Weiberschterba, koi Verderba
Pferdeverrecka, des brengt Shrecke.
“In other words,” she said, “when women die it is not a tragedy. But when horses die, it is a disaster!”
No one could deny now that the most renowned clinic in the Middle West had failed to do a thing for Eva. Besides that, it was well-known that the practice of Brauche was especially effective in dealing with children. Another customer’s family had allowed this Braucher woman to tie an egg to the stomach of their child, transfer an illness into the egg, and then burn the raw egg in the fire as she said the precise words to bind the illness in the burning yolk. She was also an accomplished Messerin, a measurer, who read tendencies to certain diseases in people’s measurements and knew the appropriate Brauche verse to repel harm from each part of the body. So the woman was sent for, and one day she showed herself at the door of the shop. She was not wearing a black head shawl/scarf of the Russian-Germans, as Delphine had expected, or a gathered apron-type skirt, nor was she even fat. She was a small, neat, sturdy little woman with short dark brown hair and ruddy, freckled skin.
“Wo ist das Kind?” she asked, all business.
Delphine brought her into the boys’ bedroom, where Markus lay sleeping underneath a pile of quilts, and called Fidelis, who came and stood in the doorway. From her handbag, the woman drew a length of blue string, which she wound on her hand as she drew the blankets away from Markus and gently awakened him. She spoke some quiet words to him in German, then asked him in English to please lie still on his back while she measured him. Still caught up in his dreams, Markus obediently stretched his arms out while she put the string to them. As she worked, his eyes widened, his face took on an expression of disbelief. The Braucher measured all of him — torso, thighs, neck, hands, feet, and head — and then she stared at him assessingly, put the string back upon him, measuring in the same sequence, only this time reciting German words in a calm firm voice every time she moved the string. By now Markus had gone rigid with an outraged fear, but neither Delphine nor Fidelis really noticed him. They were caught up in the drama of the measuring. When she was finished, the Braucher pulled the covers up around Markus’s neck, patted him gently, and turned away. On her way out, Fidelis paid the woman a shoulder picnic ham. Delphine was distracted by customers, and so she did not check back in on Markus. Meanwhile, he lay in his darkened room, thinking.
“Hello.” He suddenly appeared in the doorway that led into the shop. “I’m hungry,” he said for the first time in many weeks.
His voice was flat, suspicious, and he looked sideways at Delphine in a way she didn’t understand. “You feel better?” she asked, amazed at the Braucher’s success. She brought him back and sat him down at the kitchen table. Markus nodded, sullen and watchful. Slowly, he swallowed spoon after spoon of potato soup, sopped it up doggedly with bread. “I’m going to school,” he announced, and picked up his books with his good arm.
Delphine stopped him, put a hand on his forehead. He glowered up at her from underneath her fingers.
“You still have a bit of fever.”
“I don’t care.” He knocked her hand away and moved past her with stiff dignity. It was clear that he was terribly offended, but Delphine had no idea in what way until Franz asked, a few days later, “What’s this about Markus getting measured for a coffin?”
Delphine looked at him, speechless at first. “What are you talking about?”
“He’s telling all the kids in school, bragging sort of, that he was almost dead. That the undertaker’s wife came and measured him for a coffin.”
Delphine had meant to tell him the truth, but then, she feared suddenly, what if he were to simply crawl back into bed? And refuse to be roused this time at all? Whatever else, the Braucher’s visit had infused him with an indignant horror necessary to his sudden improvement. Markus did seem recovered, though he moved with an air of self-righteous injury and babied his arm. She waited for several weeks before she told Markus what had truly happened. By then, his nameless sickness had entirely passed, and he was firmly among the living.
ELEVEN. The Christmas Sun
THE SNOW FELL as a bitter powder all December, light dustings that did not soften the earth’s iron. The sky was clear. Day after day the sun rose, attended by two fierce sun dogs, glittering with collars of rainbows, cold fire. Where the snow was blown aside, the old plow marks and grooves in the earth sprouted a miserable stubble of wheat and cornstalks. In some places, where the crops had entirely failed, the dirt had drifted up against some lone tree or the occasional fence line. The dirt went so deep it would not be lost, it would always be there, but already it was clear that a great deal of the life was sucked from it. In higher places, the soil had leached an anemic whitish gray, like an old man’s pallor. The stuff mixed with the snow to make a gritty and punishing substance that polished the paint from the houses in Argus, and painfully scoured the cheeks of schoolchildren, who walked to school backward with their arms tucked up in their sleeves, in little groups, taking turns as lookouts. Snow is a blessing when it softens the edges of the world, when it falls like a blanket trapping warm pockets of air. This snow was the opposite — it outlined the edges of things and made the town look meaner, bereft, merely tedious, like a mistake set down upon the earth and only half erased.
TANTE DID NOT GIVE UP when the suit betrayed her, she couldn’t, not even when that first day she was nearly run over in it. Not even when she was sneered at and glared through in the county offices. She made the rounds. She went back to the bank so often that the tellers rolled their eyes at her approach. She even considered for a brief, mad moment approaching the owner of the pool hall and asking if he needed someone to clean. She got as close as the back entrance. But the smell of stale beer, sweat, piss, and worse, as well as the knowledge of what she’d find there for trash, was too revolting. What awful something might be hers to scrub and wash, she didn’t know, but she couldn’t overcome even the phantom of her disgust. So she went on searching. And to its credit, the suit held up. The fibers of the weave did not wilt or fray. The suit carried itself around her like a shield. Even when she’d failed for the day and dragged herself toward home, and some scrap of a meal, the suit rallied her and stiffened her resolve. Instead of starving that night, she went to her brother’s and straightened her back before she entered, swept in as she always had, snatched the food as though it was her due, grandly, because she had to claim it without humility, or she could not claim it at all, not in front of Delphine, whom she both depended upon and hated.
Ever since the hill, Tante had found that Fidelis was more sympathetic to her ideas about bringing the boys back to be raised in Germany. She couldn’t help pointing out that Fidelis’s sons had gotten themselves into tremendous danger. What might happen next? It could be worse! And they were boys, hell-bent, saint-worshiping, furiously happy, danger-loving boys, no doubt about that. They would get into trouble if they could. Tante felt it her duty to tell Fidelis that she doubted that, even with Delphine there for part of the day, he could keep a close enough eye on his sons. They were not safe. They were running wild and swatting themselves with the sign of the cross. And with the wages he had to pay in the shop he could barely keep shoes on their feet. You could see the newspaper linings inside of their old boots. She went on in this way until Fidelis left the room, but she could see that she’d made an impression of some sort. She played on his guilt over what might have happened, what came so close. Markus buried in the hill.