the surfaces of her doll with her love, drags it around by the braids, sleeps with it facedown across her belly. No one else knows the children the way he and Lotte do. “Soon they’ll have breakfast.”
“Slices of boiled ham?” Her voice is raspy.
“Ja. And Dutch cheese.”
“Exotic fruits…”
“They’ll eat pastries,” he prompts her.
“Pastries so delicate they’ll pass their lips like—like breath,” Lotte murmurs, yielding to the lure of the island where it’s always balmy, where she can dress her children like royalty, feed them with delicacies they’ve never tasted but only heard of.
“What kind of exotic food?” he asks.
“Oranges…” Her throat swells with sudden wild joy for her children who can eat oranges every day. “Once I tasted an orange.”
No—almost tasted an orange. One slice of one orange. In third grade, when her teacher, Sister Sieglinde, brought an orange to class, blessed by the Pope in Rome. If Lotte had been at school and not home with the measles, she would have seen Sister Sieglinde pull the orange apart, golden half moons that she slid on the tongues of her students like communion wafers. Juicy and sweet, her classmates told Lotte, till she came to remember that taste on her own tongue.
“All the riches of all the world,” Lotte says.