The Old Women are the guardians of legends. The Jansen children have entered legend. Definitely. The suicide of Herr Doktor Ullrich is gossip. The Nebelfrau—fog woman—has belonged to legend since before all time. Since before Rungholt. She can hide anything with Nebel. Confuse you. But if you look deeply into her Nebel, she will reveal the unseen to you. For some that’s courage.
“Eighty-five Hail Marys,” Maria Ullrich volunteers when the Old Women meet at her big house. Lace tablecloth and napkins. Her best silver. Candles though it’s the middle of the day.
“That’s nothing,” says Frau Bauer. “He gave me a headache.”
“In addition to the headache.”
“Twelve Our Fathers.”
“Three of each.”
“Eine ziemlich unschuldige Woche?” A fairly innocent week?
“I got done sinning when I was a girl.”
“True enough.”
Maria pours coffee into her porcelain cups. Hand-painted by her dead husband’s grandmother. Used only on Christmas Eve. But now every day. Despite her creased cheeks and neck, she feels more inside her beauty than when she was a young woman.
“I bet the beekeeper and Sabine got fifty Hail Marys,” says Frau Bauer.
“And fifty Our Fathers.”
“So let them. I get bored searching for what is sin and what is not.”
“The church’s way of keeping us timid.”
“Timid? Good luck with that.”
“If they tell you it’s a sin you won’t do it.”
“Hah!”
“Or not as often.”
“But eighty-five Hail Marys? Whatever did you do, Maria?”
Maria whispers, “Would you like to know?”
“Yes.”
“If I wanted you to know…”
They lean toward her. “Yes?”
“… then I would tell you—not some priest.”
“Oh—”
“You can be so…”
“… exasperating.”
“Stubborn,” Maria corrects them. “Stubborn.”
“Did you know the saintliest men sin the best?” I ask the beekeeper.
“And do I?”
“What?”
“Sin the best?”
“Oh yes,” I murmur against his throat. “It was mystical, the way you came into our wagon…”
“For the bees?” he teases.
“For me.”
“What if I was the one who sent the bees to invade you? Courting you with the sweetness of my honey.”
“Courting both of us?”
“You. It was always you, Sabine.”
I raise myself on one elbow, bring my face above his, and am stunned because my skin feels looser than when I lie beneath him. With The Sensational Sebastian I never thought of that; but now, with a lover a dozen years younger, I feel my features sag toward his. Is that what he sees? Quickly, I roll on my back. Feel my features adjust to gravity. Pat my cheeks and neck. Firm now.
He kisses my breast. “What if you outlive me?”
“One of us, then, the one who’s left over, will watch over her.”
The beekeeper talks to me while I’m sewing, lets me know if he’ll be away all day, or if he is hurt or puzzled. He talks to me before saying anything to Heike. And I listen. Assure him. Don’t let on I’m worried he’ll leave Heike. Fear has found a new target.
When he can’t find his amethyst letter opener, I offer to help him search for it.
“No, it was in my life a long time. I was fortunate. I expect losses. My first impulse is to get over a loss in a way that won’t take away dignity.”
“Dignity?”
“From others and from myself. It would be naïve to expect loss to bypass me.”
“I tend to hold on.”
He nods.
“Were you always like this?”
“Ja.”
“You must have been wise from the time you were a child.”
“It gets easier to lose things … even people. That’s why I dared marry your daughter.”
“You have the steadiness of a saint—”
“—of a thief.”
“A thief of what?”
“Books. I steal them from the library. It started when I was ten and the spine of my favorite Greek legends was torn. After I glued it to make it last, I returned it to the library. But that night I couldn’t sleep because I was afraid others would tear it up again.”
“You were a child.”
“I took it without borrowing.”
“You were a child!”
“I wanted to keep it safe for a few days or a few weeks and then take it back to the library and put it on a shelf when no one was looking. But I couldn’t … other books too. Later.”
“Always books that were torn?”
He nods. “I confessed to the priest. Still, I couldn’t stop.”
“Some of the greatest readers of the world stole books.”
“How do you know that?”
“Everyone knows.”
“No proof.”
“It must have been like that.”
He laughs. “Oh, Sabine.”
“You still do it?”
“No.”
I purse my lips. Wait.
“Not entire books. I take a piece of twine with me. If I want a certain page, say, I put the twine inside my mouth till it’s wet and then insert it on that page next to the binding. After it soaks through, the page comes out.”
Spit and missing pages. Disgusting. I see the pages with puckered edges Heike and I have found, the bits of twine we emptied from his pockets. “How about readers who check out those books after you’re through?”
“I take only a few pages. In a respectful manner that preserves the books.”
Respectful?
He watches me intensely.
Waiting for me to praise him for his thoughtfulness?
“We all lie to ourselves. This is just how you do it.”
He looks surprised. “I don’t lie to myself.”
“Of course you don’t,” I say quickly. After all, this is his house. And I must not let myself forget that. “I’m talking about the lies people come to believe about themselves. Lies they make up to spite or boast or get what they want.”
“Do you lie to yourself, Sabine?”
“What did you answer him?” Lotte says when I tell her.
“I put on my most mysterious smile for him.”
We’re in her kitchen, making Venetian candy with honey from our hives while Heike and Wilhelm and Tilli build bridges and houses with building blocks and feathers.
“I want to see that mysterious smile.”
I demonstrate. Smile with my lips closed. Hold it.
She turns her eyes to the ceiling as if struck by some divine insight.
“What?”
“That … is not mysterious.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Looks like sour stomach to me.”
“The Sensational Sebastian said my smile is mysterious.”
“Of course. Everything that man said was true.”
I pretend to frown, but I have to laugh.
“Did you ever hear from him again?”
“Not from him. But about him. Still a trapeze artist but always for a different Zirkus. Bremen. Köln. Danzig. Running from one woman while chasing after the next, telling her she’s not like other women.”
“That’s supposed to be a compliment?”
“It’s his line. I tried to prove him wrong.”
“Do you ever wonder how many other children he has fathered?”
“Abandoned.”
“True. He never was a father to your Heike.”
“Probably starts a new child with each new woman. Until he gets too old for the trapeze and stays with one woman for so long that, indeed, he turns to stone.”
“More, tell me more.” Lotte is fascinated and revolted by him.
“You’re far too interested in him.”
“I confess. Now tell me more.”
“We need more feathers,” Tilli announces from the door.
“Feathers for my hat,” Heike says. “A hat like Tilli’s.”
“Me too,” Wilhelm says as Tilli bundles him up.
“Stay together,” I say, though Tilli does that instinctively.
“A hat with a million feathers,” Heike says.
“Beautiful,” Lotte says.
“So … one day the Ludwig Zirkus sets up in a village where his statue stands in a square, bird shit on his shoulders…”
“… and you go up to The Sensational Sebastian and—”
“I don’t want to.”
“Just imagine…”
I don’t want to think about The Sensational Sebastian, but for Lotte I will. I’ll stand on my head to make her my best friend. Sometimes I believe she already is, but that doesn’t last.
“So…” Lotte prompts.
“So…” I sigh theatrically. Clasp my hands to my breasts. “Let’s say I’m with the Ludwigs that day they find his statue.”
“Don’t forget the bird shit all over him,” Lotte says.
“Right. Bird shit.”
“And you walk up to him and you tell him he’s finally found his place, but he cannot answer you because he’s all stone now and you can say whatever you had to hold back.”
“I don’t hold back much, Lotte.”