Nobody had said a thing all the way back from the graveyard and after that, it seemed to Markus, the silence had grown deeper, surrounding everything that had to do with his mother. His father never spoke of her, referred to things she did, or even mentioned objects that might remind anyone of her. All she owned seemed to vanish — her flowered wash dresses, her shoes, her fur-trimmed cloth coat. Only Delphine said her name. It was not as though his mother vanished, for then her things would be left to hold. It was more as though she’d never existed at all.
Not for Markus. In his thoughts, she was more powerful than ever, and stubbornly, he nursed words and pictures and spoke of her to himself. Others might let her go, but he didn’t have to, that was his choice.
The dirt sighed a little, sifted down his back. The hill was still shifting and rearranging itself, still settling mote by mote into its most compact shape. Markus closed his eyes and drifted. He actually fell asleep. When he woke in the shallow den, and came to consciousness without opening his eyes, he realized, before he knew where he was, that he felt wonderful, that he had the good feeling that he’d used to have in summers or looking forward to Christmas or his birthday, before his mother got ill. He had no idea what it was, this good thing that he anticipated, but as he gradually swam toward the surface of his thoughts, he knew that he would find it if he dug.
ONCE HE GOT HOME he couldn’t help telling Emil and Erich, the excitement of the find was too much. He thought as he talked, invented as he waxed eloquent — this fort, this tunnel, this stronghold, this cave they would dig could be reinforced just like a real miner’s mine with boards from the abandoned shack, and branches cut from the woods. It was Markus who thought of swearing people in, too, not allowing just anyone to tag along and join the construction. Having taken an oath of secrecy, made solemn by hot wax dripped on the inside of their wrists, the boys stole shovels, snatched sheets off clotheslines to haul the dirt out of the tunnels, cached away loaves of bread and hard apples, nuts, potatoes to roast, the ends of sausages for the ravenous gang to eat. After school, they gathered at the unfinished house site, worked at their task until dark and beyond dark, by the light of lanterns sneaked out of barns, the flames of candles snitched off their mothers’ bureaus and even, thanks to Roman Shimek, the worst boy in town, candles from the altar of the Catholic church, a disappearance that sent Father Clarence Marek into a fit of outraged sermonizing.
The Waldvogel boys, because they didn’t go to church anymore — not the Catholic church since their mother died and not the Lutheran church, even though Tante waged a campaign with Fidelis — never heard the sermons on the missing candles. They did hear about the sermons from the other boys. In the past they might have been worried, even felt the need for confession. Now they puffed with pride. Felt badness swell in them. Swaggered. For without their mother they felt entirely forsaken and therefore godless. Why should they believe in a God who could so easily and with total indifference to their prayers take her away? They scoffed at God, then, made wax signs on their wrists, took oaths of blood, and licked the rusty ax head. Fidelis knew none of this, and Delphine had only a suspicion.
ONE SATURDAY, Franz brought Mazarine home on her bike. She sprang off the handlebars as the bicycle slowed and then walked beside him, waited as he leaned it against the side of the house. She gazed up at him with a steady smile, trying to hide her nervousness. Franz’s father was a forbidding person and she was sure that he didn’t like her. When she’d visited before, Fidelis hadn’t said a word, hadn’t teased her, hadn’t even given her the kind of neutral but appreciative glance that grown men gave her now. Sometimes their looks were much more obvious, and she wasn’t asking for that. The fact that Mr. Waldvogel didn’t acknowledge her at all was unnerving. She hesitated a little, then followed Franz into the shop and watched him put on his apron. She heard Fidelis out in the farthest corner of the slaughtering room but his voice was muffled and she was glad he didn’t come into the shop to greet them.
“This is Mazarine,” said Franz, when Delphine appeared, wiping her hands on a towel.
“Both of you have z’s in your names,” said Delphine.
Mazarine looked at Franz with a startled little bolt of delight. For all her fooling with their names on the back pages of her notebooks at school, she’d never made anything of the z that they had in common. And now this woman had given her a brand-new piece of old information. Z. Delphine laughed a bit, noticing the pleasure in the girl’s eyes. She turned away, but she had already softened because she could see that this Mazarine, who wore boys’ shoes and had one dress to her name, whose family was dirt-poor with that one bicycle their only wealth and with a bill run up they’d never pay, and whose brother Roman was a little hell-raiser, loved Franz. Why not? Any girl would, it was true. Franz was the type for whom girls developed easy crushes. He had the rich girls after him, doing errands at the shop for their mothers and craning their heads to see if he was working out in back. Delphine knew that Franz didn’t have the capacity for similarly shallow feelings. As he’d carried his mother to her room from the plane ride, she’d seen how much he loved Eva. From that, she had also seen that his attachment to his first love would be deep, maybe even dangerous.
Delphine thought that she’d have to strangle any girl who ever hurt one of the boys. It was seeing them so helpless and lost after Eva died. Even then, she had the thought that anything a woman did would echo back into the sorrow and love they felt for Eva. After she had given this Mazarine the once-over, she asked for a hand with some chores, just to ascertain if she was steady. There was an order to be wrapped for the freezer. Delphine showed the girl how to tear off just the right amount of paper, how to make the crisp folds, then draw down the string from the spool that hung from a hook on the ceiling and secure the package with a flourish. Mazarine did everything carefully and efficiently, and then asked whether there was more that she could do. So Delphine had her wipe down the shelves out front and clean off the canned goods. She did that. And came back again for more work.
“Mazarine, are you hungry?” said Delphine.
“Oh no,” she waved her hand, but gulped. There was hesitation, and Delphine realized that she shouldn’t have asked. It was probably a matter of pride with her to have eaten.
“Come back here with me,” said Delphine. She led the girl back to the kitchen, and heard a little intake of breath as Mazarine paused at the doorway. The afternoon light was slanting through the windows, falling richly on the blue bread bowls and picking out the luster of the polished copper trim on the bins of flour. The tablecloth with the fruits in the squares was on the table, just washed, the colors quiet and cheerful. There were apples in a wicker basket. Delphine remembered how she had felt the first time she had entered Eva’s kitchen, and a wave of feeling for Mazarine flooded through her. She made a meat sandwich, put a doughnut on the plate, an apple beside, poured the girl a tall glass of milk.